How to Highlight PDF On iPad?

Need to highlight important text in a PDF on your iPad? With UPDF for iOS, you can highlight PDF text, change colors, add comments, and use Apple Pencil for natural markup.

After adding highlights, you can open the comment list to view all annotations and tap any item to jump back to the highlighted part. This is useful for reviewing study notes, research papers, contracts, reports, or meeting materials.

In this guide, you will learn how to highlight a PDF on iPad with UPDF, use Apple Pencil for PDF markup, and fix common issues when a PDF cannot be highlighted.

Can You Highlight a PDF on iPad?

Yes, you can highlight a PDF on iPad. You can use the built-in Markup tools in iPadOS for basic annotations, but if you want more flexible PDF highlighting, color options, comments, Apple Pencil support, and PDF management tools, a dedicated PDF app like UPDF is a better choice.

With UPDF on iPad, you can:

• Highlight PDF text in different colors
• Underline or strikethrough important content
• Add comments, notes, stickers, and shapes
• Use Apple Pencil to mark up PDFs naturally
• Edit, organize, convert, and manage PDF files

If you often read or review PDFs on your iPad, UPDF gives you a more complete PDF annotation experience than the default viewer.

How to Highlight a PDF on iPad with UPDF?

With UPDF, you can highlight PDF on iPad for the contents of a PDF file effortlessly. Numerous highlighting options are available for professionals to make free-hand annotations, draw horizontal lines, enlarge text, etc.

But it accomplishes a lot more than simply enabling highlights. Users can also annotate PDF on iPad easily, such as adding text comment, sticky notes, shapes, signatures, and so on.

Let's look at how to highlight PDF on iPad with UPDF.

• After you have opened the UPDF app, tap the "Tools" button that you can easily find in the left corner.
• Select the file you want to import.
• Choose the highlighter pen icon from the list shown at the top. Click on the "Comment" at the left side menu. Now, you are in the highlight mode.

• You can update the highlight color by tapping on the "Color" setting option. A range of colors will pop up. Choose which color you want the highlight to show.

• Tap and drag the section of the document where you want to highlight.

• If you want to remove the highlights, you can tap on the highlights and tap "Delete" from the options.

Want to highlight PDF with UPDF now? Download it via the below button.

Also Read: How to Change Highlight Color in PDF

How to Highlight a PDF on iPad with Apple Pencil?

If you use an Apple Pencil, UPDF also lets you highlight and annotate PDFs in a more natural way.

Open your PDF in UPDF, go to Comment mode, and choose the Highlight tool. Then use your Apple Pencil to drag over the text you want to mark. You can also use the Pencil tool to circle key points, draw arrows, underline sentences, or add handwritten notes in the margins.

This is especially useful for students, teachers, researchers, and professionals who prefer writing directly on PDFs while reading.

UPDF also allows you to adjust colors and line styles, so your annotations stay clear and organized.

What If You Cannot Highlight a PDF on iPad?

Sometimes, you may find that you cannot select or highlight text in a PDF on your iPad. This usually happens for one of the following reasons.

1. The PDF Is Scanned

If your PDF is a scanned document or image-based file, the text is not real selectable text. In this case, you need OCR to recognize the text before highlighting it.

You can learn more from this guide: how to make a PDF highlightable.

2. The PDF Is Protected

Some PDFs are password-protected or have restrictions that prevent editing, copying, or commenting. If the file owner has disabled annotations, you may not be able to highlight the PDF directly.

For this situation, check this guide: how to highlight a protected PDF.

3. The Text Layer Is Not Recognized

Even if a PDF looks like normal text, it may not contain a proper text layer. This often happens with exported images, scanned books, or flattened PDF files. You may need OCR or another annotation method, such as highlighting an area instead of selecting text.

If you need to mark a non-selectable section, you can also learn how to highlight an area in PDF.

UPDF vs. iPad Built-in Markup: Which One Should You Use?

The iPad built-in Markup tool is useful for quick notes, but it is limited if you work with PDFs often. Here is a simple comparison.

If you only need to quickly draw on a file, iPad Markup may be enough. But if you need to read, highlight, comment, organize, and manage PDFs regularly, UPDF is the better option.

FAQs

Conclusion

Highlighting PDFs on iPad is simple with the right tool. If you only need basic markup, the built-in iPad tools may work. But if you want a smoother way to highlight text, change colors, add comments, use Apple Pencil, and manage PDF files, UPDF for iPad is a more complete solution.

Download UPDF for iOS and start highlighting your PDFs on iPad with ease.