If you’ve ever been frustrated by how hard it is to find an offline PDF editor that doesn’t charge you for personal use, then you’ll be delighted to hear about PDFgear. The app easily edits PDFs whether through annotations or direct file editing.
It works with text, images, and graphics, and lets you convert PDFs into different file types, split and merge PDFs together, and delete or add PDF pages. Here’s how I use it to add notes to a PDF.
What to do:
- Download and install PDFgear on your PC. Open it and click Open File to open the PDF.
- Go to the “Comment” section. Here you can highlight, underline and strikethrough the text in the PDF. You can also add shapes and callout boxes. To highlight specific areas like blocks of text, use the “Area Highlight” feature.
- Once you’ve finished annotating, go to the upper left corner and click Save as to save the modified PDF.

Dominic Bayley / Foundry
PDFgear is pretty swell for all your PDF editing needs, especially considering its can’t-be-beat price. Check out our full PDFgear review for more details.
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