How to Annotate a PDF with Apple Pencil on iPad

Annotation as Capture

Annotation is a form of capture: you're recording what you found significant in the document. The annotations only have value if they're searchable and durable.

Apple's Markup tool on iPhone and iPad (Files app, built into PDF viewers) is genuinely good: highlight, draw, text boxes, signatures. With Apple Pencil on iPad, it approaches desktop annotation tools.

The limitation: annotations are stored inside the PDF file, not as a separate index. Finding "what did I annotate about pricing strategy" requires opening each potentially relevant PDF.

Workflow that extracts value from annotations: annotate the PDF with Markup, then capture a voice note in Nemos summarizing what you found important and why. The annotation preserves the exact location; the voice note preserves the insight in searchable form. Both are necessary — annotation without summary often fades to irrelevance.

Related guides

• Best PDF organizer apps
• Search inside PDFs
• Merge PDFs natively

Where Nemos fits

Nemos is a private second brain for iPhone that solves the "I saved it somewhere" problem. Every screenshot, voice memo, PDF, and link you save gets OCR'd, transcribed, and indexed on-device using Apple Foundation Models. Find anything by typing one word. Free. Apple-only. Free on the App Store.