Fill a PDF form on your phone, no app needed

Fill the form on your phone now

Fill PDF formAcroForm fields, flatten or keep. Free, runs on your device.Open

The page works the same on a phone as on a laptop. Below 1,024 pixels of width the editor switches to its phone layout: the file and Save at the top, the page in the middle, the tools in a bar at the bottom.

Does the form have fields I can tap?

Open the file and look at the bar above the tools at the bottom. A form with real fields says “A form: tap a tinted field to fill it”, and every field is tinted blue on the page.

No message and no blue boxes means the form has no fields: it is a printed form saved as a PDF. You can still fill it, by placing text on the lines with the Text tool; fill a PDF form with no fields shows how. On a phone that takes more patience than on a laptop, so a long flat form is a good one to finish on a bigger screen.

How do I fill each field on a phone?

1. Zoom to the field. Two fingers pinch to zoom, 1 finger scrolls. Zoom until the field you are filling is comfortably wide; small forms are easier at 150 % or more.
2. Tap a tinted field and type. A text box opens over the field with the keyboard. It uses at least 16 px text, so the phone does not zoom in on its own when the box opens.
3. Tap Return to set the answer, or tap anywhere outside the box. In a field with several lines (an address, “About you”), Return starts a new line; tap outside the box when you are done.
4. Tap the next field. On a computer, Tab moves to the next field; a phone keyboard has no Tab key, so you tap.
5. Checkboxes and radio buttons: 1 tap ticks a box, a second tap clears it. Tapping a radio button picks it and releases the others in its group.
6. Dropdowns and lists open the phone’s own picker: a wheel on an iPhone, a list on Android.
7. Fields that do not react are read-only: the form’s author locked them (a reference number, a case ID). That is deliberate, not a fault.

Every answer undoes with Undo in the top row, 1 step at a time.

The keyboard is always the letter keyboard, also for numbers, postcodes and dates. Switch to the number keys yourself (the 123 key). For dates, write them in the format the form prints next to the field; on a phone it is easy to type 03/04 without checking which comes first, and dates on PDF forms shows the trap.

How do I sign a form on my phone?

Tap the “Sign here” field if the form has one: the signature pad opens, you draw with a finger, and the signature drops into the field at its size. On a form without a signature field, pick Sign in the bottom bar, make your signature, then tap where it goes. Sign also has a Date button that places today’s date with the month spelled out, which no one can misread. Sign a PDF on your phone has the finger-signing details, and sign and fill a PDF covers drawing, typing and uploading a signature.

How do I save the filled form on my phone?

1. Tap Save at the top right. The filled copy is saved as a new file with -edited at the end of its name; the blank form stays as it was.
2. Find it. On Android, Chrome puts it in the Downloads folder, where the Files app finds it. On an iPhone, Safari puts it in Downloads in the Files app.
3. Send it from there. The share button in Files sends it to mail, a chat or a portal’s upload page.

If the form is final, save a flattened copy too: tap More at the top and pick Save flattened PDF. Your answers become part of the page, so nobody can retype them and every viewer shows them. Keep the -edited copy for yourself; flatten a filled PDF form explains why.

Can I stop halfway and finish on my laptop?

Yes, and it is the sensible plan for a long form. Your answers live in the saved file itself, not in the browser tab. Save partway, move the file to your laptop (mail it to yourself, or use whatever cloud folder you already use), open it in the same form filler there, and every answer is waiting.

If the tab closes before you save (a call comes in, the battery dies, the back button), the editor has kept a recovery copy in this browser a moment after your last change. Open the page again in the same browser and tap Recover. That copy stays on the phone; it does not follow you to the laptop. Fill a long PDF form without losing work has the full routine.

The honest part: what a phone is bad at

• Nothing syncs, because nothing is uploaded. There is no account and no cloud copy. Getting the file from phone to laptop is your job, and that is the price of the form never leaving your device.
• Long forms are slow on a phone. 3 fields are fine; 80 fields over 10 pages are faster on a computer with a keyboard and Tab. Start on the phone if you must, save, finish on the bigger screen.
• The keyboard does not switch for numbers. You switch it yourself.
• Form calculations do not run. Some forms add up totals with scripts; getPDF does not run a form’s scripts, so type totals in yourself.
• Full XFA forms do not open as forms. Some government forms use XFA, an older Adobe-only format, and show only a “Please wait” page outside Adobe Reader. Those need Adobe Reader on a computer. A form that carries ordinary fields next to its XFA copy, such as the IRS W-9, fills here like any other.

Your phone may already have an app that fills forms. Google’s Drive app has filled PDF forms on Android and iPhone since August 2019 (Google Workspace Updates blog), on a file stored in your Drive; on an iPhone, the Preview app, a separate app since iOS 26, fills forms too (both checked on 11 October 2026). Use them if they do the job. getPDF adds the flattened save, signatures in fields, and the plain fact that the form is filled in the browser and never uploaded.