Most file types are easy to edit. Just throw them into one of the countless editing programs that come with practically every computer ever made, and just mess with settings until you get the desired outcome. PDFs, however, are a bit different.
ADVERTISEMENTTo help you swim through the countless plugins dedicated to PDFs, we’ve compiled a list of nine essential add-ons that will allow you to edit PDFs easily right from your browser.
It’s practically dizzying to try and swim through every PDF editor available for Chrome. So, rather than trying to take a trial and error approach and download every single last one, let us do the work for you.
We’ve narrowed down the extensive options to a list of nine. Here are our picks to take a look at:
Now that you’ve seen our list, here’s a closer look at each of our top nine extensions.
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Kami is an ambitious extension that allows for the editing of PDFs, images, and all manner of files. It’s a complete workspace that grants you the ability to edit your documents with annotations, comments, marks, complete edits of text and images, drawing, fill out forms, and more.
While Kami is technically designed to be an educational workflow for editing student documents, it works perfectly as a tool for editing PDFs of any kind. It’s one of the most abundant tool kits we’ve seen from an extension, practically standing toe-to-toe with Adobe’s official PDF-editing software itself in terms of what you’re able to accomplish with it.
You can download the Kami extension for the Chrome browser here.
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While bookmarking and saving web pages are already very convenient as is, what happens when you only care about saving one small part of a massive text-walled site? Just a small snippet of information that you don’t want to have to swim through an entire page of hundreds of words to find. Perhaps something a bit more would be handy.
With Yawas, you gain the ability to create highlights and annotations on any web page online. However, that’s not its only useful feature. All of these annotation tools can be used for PDFs as well, allowing you to easily mark, comment, or highlight any PDF from your browser. And if that weren’t easy enough, you can even bind shortcuts for every tool in order to annotate and highlight anything with a simple button press.
You can download the Yawas extension for the Chrome browser here.
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Here’s one of those “all-in-one” extensions that we love to see. Xodo PDF Viewer & Editor is a Google Chrome plugin that allows you to read, edit, annotate, and do all sorts of things with your PDF files, all from the convenience of your browser. The best part, of course, is that all of its tools are completely free.
Unfortunately, the extension is known to be highly buggy with Chromebook computers, so caution is advised. But other than that, Xodo is an excellent set of tools for editing, customizing, and filling out any PDF you wish with ease.
You can download the Xodo PDF Viewer & Editor extension for the Chrome browser here.
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There are extensions that offer a large variety of different tools, and then there are those that go above and beyond. Smallpdf, despite its name, is no small plugin at all. Why settle for separate plugins for editing, annotating, filling, and transforming your PDF when you can have it all in a single extension?
Smallpdf is the perfect solution for resizing, reformatting, and editing every single part of your PDF files. With an incredibly easy-to-use interface, Smallpdf makes it simple to do everything you’d need to get done with your PDF files, all in a neat package where every feature and button are within arm’s reach.
You can download the Smallpdf extension for the Chrome browser here.
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Hypothesis shares many similarities to Yawas, another annotation extension on this list. However, what Hypothesis offers that Yawas lacks is the ability to share and collaborate on your annotations with groups or even search through your annotations and notes. Overall, Hypothesis seems to deliver a few extra features that Yawas simply lacks.
This is why we personally prefer Hypothesis. It runs a bit smoother and can deliver just about everything that Yawas has up its sleeve. While the final choice is, of course, up to preference, the reviews seem to reflect this. With a near-perfect score, Hypothesis seems to give a rather pleasant experience to most of its users.
You can download the Hypothesis extension for the Chrome browser here.
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At this point, it may seem like we’re practically trying to fill this list with different flavors of “all-in-one” tool kit plugins but trust us. They can be some of the most useful extensions to have when it comes to PDF editing. On top of that, Sejda is one of the highest quality and handiest ones out there.
It shares plenty of similarities with plugins like Smallpdf and Xodo, but it's not just another alternative. Sejda also has a great feature that allows you to turn HTML pages into PDF files, an extremely useful feature for saving an offline copy of a web page. On top of that, it also has all the essentials: editing, writing, adding text and images, filling forms, highlighting, converting, splitting, merging, etc.
You can download the Sejda PDF Editor extension for the Chrome browser here.
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Soda PDF is definitely one of the more simplistic extensions on our list. However, with raving reviews, at least you can rest assured knowing it does what it is supposed to do, and it does it well. Soda PDF is a simple plugin for merging PDF files into one and being able to read and download them all from your browser.
It doesn’t seem to suffer from any bugs or anything of the sort. It’s stable, reliable, and is about the easiest solution you’ll find if you’re looking for a quick way to put multiple PDFs together and download them. It also lets you split, compress, and unlock/protect your PDF files easily, as well as converting Word documents to PDF.
You can download the Soda PDF extension for the Chrome browser here.
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Moving away from “all-in-one” extensions, Smart PDF is a plugin designed for one purpose and one purpose only: conversion. Smart PDF is a simple but powerful tool that allows you to convert PDF to Word, Excel, PPT, or JPG files, or the other way around. All you need to do is simply select a converting option from its menu. It’s as easy as that.
Smart PDF is probably the easiest extension on this list to use. You could likely add the extension to your browser and start converting PDFs within the same minute. If the other plugins on this list have seemed a little too complicated or had too many unnecessary features for your taste, this one should give a much more focused function that is effortless to use.
You can download the Smart PDF extension for the Chrome browser here.
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The last spot on our list belonds to Merge PDF, a simple plugin that allows you to merge multiple files into a single PDF. Like Smart PDF, it has some converting capabilities of similar file types, but with the added function of being able to merge multiple of these files into a single master PDF rather than multiple smaller ones.
It’s extremely easy to use, with a rather pleasant interface. However, if you’re planning on using it frequently, consider finding another extension with a similar function. This plugin will hit you with a paywall if you use it often, making you wait a day before merging files with it again in order to keep using it for free.
You can download the Merge PDF extension for the Chrome browser here.
No, most Google Chrome extensions are free to use. Aside from Merge PDF, all extensions on this list have all of their functions completely free.
While this is an entirely subjective question, we personally recommend Smallpdf for all your editing needs. It’s extremely high quality, has all of the tools you might need, and has a friendly, simple interface to work with.
Most Google Chrome extensions require an online connection to function unless specifically stated otherwise. All of the extensions on this list require an internet connection to work.
Most PDF editing extensions have no issues with geographical differences, and from what we were able to tell, all of the plugins on this list should have no issues regardless of where you are in the world.
We’ve included PDF editors on this list with ratings lower than 5 and 4 stars because we found functionality in them even if they weren’t as polished or high quality as users found other extensions to be.
These were some of the best PDF reading, editing, and conversion plugins that we could find for Google Chrome. With the options on this list, you should have any of your PDF needs taken care of! Have your pick of these great plugins and edit your PDFs to your heart’s content.
If any of these plugins were useful to you, let us know! Tell us which extensions caught your eye and how you’re using them to edit your PDF files.
PDF files can be tricky to edit without the right tools. Read this article for our picks of the nine best PDF editor extensions for Chrome.
