How to add a watermark to a PDF
To add a watermark to a PDF, open it in Watermark PDF, type the text, choose where it goes and how it looks, check the pages in the preview, and press Add Watermark. You get a new PDF; the original file is not changed.
Steps
- Open the PDF. Drop it on the page or choose it from your files. The file is read inside your browser; it is not uploaded to app.zone’s servers.
- Type the text. The field starts with “CONFIDENTIAL”, already selected, so whatever you type replaces it.
- Choose a position. Nine spots on a small page map — the corners, the edges and the center — or Tile to repeat the text across the whole page.
- Choose a size and an angle. Small, normal or large; 0°, 45°, −45° or 90°.
- Set the opacity and the color. Opacity goes from 10% to 100%; the colors are gray, black, red and blue.
- Choose the pages. All pages, or a range of PDF pages with a start page and an end page.
- Check the preview. Every page shows the watermark where it will be printed. Open any page to see it larger.
- Press Add Watermark. The new file is called yourfile-watermarked.pdf. On an iPhone or iPad, the PDF is prepared first and you save or share it from the share sheet.
The defaults are a good start
A new document starts with the text in the center, at 45°, normal size, gray, at 30% opacity, on all pages. That is the classic diagonal watermark: easy to see, but light enough to read the page through it. If that is what you need, you only have to type your text and save.
What changes in the file, and what doesn’t
The watermark is drawn on top of the page content as shapes, not added as text. Your own text stays text: it can still be selected, copied and searched, and the watermark does not get mixed into what you copy. The pages are not redrawn, images are not recompressed, and page sizes, rotation, links, form fields and bookmarks stay as they were.
Before the file is handed to you, it is opened again and checked: the same number of pages, the same page boxes, the same text, and a watermark on exactly the pages you chose. If the check fails, nothing is saved.
Good to know
- A watermark is a label, not protection. Anyone with a PDF editor can remove it. Keep your original file.
- Signed PDFs. Adding a watermark changes the document, so a digital signature will not be valid in the new file. You’ll see a note when you open such a file.
- Password-protected PDFs can’t be opened.
- Large PDFs work too; on a phone, very large files can take a while, and you’ll see a note when a file is that big.