How to add initials to every page of a PDF on iPhone

You’ve got a multi-page PDF — a lease, an NDA, a loan agreement — and there’s a little “initial here” line at the bottom of every single page. One signature at the end isn’t enough; the sender wants your initials on all ten (or twenty) pages. Here’s how to do that on an iPhone without printing a thing.

Two honest routes, cheapest first.

Option 1: iOS Markup (free, built in)

Apple’s Markup can add initials to a PDF without any app — it’s just manual on every page:

Open the PDF (in Files, or tap the attachment in Mail).
Tap the pencil (Markup) icon in the top-right corner.
Tap + → Text. A text box appears — type your initials, then move and size it onto the initial line.
To reuse it on the next page: tap the text box → Copy, scroll to page 2, tap-and-hold → Paste, and nudge it into place.
Repeat the copy-paste for every page. Tap Done and share the file back.

Where Markup is enough: a two- or three-page document you sign once. It’s free and already on your phone — if that’s you, you don’t need anything else.

Where it gets painful, honestly: typed initials look like typed text, not handwriting. And there’s no “apply to all pages” button — you’re copy-pasting and re-aligning the same box page by page. On a fifteen-page lease that’s fifteen rounds of scroll-paste-nudge, and one missed page means the sender bounces it back to you. This is exactly the chore that wears people down.

Option 2: a signature app (built for multi-page documents)

If the document is long, or you initial documents more than once in a blue moon, a dedicated app removes the repetition:

Open the PDF in Mail, Gmail, Files or Outlook and tap Share.
Choose Signed (or save to Files and import it there).
Set up your initials once — draw them, or type your name in a real handwriting style (new to this, see how to create initials for signing documents). They’re saved to your signature and initials library, so you never redraw them.
Move to each page and tap your saved initials onto the line — one tap per page, and it looks the same every time. Your full signature and an auto-filled date are one tap each too, for the last page.
Tap Finish — you get a clean, flattened PDF — and share it straight back into a reply.

The initials are identical on every page because they’re the same saved image, not a fresh drawing each time. That consistency is also what makes a document look properly done rather than patched together.

The privacy angle worth knowing: the big business e-sign services upload your document to their cloud to route it around. For a lease you received and just need to initial and return, none of that applies — Signed is local-first, so the PDF never leaves your phone.

A few practical tips

Do the initials, then the signature. Most contracts want initials on every page and a full signature (plus date) on the last one. Knock out the per-page initials first, then finish the signature block. Some documents want the full signature in more than one place too — that’s a different job, covered in how to add your signature to multiple pages of a PDF on iPhone.
Don’t skip a page. Scroll the whole document before sending — a single un-initialed page is the usual reason a sender sends it back.
Keep it legible, keep it honest. Initials are just a mark of “I read this page.” Placing an initials image on a PDF is a normal way to complete most everyday agreements, but it isn’t legal advice — if a document is high-stakes, check what that specific document actually requires.

Which should you pick?

Two or three pages, one time → Markup. Free, fine, done.
A long lease or contract, or you initial documents regularly → an app pays for itself the first time you tap instead of copy-paste twenty times.