How to Highlight a PDF Online for Free

Discover different ways to quickly highlight important text in a PDF online for free with Xodo’s annotator tool.

PDF files have become an essential part of our work and personal life, widely used for various business reports, legal documents, job applications, eBooks, education, and so much more.

As a result, students and professionals want to highlight, review, and annotate a large number of documents on a daily basis.

Fortunately, there are simple and free online tools like Xodo that anyone can use to highlight a PDF with ease.

In this short step-by-step guide, we'll show you how to use Xodo to:

• Highlight text in a PDF document online
• Add highlight in scanned PDFs
• Delete highlights from PDF files
• Add other annotations to PDFs

Let's jump right into it!

How to quickly highlight in PDF online

Follow these simple steps to highlight a PDF for free using Xodo:

1. Open your file in the free online PDF annotator. 
2. Select the Highlight tool or Free Hand Highlight option from the toolbar.
3. Customize the highlight color and opacity.
4. Select text and add highlights over it.
5. Download your PDF file when you're done.

Highlighting text in a PDF document online is a convenient way to review your files without needing to rely on basic PDF readers and built-in software like the Preview app on Mac.

With Xodo, you can easily highlight, underline, add notes, insert links to PDF, and leave comments for others to review and approve.

Managing and customizing highlights

To manage and customize highlights and annotations in your file, use the panels on the left and right sides.

This feature allows you to quickly find and review all the highlights and other annotations. If you need to make changes, you can easily delete or update markups directly from the panel.

Customizing highlight color is also simple; you can choose from a range of colors and adjust the opacity to make your highlighted content stand out.

Additionally, Xodo enables you to share your file with others, making it easier to collaborate and review highlighted documents.

How to highlight text in scanned PDF documents

You can use Xodo to highlight a scanned PDF document online. Here's how:

1. Upload your scanned file to the free online annotation tool.
2. Use the Free Hand Highlight option to insert highlights.
3. Share or download your file.

Since scanned text in a PDF is recognized as an image, it cannot be highlighted using standard annotation tools. However, with Xodo, you can easily add highlights to scanned documents in just seconds.

Removing highlights from PDF documents

Follow these steps to quickly remove highlights from your PDF using Xodo:

1. Open your PDF in the PDF Annotator.
2. Click to select the highlighted area you want to delete.
3. Then click on the Eraser tool in the main toolbar.

Xodo is a versatile PDF highlighter tool that lets you easily delete highlights and other annotations directly in your browser.

Adding notes, underline and other annotations to PDF

Xodo also offers a range of additional tools to help you review and annotate your content online. You can:

• Add comments, notes, graphics, stamps, and attachments
• Insert lines, arrows, and draw shapes
• Fill out and sign PDF forms online
• Measure distances and areas
• Markup text with underline, squiggly, and strikethrough options
• Permanently redact sensitive data
• Edit PDF text directly in your browser

To access these features, simply click on the appropriate options: View, Annotate, Sign, Shapes, Insert, Measure, Redact, Crop, Edit Text, Build Form at the top of the toolbar.

Annotating vs. editing a PDF

Annotating a PDF is different from editing it.

When you annotate, you're adding notes, comments, highlights, underlines and callouts without changing the file. It's a great way to review documents, share feedback, or draw attention to important sections.

Editing a PDF involves making changes to the original content, like adding new or updating existing text, which usually requires access to more advanced PDF software.

With Xodo, you get the best of both worlds. You can easily annotate your PDFs without affecting the original content, and you can also edit them directly in your browser.

Highlight PDFs and unlock easier workflows with Xodo

From highlighting text to adding underlines and callouts, Xodo is ideal for students, educators, professionals, and anyone who needs to frequently review and collaborate on PDFs.

Xodo offers a range of features to modify, annotate, sign, fill out, redact, and convert files in a secure, intuitive online PDF editor.

So, why wait? Experience a more efficient way to review and work with your documents.

Explore all 40+ online Xodo tools below or check out our Adobe Acrobat alternative to access more advanced, business-ready features completely offline.