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By PDFWix Editorial Team · April 2026
Three free ways to sign a PDF on your iPhone — Apple Markup, Files, or PDFWix in Safari. No Acrobat app, no signup, no watermark. Works on iOS 16+.
Open Sign PDF in Safari, tap to upload your file from Files or iCloud Drive, then draw your signature with your finger or Apple Pencil. Tap Download to save the signed PDF back to Files.
Nothing leaves your phone — the entire signing flow runs in your browser. No app to install, no account.
Open the PDF in Files or Mail, tap the Markup icon (pen tip), choose Signature, and either pick a saved signature or draw a new one. Position, resize, then save.
Markup is fast for personal documents but limits you to one signature field per session and lacks date/initial fields.
If your contract needs a signature plus initials on every page, sign once with Markup, then open the resulting PDF in Sign PDF to add initials, dates and printed name fields in bulk.
Open the PDF in Files, Mail or Messages — anywhere it previews on your iPhone. Tap the document to enter full-screen view, then tap the Markup icon (a pencil tip inside a circle) in the top-right corner. The annotation toolbar slides up from the bottom of the screen. Tap the plus button at the far right of that toolbar to open the insert menu.
Pick Signature. The first time you do this, iOS asks you to draw your signature on a clean white canvas — use your finger or, ideally, an Apple Pencil for a smoother line. Tap Done; iOS saves the signature to your library and pastes it onto the current page. Drag to position, pinch to resize, then tap Done in the top-right. Share the signed PDF via AirDrop, Mail or Files. Subsequent signings re-use the saved signature with a single tap.
Markup is perfect for low-stakes documents: internal approvals, freelance invoices, personal forms, school permission slips, returns shipping waybills. The signed PDF is legally binding under the US E-SIGN Act, EU eIDAS and UK Electronic Communications Act for the vast majority of contracts.
Use a proper e-signature service (Sign PDF, DocuSign, Adobe Sign) when you need an audit trail (IP address, timestamp, email confirmation) the other party can independently verify, when the contract requires witness signatures or notarisation, or when value is high enough that a dispute could turn on signature provenance — typically real estate, employment offers above six figures, and any document a regulator might audit.
Yes, under the US E-SIGN Act (2000), the EU eIDAS Regulation (2014) and equivalent UK, Canadian, Australian and Indian laws, a signature drawn with a finger on a touchscreen has the same legal weight as a handwritten ink signature for almost every business and personal contract. Courts look at intent, not aesthetics — a wobbly finger-signature with clear intent is binding; a beautiful forged signature with no intent is not.
The narrow exceptions are wills, divorce papers, some real-estate transfers and a handful of regulator-specific filings that still require wet ink or a Qualified Electronic Signature. For everything else — NDAs, employment contracts, vendor agreements, consent forms — a Markup signature on your iPhone is enforceable and routinely accepted in court when disputed.
In the US (E-SIGN Act), EU (eIDAS) and most jurisdictions, yes — for most contracts. Read the legality guide for edge cases.
After the page loads, yes. Refresh once with internet, then you can sign offline.
Yes — Sign PDF supports request-signature flows where the recipient gets an email link.