Watermark PDF
Add a text watermark to every page, with control over position, size and opacity. Diagonal and tiled layouts are supported, along with Chinese and other
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Add a text watermark to every page of a PDF - a company name, a website address, a client name or a status such as "DRAFT" or "CONFIDENTIAL". You control the position (corners, centre, diagonal or tiled), the font size and the opacity, and the watermark is drawn on top of the existing content without changing the original text.
Watermarks are the simplest way to stop a draft from being mistaken for a final version, to mark internal documents, or to make sure your name travels with a document you hand to someone else. Tiled and diagonal layouts are the hardest to crop out. The file stays on your device; nothing is uploaded to a server.
How to add a watermark to a PDF
Add your PDF
Enter the watermark text and set position, size and opacity
Download the watermarked PDF
FAQ
Can I watermark only some pages?
The current version applies the watermark to every page, which is what most users want for drafts and confidential documents. If you need it on a single page, split the PDF first, watermark that part and merge the files back together.
Which positions can I choose?
All four corners, centre, a diagonal layout across the page and a tiled pattern that repeats over the whole page. The tiled mode is the most difficult to remove by cropping.
Can I make the watermark faint enough to read the text underneath?
Yes. Lower the opacity to around 10-20% for a discreet background mark, or keep 40-60% when the watermark needs to be clearly visible.
Does it support non-Latin characters?
Yes - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic and Arabic text is supported through a canvas fallback when the standard PDF fonts cannot render the characters.
Is the watermark permanent?
It is drawn into the page content, so it is not a separate layer that can simply be switched off. Someone with a PDF editor could still cover it, which is true of any visible watermark.
Are my documents uploaded?
No, the watermark is applied locally in your browser with pdf-lib.
Should I use a text or image watermark?
Text is best for "DRAFT", "CONFIDENTIAL" or a company name, and stays sharp at any zoom because it remains vector. Use an image when you need a logo.
How do I keep it unobtrusive?
Lower the opacity - around 10-20% is typical for a diagonal stamp - and use tiling when the document must not be reused piece by piece, so every part carries the mark.
Does the watermark go on every page?
Yes - one run applies the same watermark to the whole file, and there is no per-page selection. If only part of a document should carry the mark, split the PDF first, watermark the part that needs it, then merge the pieces back together.
Can I remove the watermark later?
Not with this tool. A watermark is drawn into the page content, so the clean way to get rid of one is to re-create the document without it.
At a glance
| Input | |
|---|---|
| Multiple files | No |
| Where it runs | In your browser - files are never uploaded |
| Works offline | Yes — once the page has loaded |
| Price | Free, no sign-up, no watermark |
What actually makes a PDF large
Almost all of a bulky PDF is images, not text. A ten-page scan can be 40 MB while a 300-page text document is often under 2 MB. That is why compression targets embedded pictures: it downsamples them to a sensible resolution (150 dpi is usually enough for on-screen reading, 300 dpi only if someone will print it) and re-encodes them more efficiently. Text, bookmarks, links and form fields cost almost nothing and should never need to be removed. If a file stays large after compression, it usually contains either a lot of high-resolution images that the compression setting did not touch, or embedded fonts and attachments you can strip.
Keeping text selectable and searchable
A PDF can hold real text or a picture of text, and the difference matters: real text can be selected, searched, copied and read aloud, while a scanned page cannot until someone runs OCR on it. Many "reduce size" tools silently flatten everything into images, which shrinks the file but destroys searchability and makes the text blurry when zoomed. If a document needs to stay usable - contracts, manuals, anything you may need to search later - keep text as text and compress only the images. If you are starting from a scan, run OCR first, then compress.