How do I copy text from a PDF on iPhone?

Last reviewed: October 7, 2026 · Markdown version

Open the PDF in Apple's Preview app, touch and hold the first word you want, drag the grab points to the end of the passage, and tap Copy. You can then paste it into Notes, Mail or a message. If the PDF is in Safari, Books or Files, the reliable route on Apple's own pages is to get it into Preview first. If touching and holding selects nothing, the page is a scan, and copying needs a different tool.

In Preview: Apple's steps

Apple's page on marking up PDFs opens with "You can copy, highlight, underline, or strike through text in a PDF file", and its "Select and copy text" steps are: go to the Preview app, open a PDF, "To select text, touch and hold the first word, then move the grab points", then "To copy the selection, tap Copy." Afterwards "You can then paste the text into another document or app" (Annotate a PDF or image in Preview on iPhone, iPhone User Guide, read 7 October 2026). That page has editions for iOS 27 and iOS 26 only; on an older iOS there may be no Preview app to follow it in.

Apple's steps describe selecting a passage by dragging; the page does not describe a Select All command for a whole PDF. For a long document, copying it a section at a time is the route Apple documents. If you need the whole text out, extracting text from a PDF covers tools built for that.

Getting the PDF into Preview

From Files. Touch and hold the PDF, "Choose Open With from the menu, then choose an option" (Find and view files and folders in Files on iPhone, iPhone User Guide, read 7 October 2026). Preview also has its own Browse tab, so you can open the file from inside Preview without going through Files (Open and view PDFs and images in Preview on iPhone, read 7 October 2026).

From Safari. Apple's Safari page covers keeping a PDF rather than copying from it: tap the Page Menu button, then Share, then "Save to Files", and "Enter a name for the file, then tap Save" (Download a PDF from Safari to your iPhone, iPhone User Guide, read 7 October 2026). It does not mention selecting text in a PDF shown in Safari. Once the file is saved, open it in Preview and use the steps above; opening PDFs in Safari explains where the saved copy goes.

From Books. Apple's Books page for PDFs covers opening, sharing, printing and marking up, using "the drawing and annotation tools"; it says nothing about selecting or copying text (Read PDF documents in the Books app on iPhone, iPhone User Guide, read 7 October 2026). The share options it names are AirDrop, Mail, Messages and Print, so our suggestion is to go back to the original file or attachment and open that in Preview instead.

When nothing selects: a scanned page

If touching and holding does nothing, or the whole page highlights as one block, the page is almost certainly an image of text rather than text; checking for a text layer confirms it. Apple's Live Text in Preview works on pictures: its page says you can "copy or translate text within an image", and the steps begin "Open an image that shows text, then select the text" (Interact with text in an image in Preview on iPhone, iPhone User Guide, read 7 October 2026). That page talks about images, not pages inside a PDF. A workaround of ours, not one Apple describes: save the page you need as an image (a screenshot will do), open the image in Preview, and copy from it there. For a few lines that is quick; for a long scan, OCR on iPhone and what Live Text is good for cover the alternatives.

When the passages are spread over many PDFs

Copying works one passage at a time. If you are collecting every mention of a name or a clause from a folder of PDFs, DocFind finds them first: it searches inside many PDFs at once, shows the file, the page and the surrounding text for each match, and can export the results as a CSV spreadsheet, a Markdown file, a PDF report, or a PDF of just the pages that matched. Every export records what was searched and anything that was skipped. It does not edit, annotate or sign PDFs; it never changes the files you search, and the exports are new files. Scanned pages are read for printed text, not handwriting, and on iOS it is an iPhone app.