The integrated PDF reader in the legacy Microsoft Edge browser is deeply loved by many of you and we have been getting feedback about the availability of those features in the new version of Microsoft Edge. We are working on adding your favorite annotations tools to the PDF reader in Microsoft Edge right now and wanted to provide you an update on our work.
Inking on PDF files
Today you can use built-in inking tools when you open PDF files in the new Microsoft Edge. This allows you to take notes, fill out and sign PDF forms. Click on the Draw button from the toolbar to start writing; you can use a digital pen, touch or a mouse. You can use the Erase button to start erasing the strokes. If you are using a digital pen with a back-button, you can use that to erase while in draw mode.
We have also added the ability to change the color and width of the lines you are drawing. To open the new customization panel, just click or tap the "
Text highlight support
Highlighting important text while reading PDFs is a very common activity especially for students reading books or research papers in PDF format. We have added the ability to highlight text in PDF files. You can access this feature today in the Canary, Dev and Beta channels via the context menu. Just select any piece of text on a PDF document that you want to highlight, right click to invoke the context menu and you will find the option to highlight the text. You can even choose from four different colors for the highlighters.
We will continue to improve the highlighting experience in PDF by making it accessible directly from the PDF toolbar. Click or tap Highlight in the toolbar to get started. Then use your digital pen or mouse over the text you want to highlight. You can also change the color of the highlight by clicking the "
What’s next
We know that many of you love the PDF reader in Microsoft Edge and we’ve heard a lot of feedback and requests for annotations support. We will be working on improving the ability to do light editing on PDF files which would make you productive right within the browser. As part of this effort, the team will be working on these scenarios:
- Improving the experience of reading text notes already present in a PDF.
- Ability to add text notes on a PDF.
Let us know in what scenarios you use annotations on PDFs and what kind of toolset you would want to see in Microsoft Edge PDF reader. This would help us expand the range of tools we have for PDFs with what is most important for you.
@Elliot Kirk The ability to select bookmarks in PDFs like in Chrome browser:
This is a feature that was requested by our internal users very early in testing.
I am on edge dev and I would like to see the following improvement for PDF reader.
1. Fix smooth scroll as in https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/4k-smooth-support-pdfs/m-p/1189931
2. Fix selection. Selecting one line should not break into several segment of different height.
Chromium edge
Old edge
3. Fix comment display. There shouldn't be inconsistent spacing within each word.
4. Add support for textbox. Currently both legacy and chromium edge doesn't display such thing in PDF. This is important for reading annotation if the PDF was annotated by some other tools.
5. Add support for pen pressure sensitivity and annotate by pen only.
6. Ink looks distorted (lots of pixel!) before pen is released.
And looks much better after pen is released.
