Can the watermark be removed?

By someone with the right tools, yes. It is drawn into the page content rather than added as an annotation, which makes it harder than deleting a layer, but it is a marking rather than a protection.

Will it make the document hard to read?

Not at fifteen to twenty-five per cent opacity, which is the point of the convention. Full-strength text ruins the document, which defeats the purpose of circulating it.

Because it crosses the whole page and cannot be cropped off. A mark in a corner disappears the moment someone trims the page or screenshots the middle of it.

Does the text underneath stay searchable?

Yes. The watermark is drawn over the existing content rather than replacing it, so the document's own text remains selectable and searchable.

Add Watermark

Stamp text across a document — once per page or tiled.

Everything runs inside your browser. Your files never leave your device.

Drop your file here

.pdf · they stay on this device

Ask about Add Watermark

Questions about what this tool does, which option to pick, or what it can and cannot handle.

The question you type here is sent to an AI provider to be answered — your files and whatever you put in the tool above are not, and the assistant cannot see them. Answers are generated and can be wrong. The tool itself is not guessing: it runs deterministic code on your device.

About the Add Watermark

Stamping a word across every page of a document marks its status in a way that survives being printed, photographed and forwarded. DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, the client's name on a proposal, a date on a version circulated for review.

This adds text across the pages of a PDF, with control over size, opacity, rotation and whether it appears on every page or a selection.

The purpose is mostly social rather than technical. A document marked DRAFT in large diagonal letters does not stop anyone from acting on it, but it stops the specific and common failure where a working version is mistaken for a final one — and it survives the trip through a printer and a photograph, which a filename never does.

Diagonal placement at low opacity is the convention because it works. Diagonal text crosses the whole page, so it cannot be cropped off; low opacity keeps the underlying text readable, which matters because a document nobody can read is a document nobody will use. Fifteen to twenty-five per cent is the usual range.

For confidentiality marking, adding the recipient's name is worth considering. A proposal watermarked with the name of the firm it went to makes a leaked copy traceable to a source, which changes how carefully it gets handled.

The watermark is drawn into the page content, so it is part of the document rather than an annotation a viewer might hide. It can still be removed by someone with the right tools — this is a marking rather than a protection, and treating it as protection is the mistake to avoid.

Existing text stays selectable and searchable underneath.

How to use it

1Drop in the PDF.
2Enter the watermark text — DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, a client name, a version date.
3Set it diagonally at fifteen to twenty-five per cent opacity so the document stays readable.
4Apply to every page unless only part of the document needs marking.

Questions

Can the watermark be removed?: By someone with the right tools, yes. It is drawn into the page content rather than added as an annotation, which makes it harder than deleting a layer, but it is a marking rather than a protection.
Will it make the document hard to read?: Not at fifteen to twenty-five per cent opacity, which is the point of the convention. Full-strength text ruins the document, which defeats the purpose of circulating it.
Why diagonal?: Because it crosses the whole page and cannot be cropped off. A mark in a corner disappears the moment someone trims the page or screenshots the middle of it.
Does the text underneath stay searchable?: Yes. The watermark is drawn over the existing content rather than replacing it, so the document's own text remains selectable and searchable.