I’m often asked, “what’s a simple way I can sign a PDF without having to print the document out?” Many times, the person is trying to live the paperless lifestyle. There are a number of great PDF apps that can wrangle all sorts of text for editing and signatures. Some of my favorites are PDF Expert and Documents 5, both from Readdle, and some of the offerings from Adobe. However, after having tried many of these apps, I’ve stuck with PDFpen from Smile Software, makers of another favorite of mine, TextExpander.
Whether you’re marking up and making corrections to a PDF or actually signing it, being able to do either easily and from any of your devices is a big help and could save you in a time sensitive situation!
What I like about PDFpen is that Smile makes it easy to get your document from a number of sources (whether that be iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.), and once you’ve loaded it up you can sign it with your finger, or with an Apple Pencil if you’re on an iPad Pro. Once it’s signed, you have a number of options to send the document off.
Here’s exactly how to sign your document:
How to sign a document with PDFpen on iOS
- After opening PDFpen, press the plus button in the upper left corner.
- Next, choose the location of where your document is stored. Alternately, you can create a Blank, Lined, or Graph document from scratch, or use a Photo.
- If you’re signing a document from a location like Dropbox, Google or elsewhere, next pick the file you want to sign.
- Once you have your document ready, press the pencil button and sign your document.
- Once it’s signed, press the wrench icon in the upper right of the screen.
- This will open a number of options, such as printing and more. For our example we’re going to press Share.
- After pressing the Share button, you’re greeted with a number of options to send or save your newly signed document!
What app do you use to sign documents on iOS?
PDFpen is an easy solution to a very common problem. I’ve enjoyed using it on my iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil quite a bit, and on my iPhone when i’m in a hurry to get something signed. What apps work for you, and what’s your workflow for going paperless? Let me know in the comments section below!
- $19.99 (Universal) – Download
