QuireHow to highlight text in a PDF
Short answer: select the text and use the highlight tool. Preview on a Mac, Microsoft Edge, Adobe Acrobat Reader and the Quire PDF extension all highlight selected text. Chrome’s own viewer has a highlighter pen that you drag across the words instead.
If the text won’t select, the PDF is probably a scan, a picture of the page with no text in it.
Updated 15 October 2026. Mac steps follow Apple’s Preview guide; Chrome steps follow Google’s Chrome help.
Highlight with Preview on a Mac
- Open the PDF in Preview
Double-click the PDF, or right-click it and choose Open With › Preview.
- Select the text
Drag across the words you want to mark.
- Choose a colour or style
Click the arrow next to the Highlight button and choose a highlight colour, underline or strikethrough.
- Remove a highlight if needed
Control-click the highlighted text and choose the remove option from the shortcut menu.
- Review your highlights
Choose View › Highlights and Notes to list them in the sidebar.
Preview saves changes into the file as you work. Choose File › Duplicate first if you want a clean copy too.
Highlight in Chrome
Choose Draw in Chrome’s PDF viewer, then Highlighter in the panel on the right, pick a colour and size, and drag across the text. It is a freehand marker rather than a text highlight, so go slowly along the line. When you’re done, choose Download › With your changes. More in how to annotate a PDF in Chrome.
Highlight in Edge or Acrobat Reader
Microsoft describes Edge’s built-in reader as able to “highlight, mark up, add text, and save your changes”, and Edge is the default PDF reader on Windows 10 and 11. Microsoft’s current pages don’t list the toolbar in detail: select the text and look for the highlight option in the PDF toolbar or the right-click menu, then save a copy. Adobe Acrobat Reader is free and can also add highlights, comments and sticky notes.
Highlight with Quire PDF
Quire PDF is our Chrome extension. Its Highlight tool marks the text you select, so highlights follow the lines of text rather than your hand.
- Open the PDF
Click the Quire PDF icon, choose Open a PDF, or drop the file on the page. For a PDF on a website, right-click the link and choose Open PDF in Quire.
- Choose Highlight and select text
Drag across the words. Add a Note beside a highlight if you want to say why it matters.
- Save a copy
Save a copy downloads the highlighted PDF. The document also stays in Quire’s local library, so you can come back to it.
When the text won’t highlight
A scanned PDF is a photo of each page, so there is no text to select. Google says Chrome’s viewer can convert scanned PDFs with on-device text recognition (OCR), after which you can select and highlight the text. Quire PDF has no OCR, so in Quire, use Draw to mark a scan freehand.
Questions
Will my highlights show in other PDF apps?
Highlights from these tools are saved as standard PDF annotations, so other readers should show them. Check the saved copy once.
Can I export a list of my highlights?
Preview lists them under View › Highlights and Notes. Quire PDF doesn’t export a list.