Watermark PDF – Add Text Watermark

Stamp CONFIDENTIAL, DRAFT, your company name or any text on your PDF pages. Adjust size, opacity, angle and color with a live preview. Nothing is uploaded.

Drop a PDF file here

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🔒 Your PDF is processed locally in your browser and never uploaded.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I add a watermark to a PDF?

Open your PDF in the tool, type the watermark text, adjust size, opacity, rotation and color while watching the live preview, then click Add watermark and download the new file.

Can I watermark only some pages of a PDF?

Yes. Choose Custom under Pages and enter the pages or ranges, for example 2-5, 9. All other pages are left untouched.

Can a text watermark be removed from a PDF?

A text watermark is added as a separate layer of page content, so someone with a PDF editor can delete it. It deters casual copying and marks a document's status, but it is not a security feature. For stronger protection, convert the watermarked PDF to images.

Why are some characters not allowed in the watermark?

The tool uses the standard Helvetica font built into every PDF reader, which only covers Western European characters (WinAnsi). Emoji and scripts such as Chinese, Arabic or Cyrillic would need an embedded font and are rejected with a clear message.

Does adding a watermark reduce PDF quality?

No. The original pages, text and images are kept exactly as they are and the watermark is drawn on top as vector text. The text in the document stays selectable and searchable.

Is my PDF uploaded when I add a watermark?

No. The watermark is applied by JavaScript running in your browser. Your document is never sent to a server, which makes the tool safe for contracts, drafts and other confidential files.

What a PDF watermark is for

A watermark is semi-transparent text printed across a page. It tells every reader at a glance what the document is: a DRAFT that is not final, a CONFIDENTIAL report that should not be forwarded, a SAMPLE of paid content, or a copy issued to a specific client. Because it sits on top of the content, the mark is still there when the page is printed, screenshotted or photographed. Plain metadata or a cover note does not survive that.

How this watermark tool works

The tool opens your file with pdf-lib and, on every selected page, draws your text with the standard Helvetica font, at the opacity and angle you chose. The existing page content is not modified or re-rendered. The watermark is added as an extra layer, so the original text stays sharp, selectable and searchable, and the file size barely changes.

Real-world PDFs are not always simple. Scanned pages often have a rotation flag, and many documents have a crop box that hides part of the page. The tool reads both values for each page, so the watermark is centered on the area you actually see and keeps the same angle on every page, even when portrait and landscape pages are mixed.

Step by step

  1. Open the PDF: a preview of the first page appears next to the settings.
  2. Type your text: short words such as DRAFT or CONFIDENTIAL work best.
  3. Style it: set font size, opacity (20–30% keeps the page readable), rotation and color.
  4. Choose the layout: Center places one large stamp. Tiled repeats the text across the page, which makes it harder to crop out.
  5. Select pages and apply: download the result as yourfile-watermarked.pdf.

Designing a watermark that works

A good watermark is visible without getting in the way of reading. Light colors such as gray or pale red at 15–30% opacity work best on text documents. Dark colors at high opacity make the page tiring to read and look bad when printed in black and white. The classic 45° diagonal crosses the most lines of text, so it is hard to crop out and still leaves words readable. For documents shared with several recipients, put the recipient’s name in the watermark, for example “Copy for ACME Ltd”. If the file leaks, you will know where it came from.

Tips and limits

  • A watermark is not encryption. Anyone with a PDF editor can remove a text layer. To make removal much harder, flatten the result with the PDF to JPG tool and rebuild it with JPG to PDF.
  • Supported characters: Latin letters including accents (é, ñ, ü), digits and common symbols such as ©, ® and €. Emoji and non-Latin scripts are rejected before processing.
  • The preview is a close approximation. Letter spacing can differ slightly from the final PDF.
  • Password-protected PDFs must be unlocked first. The tool tells you if a file is encrypted.

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