How to Sign a PDF Online Without Printing

You can sign a PDF online without printing it, signing it by hand and scanning it again. Sign PDF is free, needs no account and runs in your browser: the document is processed on your device and is not sent anywhere.

The signature it adds is a visual one, an image placed on the page. The last sections of this guide explain what that means and when the person who receives the file may expect something else.

How to sign a PDF, step by step

1. 1 Open Sign PDF and drop your document on the page, or choose it from your device. A PDF protected by a password is not supported, even one that opens without asking for it, and its signed copy may not open: remove the protection with Unlock PDF first, if you know the password.
2. 2 In the Signature Library panel on the right, click Signature, Initials or Short signature to create an item.
3. 3 In the window that opens, choose Draw to sign with your mouse or trackpad, Text to type your name and pick a style, or Import image to use a PNG or JPEG picture of your signature. Pick a color for a drawn or typed item, and a thickness when you draw, then click Save.
4. 4 Select the page in the thumbnails, then drag the item from the library onto the page.
5. 5 Click a placed signature to select it. Drag it to move it and use the round handles to resize it; the two small buttons at its top-right corner duplicate it on the same page or remove it.
6. 6 Click Download. The signed file keeps its name, with _signed added before the extension.

Tips for a clean result

• • Typed styles are drawn with fonts installed on your device, so a style can look different from one computer to another. Once saved, the item is an image and looks the same in the file for everyone.
• • An imported PNG with a transparent background blends into the page. A JPEG has no transparency, so its background, often white paper, stays visible as a rectangle.
• • To initial every page, create your initials once, then drag them from the library onto each page.
• • Choose the zoom before you place signatures and keep it until you download: a placed signature keeps its position on the screen when you zoom, so it moves on the page. In a PDF whose pages are not all the same size, signatures can come out shifted or stretched, so open the download and check every signed page.
• • Delete all removes every placed signature at once, while your library items stay available.
• • The library lasts as long as the page stays open. It survives Change file, so you can sign several documents in a row, but reloading or closing the page empties it, and nothing is saved on the site.

Visual signature or certificate-based signature?

Sign PDF adds a visual signature: an image of your signature drawn on the page. It carries no certificate, no timestamp and no audit trail. Nothing in the file proves who placed it, and anyone with a PDF editor could copy or remove the image.

A certificate-based digital signature works differently. It adds cryptographic data to the file, linked to a certificate that identifies the signer, so PDF software can check who signed and whether the document changed afterward. It is created with dedicated signing software or services, and it often includes a trusted timestamp.

When to ask the recipient first

Whether a visual signature is enough depends on the person or organization that receives the document, not on the tool. Ask them before you sign in these cases:

• • They ask for a digital signature, a certificate or a specific signing service.
• • Their instructions name a signature format or standard that you must use.
• • You are not sure that an image of your signature will be accepted.

After signing

After the download, the "File ready" panel offers to continue with Compress, Protect or Merge, without selecting the file again.

Protect adds AES-256 encryption: the password is required to open the file. Unlike Sign PDF, it is a server tool, so the file is sent over HTTPS to the ProPDF server in Paris, processed there, then deleted as soon as the task ends.

Edit PDF also has a signature mode, but it sends a document of up to 4 MB in full to the server. If you want the document to stay on your device, sign it with Sign PDF.