Add signatures to documents on your iPhone or Android phone

When you receive a digital document, such as a PDF or Word file that requires your signature, you can easily arrange this via your phone. Whether you have a iPhone or an Android phone, both include built-in options for quickly adding a signature to a document, saving a new copy, and sending it to whomever you want.

While these tools work in a pinch, I wouldn’t recommend them if you’re marking up a more in-depth document that requires multiple signatures and lots of text boxes to fill in. A more advanced signing tool like DocuSign or Microsoft 365 is better optimized, and honestly, if you’re signing something like an apartment lease, you might want to use a larger screen, like a computer or tablet.

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Most documents that require your signature are much shorter and simpler, so if you’re dealing with one of these, Apple’s Markup tool and the Google Drive app each offer a quick way to get your documents completed and on the go to get.

Sign with Google Drive on Android or iPhone

The Google Drive app — included on all Android phones and can be downloaded to an iPhone — includes markup tools to make it easy to sign a document.

When using Google Drive on Android, you must first open the PDF you want to sign.

When it’s open, depending on the file, you’ll get a Editing option marked with a pencil or a Annotate option marked by a pen with squiggly lines. If you have the Editing option, you can then select Fill in the form to enter your additional information. If you only use the Annotate option, you can tap it to open a pen, and you can use that to give a quick signature to your document.

Unfortunately, Google Drive doesn’t consistently detect PDFs that should be given the Form Fill option, and if you do need to edit the document to include plain text, you may want to use a more robust alternative service instead. Once the above steps have achieved what you need for your document, you can tap To rescue at the top right to save the changes. If you want to create a separate copy with these changes, you can tap More button marked by three vertical dots and tap Save as.

The iPhone version of Google Drive has less flexibility. Once you open a PDF, you’ll see a Fill out form option at the bottom indicating whether Google Drive can fill out the form. Otherwise, there is no annotation option to fall back on. Apple has its own built-in document signing tool that can be used instead.

Draw with Apple’s Markup tool on iPhone

Apple’s Markup tool lets you annotate documents and photos with text, images, emojis, and signatures. You can access this tool from across iOS, directly while viewing a PDF or via Apple’s Share menu.

You’ll first need to open the PDF you want to sign, whether that PDF comes from an email attachment or a website. Depending on the app you use to view it, you may already see the Formatting tool in the bottom right corner of the screen, represented by a pen tip in a circle. If you don’t, tap the Part icon marked by a square with an upward arrow, and in the pop-up menu, scroll up to find and tap it Formatting.

Once Markup is enabled, you will first be given the option to scribble directly on the document using various pen tools, but do not use them to sign the document. Instead, tap the Signature icon marked by a pencil rectangle, which is probably in the top row of the Markup menu. This then produces a + icon at the bottom right of the screen and after tapping it, select it Add text form box or Add signature. The former is good for typing printed text, while the latter is suitable for handwritten signatures.

If you choose to add a text box, you can first move the text box by dragging it and resizing it as desired. You can then tap the text box to display the keyboard for entering text. When you’re done, you can tap outside the text box to make the keyboard disappear, then tap Finished in the top right corner to save those changes.

To add a signature, first use the pop-up menu to sign your name with a finger. That signature can be saved and reused for future documents. Once you’ve set up that signature, you can tap Finished to move it to a text box in the document. Then you can use your finger to drag, drop and resize as needed.

Whether you use the text box option or the signature option, you can make additional adjustments to each box by tapping an options icon next to each box, marked by three dots (…). This popup allows you to cut, copy, duplicate or delete the box as needed.

When you’ve finished making your adjustments, you can select either one Finished to save your changes or use the Share icon to send the changed document to another app such as your email or cloud storage.