Sign and fill a PDF, free and on your device

Sign and fill it now

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

Drop the file and the editor opens with the signature tool ready. It works the same on a laptop and on a phone: on a phone you draw with a finger, on a desktop with the mouse or trackpad. Every action undoes, so a crooked placement costs you one undo, not a restart.

The rest of this page is the full job: the 3 ways to make a signature, filling every kind of form field, what to do when the form has no fields at all, when and why to flatten, and the plain-words version of whether any of this counts legally. At the end is the honest list of what getPDF does not do.

The 3 ways to make a signature

The signature pad has 3 tabs. All 3 produce a signature you place like a stamp, and all 3 carry the same legal weight for everyday documents. They differ in effort and in what ends up inside your file.

Draw. Sign with the mouse, the trackpad or, on a phone, your finger. A finger is the steadiest of the 3; a mouse is the hardest, and if your mouse signature looks like a heart monitor, type or upload instead. The drawn signature is stored as vector strokes, so it stays sharp at any zoom.

Type. Type your name and the pad renders it in a handwriting font. When you press Use this signature, it becomes vector outlines: the shapes of the letters, not text in a font. No font file is embedded in your PDF, and the signature looks identical in every viewer because there is nothing left to substitute.

Upload. Photograph your real signature on paper and upload the picture. With Make the white paper see-through ticked (it is by default), only the ink lands on the document, not a grey rectangle of paper around it. Sign with a dark pen on plain white paper and shoot from straight above; a dedicated guide below covers the photo habits that make this clean on the first try.

Next to New signature, the Sign tool has Initials (the same pad, for the lease that wants a mark on every page) and a Date button with today’s date, so you do not type the date by hand next to every signature.

One thing worth knowing before you build the perfect signature: it is kept in the browser tab’s memory and nowhere else. It stays ready for the next file you open in the same tab, so a second document is a click, not a new drawing. It is never sent to a server, because nothing is uploaded, and it is not written to your disk either. Close the tab and it is gone. That is the privacy deal, stated plainly. (The document you are editing is a different matter: a recovery copy of it, signature included, stays in this browser until you close the file, so a crash does not lose your work. On a shared computer, close the file before you leave.)

Place it: the line, the size, the date

Some PDFs arrive with a real signature field, the kind labelled “Sign here”. Click it and your signature drops in at the right size, fitted to the field. Done.

Most documents do not have one, just a printed line. Place the signature yourself: click just above the line, drag it onto the line, pull a corner until it matches the line’s length rather than the whitespace around it, and put the date beside it with the Date button. A signature that dwarfs the line reads as pasted; one that sits on the line at the line’s width reads as signed.

For a lease that wants initials on every page, make your initials once and place them page by page in the same corner: once made, each page is a click on the initials and a click on the page. There is a full worked guide to it in this cluster.

Fill the form fields

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

If the PDF carries real form fields (an AcroForm, in PDF language), filling is the easy part. The fillable fields are tinted so you can see at a glance what the form wants, and read-only fields say so instead of silently ignoring your clicks. Tab moves to the next field in the form’s own order, so a 30-field form is a typing job, not a clicking job.

Every standard field type works, in place:

Field type	How it behaves
Text, 1 line	Click and type; the field keeps the author’s font and size
Text, several lines	Wraps as you type, for address blocks and comments
Checkbox	Any number of them can be on
Radio buttons	Exactly 1 of the group; picking one releases its siblings
Dropdown	Pick from the author’s list
List	Like a dropdown, with the options laid open

Two habits save the most grief on real forms. First, write dates the way the form expects; 03/04/2026 is March in the US and April in Vienna, and a flat form will not correct you. Second, save as you go on a long form: your answers live in the saved file itself, so you can close the lid, reopen the file tomorrow and continue. Both habits have their own guides in this cluster.

When the form has no fields at all

Click a line and nothing happens: no cursor, no tint. That is not a broken file, it is a flat form, a printout in PDF form. Plenty of leases, school forms and scanned applications are exactly this.

The fix is to put the text on the lines yourself with add text to PDF: a text box on each line, nudged level with the printed label, at a size that fits the line (10 to 11 pt suits most forms). Printed checkboxes get a typed X. You place every line by hand and there is no Tab order, which is the honest difference between a flat form and a real one. The step-by-step version, with the alignment tricks, is its own guide in this cluster.

Flatten on save: lock the answers in

Flatten PDFForms and annotations into content. Free, runs on your device.Open

When you save, you choose between 2 files:

1. Save PDF. Fields stay fields, so you can still fix a typo next week. This is the copy you keep for yourself.
2. Save flattened PDF. Filled fields, highlights and other marks become part of the page itself, like ink on paper, and a note keeps only its icon. Nobody can click into a field and retype an answer. This is the copy you send.

Your signature is the same in both. It is written into the page content as a drawing (or as a picture, if you uploaded one) on every save, so flattening does not change it; what flattening locks is the form.

Recipients ask for flattened files for a reason: a live field can be retyped by anyone with a PDF editor, and some viewers mangle unflattened fields anyway, showing blanks where your answers are. Flattening removes both failure modes in one save.

Be honest with yourself about what flattening is not. It is not a password: anyone who has the file can read it, and if it should not be readable in transit, protect it with a password as well. It is not redaction: flattened text is still text, still copyable, and covering it with a box removes nothing. And it does not prove who signed or that nothing changed since; it only stops casual edits. The wider story of locking down a PDF properly is in PDF privacy and protection.

Flatten is one way. Keep the editable copy in your own folder before you send the flat one.

Does a drawn or typed signature count legally?

This is not legal advice; it is the map, checked on 11 October 2026.

In the EU, the eIDAS regulation recognises 3 levels of electronic signature: simple, advanced and qualified. A drawn, typed or uploaded signature is a simple electronic signature, and eIDAS says a signature cannot be denied legal effect only because it is electronic. For most everyday documents between private parties (leases, offers, invoice approvals, HR paperwork) a simple signature is what everyone uses and accepts. Some documents are the exception: notarised deeds, certain registry and court filings, and public tenders often demand a qualified signature, the certificate-backed kind from an audited provider.

In the US, the ESIGN Act and UETA make electronic signatures valid for most private contracts, provided both sides intended to sign and agreed to do business electronically; an email thread around the document usually shows both.

Validity and proof are different things. A drawn signature is valid, but proving later who drew it is harder than with a certificate signature. For an everyday lease the email trail is normally proof enough; for a high-stakes document, ask the receiving party what they accept before you sign. The full plain-words explainer on signature law, and the one on qualified signatures, are both in this cluster.

What getPDF does not do

The honest limits, so you are not surprised at the worst moment:

No qualified or certificate signatures yet. The signatures here are simple electronic signatures. If a tender, registry or bank demands a qualified signature, you need a qualified provider; the explainer in this cluster tells you where to get one and what it costs. Certificate signatures are on the plan, but a plan is not a feature.

No sending documents to other people for signature. DocuSign-style request flows need a server that holds your document and nags the other party. Nothing here is uploaded, so there is no such server, and we will not pretend otherwise. The route that works: fill and sign your part, do not flatten yet if the other side still signs, email the file yourself with 1 line of instructions. The other party signs with the same free tool, no account on their side either; the last signer flattens. The multi-signer order, and the 2 emails written out, are their own guides in this cluster.

A flat PDF is not tamper-proof. Flattening stops retyping, not a determined editor with time: any PDF editor, this one included, can still select and move a drawing on a page, signatures included. What proves tampering is a certificate signature, which is exactly the feature above that does not exist here yet. Say what you have, keep your copies, and for most everyday documents that is genuinely enough.

A file that already carries a certificate signature is handled with care. When someone sent you a digitally signed PDF to countersign, the editor adds your signature and answers after the signed bytes instead of rewriting the file, so their signature stays valid for what they signed, and it says so when it saves. Other getPDF tools that write a new PDF from a signed one (compress, merge and the like) warn that the copy’s signature no longer checks out; keep the original.

If what you actually need is to change the document’s own text before signing it, that is a different job: see edit a PDF.

Every signing and filling job, mapped

This page is the hub of the cluster; the specifics each have a focused guide. By job: signing without the print-sign-scan loop; signing on a phone with a finger; turning a paper signature into a clean reusable image; choosing between drawing, typing and uploading; initials on every page of a lease; date formats that nothing rejects; checkboxes, radio buttons and dropdowns; filling a long multi-page form without losing work; a filled form that arrives blank at the recipient; the government form that only says “Please wait” (an XFA form, and what to do about it); fixing a wrong answer after saving; the W-9, filled without your tax number leaving the machine; sending the signed file back the right way; and the full comparison of free signing tools, browsers included. The nearest of these are listed under Related below.

For the jobs that wrap around this one, start at the pillars: everyday PDF jobs walks whole workflows like an apartment application end to end, and PDF privacy and protection covers passwords, metadata and true redaction once the document is signed.

And the claim that carries the whole page: your lease, your W-9, your contract never leave your device. Open a file in the tool once, turn Wi-Fi off, and sign anyway. That is what “nothing is uploaded” means here, and you do not have to take our word for it.