Open a PDF to start marking up

SnakeScale PDF works like a desktop markup tool in your browser. Open a plan set, spec, or any PDF from your computer, add clouds, callouts, highlights, and text, then save your markups back into the same file, written in as standard PDF annotations that open in Revu, Acrobat, and other readers. Reopen a PDF you saved here and its markups come back fully editable; a PDF you flattened here can be restored with Unflatten.

You can also drag and drop a PDF anywhere on this window. Your file stays on this device; nothing is uploaded.

Properties

No markup selected

Stroke / text color

Fill color

Use fill

Line width 2 pt

Opacity 100%

Font size (text tools)

Text / note contents

Comment (shows in Markups List)

Author

Status

Layer (selected markup)

Tool Chest

Save a markup you have made as a reusable tool, then pick the tool and click or drag on a page to place copies. Tools keep their type, colors, text, and measurement settings, and they stay saved in this browser between sessions.

Tool set

Pick a tool above, then click a page to place it. Box tools can be dragged to size; press Esc to stop placing.

Layers

New markups go on the active layer (brown edge). Eye hides a layer on the page, Lock stops its markups being picked, moved, or deleted. Layers and their settings save inside the PDF and come back on reopen.

Phase 3: the Tool Chest saves any markup or measurement as a reusable tool in named sets (stored in this browser) and places copies with a click or drag. Layers organise markups: create, rename, delete, show or hide, and lock them from the Layers panel; a markup's layer is set in Properties above and shown in the Markups List, and layers save inside the PDF. Batch (toolbar) flattens, stamps, or sets the scale across a page range in one step. Google Drive (File menu or toolbar) opens PDFs from your Drive and saves back to the same Drive file, using the same Google sign in as SnakeScale Notes.

Phase 2: the Pages tools rotate the current page, all pages, or a chosen set (saved as real page rotation), insert and delete pages, and extract pages to a new file. Drag thumbnails to reorder pages. Calibrate sets the measurement scale for the document or one page; Distance, Dimension, Perimeter, Area, and Count values show on the page and in the Markups List and save with the file. A Dimension is placed with three clicks (two measured points, then the dimension line position); double click it to type your own text for it, which is kept even when the scale or an endpoint changes, while the Markups List always shows the true measured value. Stamps and inserted images behave like markups. Snapshot drags a page region out as a PNG.

Tip: with a tool active, the settings above become the defaults for the next markup you draw. Select markups and change a setting to restyle all of them at once. Double click a polyline or polygon to finish it. Esc cancels whatever is in progress and returns to Select.

Select tool: click a markup to select it, drag empty page to window-select (left to right selects what is fully inside, right to left selects anything touched), and hold Shift while clicking to add or remove markups from the selection. Right click any markup for Copy, Paste here, Duplicate, Bring to Front, Send to Back, and Delete. With any markup selected, the menu also has Apply to pages... to copy the selection onto other pages at the same position.

Mouse, like CAD: roll the wheel to zoom in and out centered on the cursor. Hold the wheel button down and drag to pan, from any tool. Shift plus wheel pans sideways. The Hand tool still pans with the left button.

Saving: Save (Ctrl+S) writes back to the file you opened and updates it in place, with no new copy in Downloads. If the PDF came in by drag and drop and the browser kept no handle for it, the first Save asks you to point at the same file once; after that, Save is silent. Save As always asks for a new location. In a browser without the File System Access API, Save falls back to downloading a copy and the status bar says so. Reopening: a PDF saved here in annotation mode reopens with every markup editable again (select, move, grips, copy, delete), and saving it again replaces the old annotations instead of duplicating them. That still holds after the file has been opened and marked up in Adobe Acrobat or Bluebeam Revu: markups are rebuilt from the standard annotation data, so markups those programs edited, moved, or added reopen editable here too, even when they dropped the SnakeScale data stored in the file, and a markup another program moved comes back at its new position only, with no copy left at the old one. Flattened markups are part of the page and are not editable, unless the file was flattened here: then Unflatten (top bar) restores them from the recovery data stored in the file.

Sticky notes are a fixed size icon with no grips: drag the note body to move it, hover it to read it, and single click it to open and edit its text. Every other markup shows a dashed bounding box with square corner grips that scale the whole markup about the opposite corner, plus a round rotation grip on a dashed stem above the top centre (hold Shift to snap rotation to 15 degrees). Polylines and polygons also have round vertex grips and green diamond grips at each segment midpoint; dragging a segment grip, or dragging the segment itself, moves that whole segment. With several markups selected, the corner and rotation grips transform the whole selection as a group.

Shortcuts: V select, H hand, Ctrl+Z undo, Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y redo, Ctrl+C copy, Ctrl+V paste, Delete removes the selected markup.