Reuse your signature across documents, the same every time

Make your keeper signature

Sign PDFDraw, type or upload; flatten on save. Free, runs on your device.Open

Open any PDF, pick the Sign tool and press New signature. Which tab you use decides how you reuse it later:

Method	How you get the same signature next time	What you keep
Type	Type the same name, pick the same ink	Nothing; your name is the recipe
Upload	Upload the same picture	1 picture file in your own folder
Draw	You cannot: every drawing differs a little	Nothing reusable

Draw is fine for one document. For a signature that must look the same across a year of leases, invoices and forms, use Type or Upload. The guide comparing drawing, typing and uploading weighs the 3 in full.

Why does a consistent signature matter?

Recipients compare. A landlord with your application, your lease and your deposit form side by side, or an accounts team with 12 of your monthly invoices, sees every signature at once. Twelve slightly different mouse scrawls look careless at best and suspicious at worst. One signature, the same shape and the same size on every page, looks like what it is: you, signing.

Where does getPDF keep my signature?

In the tab’s memory, and nowhere else.

• While the tab is open, every signature and set of initials you made shows as a small preview in the Sign tool’s bar. Click one, click the page, and it is placed again. Make as many as you like: a full signature and initials, in black and in blue.
• When you close one file and open the next in the same tab, the previews are still there, so a stack of documents is signed with the signature you made for the first one.
• When you close the tab, the list is gone. Nothing was written to your disk, to the browser’s storage or to a server.

That is a choice, not a missing feature. A signature remembered by a browser stays on that computer for whoever uses it next: a library PC, an office machine, a partner’s laptop. Forgetting it is the safe default for a signature, and the place to keep a copy is a folder you control.

One related thing to know: while you edit, the editor keeps a recovery copy of the document itself in this browser, so a crash or a closed tab does not lose your work. That copy contains your placed signature, because it is the document. It goes away when you press Close the file (the editor asks first if you have not saved). On a shared computer, save, close the file, then close the tab.

Keep 1 signature picture: the routine

1. Sign on paper. Plain white paper, a dark pen, 3 to 5 tries; pick the best. Make a signature image from paper has the details.
2. Photograph it from straight above in daylight, no shadow across the ink, and crop the photo close around the signature on your phone.
3. Save it in your documents folder with a plain name, for example signature-jane-cooper.jpg. Keep it where you keep your passport scan, not on the desktop.
4. Each time you sign, press New signature, open Upload, press Choose a picture, pick the file. Leave Make the white paper see-through ticked. Press Use this signature.
5. Click the page where it goes.

From step 4 on, it takes about 10 seconds, and the signature is pixel for pixel the same as last time. The pad takes PNG, JPG or WebP pictures.

If you prefer typing, there is no routine at all: type your name exactly as last time (same spelling, same capitals, same ink colour) and the outlines are identical, because they come from the same handwriting font.

Place it at the same size every time

A click with a signature places it 170 points wide, about 6 cm, with its top left corner where you clicked. Initials go in 60 points wide, about 2 cm. Because that width is fixed, the same signature placed by a click is the same size on every document, which is most of what “consistent” means to a reader.

When a printed line is shorter or longer, resize to match the line, not the white space around it: drag a corner of the selected signature. A document with a real “Sign here” field is easier still: click the field and the signature fits itself into it, as large as fits, centred.

How other tools keep your signature

To be fair to the alternatives, here is where they keep it (checked on 11 October 2026):

• Adobe Acrobat Reader: Fill & Sign has a “Save signature” option; Adobe’s help page says that when you are signed in, the signature is saved in Adobe Document Cloud for reuse.
• Preview on a Mac: Apple’s Preview guide says that with iCloud Drive on, your signatures are available on your other Macs.
• Preview on iPhone (iOS 26): a signature you add through Markup stays in the app for later documents.

Each is convenient, and each means your signature lives in an account or on a device. getPDF keeps nothing, so the convenience is yours to arrange with 1 file.

The honest part

No sync, no account, no saved list. Your laptop and your phone do not share anything through getPDF. To sign on the phone with the same picture, move the file there yourself (send it to yourself, or keep it in a cloud folder you trust).

A picture of a signature can be copied. That is true of the file you keep, of every PDF you send and of every paper you ever signed and scanned. Keep the picture private, and remember that what makes a signature hold up later is the record around it: the email the document came in and your own copy of what you signed.

It is not a certificate signature. Reusing a picture or a typed name gives a simple electronic signature, fine for everyday documents. A tender or registry that asks for a qualified signature needs a certificate from a trust service provider, which getPDF does not make yet.

Next: for a lease that wants your initials on every page, see initials on every page. For the whole job, start at Sign and fill a PDF.