How to sign a PDF on your phone without printing it
Print, sign, scan, send: four steps and a printer for one scribble. On a phone you can sign the PDF directly, and if you do it well the result looks better than a scan.
Draw the signature so it looks like yours
Turn the phone sideways before drawing: the pad becomes twice as wide and the signature comes out with its real proportions instead of squashed. Sign with your finger at a normal speed — slow, careful strokes look shaky. A good signature pad thins the line when you move fast, like ink does, which is what makes a finger signature look natural.
If you have a stylus, use it; if not, the side of your fingertip gives a thinner line than the pad of the finger. Draw it two or three times and keep the best one: you only have to do it once per document.
Typed or photographed signatures
If drawing on glass does not work for you, there are two alternatives. Typing your name in a handwriting font is accepted almost everywhere for everyday documents. Photographing your signature on white paper gives the most faithful result: sign with a dark pen, take the photo in good light, and let the tool remove the white background so only the ink is placed on the PDF.
In CLEKARA's Sign PDF you can do any of the three, and the signature is remembered while the page is open, so initialling every page takes one tap per page.
Where to place it
Place the signature over the line, slightly above it, not floating in empty space. Add the date next to it if the document asks for one — a date field typed by the tool is easier to read than a handwritten one. If every page must be initialled, add your initials once and copy them to every page in the same position.
Zoom in before downloading: a signature that covers printed text, or that sits on the wrong page, is the most common reason a document gets sent back.
Is an electronic signature valid?
For most everyday documents — rental applications, delivery notes, school authorisations, quotes, many employment forms — a signature drawn or pasted on the PDF is accepted. In many countries the law recognises simple electronic signatures, but the weight it gives them depends on the type of document.
Some procedures require a qualified or certificate-based digital signature: notarial deeds, many tax and government filings, certain contracts. That is a different technology, tied to an identity certificate, and no image of a signature replaces it. When in doubt, ask whoever requested the signature what they accept — it takes one message and saves a rejection.
Privacy
A signed contract contains your signature, your name and often your ID number. Before uploading it to a website, check where it goes. A tool that signs inside the browser — CLEKARA does — never receives the document or the signature, so there is nothing to leak.