Easily mark up and annotate documents on your iPad with your Apple Pencil and these great apps.
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At some point in our lifetimes, we've all had to deal with PDFs. You may have needed to read a document in PDF format or you may have needed to fill out and sign a PDF form before sending it back. We've all been there. But if you're using a desktop Mac with no trackpad, doing that kind of stuff may be more of a hassle. In fact, for this kind of thing, we actually prefer an iPad with an Apple Pencil because it just feels so much more natural, like pen and paper.
Regardless of what your current iPad is or which Apple Pencil you're using, having a great app for PDFs really makes all the difference. Here are the best PDF markup and annotation apps that will help you be more productive on the go!
Just starting out? Check which iPad models support Apple Pencil so you buy the right devices for your plans.
Preview may not exist on the iPad just yet, but its excellent markup and annotation tools are available systemwide in iOS. The Instant Markup feature can be triggered by pressing either the Share button or the new Markup button in certain apps — it looks like a pen tip with a circle around it. You can also tap an email attachment in Mail, or take a screenshot to activate the feature.
In the Markup interface, you can add pen, highlighter, or pencil notation, along with basic shapes like squares, circles, arrows, and quote bubbles. Or you can drop a magnifier on the image or document and even add text or a signature. And the best part is that it is all integrated directly into iOS, so you don't need any extra apps.
Sure, it's pretty basic, but sometimes that's all you need.
PDF Viewer has a clean, simplistic interface and powerful annotation tools. It is a perfect in-between for users who need a bit more than what the iOS Markup tool provides, but don't need the power of apps like PDF Expert or LiquidText.
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A PDF app's interface can frequently appear daunting to the average user, thanks in part to the sheer number of annotation options developers try to shove inside of them, but PDF Viewer smartly simplifies this process. Taking a page from Apple's own iWork suite, the app provides a series of nested views depending on which feature you're using. For instance, if you're looking at a document, you'll be shown the tools for sharing, zooming, and browsing through annotations; tap the annotation button, and the app brings you into Annotation mode, with its various tools — still simplified into easy-to-understand icons.
PDF Viewer can even rearrange, delete, or insert blank pages within a PDF, though it doesn't have some of the more advanced combination features (like merging multiple PDFs or adding existing PDF pages into a document).
PDF Viewer - Annotation Expert
PDF Viewer is simple and streamlined enough to help you get all the basics done without much fuss.
When people ask for an all-purpose PDF markup and annotation app, I tend to send them to Readdle's PDF Expert. The free download offers basic PDF reading, annotation, and digital signatures, but it really shines with the advanced tools that you can get via in-app purchases.
You can create customizable "stamps" for oft-used annotations (a friend to copy editors everywhere), edit the structure of the PDF, zip multiple documents together, password-protect your files, and sync with iCloud.
The Pro upgrade takes those tools one step further and allows you to physically crack open a PDF and edit it on the spot. Have a spelling error in your ready-to-print proof? Even if you can't jump back to InDesign on your iPad, you can fix it in the PDF.
You may never need the tools that PDF Expert provides, but I for one love that an app this complex and functional exists on iOS.
PDF Expert - Read, Edit, Sign
Readdle's PDF Expert is one of the best options for PDF viewing and editing. You get the basics for free, and more powerful features with a PRO subscription.
I've rewritten this intro to LiquidText about five times now, largely because the multitouch annotation app has this slippery way of defying description. A traditional sign-and-form-fill annotation app this is not — LiquidText is built for projects, novels, research papers, and dusty libraries. Lawyer and Mac enthusiast David Sparks describes it as being "engineered around the idea of reviewing long PDF documents better." It looks at books filled with post-it notes and string-covered bulletin boards and laughs. There's a better way to organize your research, and this app is it.
At its core, LiquidText focuses on the pain point of annotating lengthy documents, giving users a number of tools to do it in a way wholly unlike any other PDF app on the market. You can use multitouch gestures to pinch together large sections of a document. For instance, you could look at an introductory thesis statement next to its midpoint argument to see if it properly connects the dots. You can pull annotations out from the document they belong to — like clippings or post-its — and organize them together or even link them along the right side of the screen. And all of this is lightning fast and wholly enjoyable, thanks to LiquidText's speedy and simple UI.
The Apple Pencil makes all of this even better, giving users specific gestures to highlight and pull out annotations as they review documents. For those who need this kind of workflow, there's no better app than LiquidText out there — and possibly no better workflow.
LiquidText
LiquidText is a PDF app that is built for those who are working on lengthy research papers, novels, and other in-depth projects.
