Can I move or delete a mark after drawing it?

You can drag a mark you drew to reposition it, and undo removes the last one. Selecting an older mark and deleting it individually is not built yet.

Why does the arrow look like a plain box while I am drawing?

The instant frame shows the outline of the region so it keeps up with your mouse. About half a second later the real thing renders underneath — the same code that produces the export, so what settles is exactly what you will get.

Will the highlight cover the text so it cannot be copied?

No, and it is not meant to. Highlighting is not redaction — the text underneath is still fully present and copyable. To actually remove text, use Redact, which destroys it and then verifies it is gone.

Can I add a sticky note with a comment?

Not as a pop-up note. You can put visible text on the page with the Add text tool, which is drawn in the same permanent way.

Highlight, draw and mark up a PDF

How it works

01Open the PDF.
02Pick the highlighter, a box, an ellipse, an arrow or the pen.
03Drag on the page to draw.
04Or type a phrase to highlight every occurrence of it at once.
05Export.

Drawn into the page, not stuck on top

Most tools add these as PDF annotation objects — a separate layer sitting above the document. That layer can be switched off in a reader, is skipped by some printers, and can be deleted by anyone who opens the file with one right-click. These marks are drawn into the page content instead, so they are simply part of the document wherever it is opened.

Which means they are permanent

That is the other half of the same trade, and it is worth saying plainly: once you export, the marks cannot be clicked and removed — not by the person you send it to, and not by you either. Keep the original if you might want a clean copy. For a comment someone is meant to reply to and dismiss, a real annotation layer is the better tool, and this is not it.

Highlight every occurrence at once

Type a name or a phrase and every occurrence in the document is highlighted, updating as you type. It is the same search that drives Find and Redact, so it behaves the same way and finds the same things. Marks you drew by hand are left exactly where they are while you do this — editing the search box never removes your own work.

The highlighter goes behind the words

A highlight is drawn with a multiply blend, so the text shows through and stays readable and selectable. Drawn the ordinary way it would paint over the words it was meant to draw attention to, which is both wrong and what you get by default if nobody thinks about it.

One drag is one undo

The whole gesture is held while you draw and committed once when you let go, so undo removes the mark you just made rather than stepping back through two hundred mouse positions. A click that was not a drag leaves nothing behind at all, instead of an invisible zero-size mark buried in the file.

Questions

Can I move or delete a mark after drawing it?: You can drag a mark you drew to reposition it, and undo removes the last one. Selecting an older mark and deleting it individually is not built yet.
Why does the arrow look like a plain box while I am drawing?: The instant frame shows the outline of the region so it keeps up with your mouse. About half a second later the real thing renders underneath — the same code that produces the export, so what settles is exactly what you will get.
Will the highlight cover the text so it cannot be copied?: No, and it is not meant to. Highlighting is not redaction — the text underneath is still fully present and copyable. To actually remove text, use Redact, which destroys it and then verifies it is gone.
Can I add a sticky note with a comment?: Not as a pop-up note. You can put visible text on the page with the Add text tool, which is drawn in the same permanent way.