ChromeOS has a PDF editor in the box. The Gallery app fills forms, adds text, highlights, signs with a freehand signature, redacts and deletes pages, and reads scanned text with OCR.
What it does not do is merge two documents, split one, or make it smaller. Those are the jobs that send people looking, and they are the reason this page exists.
The reputation ChromeOS has for not doing document work is a few years out of date. The gap is real but it is narrower and more specific than most advice suggests.
What the Gallery app covers
Open a PDF from the Files app and it opens in Gallery. The toolbar across the top is the editor.
Google's page for it lists the lot, including the part people miss: it will read a scanned PDF with optical character recognition, so a photographed document becomes searchable text rather than a picture.
The three it will not do
Merging, splitting and compressing. All three are file-level operations rather than page-level ones, which is roughly why an app built around viewing and marking up a document does not have them.
Three ways round it
An Android app
Most Chromebooks run Android apps from the Play Store. It works, it takes storage, and phone apps on a laptop screen are a mixed experience.
A Linux app
Turning on the Linux environment gets you Okular, LibreOffice Draw and the command line tools. It will do anything you ask, and it is a large thing to install for one document.
The browser
Nothing to install, nothing to keep updated, and on a Chromebook the browser is the machine. The catch is that most online tools upload the file.
That catch matters more on a Chromebook than elsewhere, because the browser is where everything happens and it is easy to stop noticing what leaves the device. A tool that does the work locally does not have the problem: the page loads, the file is read by the page, and nothing is sent.
The redaction one, which is worth getting right
Gallery can black something out, and Google's own wording for the feature is that you use the Draw function to cover text or images. That distinction matters enormously and is the single most dangerous thing on this page.
If what you are hiding is a name, an address, a salary or an account number, the text has to come out of the file rather than be painted over. The redaction tool here removes the text and then reopens the finished document to confirm the words are gone, which is the only check worth having.
Working without a connection
The usual objection to doing anything in a browser on a Chromebook is that the browser needs the internet. For a tool that runs in the page, that is true only once: the page has to load, and after that the work happens on the machine.
Open the tool while you have a connection
The page and its code arrive in the usual way.
Work offline from then on
The file is read by the page, the work is done by the processor in front of you, and the result is written back to Downloads.
Nothing goes out either way
Which is the same reason it keeps working: there was never a round trip to lose.
Tools that do the work on a server behave the opposite way. They look identical until the connection drops, at which point the upload stalls and the document is halfway to somewhere.
Which to use for what
Filling in a form somebody sent you.
Signing something.
Marking up a draft for somebody else to read.
Deleting a page.
Putting several documents together.
Pulling a chapter out of a long one.
Getting under an upload limit.
Hiding something that must actually be gone.
For the right column, the tools here run entirely in the browser tab: merge, split, compress, reorder pages. On a Chromebook that is the natural shape for a tool to take.
Do the rest in the tab
Merge, split, compress and reorder, with nothing installed and nothing uploaded.
Common questions
What is built in, what is not, and the three ways round it.
01Does a Chromebook have a PDF editor built in?
Yes. The Gallery app opens PDFs from Files and can fill forms, add text, highlight, draw, sign with a freehand signature, redact and delete pages, and read scanned pages with OCR.
02Can I merge two PDFs on a Chromebook without an app?
Not in Gallery. A browser tool will do it in the tab, and the ones that work locally do not upload the files. An Android or Linux app is the other route if you would rather install something.
03Can I change the text in a PDF on a Chromebook?
Not the text that is already there, and not on any other system either without converting first. A PDF stores positioned glyphs rather than sentences. Converting to Word or Markdown, editing, and going back is the usual path.
04How do I sign a PDF on a Chromebook?
In Gallery, use the annotate tools to draw a signature, and save it so it can be reused. Google's documentation covers creating and saving one.
05Will Gallery make a scanned PDF searchable?
It will read the text with OCR so you can search and select it in the app. If you need the searchable text carried into the file itself for other programs, that is a conversion rather than a view.
06Do browser PDF tools upload my file?
Most do, and it is worth checking before you use one on anything private. The tools here run in the page: the file is read by JavaScript in your own tab and nothing is sent anywhere.