How do I sign a PDF on my iPhone or Android phone?

A landlord, an employer or a school sends a PDF and asks you to sign it and send it back today. You are on your phone, there is no printer nearby, and you do not want to install an app for one signature.

You do not need to print anything. A signature added on screen is accepted for most everyday paperwork, and a finger on a touchscreen is one of the better ways to draw one.

The short version

1. Save the PDF to your phone.
2. Open Sign PDF in Safari, Chrome or any other browser and choose the file.
3. Tap Draw, sign with your finger and tap Use signature.
4. Drag the signature onto the line, add the date, and tap Save.
5. Tap Download PDF and send the signed copy back.

The rest of this page goes through each step, and the things that tend to go wrong on a small screen.

Step 1: get the PDF into your files

A PDF you only open from an email is easy to sign in a preview that never saves. Save it first.

On an iPhone, open the attachment, tap the share button and choose Save to Files. It goes into the Files app, usually under iCloud Drive or On My iPhone.

On Android, tap the attachment's download icon. It lands in the Downloads folder of your file manager, or in Google Drive if you choose that.

If what you have is a paper form, photograph it flat in good light. Sign PDF takes a JPG, PNG or WebP photo of a page as well as a PDF, and turns it into a PDF first. A Word file works the same way.

Step 2: make your signature

Open Sign PDF and choose the file. The document fills the top of the screen and the Signing tools panel sits underneath it. Tap the arrow beside that heading to fold the panel away when you want to see more of the page.

Under Signature there are three ways to make one:

• Draw: sign in the box with your finger, then tap Use signature. Undo removes the last stroke and Clear starts again.
• Type: type your name and pick a handwriting style.
• Upload: choose a photo of your signature on white paper. The paper around the ink is removed in your browser, so the signature sits on the page like ink rather than a pasted rectangle.

Choose Blue or Black under Ink colour before you draw if the colour matters. Some offices ask for blue, because it makes a signed original easy to tell from a photocopy.

Drawing a signature that looks like yours

A finger signature looks shaky when it is drawn small and slowly. Sign at your normal speed and use most of the box. The signature is scaled down when it goes on the page, and any wobble shrinks with it. If you have a stylus, use it.

Step 3: put it in the right place

The signature appears on the page you are looking at. Then:

• Drag it with your finger onto the signature line.
• Drag a corner to make it larger or smaller. Size it against the printed text around it: a signature twice the height of the line looks pasted on.
• Pinch to zoom on the page to line it up precisely.

Most forms want more than a signature. In the same panel, Fields adds your Name, the Date, a line of Text for anything else, and a Check or Cross for tick boxes. Initials has its own card, and once your initials are placed, Copy to all pages puts them in the same spot on every page, which leases and contracts often ask for.

The date is today unless you pick another day, and you choose how it is written: spelled out, MM/DD/YYYY, DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD. Match the document. A US form expects MM/DD/YYYY, while in the UK, Canada, Australia and most of Europe 03/04/2026 means 3 April, not March 4. Writing the date out in words avoids the question.

Step 4: save and send

Tap Save, then Download PDF. The signed copy keeps the file name with _edited added, so the unsigned original is still on your phone.

On an iPhone the download goes to the Downloads folder in Files, unless you have changed where Safari saves downloads. On Android it goes to Downloads. Attach it to your reply from there, or use the share button to send it by email or a messaging app.

Before you send it, open the signed file once. It takes ten seconds and catches a signature that landed on the wrong page.

Where your signature goes

Your signature exists only in the browser tab while you work. When you tap Save, the document and what you placed on it are sent over an encrypted connection to our server, the signed PDF is built, and the working copy is deleted as soon as it is done. Your signature is not kept for next time, so you make it again for each document.

Your phone's own tools

Phones have built-in options too, and for a quick signature they can be enough. On an iPhone, the Markup tool in Files and Mail can add a signature, although its buttons move between versions of iOS. On Android it depends on the maker and the apps installed. They are less handy when a form also needs a date in a set format, initials on every page, or ticks in boxes.

Is a signature made on a phone legally valid?

For most everyday documents, yes. A drawn signature on a PDF is an electronic signature, and those are recognised under the ESIGN Act and UETA in the United States, the eIDAS regulation in the EU, and comparable laws in the UK, Canada and Australia. Tenancy forms, job offers, school consent forms and ordinary business agreements are signed this way all the time.

The exceptions are documents that need a witness, a notary or wet ink where you live, such as wills and some property deeds. Are electronic signatures legal in the US? explains where the lines fall, and the other country posts cover the UK, Canada, Australia and the EU. This is general information, not legal advice.

A signature placed this way is a picture of your signature on the page. It shows that you agreed; it cannot prove later that the document was not changed. When that proof is needed, the sender will normally say so and ask for a certificate-based signature or use a signing service. If you are the one collecting signatures, Request Signatures sends each signer a private link and records who signed and when. Sending needs a free account; the people signing do not need one.