How to Sign PDFs & Documents on iPhone (Markup, Mail App)

0:00 If you're trying to figure out how to sign documents on iPhone or how to sign a PDF on the iPhone, I'll show you exactly how to electronically sign using the iPhone markup tool so you can sign any documents in seconds. No apps needed. Everything is right on your phone. Let's get started. All right, so there's a lot of ways that you can actually sign documents on the iPhone, whether you're getting an email in your mail app, whether you're using Gmail, the files app, or even the preview app, or even your photos app. Now, we're going to go through each one of these so I can show you how to sign those documents, but traditionally we get an email. So, let's start with that one. We're going to open up our mail application here and you'll be in your inbox and this is traditionally what

0:46 happens. You have an email. This one in particular says sign and return and when you open it up, you see the actual document or PDF file with these little boxes. So, what we could do, uh in my opinion, is first tap on it and it's going to bring up a preview window here. You have auto fill form sections here which I'll talk about in a second, but usually when you're getting these files, you want a copy for yourself. So, what I would suggest you hit the share. You're going to save it to files. It's going to open up your files app on your iPhone. This is your iCloud Drive and you can choose where you want to save it. So, you can hit the back button here. It'll show you what options you have so you can put it in your downloads folder and then hit save. From there, you can exit your email and

1:31 you can go to your files app and usually it opens in the recent tab and you'll see your file right there at the top or you can tap browse, tap on the folder you saved it and it's right there. Now, we can tap to open it and it's going to open up in a very similar page than what we saw in the email, but you're going to actually use the markup tool here and when you tap on it, it's going to give you a whole bunch of different pencils, pens, erasers, and things like that. You can then just kind of zoom in, pinch to zoom in, use this pencil, and manually sign, manually initial, or manually date, if that's what you want to do. Now, if you don't want to do it that way, tap undo here for reference that you can do that if you make a mistake.

2:17 You can then use this little plus. Now, when you tap this plus, there's some fields here that you can actually set up a signature and even a text field. Now, this video is all about adding a signature and filling out documents with the iPhone, so we're going to tap add a signature. Now, you can see I have a few signatures here. I can add or remove a signature, and when you tap on that, if you've never created a signature before, you'll see this page here. So, let's go ahead. I'm going to add a signature, so we're just going to start drawing on here. I'm just going to put some initials. So, we'll just use that as initials cuz I already have a couple signatures, hit the check mark, and it'll add those initials in. Now, you can use these boxes here, and just tapping on it will bring them. So, these circles, you can use these to resize it, and then you can

3:03 drag it where you would need to have it. So, for example, if I need these initials right there, I can move it right there, and tap away, and now you can see I've added my initials. You can always resize and tap on it after, as well. You can do the same thing with your signature here, so we'll add a signature in. Let's just throw in this signature here, and we'll put it in the signature tab. And in the date section here, you write it if you want, or tap on the plus, add text, and then you can enter the text using the keyboard like this. So, totally up to you how you want to have that set up. But, once you're done here, okay, you're going to tap in this section here, and you can choose to share it right off the bat to your email, or you can tap here. Now, we can go back to our email,

3:48 because we've already signed the document, and what we'll do this time is just reply to this email like this. And we're going to attach, and when you tap that little attach icon, the little paper clip, you can see how you can attach it. The file, scan, photo, wherever you have it. We saved it in our files app, and for me it just opens straight into that folder. Yours may open in recent. Just find the document or the folder, tap on it. It'll add that there. And now if we just take a quick look, you can see it's signed, and we can go ahead and send that off. Now, an even easier way to do this is to just go into your email, tap on it, tap on this little page here so you can see the actual document that needs to be signed. Now, anytime you're using an

4:35 Apple app, you'll get these little options where it says "Autofill can assist you with filling up this form." So, tap on that. It'll pull these little boxes, so then you can use your keyboard and things like that to fill it out. For example, date. We tap in that box now, we can enter the date, right? And then tap away. For the sign section, we don't want to enter in text, we want to sign it. So, what we're going to actually do here is tap this plus, and we're going to add a signature. Now, same deal as in markup, you can add or remove a signature, or you can just tap the signature that it's already there. Align it, place it, tap away, and you've done and signed your document. And the great thing by working with it in the Apple Mail app is that now you can just hit that check mark, and it'll give you the option to reply

5:21 to it right away. You can still save it to files if you need to, but you can hit reply, and it'll automatically create your reply. You can see the attachment right here. Just type in your text, whatever it may be, and then you can send it off just like that. Very easy this way. Now, where this becomes a little bit tedious is in other applications. For example, Yahoo Mail or Gmail. For example, we open this one up. I have an email here with the same test document and if I tap on it, you can see it opens up like this. Now, I was already playing with it, so I signed it already a little bit, but you cannot use that auto fill or the fill out option straight from this email. You can tap on it and view it, but you do have to hit share down here. Now, from this share section, you have two options, save to

6:07 files or markup right from this section. Either way, you're going to end up having to save it, so we'll hit markup. It's going to open it up like this where it's similar to the preview app, so you can use the markup tool right here with these little options and add your signature. You can also pre-fill like this, so you can see it creates that effect there if you need it. But either way, whenever you fill it in, whatever you fill it in with, when you hit done, it's going to ask you to save file to or delete your PDF. So, you're stuck here, you have to save it. It's going to open up files. If you want to give it a name, you can always change this, too. I'm just going to give it a random name. Hit save. Now, you're going to go back into that email. I'm just going to delete the draft, hit reply, and this time you're going to hit this little icon here. And

6:53 because we saved it to files, we're going to go into files, you save it to photos, wherever. Files, you want to find your file. It should be the first one in the recent tab. Give it a click, hit open. It's going to attach it to the email, and that's how you would work with it through in Gmail, very similar in Yahoo Mail as well and other mail clients. Even if you're using Safari to access your email account, you're going to have to work with it that way. Now, in the situations where you get a file or you scan a document that's a photo, so we've got one right here. It looks like this. Basic photo that looks like it's handwritten, but you need to sign it, take a quick picture of it, and in photos, you're going to use the markup option. So, again, we're going to tap here. It's going to bring up our editor.

7:38 You have your markup tool, and anytime you see see tool, you'll be able to then sign documents. You can use the manual pencil to sign, or you can use this option here again and add your signatures in just like we did in the email and in files and preview. So, you do that, hit the check mark, tap done, and then again, same thing, you can choose to share this, choose to use your mail app, Gmail, or just go straight into those apps like this, hit your reply button, and then when you go to attach your document, you're going to choose your photo library this time, and you just hit that, it adds it in, and you're going to enter in your text and send it off like we did earlier. Now, there are situations where documents, for whatever

8:23 reason, are locked or you cannot sign them. No matter what you try, they won't sign. You just can't. They're blocked by whatever there is. The only work around I found is to take a screenshot. I have a full tutorial on screenshot right here if you want to learn how to use it and work with it, but it's basically pressing the power button and then the volume up at the same time, it takes a screenshot. Just like that. This gives you a kind of a photo of this. You're going to use these angled corners to resize it, so you can get rid of all this other stuff you don't need, so it looks more like a document. You can then use the markup tool right here and add in your signatures. You can fill it out here. You can also just hit the check mark and save it to your photos and then use the markup tool, but just to show you that you can

9:09 do it from here. Hit the check mark, choose where you want to save it, I'll save it to photos, and now we can hit reply to this, and we'll hit reply again, and we'll use our attachment photo library, and we're going to choose the one we just added right there. So, there it is. You can send it off just like that. So, that's a work around if you're having trouble signing documents with the iPhone. Usually, you're okay, but if you ever need it, use the screenshot. Now, let's go over these apps once again. Files is where your files are saved, preview is where you can work with your files, and then your photos app is also a place where you can modify and work with those files. You can do the same thing in notes. I'm not going to get into that. It's going to get too repetitive here, but this is how you can sign documents

9:55 and PDF files using your iPhone. I was using the iPhone 17 Pro, but you can use any iPhone that has a fairly recent version of iOS, whether it's iOS 18, iOS 26, or newer. But, if you did have any trouble signing your PDFs with your iPhone, let me know in the comments. Let me know the issue. I'll do my best to help you out. And if you're looking to learn more about your iPhone and you want to get the most out of it, this channel DHTV is the best place for that. I have tons of iPhone tips, tricks, and tutorials with a full series to guide you through everything you need to know to get the most out of your new iPhone and use it to its full capacity. So, check that out. As always, hit the like button, subscribe, and click the bell notification box to be notified when I post new videos, and I'll see you in the next one.