Millions of engineers, architects, lawyers, students and educators are using Drawboard PDF every day for fast and collaborative PDF markup.
Powerful PDF tools at your fingertips. The latest PDF technology and software for a better experience. With an intuitive UI designed for delight – there’s a better way to PDF!
Do your best work with Drawboard.
- Dynamic PDF tools that feel good to use
- Multi-platform access and storage. Where you are, your work is.
- Paperless. A way of working for a sustainable future
TOOLS FOR EVERY JOB
Fast, responsive, and accurate markup tools. Draw with best-in-class ink for flawless Apple Pencil hand-feel and finally replace pen and paper.
CROSS-PLATFORM ACCESS ON ANY DEVICE
Upload your annotated PDFs to the cloud and mark up with others in real time with instant sync. Go Pro in-app for additional storage capacity and advanced features.
WORK YOUR WAY
Customize your workspace by docking your favorite tools and build a toolbar that works for you!
MORE
- Text review markup - freehand highlighter, text highlighter, underline, strikeout, squiggly on PDF.
- Insert lines and shapes - cloud tool, rectangle, ellipse, line, arrow, polygon and polyline on PDF.
- Add text with a range of fonts and text styling options
- Insert images and camera photos onto PDFs.
- Convert JPG and PNG image files to PDF.
- Write, annotate, ink and draw on PDFs.
- Customize and edit annotation colors, stroke widths, and opacities.
- Create new blank PDF documents of different size, color, orientation and page count.
- Insert, rotate and delete PDF pages.
- Open, read, mark up and save large and complex PDF documents.
GET MORE WITH PRO
- Redact text and sections of your PDF documents
- Measure elements on your page with length and area measurement tools and smart page calibration
- Add callouts, hyperlinks and audio notes to your documents
- On-page ruler - measure objects on your page with the ease of using a tape measure
I started using this app around 2022. It started off great. I don’t need a lot of features, and it still has the right amount. I open PDF sheet music to mark up for my students, and it does this job.Now let me get into how it has increasingly got worse…When I first got the app, it remembered I liked it snapped to the left of my screen. It also let me exit books without relaunching the window. This was soon changed in an update. It always goes center screen at an undesired resolution. I have to constantly put it back to where I went it, and resize it.Later they also had an update that kept the app crashing. I ended up briefly switching to a different app. I came back when another update fixed the crashing, but now it can’t remember my pages 50% of the time. Which is super frustrating when I have 50 students per week, working on books with hundreds of pages. Luckily I write down the pages for each student, but I still have to scroll to them.This app used to make my workflow better, but lately it hasn’t been holding up. I wouldn’t be upset if this is how it always was, but I’m not sure how they are continuously making the app worse. I wish I could go back and use the first version I had, it was perfect. Alas, I’m stuck with the newest lemon they’ve produced.
Mac Version Needs Work
big shooter
I’ve used the Pro Plus edition of Drawboard now on two separate projects, involving marking-up a check set of Architectural drawings. I’ve used BlueBeam in the past but they no longer support Mac is I no longer support them.Drawboard feels very clunky to me. There is no marquee zoom tool (a fatal flaw) so you have to keep hitting the +/- buttons along with panning to move around a drawing. There also should be a single click to “fit page” like almost every other pdf editor I’ve used. The various tools are selected from microscopic icons that lack intuitive graphics to describe their function. Using call-out notes has also been problematic as the positioning of the notes and leader lines can change when you close and re-open the file, causing you to reformat your notes. The responsiveness of trying to drag an object to a different location is poor. I have yet to figure out how to drag a copy of graphics or notes. Copying and pasting a note from one page to another changes the position of the note instead of allowing you to paste “in-place”.These are all very basic features of any graphics editing program and the fact that they are missing indicates to me that Drawboard isn’t prioritizing improvements.
Developer Response
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your feedback - we really appreciate it. We’re sorry to hear you’ve been experiencing some issues, and we’d love the opportunity to understand them better and help resolve them.If you’re willing, please reach out to us at support@drawboard.com so our team can look into this with you directly. Your experience matters to us, and we’re here to help.
Best pdf app
Collegestudent(polisci)
I love this app! I use it in my iPad, hp laptop, and my phone. It works amazingly on all of them! I read a lot of articles/textbooks since I’m a college student and this app has never failed me. However, I do have one recommendation: consider adding a folder option so that we can better organize pdfs. I have multiple pdfs open that I’m using for different classes and it can be difficult to organize them all, so I frequently get a little frazzled and have to click on each pdf to make sure I have the right one. Add that and you’ll be perfect!
Good for notes often with weird issues
Sharky591
For the majority of the time, the app works great, I used it on my Laptop before getting an iPad and had some issues but were minimal here and there. However, when there are issues, it either doesn’t make sense or its significantly frustrating.For the first part, there is absolutely no good reason to upload to the Drawboard cloud. For whatever reason, they decided to limit many functionalities for files that are uploaded. The two biggest ones I remember before removing them all from the cloud were you cannot add new pages and you cannot rearrange pages. DO NOT UPLOAD TO THEIR CLOUD as of now. Use OneDrive or Google Drive.The second part is more frustrating. Every now and again, all of my work won’t be saved, I go back to a document and will find that everything I did in my last session completely gone. This is really annoying because I use Drawboard to take notes in class.Finally, it seems to be a coin-toss on which tools you can use and which you cannot use. I have the Pro-Lite version I believe and its enough but for whatever reason, moving something to the background or foreground requires the next version. Why are there so many different subscriptions? Why is one thing included but a similar thing not?TL;DR its good but there’s some quirks you need to be prepared for and don’t upload to their Cloud unless you want to lose some functionalities.
Developer Response
Hi, we appreciate your feedback! We've listened to our users and recently released page manipulation support for cloud documents. You can now add and rearrange pages in uploaded documents, and changes will sync across our other platforms (Windows/Web).We're continuously adding more features to cloud documents, so stay tuned!Regarding issues like work not saving, could you please submit a ticket to our support team at https://support.drawboard.com/hc/en-us/requests/new. This will help us investigate and resolve them more effectively. Thanks for your support!
New features:
• Measurement Overhaul: a completely refreshed measurement experience, including a new Perimeter tool and a unified Area tool
• Customizable Measurement Captions: show or hide the label, length, perimeter, and area independently. Drag captions to reposition them, rotate them, and connect them back to the annotation with a leader line
• Custom Measurement Labels: add your own text label above any measurement
• Annotation Subjects: every annotation now has a subject field that you can edit, then use to filter and group in the annotations list
• Measurement Totals: the advanced annotation list now shows measurement totals for each group
Bug fixes:
• Fixed a crash that could occur when opening some documents
• Fixed an issue with importing images from the photos app via the share sheet
• Fixed an issue where some PDF files incorrectly required a password
Version 5.2.1
The developer, Drawboard Pty Ltd, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
Contact Info
User Content
Identifiers
Usage Data
Diagnostics
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
