Open the form, type into its fields, tick its boxes and save. You can fill PDF forms for free, with no account and no watermark, and neither the form nor what you typed into it is sent anywhere.
A fillable PDF has its fields built in. When you open one, OpenPdfEdit lists every field in the Form fields panel, under the name the form gives it. Type into the text fields, tick the checkboxes, and choose an option where the form offers a dropdown or a list box. That is all it takes to fill PDF forms that came with their fields built in.
Each change is applied as you make it. There is no separate apply step.
One thing to know if the form was digitally signed before it reached you: filling in a field saves the form by rewriting the whole file, and a rewrite breaks an existing digital signature.
Radio buttons are best-effort. Most groups behave, but they are the one kind of field where a form can be built in a way the app does not fill correctly, so check them before you send the file on.
Plenty of forms are flat: a scan or an export with lines to write on and no fields behind them. For those the panel says the document has no fillable form fields, and you add the fields yourself.
There are two kinds you can add, in Edit mode: a text field and a checkbox. Place it on the page, then drag it by its grip to move it or by its corner to resize it. A text field can be set in Helvetica, Times or Courier at a size you choose. A checkbox can show a tick, a cross, a dot or a square.
What you add are standard form fields, not drawings that look like them, so the form can be filled in afterwards in other PDF software as well as in this one.
That is the whole list. The app does not create radio groups, dropdowns or list boxes, and it does not detect where the fields of a flat form ought to go. You place each one.
The steps to fill PDF forms are the same in every version of the app.
Most forms end with a signature line. You can sign a PDF in the same window by drawing your signature, typing it or using a picture of it.
A filled-in form can still be changed by anyone who opens it. If the answers have to stay as they are, flatten the document: what you typed and the boxes you ticked become ordinary content on the page, and every field is removed, so nobody can change the answers once it has been flattened. Check your answers first and keep the unflattened copy. The steps are in How to flatten a PDF.
Think about what goes into a form: a tax number, a bank account, a date of birth, a home address. An upload site asks for all of it before it does anything. To fill PDF forms here, the file is read from your disk, the fields are filled in on your own machine and the result is saved back to your disk. Nothing is uploaded, because there is nowhere for it to go. OpenPdfEdit is an open source PDF editor, so you can check that in the code.
You can fill PDF forms the same way in the browser, in the desktop app for macOS and Windows, and in the extension for Chrome and Edge. The web app keeps working with the network off once it has loaded.
Open it, fill it, save it. Nothing to install and nothing to sign up for.
Guides: How to flatten a PDF · How to add a signature to a PDF · All guides
Yes. You can fill PDF forms, and add text fields and checkboxes to them, for free, with no account, no page limit and nothing stamped on the form. The only paid tools in the app are watermarking and OCR.
Add the fields yourself. In Edit mode, place a text field or a checkbox where each answer goes, then type into it or tick it like any other field.
Yes, with text fields and checkboxes. They are standard form fields, so the person you send the form to can fill it in with other PDF software. Radio groups, dropdowns and list boxes cannot be created here.
It can choose an option in a dropdown or a list box that the form already has. Radio buttons are best-effort: most work, and a few forms are built in a way that does not fill correctly.
No. The form is read, filled in and saved on your own machine. No document, and no part of one, is sent anywhere.
Yes. The desktop app never needs a network. The web app needs one only to load the page the first time, and after that it works offline.