View, navigate, and annotate PDFs. Highlight text, add sticky notes, and draw freehand.
Reading a PDF should not require an app install or a trip to the printer. This free viewer renders your PDF directly in the browser the moment you select it, with page navigation, zoom, and thumbnail previews for moving around large documents. It also doubles as an annotation tool, so you can highlight text, add sticky notes, and draw freehand as you review.
The viewer loads the file locally with PDF.js, so pages appear quickly and nothing is uploaded. A sidebar of thumbnail previews lets you jump straight to any page, while previous and next buttons and a page counter keep you oriented. Zoom controls range from 25% to 300% in 25% steps, which is enough to read dense text or inspect fine detail.
Rendering happens page by page as you move, so even a lengthy document opens fast and stays responsive. The thumbnails are generated from the first pages of the file, giving you a visual map of the document at a glance.
All of this runs in your browser, which means large or sensitive files can be reviewed without sending them anywhere.
Highlight drags a translucent marker over the text you want to revisit, perfect for study notes and article reviews. Sticky lets you click anywhere on a page and drop a note with your own words, like a margin comment. Draw turns your mouse or trackpad into a freehand pen, useful for circling figures or sketching on top of the page.
Every annotation appears in a panel for the current page, where you can remove individual marks. Undo and redo cover mistakes as you work, and switching between the cursor and annotation tools takes a single click. Annotations are kept per page, so you can move through the document and mark as you go.
There is no install, no sign-up, and no toolbar to learn. The controls live in a single row at the top of the viewer, and the page itself is the whole workspace.
Pro tip
Zoom in to 150% or more before drawing or highlighting. The marks follow your cursor precisely, and a larger view makes it much easier to outline exactly the passage you mean.
Anyone who reads PDFs regularly — students, reviewers, clients, editors — will find a faster way through their documents here. Because the annotations stay on screen while you work, you can review a draft, flag sections, and collect your thoughts in one sitting without extra software.
The sticky-note workflow is especially handy for feedback: click where you have a comment, type it, and it sits right on the page in context. For a first pass over a long document, that beats keeping a separate notes file and trying to remember which page each thought belongs to.
Note that annotations are for on-screen review during your session rather than being saved into the file. If you need to burn your marks into the PDF itself, a dedicated annotation tool with download support is the better fit.