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Free Online PDF Annotation Remover, Strip Comments and Highlights

Take the markup off a PDF. Every comment, highlight, drawing, stamp, link and form field is counted and listed first, you choose which kinds to remove, and the pages themselves are never rebuilt, so text, images and bookmarks survive untouched.

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Free Online PDF Annotation Remover, Strip Comments and Highlights

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Remove the markup Drag and drop a PDF. Every comment, highlight, sticky note, stamp and link is listed, and you choose which kinds to strip out, inside your browser. Select a PDF File Up to 200 MB • 5,000 pages • nothing is uploaded

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How to Strip the Markup Off a PDF

Four steps, and the file never leaves your computer.

Step 1

Drop the PDF in. Every kind of markup it carries is counted and listed.

Step 2

Tick the kinds you want gone. Links and form fields are left alone unless you say otherwise.

Step 3

Narrow it to certain pages if only part of the document needs cleaning.

Step 4

Press Remove them and download the clean file.

What It Does, and What It Cannot Do

What counts as an annotation, and what removing one really does.

This is not redaction. A highlight is a coloured layer sitting over the text, not the text itself. Removing it takes the colour away and leaves every word exactly where it was. If something has to be genuinely unreadable, it must be deleted from the page, not covered or uncovered.

Removing form fields removes what was typed in them. The boxes and their contents go together, and the document stops being a form. If you want to keep the answers but stop anyone editing them, flatten the form instead with our Flatten Form Fields tool.

Links are off by default on purpose. A table of contents, an index and any cross reference in the document all use them. Turning links off makes those stop working, which is sometimes what you want and usually is not.

Everything else in the file is untouched. The pages themselves are not rebuilt, so text, images, bookmarks and page numbering all stay exactly as they were.

Key Features & Capabilities

Designed for speed, privacy, and precision.

Never uploaded

A marked up draft is often the most sensitive version of a document. This one is cleaned inside your browser and goes nowhere.

Counted before removed

Every kind of markup is listed with how many there are and which pages they sit on, before anything is taken away.

You choose the kinds

Strip the comments but keep the links, or take the highlights and leave the stamps. Each kind is a separate decision.

The page is untouched

Only the annotation list is edited. Text, images, bookmarks and the page structure are all left exactly as they were.

Honest about redaction

The page says plainly that removing a highlight does not remove the text under it. Nothing here pretends to be redaction.

Only some pages

Clean the whole document or just the pages a reviewer covered in comments.

About the PDF Annotation Remover

A PDF carries two different kinds of thing. There is the page itself, which is the document, and there is a list of annotations attached to it: comments, highlights, sticky notes, freehand ink, stamps, links and form fields. This tool edits that second list and never touches the first.

That distinction is the whole point, and it is where people get caught out. Removing a highlight takes away the yellow, not the sentence. Removing a comment takes away the note, not what it was about. If a document has to be safe to send because something in it must not be read, that is redaction, and redaction means deleting content from the page. This page says so plainly rather than letting anyone assume otherwise.

Everything is counted before anything is removed. You can see how many comments a reviewer left, how many highlights are on page fourteen and whether the file has form fields you had forgotten about, and then decide one kind at a time.

It runs in your browser with nothing uploaded, which is what a marked up draft deserves. Those files usually carry more candour than the final version does.

Frequently Asked Questions

Comments, highlights, links, form fields and redaction.

Drop the file onto this page. The comments, highlights, drawings and stamps it carries are counted and listed, you tick what should go, and the clean file downloads. Nothing is uploaded and the pages themselves are never rebuilt.

No. A highlight is a coloured shape drawn over the words; the words are part of the page and stay where they are. This tool cleans markup, it does not redact. Anything that must be unreadable has to be removed from the page content itself.

Because a document usually needs them. Tables of contents, indexes and cross references are all links, and turning them off breaks navigation inside the file. The option is there when you genuinely want the file to be inert.

The boxes disappear along with anything typed into them, and the document stops being fillable. If you want to keep the answers visible but not editable, flatten the form instead, which prints the values into the page.

Yes. Only the annotation list on each page is edited. Bookmarks, page labels, text, images and metadata are all left alone.

No. The whole job happens inside your browser, which you can prove by disconnecting from the internet and using the page anyway.