Recolour Annotations - Free Online Browser Tool

Change the colour of every highlight and markup in a document at once.

A document that arrives with an unreadable highlight colour, or a review where every reviewer picked a different shade, is hard to act on. Recolouring brings the markup back to one consistent scheme without touching a single word of the document.

This recolour annotations utility runs completely inside your web browser. Your document is opened locally and processed on your own device using JavaScript and WebAssembly, so your file is never uploaded to any server. There is no signup, no watermark and no limit on how many documents you can handle.

  • 100% client-side - files never leave your device
  • Instant processing, no upload wait
  • Works on desktop, tablet and mobile
  • Free forever, no account required

Common next steps: Highlight PDF, Underline Text, Flatten / Remove Annotations, Bulk Keyword Redaction.

How to Use the Recolour Annotations Tool

Four steps, and the whole thing runs locally on your own device.

  1. Load the marked-up PDF

    The document must already contain markup to recolour.

  2. Pick the new colour

    Yellow and green are the readable defaults; a dark shade behind black text is not.

  3. Choose the scope

    Highlights only, or every markup type including squiggles, boxes and stamps.

  4. Download

    Positions, text and author information are all left as they were.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this change the highlighted text itself?

No. Only the colour behind it changes. The text, its position and who marked it are untouched.

Will it fix a highlight that hides the text?

Yes, if you pick a lighter colour. A pale yellow behind black text reads; the dark shade that started the problem does not.

Why might a highlight not change?

If it was drawn as a shape rectangle rather than a highlight annotation, it is a drawing, not markup. Use the all-markup scope and check it still leaves drawn boxes alone.

Does this remove any annotations?

No. Nothing is deleted; only colours are rewritten.

Can I do the same thing by hand?

You can, one annotation at a time, which is the reason this exists when a review has hundreds of marks on it.