Updated July 2026 · 11 min read
Signing a PDF used to mean printing it, signing by hand and scanning it back. Today it takes a browser tab and under a minute — no software, no account.
This guide covers the awkward cases as well as the easy one: scanned and password-protected files, phone gestures, initialling a long contract, what to check before you send it back — and, honestly, what this tool cannot do.
What you'll need
Two minutes here saves twenty later. Open the file in any viewer and check three things: is the text real, are the blanks interactive form fields, and is it password-protected?
Try to select a word, or press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) and search for one you can see. If nothing highlights, you have a scan — a photograph of paper in a PDF wrapper. That changes nothing for signing: a signature graphic sits on pixels as happily as on text. It changes everything else, because you can't search a scan or fill fields that don't exist, so run OCR first if you need either. If the page was scanned crooked, deskew it before signing — a placed signature can be moved and resized here, but not rotated.
PDFs support two passwords that behave very differently. An open password is needed just to view the file; a permissions password lets anyone open it but restricts editing, printing or copying.
Here, an open-password file won't render at all. A permissions-restricted file is sneakier: it displays normally, lets you place a signature, then fails at download, because the library that writes the final PDF refuses to modify an encrypted document. Make an unencrypted copy first, if you have the right to: on a Mac open it in Preview with the password and use File → Export as PDF; on Windows open it in Chrome or Edge and Print → Save as PDF, which turns interactive fields into static ink (and only works where printing is permitted). No password, or no permission to strip it? Ask the sender for a clean copy.
Drag the file onto the upload zone or click "Choose PDF". It is read into your browser's memory and rendered there: the document itself is not uploaded to us, and every step below happens on your own device. Only .pdf files are accepted.
Draw signs with a mouse, trackpad, finger or stylus, with a choice of ink colour and pen weight. Type renders your name in a cursive typeface — fastest on a phone. Upload takes a photo of a wet signature and strips the paper background.
Click the signature thumbnail to drop it onto the page you are viewing, then drag it into position. The item centres on your pointer, so aim slightly above the printed line. Corner handles resize it; arrow keys handle the last millimetre.
Use the quick-add buttons for a printed name and date, or Add Custom Text for a job title or reference number. Tick and cross stamps handle checkbox questions, and Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z) undoes anything.
The final file is assembled on your device and saved with "_Signed" appended, so the two copies never get confused. Close the tab and the working copy held in the page is discarded — only what you downloaded survives. Always open that download before sending it.
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Sign Your Document Free Now →Confusing these is a common reason a signed document gets bounced back. A form field is part of the document's structure: whoever built the PDF defined a named box — Full Name, Date, Signature — that a viewer like Acrobat lets you type into. A signature graphic is a picture painted onto the page itself: no name, no field data, no interactivity.
SimpleSignPDF does the second thing; it does not fill form fields. If your document has real fillable boxes, fill them in your viewer first, save, and bring that copy here — the other way round, field widgets may render above your signature, since annotations are painted after page content.
A signature field is different again: a widget that, clicked in Acrobat, asks for a digital ID. That is a cryptographic signature bound to a certificate, so if the instructions mention a digital certificate, DSC or Qualified Electronic Signature you need certificate-based software. If they just want a signed copy back by email, as most leases, offers, NDAs and freelance contracts do, a graphic is what they expect.
A mouse produces a signature that looks like a mouse drew it. Either use the Type tab, or draw large and slowly across the full pad and shrink it when you place it, since shrinking hides the wobble. Once placed, the keyboard beats dragging: arrow keys nudge finely, Shift+arrow further, Delete removes, Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z) undoes.
If the PDF arrived by email, touch and hold the attachment and Save to Files first, then tap Choose PDF in Safari and pick it from there. Draw with your fingertip: the pad absorbs touch gestures so the page can't scroll out from under you mid-stroke, and landscape gives a wider, more natural stroke. To move a placed signature, press directly on it and drag; to scroll instead, drag the page background beside it. If your fingertip hides the target, zoom out, place it roughly, then zoom in to adjust.
In Chrome, tap Choose PDF and pick from Files, Recent or Drive; a Gmail attachment must be downloaded first so it exists as a local file. The gestures match iPhone, and a stylus beats a fingertip dramatically. When you reply in Gmail, attach from Files rather than Recents, which sometimes points at the unsigned original.
Long agreements often want initials on every page and a full signature on the execution page. Done by hand thirty-odd times, that is the task that produces one missed page — and the missed page is what gets noticed.
The convention exists because initials on every page make it more awkward to swap one out later — how much weight that carries is a matter for the parties and, if it ever comes to it, a court. Where a contract carries a handwritten amendment, both parties normally initial beside it.
A PDF page is a list of drawing instructions. Separately, a PDF can carry annotations — comments, highlights, stamps, form widgets — objects layered above the page, each selectable and deletable.
Your signature is not one of those. The image is painted directly into the page's own content, and your typed name and date are drawn as page text. Open the result in any reader and there is nothing to click, nothing to drag, nothing in the comments panel. That is a flattened signature — and viewers that hide annotations still show it.
It also means you cannot go back and adjust it. If the placement is wrong, sign the original again rather than editing the signed copy.
The honest caveat
Flattening is not tamper-proofing: anyone with a full PDF editor can still alter page content. What detects tampering is a cryptographic digital signature, which seals the file against a certificate so a viewer can flag later modification. This tool does not apply one — it produces a Simple Electronic Signature with no certificate and no audit trail.
A signature is captured as an image at a fixed resolution. At a sensible size it looks clean; stretched across half the page it softens, as any image would.
Rule of thumb: about as wide as the signature line beneath it, and roughly as tall as one and a half lines of body text. If it towers over the printed name below, it is too big. Drag a corner handle inward, then nudge with the arrow keys.
Signing does not compress or re-encode your document: the output is the original plus the signature graphics. A 400 KB original stays about 400 KB; a 40 MB colour scan stays about 40 MB. Every placement embeds its own copy of the signature, so a photo-based signature initialled onto forty pages adds up.
Mainstream providers cap attachments in the region of 20–25 MB (Gmail's limit is 25 MB) and corporate gateways are often stricter, so check yours. If the signed file is too big, the original scan is almost always the reason: ask for the digital original, rescan at 200–300 dpi greyscale rather than 600 dpi colour, or share a cloud-drive link.
Emailing the signed PDF to yourself leaves a timestamped copy of exactly what you sent, sitting in a mailbox you did not write. It is not an audit trail, but it beats having nothing.
A signature created this way is what the e-signature world calls a Simple Electronic Signature (SES) — an electronic mark attached to a document to show you intend to be bound by it. It carries no identity check and no cryptographic seal, which is the tier above it. Broadly, and with real variation by country and document type, an SES is accepted for everyday, low-risk agreements and is a poor fit for anything with formalities attached.
The pattern repeats elsewhere: wills and testamentary documents, and anything a statute says must be witnessed in person, are where electronic signing tends to fail. Notarisation is a subtler case — US federal law lets a notary's own electronic signature satisfy a notarisation requirement, but whether that works for your document depends on state law and on whether remote online notarisation is permitted, so check before assuming. Our electronic signature laws guide goes country by country.
What it does not give you is proof of who signed. In a dispute the question is rarely whether electronic signatures are valid, but whether you can show this person signed this version on this date — so keep the email trail.
If you need those, a paid platform is the right answer — our comparison of e-signature platforms covers where each fits. If you just need to return a document signed, you can skip all of that, and printing and scanning too.
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Sign Your Document Free Now →Under ESIGN, UETA and eIDAS the question is generally whether you intended to sign, not what the mark looks like — a typed name and a drawn squiggle are both simple electronic signatures. Counterparties often have their own preference regardless, so if a lender or employer asked for a handwritten-style signature, draw it.
Not by clicking on it: the signature is painted into the page content rather than added as an annotation, so there is nothing to select or drag in a normal PDF reader. That is not tamper-proofing, though — only a cryptographic digital signature detects modification.
In your browser's local storage on that device only. They do not sync between phone and laptop.