A running header or footer — a document title at the top, a confidentiality notice at the bottom, a “Page 3 of 12” line — is one of those small touches that makes a document feel finished, but it’s rarely something the original file was built with from the start.
Adding one
Header & Footer stamps a custom text line across every page:
- Upload your PDF.
- Type your header text, footer text, or both — they’re independent fields, so fill in just one if that’s all you need.
- Optionally type the page-number placeholder into your header or footer text.
- Download — every page gets the same line, positioned consistently.
Including page numbers in the text
Rather than a separate page-numbering step, the text fields support two placeholders: {n} for the current page and {total} for the page count, so typing “Confidential — Page {n} of {total}” into the footer field turns into “Confidential — Page 3 of 24” on page three, filled in automatically per page. If you only need a plain number with no surrounding text, Add Page Numbers is the more direct tool for that.
If the page already has something there
New text is drawn on top of the page rather than replacing anything, so if the original document already has content in that area, both will be visible after adding yours. Leave a field blank if you only want to add a header, or only a footer, without touching the other.
A common use case
Internal drafts and legal documents often need a consistent “DRAFT” or “CONFIDENTIAL” line across every page of a long document — if you want that as a large, angled stamp across the page rather than a small header/footer line, Watermark PDF is built specifically for that instead.
What’s fixed, and what’s not
This tool keeps the styling simple on purpose: both lines are centered, set in a small gray sans-serif font, and sit about 0.4 inches (28pt) in from the top or bottom edge. There’s no font picker, no bold or color option, and no left- or right-aligned text — if your document needs a header on the left and a page number on the right, that’s two separate positions this tool can’t produce in one pass. What you do control is the text itself, up to 120 characters per field, applied identically to every page — there’s no way to apply it to a page range only, or to skip a cover page the way a dedicated numbering tool can.
If the fixed centered style doesn’t fit — you need a left-aligned running title, a right-aligned date, or a cover page that stays untouched — Add Page Numbers at least handles the cover-page case for plain numbering; for anything needing true left/right alignment or font control, this tool isn’t the right fit and you’ll want a desktop PDF editor instead.
Runs in your browser, not on a server
Adding the text happens entirely in the tab you’re already in — the PDF is never uploaded anywhere to get stamped. That matters for the documents this feature tends to get used on: contracts, internal reports, anything marked “Confidential” in the footer you’re about to add. There’s also no page-count or file-size cap tied to an upload queue, since there’s no upload to queue in the first place.