--- title: "How to sign a PDF on your phone" description: "Sign a PDF from your phone: draw a signature or photograph the one you wrote on paper, save it once, and drop it onto any document." canonical: "https://spirikle.com/blog/sign-a-pdf-on-your-phone/" last-updated: "2026-08-25" --- # How to sign a PDF on your phone You do not need to print, sign and re-scan. Open the PDF in Scan Clan, add your signature, and send it back. You can draw the signature on the screen, or photograph one you wrote on paper and Scan Clan will lift it off the page. By Abhishek Chauhan · 25 August 2026 · 1 min read · [How-to guides](/blog/category/how-to-guides/) ## Step by step ### 1. Open the document Scan the page, or import a PDF you already have. Imported PDFs are edited alongside anything you scan. ### 2. Choose Signature From the document menu. If you have not made one yet, this is where you do it. ### 3. Draw it, or photograph it Draw with a finger or stylus. Or sign a blank sheet of paper, photograph it, and Scan Clan lifts the ink off the background so you get the signature without the paper around it. The photographed one usually looks more like your real signature. ### 4. Place it Drop it where it belongs on the page and size it. It is saved, so the next document takes one tap. ### 5. Send it Share it to any app, print it, or export it with a password if it is going somewhere sensitive. ## Getting a clean signature from paper Use a dark pen on white unlined paper. Lifting the ink off the background is a contrast problem, and a blue biro on a lined pad gives it far less to work with than a black pen on plain white. Fill a good part of the frame with the signature rather than photographing a whole page with a small mark in the corner. More pixels on the ink means cleaner edges when it is scaled onto a document. ## Locking the signed file A signed contract is usually the kind of thing worth protecting in transit. Choose the password option when you export or share, and the PDF that leaves the app is encrypted with AES-256 and needs the password to open. Send the password by another channel than the file itself — a password in the same email as the attachment protects nothing. See also: [how to scan a document to PDF on Android](/blog/scan-documents-to-pdf-on-android/). **About the author: Abhishek Chauhan.** Founder of Spirikle and the maker of Scan Clan, a free document scanner app. ## Continue reading - [How to scan a document to PDF on Android](https://spirikle.com/blog/scan-documents-to-pdf-on-android/) — Open Scan Clan, point the camera at the page, and let it find the edges. It straightens the photo, evens out the lighting, and gives you a PDF you can send. The whole thing takes about fifteen seconds per page. - [How to scan a document without a watermark](https://spirikle.com/blog/scan-a-document-without-a-watermark/) — Scan Clan does not stamp anything on your scans. There is no watermark to remove and no upgrade that takes it off, because there is no paid tier here for it to belong to. If you want a watermark — "COPY", "DRAFT", your own name — you can add one deliberately. - [How to remove glare and shadows from a scanned page](https://spirikle.com/blog/remove-glare-and-shadows-from-a-scan/) — Two things ruin a phone scan: the shadow you cast over the page, and the bright patch a lamp leaves on glossy paper. Scan Clan has a filter for each — No Shadow and Glare Removal — and a few centimetres of movement prevents both. > **Scan Clan** is our free document scanner app for Android: it turns paper into clean, straight PDFs with your camera, and can sign, compress and share them — no ads and no subscription. [Get it on Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spirikle.scanclan). For quick jobs on a computer, try the [free PDF and image tools](/tools/). --- _Scan Clan · https://spirikle.com/blog/sign-a-pdf-on-your-phone/ · published by Spirikle · support@spirikle.com_