Getting started

How to Use PDFSimplified: A Complete Walkthrough

PDFSimplified lets you edit a PDF directly in your browser — click any line of text and retype it, drop in images, draw on the page, and rearrange pages. Open pdfsimplified.com/edit-pdf, choose your file, and start editing. Everything you change is visible on the page as you change it, and an AI assistant can rephrase, summarize, or translate any element you select.

Updated July 10, 2026 · 7 min read

What PDFSimplified does

PDFs are usually locked — you can read them, but changing a single typo means going back to whoever made the original. PDFSimplified removes that step. You open your file, click the thing you want to change, and change it. There's nothing to install and nothing to configure.

There are two ways in. If you already have a document, use Edit PDF. If you're starting from nothing, use Create PDF.

Opening your file

1. 1

   Go to the editor

   Open pdfsimplified.com/edit-pdf in your browser.

2. 2

   Choose your PDF

   Click the Select PDF files button and pick the document from your computer.

3. 3

   Wait for it to load

   Your document appears in the editor, page by page, exactly as it looks now.

Finding your way around

The editor has two parts. Down the left is the toolbar — everything you can add or change lives here. Filling the rest of the window is the page itself, where you click directly on whatever you want to edit.

The toolbar, one button at a time

File

Rename your document, save your progress, start a new design, or download the finished PDF. Save keeps your work in the editor; Download puts the file on your computer.

Pages

Shows every page as a small thumbnail. From here you can:

• Move a page up or down with the arrow buttons
• Delete a page you don't need
• Add a fresh blank page
• Open the page manager from the more-options button on any thumbnail

The page manager also holds AI Edit, which works on a whole page at once rather than a single element — useful for something like translating an entire page in one go.

Text

Add new text anywhere on the page. Pick from a range of sizes and styles, or use one of the ready-made font combinations if you'd rather not choose.

Shapes

Drop in circles, lines, boxes and other ready-made shapes — handy for boxing off a section or underlining something by hand.

Uploads

Place an image into your PDF. Choose a picture from your computer and drag it wherever it belongs.

Draw

Draw freehand. Three brushes: pen for clean lines, highlighter for marking passages, and eraser for undoing strokes. Every brush has its own sizes and colours.

Styling what you've selected

Click any element on the page and a bar of controls appears across the top. From left to right you'll find everything you'd expect from a word processor:

• Font and size — typeface, plus the plus/minus buttons to size it
• Colour — text colour and background colour
• Emphasis — bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
• Letter case — switch between uppercase, lowercase and title case
• Alignment and lists — left, centre, right; bulleted or numbered
• Spacing — the gap between lines, and between letters
• Transparency — fade an element in or out
• Text direction — for right-to-left languages like Arabic or Hebrew
• Add a link — turn text into a clickable link
• Download — save the PDF without leaving the bar

Letting AI do the work

Whenever you select something, a small blue button appears next to it. Click it and you can hand that piece of text to an AI assistant. First choose which model to use — the editor tells you what each one is good at — then pick what you want done:

• Rephrase — rewrite it in a different tone
• Summarize — condense a long passage
• Translate — put it into another language
• Custom instruction — describe anything else in your own words

A worked example: fixing up a résumé

1. 1

   Open the résumé

   Go to Edit PDF, click Select PDF files, and load your existing résumé.

2. 2

   Fix the job title

   Click the line under your name and retype it. The rest of the page stays exactly where it is.

3. 3

   Tighten the summary

   Select the summary paragraph, click the blue AI button, and choose Rephrase — then pick a more confident tone.

4. 4

   Make a translated copy

   Open the Pages panel, hit more options on the page, choose AI Edit, and translate the whole page at once.

5. 5

   Save it

   Open the File panel and click Download.