Fill and sign a PDF for free, on Windows and Mac.

01A form with fields

Open the PDF. If it was made as a form, its fields are live: click a text field and type, tick check boxes, pick radio buttons and list entries, and press Tab to move to the next field. The form's own calculations and formats run (totals, dates, currency), as they would in Acrobat. The values are drawn into the fields' own appearances, so other PDF viewers show them as you typed them, formatted.

02A form without fields

Many forms are flat: a scan, a printout turned into a PDF, or a document with lines to write on but no fields behind them. Choose Fill & Sign (the card on the start page, or Ctrl+K and "fill"), then:

• A places text: click where it goes and type. Drag it to move it.
• K places a check mark, X a cross, for boxes that aren't real check boxes.
• Everything you place is a comment every viewer shows, and can be moved, resized or deleted until you flatten the page.

If you'd rather give the form real fields, Prepare Form (Ctrl+Alt+F) adds text fields, check boxes, radio buttons, lists and signature fields, with formats and tab order, and Detect Fields suggests them from the lines and boxes on the page.

03Your signature

Sign places a handwritten signature or your initials. The first time, make one: draw it with the mouse, a pen or a touch screen, type your name in a script font, or import a picture of your signature. Up to three signatures and your initials are saved on this PC, for the next form. Click where the signature goes; drag it to move it, drag the corner to resize it, press Delete to remove it. It is placed as a stamp, so every PDF viewer shows it.

04A digital signature

Some forms ask for a signature that can be verified, not a picture of one. Sign Digitally (Review menu, the Sign button, or clicking an empty signature field) signs with a digital ID from Windows, a smart card or Windows Hello, or a .pfx file; if you have none, Inkvolt PDF can make a personal ID for you. Choose a reason and location, a visible box on the page (with your handwritten image if you like) or an invisible signature, and optionally a trusted timestamp (only a hash of the signature goes to the timestamp server). The signature is appended to the file, so earlier signatures stay valid, and the result is saved as a new file and verified. Existing signatures in any document are checked in the Signatures pane, including any change made to the file after signing.

05Save and send

Save the form (Ctrl+S) and send it the way you send any file. If the recipient must not change what you filled in, Flatten writes the fields and comments into the pages first. The values of a form can also go out on their own as XFDF, FDF, CSV or JSON (Edit › Forms › Export Form Data…) and fill a form again from any of them; a CSV with one row per person fills one copy of the form per row.

06On the Mac

Inkvolt PDF for Mac fills text fields, check boxes, radio buttons and lists with the form's own calculations and formats, and its Fill & Sign types text or check marks anywhere and places a signature you draw or type. Digital signatures with a certificate are on its roadmap. It is a notarized download for Macs with Apple silicon on macOS 15 or later: download the disk image, or brew install --cask gabandres/inkvolt/inkvolt-pdf.

07Questions

Adobe and Acrobat are trademarks of Adobe. Windows and Windows Hello are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. Inkvolt is independent and not affiliated with either. The screenshot shows a sample form with made-up details.