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    New: Full PDF Annotation Suite — Draw, Highlight, Redact, and More

    PDFLoves TeamApril 14, 20266 min read

    We have shipped a major upgrade to the Edit PDF and Annotate PDF tools on PDFLoves.me. What was previously a simple text overlay tool is now a full-featured annotation suite with six professional tools — and it all runs 100% in your browser.

    What is New

    Six Annotation Tools

    The toolbar now includes:

  1. Text — Click anywhere on the page to place typed text with custom font size (10px to 32px) and your choice of five colors.
  2. Pen / Freehand Drawing — Draw freely with your mouse or trackpad. Adjustable line width from 1px to 8px. Perfect for circling items, underlining, or adding hand-drawn marks.
  3. Highlight — Drag a semi-transparent colored rectangle over text passages. Works exactly like a physical highlighter — the text underneath remains visible through the color overlay.
  4. Rectangle — Draw outlined rectangles around content areas for emphasis, grouping, or callouts.
  5. Arrow — Draw directional arrows from one point to another. Great for "look here" callouts in document reviews.
  6. Redact / Hide — The tool many users requested. Cover any area with an opaque black or white rectangle that permanently obscures the content beneath it.

    7. Undo and Redo

    Every action — adding text, drawing a shape, deleting an annotation — is tracked in a full undo/redo history. Made a mistake? Click undo. Changed your mind? Click redo. This works across all six tools and across page navigation.

    Per-Item Management

    Every annotation you create appears in a list below the canvas. You can see exactly what you have added on the current page and delete individual items with a single click. No need to redo everything if you only want to remove one highlight.

    How Redaction Works

    Redaction is a feature that requires careful engineering to get right. When you use the Redact tool on PDFLoves.me:

  7. You select the redact mode and choose black or white as the cover color.
  8. You click and drag over the area you want to hide.
  9. A preview rectangle appears showing exactly what will be covered.
  10. When you click Save, the tool uses pdf-lib to draw an opaque filled rectangle at the exact coordinates on the PDF page.

    11. The result is a PDF where the redacted area is permanently covered. The original content beneath the rectangle is visually hidden in the saved file. This is the same client-side approach used by professional tools.

    Important note on client-side redaction: The rectangle covers the content visually. For documents where the underlying text stream must also be removed (forensic-level redaction), a server-side tool that modifies the content stream would be needed. For the vast majority of use cases — hiding personal details, covering signatures, obscuring sensitive sections before sharing — the visual coverage approach is effective and standard.

    The Annotator Page

    We also added a dedicated Annotate PDF page at pdfloves.me/annotate. This is the exact same tool as Edit PDF, but with a URL and title optimized for users searching for "PDF annotator" or "annotate PDF online." Both pages share identical functionality.

    Privacy Remains Absolute

    All six annotation tools operate entirely in your browser using the pdf-lib JavaScript library. Your PDF file is never uploaded to any server. You can verify this yourself:

  11. Open your browser DevTools (F12)
  12. Go to the Network tab
  13. Upload a PDF and add annotations
  14. Save the file

    15. You will see zero outgoing requests containing your document data. The processing happens in your browser's memory, and the result downloads directly to your device.

    Technical Architecture

    The annotation system is built on three layers:

    Type definitions (edit-pdf-types.ts) — Each annotation type (text, freehand path, rectangle, arrow, redaction) has a typed interface with page number, coordinates, color, and dimension properties.

    Canvas rendering (edit-pdf-render.ts) — A set of pure functions that take annotation arrays and draw them onto an HTML5 Canvas element. This includes real-time drag previews so you can see shapes as you draw them.

    PDF embedding (EditPdf.tsx) — When you save, each annotation is converted from canvas coordinates to PDF coordinates and permanently embedded using pdf-lib's drawText, drawLine, and drawRectangle methods.

    The undo/redo system uses an action-based history stack. Each add or remove operation is recorded as an action with the item and its collection type. Undo reverses the action; redo re-applies it. This is more memory-efficient than storing full state snapshots.

    What This Means for Users

    You now have a professional-grade PDF markup tool that:

  15. Works entirely offline after the page loads
  16. Handles multi-page documents
  17. Supports freehand drawing, typed text, highlights, shapes, and arrows
  18. Includes permanent redaction for sensitive content
  19. Offers full undo/redo
  20. Requires no account, no subscription, and no software installation
  21. Keeps your documents completely private

    22. Whether you are a student highlighting study materials, a lawyer redacting confidential information, a designer marking up proofs, or anyone who needs to annotate a PDF quickly — the tool is ready at pdfloves.me/edit or pdfloves.me/annotate.

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