Add Header & Footer
Add custom text headers and footers to every page of your PDF — supports page numbers, dates, and custom text
Drop a PDF here
Select a PDF to add header and footer
Max file size: 100MB
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Add Header & Footer stamps a line of text along the top and/or bottom of every page in a PDF — useful for a document title, a “Confidential” label, a page-numbering line, or a submission date that has to appear on each page. Header and footer are configured independently: separate text, alignment (left, center, or right), font size (7pt to 18pt), and color for each, applied consistently across the whole document in one pass. Three placeholder tokens — {page}, {total}, and {date} — get replaced automatically per page, so a footer typed once as “Page {page} of {total}” shows the correct numbers on every page without retyping anything.
There are two honest limits worth knowing before you rely on this for something specific. First, the same header text and the same footer text apply to every page — there's no way to give page 3 different wording from page 1 beyond what the three tokens already vary. Second, the text is drawn using a single embedded Helvetica font that only supports Latin-script characters (accented European letters like é or ü work fine); typing in Hindi, other Indic scripts, Chinese, Arabic, or emoji will have those characters silently stripped from the output rather than rendered as boxes or errors.
How it works
1. Drop a PDF here
Upload a PDF up to 100 MB. An encrypted file whose pages can't be read is rejected with a message to unlock it first.
2. Type your header and/or footer text
Fill in either field, both, or just one — pressing Apply requires at least one of them to have text. Click the {page}, {total}, or {date} buttons to insert those tokens into whichever field is focused.
3. Set alignment, size, and color for each
Header and footer each get their own left/center/right alignment, a font size from 7pt to 18pt, and a color picker or hex input — changing either doesn't affect the other.
4. Apply to all pages, then download
Press “Apply to N Pages.” Once it reports success, download the file; the saved name has “-header-footer” added before .pdf.
When you'd use it
Marking an internal report “Confidential”
Add a top-right footer or header reading “Confidential — Internal Use Only” before circulating a report, applied identically to every page in one step.
Numbering pages on a submission with a required format
A footer of “Page {page} of {total}” gives every page the correct running count automatically, useful for annexures and forms that specify a page-numbering format.
Dating a document at the moment you finalize it
A header or footer using {date} stamps the day you apply it onto every page — handy for versioning drafts of a quote or proposal before sending the final one.
Adding a document title across a long PDF
A multi-page thesis, contract, or manual can carry its title in the header on every page so a printed or reordered stack of pages is easy to identify without a cover page.
Same text on every page — with three exceptions
Whatever you type into the header field appears on every page of the document, and the same is true for the footer — there's no per-page text editor here. The only things that actually change from page to page are the three placeholder tokens: {page} substitutes the current page number, {total} substitutes the document's total page count, and {date} substitutes today's date, each recalculated as it's applied to every page in the loop.
That makes this tool a good fit for a consistent running header or footer across a whole document, but not for something like a chapter title that's supposed to change partway through — for content that genuinely differs page to page beyond numbering and dates, you'd need to split the document at those boundaries and apply different text to each piece separately.
Text is limited to Latin-script characters
The tool embeds a single standard Helvetica font and, before drawing any text, converts curly quotes, em/en dashes, and ellipsis characters to their plain ASCII equivalents so they render safely. Anything left over that falls outside the font's supported range — Devanagari, other Indic scripts, CJK characters, Arabic, or emoji — is stripped out entirely rather than shown as a placeholder box, so a header typed partly in Hindi will come out with only the English portion visible.
If the font genuinely can't display what's left after that cleanup, applying shows “Header/footer contains characters this font can't display. Please remove special characters and try again” — in practice this fires rarely, since most problem characters are already stripped before that check runs.
Positioning and the preview panel
Header text sits a fixed 40 pt margin from the top edge of the page (y = height - 40), while footer text positioning is calculated as y = MARGIN - fontSize + 4 (clamped to a 4 pt minimum), meaning the baseline shifts closer to the bottom edge as font size increases rather than remaining at a fixed offset. A very large font size close to the top of that range can crowd close to existing content if your original PDF already has text or images running near the page edge. The “Page Layout Preview” panel on screen is a generic mock-up of a page with placeholder gray lines standing in for your content, not a render of your actual PDF — it's there to preview how your header/footer text, alignment, and color will look, not to preview your document's real layout.
Frequently asked questions
Can page 5 have different header text than page 1?
No — the same header text and the same footer text apply to every page. Only the {page}, {total}, and {date} tokens vary automatically from page to page.
Will a header typed in Hindi or another non-Latin script show up correctly?
No. The embedded font only supports Latin-script characters. Non-Latin characters — Devanagari, Chinese, Arabic, and similar — are silently removed from the text before it's drawn onto the page.
What does the {total} placeholder show?
The document's total page count, recalculated automatically so every page's footer or header shows the correct number without you typing it manually.
Can I add only a footer and skip the header?
Yes — leave the header field empty and fill in only the footer (or the other way around). At least one of the two needs text before you can apply.
Does the on-screen preview show my actual PDF page?
No. The Page Layout Preview is a generic mock-up with placeholder gray lines used to preview your header/footer text and styling — it doesn't render your document's real content.
Can I change the font used for the header and footer?
No. The tool always uses a single embedded Helvetica font; there's no font selector.