How to draw on a PDF on a Mac

With PDF Unlimited (free)

1. Switch to Annotate mode

   Open the PDF and click Annotate in the toolbar mode switcher.

2. Pick the pen

   Choose the Pen tool, or press P on the page. It is also under Tools > Annotate > Pen.

3. Set color and thickness

   Choose a color and stroke width in the inspector on the right. If the inspector is hidden, choose View > Show Inspector.

4. Draw

   Drag across the page with the trackpad or mouse. Each stroke is its own annotation, so you can select it later to move or delete it.

5. Add clean shapes

   For tidy marks, use Rectangle (R), Ellipse (O), Line (L) or Arrow (A). Drag to draw, then drag the handles to adjust.

6. Save

   Save the file. To make drawings part of the page so nobody can edit them, use File > Export Flattened…

With Preview, built into macOS

1. Show the Markup toolbar

   Open the PDF in Preview and click the Show Markup Toolbar button.

2. Use Sketch

   Click Sketch and draw a single stroke. If Preview recognizes a standard shape, it swaps in a neat version; choose your original from the palette to keep the freehand line.

3. Use Draw, if you have it

   Macs with a Force Touch trackpad also get a Draw tool, where pressing harder makes a heavier, darker line.

4. Style it

   Use Shape Style for line thickness, Border Color for the line color and Fill Color for the inside of a shape.

Freehand or shapes

Freehand is great for circling a figure, scribbling a quick note in the margin, or sketching a rough layout over a floor plan. It is less great for anything that needs to look tidy. A trackpad circle drawn in one go tends to look like a potato.

That is what the shape tools are for. An ellipse around a number, an arrow pointing at a clause, a rectangle around a section of a diagram: all of them stay crisp at any zoom, and you can resize them afterwards. A good rule is pen for thinking out loud and shapes for anything someone else will read.

Drawing with a trackpad, mouse or iPad

A trackpad works fine for short marks. Go slower than feels natural and you will get smoother lines. A mouse is better for long, straight-ish strokes.

If you own an iPad and an Apple Pencil, Sidecar can extend your Mac display to the iPad, and some people find drawing that way much more natural. Either way, the drawings are ordinary annotations in the PDF.

Editable or flattened

Drawings are saved as annotations that sit on top of the page. That means you, or the next person, can select them, move them, recolor them or delete them. For review copies, that is what you want.

For a final version, you may want the opposite. File > Export Flattened… in PDF Unlimited saves a copy where drawings, highlights and form entries are part of the page itself. Apple suggests File > Print > Save as PDF for the same result in Preview. Read more in how to flatten a PDF.

Related markup

Drawing is one part of marking up a document. For highlights, underlines and sticky notes, see how to annotate a PDF. To type words onto the page, see add text to a PDF. And if a line you drew is meant to hide something, stop: a black shape is not a redaction. Use true redaction, which removes the content underneath.

Questions