Add page numbers to a PDF

At the distance from the chosen edges you set, from 0 to 50 mm (12.7 mm, half an inch, unless you change it), inside the page's visible area (its crop box). On a page too small for that distance the number stands nearer the edge, all of it still on the page, and the result names that page; a page too small for the number at the chosen size gets no number, and the result names it. If a page is rotated, the number is rotated with it so it reads upright on screen. Page 1 gets the first number you enter, every later page counts up by one, and the "of" total counts up the same way, so a document starting at 5 with 8 pages ends at 12 of 12.

No. This tool only adds text; it does not detect or remove existing numbers, headers or footers. The new number is drawn as page content (in the font you choose - Helvetica, Liberation Serif or Liberation Mono - or in Noto Sans CJK for characters that font lacks, Chinese, Japanese and Korean among them; the next answer says which characters each font writes), so it prints and copies like any other text, but it is not a header field that can be switched off later.

The four built-in formats are 1, Page 1, 1 / 12 and Page 1 of 12; on a page shown in Chinese the two with words are written 第 1 页 and 第 1 页，共 12 页. Your own text, up to 60 characters, puts the page number where you write {n} and the total where you write {p}, for example 第 {n} 页 / 共 {p} 页 or Seite {n} von {p}. The label is written in the font you choose: Helvetica, which viewers draw with their own copy of it, or Liberation Serif or Liberation Mono, loaded from this site the first time they are chosen (0.3 to 0.4 MB) and embedded as a small subset of the characters used. Characters those fonts cannot write are written with this site's own Noto Sans CJK when it has them (Simplified Chinese design; Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters and Cyrillic are in it too), embedded as a small subset of the characters used. With Helvetica, a label that has any such character is written in Noto Sans CJK, its Latin letters, digits and spaces too, as before, except the few characters Helvetica has and Noto Sans CJK lacks, which stay in Helvetica: Š, š, Ž, ž, Ÿ, ˆ and ˜, and, when the common-Chinese part is all the label needs, also Œ, œ, ƒ, € and ™. Liberation Serif and Liberation Mono write every character they have themselves, letters such as Ć, Ł and Ő among them, except Hebrew, and leave only the others to Noto Sans CJK. Common Chinese (the 7,445 characters of GB2312, its 6,763 Chinese characters and 682 symbols such as ①, ℃ and →, with Chinese punctuation and full-width forms) needs only the font's common-Chinese part, 2.3 MB once; any other Chinese, Japanese or Korean character loads the whole font instead, about 22 MB once. Either is loaded from this site only when such text is first written, and your file and text stay on this device. Thai, Arabic, emoji and other scripts are in none of these fonts, and Hebrew, which the Liberation fonts have, would come out reversed, since a label is laid out left to right: the tool names the characters it cannot write and makes nothing. A character the chosen font and Noto Sans CJK both lack is named with any font here that has it: with Helvetica, letters such as Ć, Ł and Ő, which Liberation Serif and Liberation Mono have. There are no Roman numerals.

Yes. The preview is the first page you chose, numbered by the same code that makes the file and drawn by the same viewer (PDF.js), so the saved page looks the same: the number in the same place, font, size and colour. Without a connection there is no preview, since that viewer is loaded from this site. Numbers in Helvetica are still added as set; Liberation Serif, Liberation Mono and the font for Chinese, Japanese or Korean are loaded from this site the first time the page uses them, and if that fails the tool says so and you can try again once you are back online.

No. The page loads a PDF engine into your browser and every operation runs on your device. You can check this yourself in the browser's network panel: after the page has loaded there are no upload requests. Closing the tab discards the file.

No. These basic tools are free, have no page or file limits set by us, and never add a watermark. The practical limit is your device's memory.

Encrypted PDFs cannot be processed here. Remove the password first, then use this tool.

Nothing you open or type. While the tab is open, the tool pages keep a short list of the steps taken in it, in the tab's session storage: the step (page opened, started, succeeded, first success, used again or failed), the tool's name, the time, how many files were used and, for a failure, an error code; never a file name, the contents of a file or your text. It holds at most the latest 200 steps, and the browser deletes it when the tab closes. The page never sends it. Where a Report a problem button is shown, you can attach the last 20 steps to your report; nothing is attached unless you tick that box. In local storage the page keeps only choices you made: a Light or Dark theme until you choose System again, the language you picked with the EN / 中文 switch if it differs from your browser's language, and this tool in your recently used list if you switched that list on at the tools page.