Terms of use

What this is

These terms cover your use of the PDF Filler app for Android. Installing it or using it means accepting them. If you do not accept them, do not install it — and if you already have, uninstalling it ends this agreement with nothing left owing on either side.

You are given permission to use the app on devices you control, for your own purposes, personal or professional. That permission is not exclusive and cannot be transferred. The app itself, its design and its code remain ours.

You need to be old enough, where you live, to agree to terms like these on your own behalf. If you are not, an adult responsible for you has to agree to them for you.

What it is not

The app is an editor. It puts text, marks, images and a signature onto a PDF and writes out a new copy. It is not a legal service, it does not check that a form is the right form, correctly completed or still valid, and nothing in it is advice — legal, financial, medical or otherwise.

It is not a document-verification, certification or witnessing service either. It cannot tell you whether a document is genuine, whether a signature on one is really that person’s, or whether whoever you send it to will accept it. Those questions are settled by the people asking for the document, not by the app that filled it in.

Blacking something out covers it; it does not delete it

This is the most important thing on this page, so it has its own section. When you draw a blackout, the app paints a solid opaque rectangle onto the page and writes it into the exported file. The rectangle is part of the page from then on, and no PDF reader can switch it off or move it aside.

What is underneath is still there. The app covers the text; it does not remove it from the file. Someone who opens the exported PDF can select the area, copy it, or run it through any PDF tool and read what the black box is sitting on top of. That is how the format works, and it is true of every editor that draws a box rather than rebuilding the page.

So use a blackout to tidy a form — to stop a reader’s eye landing on an old figure, or to hide something from someone glancing over a shoulder or a printout. Do not use it as the only thing standing between an account number, a national identification number or a medical detail and whoever receives the file. Where something must not be recoverable, it has to be gone before the PDF is made: ask for a copy without it, or cut the page.

The same is true of a whiteout, and of anything else you place over existing content. Covering is not deleting, anywhere in the app.

What a signature in this app is

A signature here is a picture of your signature — drawn with a finger, typed in a handwriting style, or taken from a photograph of one you signed on paper — placed onto the page. That is all it is, and for most forms it is exactly what is being asked for.

It is not a digital signature in the cryptographic sense and not a qualified or advanced electronic signature. The app issues no certificate, adds no timestamp, checks nobody’s identity, keeps no audit trail, and does nothing to make the document tamper-evident afterwards. Nothing in the exported file proves who signed it or that it has not been changed since.

Whether a signed document counts depends on the law that applies to it and on whoever you are sending it to. We make no promise that a form signed here will be accepted, and where a certified, witnessed or notarised signature is required, this app cannot produce one.

Sign only as yourself, and only where you are entitled to sign. Putting somebody else’s signature onto a document, or altering a document so that it says something it did not, is between you and the law — the app has no way to know and no part in it.

Your documents, and what the app does with them

Your documents stay on your phone. Filling, signing and exporting all happen on the device, and nothing you open is uploaded anywhere — the app uses the internet for one advertisement when you export, and for nothing else. The privacy policy sets that out in full.

The consequence is worth stating plainly: we have no copy of anything. We cannot recover a draft you deleted, a file you overwrote or a document you lost with the phone, because there is nothing of yours on our side to recover it from. Keep your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose.

Open only documents you are entitled to open and edit. A PDF that is somebody else’s — a form about another person, a document you were sent in confidence — is yours to handle responsibly, and the app has no way to judge that.

One thing to know about password-protected files. Android cannot display an encrypted PDF at all, so when you open one the app removes its protection in order to show it to you. The copy you edit, and the copy you export, therefore have no password on them. That is the only way the file can be opened, and it means an exported copy is not protected the way the original was — so think about that before you forward it.

Using it fairly

• Do not use the app to forge a signature, to alter a document in order to deceive someone, or to produce anything you would present as more official than it is.
• Do not use it to strip the protection from a document you are not entitled to open.
• Do not decompile, modify or redistribute the app.
• Do not interfere with the advertising that pays for it, or produce ad activity that is not genuine use.

Availability

Everything the app actually does works with no connection. Only the advertisement needs one, and it is never allowed to stand between you and your file: if it cannot load, or you are offline, the export is saved and shared exactly as it would have been.

We may stop publishing updates, or remove the app from Google Play, at any time. A copy already installed keeps working; we do not disable it remotely, there is no account to close, and your documents are on your phone rather than anywhere we could take them away from.

How the app is paid for, and that this can change

The app is free to download and every feature in it is free to use. There is no subscription, no pro version, nothing behind a paywall and no watermark on what you export. It is funded by one full-screen advertisement shown when you download or share a finished PDF, served by Google, and what Google collects in order to do that is set out in the privacy policy rather than here.

We may change how the app is funded in a future version — by changing or removing advertising, or by introducing paid features. If we do, the change arrives in an app update, this page is updated with it, and the privacy policy and the app’s Data safety information on Google Play are updated at the same time if what is collected changes. Nothing you have already installed starts costing money, and an export you can make today does not become one you have to pay for.

What we are responsible for

The app is provided as it is. We do not promise that it is free of defects, that it will always be available, or that an exported PDF will open, print or be accepted exactly as you expect everywhere it is sent.

We are not liable for a loss that follows from something you sent. That includes information read out from under a blackout, a signature that was not accepted or was disputed, a form filled in wrongly or submitted late, and an exported copy of a protected document that no longer carries its password. That is the whole reason the sections above say plainly what each of those things is and is not.

We are not liable for documents you lose. There is no copy of anything on our side, which is the same fact that lets the privacy policy say your documents never leave your phone — the two cannot be separated, and we would rather have it this way round.

None of that touches the rights you have as a consumer. Nothing on this page excludes or limits any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, and for fraud. Where the law of your own country gives you rights that these terms appear to reduce, your rights win and this paragraph is the one that governs.

You have paid us nothing, and we hold nothing of yours: there is no account, no subscription and no document of yours on any server of ours. Where a limit on liability applies and the law allows one to be set, it is the amount you have paid us for the app, which is nothing.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. When we do, the date at the top of this page changes, and the change takes effect for the version of the app released alongside it.

It does not take effect for the copy already on your phone. That version keeps behaving the way it did when you installed it and stays governed by the terms it shipped under, so you are not bound by a change simply for carrying on using what you already have. A change reaches you only through an update, and you can decline an update or uninstall the app. Continuing to use the app after you have installed an update is what indicates that you accept the terms that came with it.

Contact

Questions about these terms go to the address on our contact page. If a PDF came out wrong — a page that would not open, a signature in the wrong place, text that moved when it was exported — that is worth telling us and we would rather hear it than not.

The other documents

• PDF Filler privacy policy

  What the app does with your information. These terms are the agreement; that is the disclosure.

• Website terms

  These cover the app. Those cover this site, which is a different thing entirely.