Since version 3.3 SumatraPDF can add / edit annotations in PDF
files.
Note: version 3.3 is not yet released, you need
to use daily build from
https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/dailybuilds
Highlight text with highlight annotation
Most common annotation is highlighting of text: select text and
press
a
. This creates a highlight annotation in
yellow color:
Here I highlighted word
USAGE
and pressed
a
.Saving annotations back to PDF file
Notice in toolbar (upper right) we show:
You have unsaved annotations.
When you close the document (or exit the app) and have unsaved
annotations, we'll ask if you want to save them:

If you close the dialog or choose
Discard
,
annotations will be lost.Save changes to existing PDF
will over-write the PDF
with newly added annotations.Save changes to a new PDF
will allow you to save as
a new file.Open annotation editor
If you press
A
(upper case i.e.
Shift-a
) we will create a highlight annotation (same
as lower case a
) but also open annotation editor
window.Another way to open annotation editor is to use context menu
(right mouse click or
Shift-F10
) and use
Edit Annotations
:
Other annotations for selected text
When you selected a text, you can create the following
annotations from the selection:
- highlight
- underline
- strike out
- squiggly underline

We also copy selected text to a clipboard so that e.g. you can
use
Ctrl-V
to paste it into
Contents
property of the annotation.Other annotation types
You can also create annotation object at your mouse
location:
- text
- free text
- stamp
- caret

Annotation editor
All those commands will open annotation editor:

Here we have a text annotation in the editor.
You can delete annotations, change color, text and other
attributes.
Select annotation from page in editor
When you have many annotations on the page, it's hard to
locate the desired annotation in the editor list.
To select an annotation in the editor, place the mouse cursor
over an annotation in the page, right click for context menu and
use
Select Annotation in Editor
.
Moving annotations
To move an annotation on the page, left click with mouse and drag
to new location.
Customize highlight color
To change default color for highlight annotation (created with
keyboard shortcut
a
), use
Settings \ Advanced Options...
menu and change
Annotations
\ HighlightColor
value.
Default is yellow #ffff00
).Missing features
This is a first version of annotation editing. We don't yet
support all annotation types and can't do everything that
other PDF editing apps can do.
The future will be driven by your feedback. If there are features
missing or there are better ways of doing things, let me know in
the forum
https://forum.sumatrapdfreader.org/
When providing feedback:
- tell us what
- tell us why. Context is important for prioritizing features. Is new feature / idea something that you absolutely need or is it just a nice improvement
- you might be familiar how other PDF editors work. When referencing feature or UI ideas coming from other apps, tell us which app it is. Screenshots are better than words when describing UI ideas.