It’s common knowledge that you can open most PDF documents in a browser at this point, whether you’re using Google’s Chrome, a Chromium-based browser, Firefox, or Apple’s Safari. You can also use dedicated PDF applications, but for a while browsers only allowed you to view these documents. If you want to make any changes, like adding a signature or annotations, you’ll need a separate app. You can still edit a PDF in Adobe Acrobat for free, but it still requires juggling multiple applications. At least that was the case until Google built a PDF manager into Chrome and, more recently, improved its editing features.
Basic support was added as early as 2010, but it wasn’t until 2020 that Chrome added support for filling out these forms and saving tagged documents. In February 2026, Google announced the addition of native PDF annotation tools, which allow you to mark up and customize these documents, as well as a handy “Save to Google Drive” feature. Basically, you can now do all your PDF-related tasks directly from Chrome, provided you have the latest version. You can also send these documents to your Google Drive without downloading or re-uploading them, making managing your PDF files across platforms more convenient than ever.
With annotations, you can draw or highlight text anywhere on a document, erase previous annotations you’ve made, and even draw a signature. You can do this on PC (desktop) and mobile (Android). And on Android, you don’t need to download the PDF documents first, you can open them directly in a browser from the website that offers them.
How to use these new PDF features in Chrome
There may be times when you want to reference items on a particularly large document, if only for your own peace of mind. Maybe you’re reviewing a big contract before signing it, or maybe you need to review business legalese with lawyers or an advisory team. Either way, you can now highlight, rate, and note reminders in a PDF document, all from your Chrome browser. Even if you don’t use these features professionally, PDF documents are a popular format for a variety of documents, from e-books to instructions and user manuals. These features allow you to visually approach critical sections of a document, which can speed up future skims or even help you memorize or identify important text. You can draw a circle over your current step in a step-by-step user manual or highlight phrases to look up in a dictionary in your current book.
Additionally, since Claude can now create and populate PDF, Word, and Excel files for you, you may find yourself working with these types of documents more than expected, especially if you share them with colleagues or peers. Adobe also offers AI support for PDFs that many will find useful. But PDF documents have long been the go-to file format for official, legal documentation and business contracts because they are easy to share, are cross-platform, and built-in security can prevent tampering and unauthorized changes to contracts and legal documents.
As a helpful tip, you can easily create PDFs in Google Docs, simply by converting a regular Word document. After creating and editing, in the top left menu, click File > Upload > and choose PDF Document (.pdf) for the format.
