How to save an electronic signature on iPhone and reuse it

Drawing your signature with a fingertip is a one-time annoyance. Redrawing it every single time a form shows up is the actual problem — and it’s the reason a signature that sticks around is worth two minutes of setup.

Your iPhone can already do this for free. Here’s where it saves your signature, how to get it back, and where the built-in version runs out.

Save one in iOS Markup (free, no app)

iOS keeps a signature for you, but it’s tucked inside Markup rather than in Settings — so you reach it through a document:

Open any PDF (from Mail, Files, or a photo of a page) and tap the pencil (Markup) icon.
Tap + in the bottom corner → Signature.
Tap Add or Remove Signature → +, draw your signature on the line, tap Done.

That’s it — it’s saved. From now on, + → Signature on any document shows your signature ready to drop in, resize and position. No re-drawing.

Tip that makes the saved one look better: turn the phone sideways before you draw. The landscape canvas is roughly twice as wide, and a signature drawn with room to move looks far more like your real one than a cramped one squeezed into portrait. You’re only doing this once, so it’s worth a couple of attempts — tap Clear and go again until you’d be happy seeing it on a contract.

Managing, replacing, or deleting a saved signature

Same place: + → Signature → Add or Remove Signature. From that list you can add more (iOS lets you keep several — handy if you also want a second one for a spouse or a business name), or swipe to delete one you’ve outgrown.

Two things worth knowing before you rely on it:

It’s stored on the device. Don’t assume the signature you saved on your iPhone will be waiting on your Mac — Preview keeps its own separate list. Check rather than assume before you need it in a hurry.
Nothing about it is portable. You can’t export the saved Markup signature as a file, email it to yourself, or drop it into Pages, Word, or an email footer. It only exists inside Markup.

That second point is the one that catches people out, which is why the next option exists.

Save it as a transparent PNG (the portable version)

If you want a signature you can use anywhere — a Word document, a Google Doc, a scanned form, a Keynote deck — save it as an image with a transparent background instead. A PNG file lives in Photos or Files, syncs through iCloud like anything else, and can be dropped into any app that accepts an image.

You can make one in a browser with our free signature generator: type your name, pick a handwriting style or draw it, then download it. The transparent signature PNG guide covers why the transparency matters — a signature saved as a JPG arrives with a white box around it that sits visibly on top of the document text.

Keep the file somewhere you’ll find it again (a Files folder beats the camera roll, where it gets buried in a week), and back it up. Losing it just means making a new one, but making a new one that matches the old one is fiddly.

Where one saved signature stops being enough

Markup saving your signature solves exactly one of the things a document asks for. The rest are still manual every time:

Initials — contracts and leases that want a mark on every page need a saved set of initials too, which Markup has no concept of. Every page becomes a hand-drawn scribble.
The date — nearly every signature line has one next to it, and in Markup it’s a text box you place and size by hand, every single time.
Consistency — dropped in by hand, your signature ends up a slightly different size and angle on each document. Nobody will reject it for that, but it looks like what it is.

If you sign a few times a year, none of this matters — stop at Markup and you’ve got a saved electronic signature for free.

If a document lands on you monthly or more, this is the part an app is actually for. In Signed the signature, the initials and today’s date are all saved together and applied at a consistent size, so a document is: share it in, tap three things where they belong, export a flattened PDF. You set the signature up once — draw it on a full-width canvas, type it in a handwriting style, or have AI generate one from your name — and it’s there on every document after that. It’s also local-first: the file never leaves your phone, which is the opposite of how the big e-sign services work.

Not sure which route to set up in the first place? Start with how to create an electronic signature on iPhone — it compares all three ways of making one.

One honest warning about reusing a saved signature

A saved signature is a reusable image of your name. That convenience cuts both ways: anyone who gets hold of the file — or your unlocked phone — can put it on a document you never saw.

Practical, not paranoid:

Keep your phone locked with Face ID. That’s most of your security, and it’s already on.
Don’t email or message your signature PNG around, and don’t leave it in a shared cloud folder or a shared photo album.
When you’re signing something that matters, know what makes a signature harder to copy, and remember the file itself isn’t proof of anything — what actually gives a signed document weight depends on the document and the parties involved, not on the app that placed the image.

Save it once, keep it somewhere sensible, and the second document takes ten seconds.