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Tech Tip – Annotating, Signing, And Saving PDFs In Firefox

12 October 2022
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The release of Firefox 104 in August gave users the ability to annotate PDFs, e.g. sign PDFs directly in the browser, and save them. Here’s how:

  • Open a PDF in Firefox, i.e. drag it into the Firefox Window, or right click on the file and select ‘Open with’ and choose Firefox.
  • In the top right corner of the PDF window click on the ‘Add Free Text Annotation’ icon (a ‘T’ symbol).
  • Click on the page and start writing. You can change the text colour and size.
  • Also top right (a pen symbol), click on the ‘Add Link Annotation’ icon to use a virtual pen to annotate or sign a document freehand. The colour and line thickness can be adjusted.
  • To save an annotated PDF, click on the ‘Download’ button in the toolbar.
  • To disable annotation editing, click on the arrow symbol (top right).

If Firefox browser doesn’t yet have the annotation options:

  • Type about:config in the address bar, press Enter, click on ‘Accept the risk’ and ‘Continue.’
  • Look for the preference pdfjs.annotationEditorMode, click the button next to it, and change the value to 0 (zero).
  • Click the tick box to confirm and restart Firefox.