Check, edit & sign PDFs

You can use the Gallery app on your Chromebook to view PDFs and edit them. You can:

  • Fill out PDF forms.
  • Add text annotations.
  • Add highlights.
  • Sign docs with free-hand annotations.

Open a PDF with the Gallery app

  1. At the bottom left of your screen, select the Launcher .
  2. Open Files .
  3. On the left, choose where your PDF is saved.
  4. To open your PDF, double-click on it.

Access & read PDFs with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Important:

  • Turn on your screen reader. Learn how to use the built-in screen reader.
  • This feature is turned on by default for screen reader users.
  • This feature is currently available for ChromeOS only and works by using Chrome PDF Viewer.

With machine learning, Chrome allows screen readers to access and read inaccessible PDFs through Chrome PDF Viewer. If you have a PDF file, either from your local storage or from a web page, that has an image of written text or any inaccessible text content, you can convert it into a readable text.

  1. On your Chromebook, select Files .
  2. To open a PDF file, right-click on the document.
  3. Select Open with and thenChrome PDF Viewer.
  4. In the document, press Search + Down arrow.
    • If there is no accessible text in the first page, at the top left, you’ll find the “Press search + m and convert image to text in the context menu” status update.
  5. To open the Context menu, press Search + m.
    • Once OCR starts, at the top left, you’ll find the “This PDF is inaccessible. Extracting text, powered by Google AI.” status update.
  6. Click Extract text from PDF.
    • When OCR is complete, at the top left, you’ll find a status update:
      • Successful OCR of image: Text extracted, powered by Google AI.
      • No text found in images: This PDF is inaccessible. No text extracted.

Tips:

  • If the PDF file is from a web page, Chrome opens it in Chrome PDF Viewer.
  • To navigate forward, press Search + Down/Right arrow and you’ll hear a disclaimer at the start and end of the extracted text.

Turn off OCR

To turn off this feature:

  1. On your Chromebook, at the bottom right, select the time. Or press Alt + Shift + s.
  2. Select Settings and then Accessibility.
  3. Under "Text-to-Speech," turn off Extract text from PDF.

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