PDFs and E-Books With Annotations on Your iPhone

The Books app on iPhone tends to get treated like a digital bookshelf for novels purchased through Apple Books, but it is quietly one of the most versatile document readers available on a consumer phone. PDFs, EPUBs and DRM-free e-books all open in the same clean interface, and the built-in markup tools let you highlight passages, jot down notes and sketch on the page without buying extra software. For Australian readers juggling university readings on the train from Parramatta, work contracts at a café in Fitzroy, or research papers in a Brisbane co-working space, that built-in flexibility removes the need to install yet another reader app.

What many people do not realise is that annotations made on the iPhone sync to every other Apple device signed into the same iCloud account. A note jotted while waiting for a flight at Melbourne Airport will appear on a MacBook the next morning, and highlights made on an iPad will turn up on the phone before bed. This guide walks through the practical steps to import files, adjust the reading view, mark up documents and keep everything organised across devices.

Setting Up the Books App for PDFs and E-Books

The first thing to check is whether the Books app is actually on the home screen. iOS 16 and later ship with it pre-installed on Australian retail units sold through JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman and the local Apple Store, but anyone who has hidden the app can bring it back by searching in the App Library or pulling it back via the Settings menu. Once visible, opening it once will register the app with iCloud and create the default Collections for Books, PDFs and Audiobooks.

The next decision is which file types the app should handle by default. Safari, Mail and Messages all rely on iOS to choose the correct reader when a PDF or EPUB is tapped. Heading into Settings, then Apps, then Books, exposes a toggle for "Organise by Collections" that is worth switching on for anyone who keeps a mix of reading material and reference documents in the same library. With Collections enabled, every imported PDF drops into its own tab, keeping lecture slides separate from bedtime reading.

Storage is another small but important consideration. A four hundred page textbook PDF can easily weigh in at eighty megabytes, and a handful of those will chew through the free iCloud tier. Australians who shoot a lot of video on a recent iPhone will already be familiar with the iCloud storage prompt, and the same upgrade path covers documents. Either pay Apple for additional iCloud space or store bulky reference PDFs locally on the device by toggling "Downloading" to "Original" under the Books settings, which keeps files on the iPhone itself rather than streaming them.

Importing Files From Emails, Cloud Storage and Safari

Bringing a PDF into the Books app from another source takes only a few seconds once you know where to look. The most common route is through the share sheet. Open a PDF attachment in Mail, tap the share icon and scroll through the activity list until Books appears. Selecting it copies the file into the Books library and, depending on the toggle mentioned earlier, places it in the appropriate collection. The same share-sheet approach works from the Files app, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and even Microsoft Teams.

Safari users on Telstra or Optus home broadband often save research articles directly from the browser. Tapping the share icon on a webpage and choosing "Options" at the top of the share sheet offers a "PDF" action, which converts the current page into a PDF and routes it straight into Books. This is a handy way to archive government press releases from the ABC News site or to capture a recipe from a cooking blog for later reading in the kitchen with greasy fingers.

For e-books purchased outside of Apple's store, sideloading through iTunes on a computer remains an option but is increasingly unnecessary. Most Australian independent authors sell EPUB files directly through their websites, and these can be downloaded into the Files app on the iPhone and then opened with Books. The app reads EPUB, PDF, RTF, TXT, HTML and several less common formats, so there is rarely a need to convert a file before importing it.

Customising the Reading View for Comfort

Long reading sessions are easier on the eyes when the display is dialled in. Inside an open book or PDF, tapping the screen brings up the reading controls. The "AA" icon opens a menu with options to change the font, bump the text size up or down, adjust the page colour and toggle between a sepia, grey or pure white background. Switching to sepia helps during late-night reading on a tram from Sydney's Inner West to the CBD, where the warm tones cut down the harsh glare from street lights through the window.

Brightness and Auto-Brightness deserve a quick mention because they directly affect battery life. The Books app is comparatively frugal with power, but cranking the screen to maximum for a two-hour reading session will still drain the battery noticeably. A good compromise on the go is to leave the slider around forty percent and let True Tone handle the rest. For anyone who reads in bed, the Night Shift setting under Display and Brightness shifts the screen toward warmer colour temperatures after sunset, which is gentler on tired eyes.

Bookmarks, the table of contents and the search field are reached by tapping the small list icon. PDFs behave slightly differently from reflowable EPUBs here. A scanned PDF does not have selectable text, so search will only work if the document has an invisible text layer, which is true for most files generated from word processors but not for photocopied handouts. Searching inside an EPUB, by contrast, will surface every match and highlight them in yellow as you tap through.

Highlighting, Underlining and Adding Notes

Annotations are where the Books app truly earns its place. With a document open, pressing and holding on a word selects it, and dragging the blue handles expands the selection across a sentence, paragraph or page. A pop-up menu offers Highlight, Underline, Strike Through, Copy, Look Up, Translate, Share and Notes. Highlight and Underline use the same colour palette, which can be changed in Settings under Apps then Books, allowing readers to assign different colours for different purposes such as yellow for key concepts and red for disagreements.

Tapping the Notes icon inside that same menu opens a small text field. Typed notes are anchored to the selected passage and become visible when the document is reopened or viewed on another device. A useful habit is to write questions or follow-up actions rather than full sentences. For example, a law student at the University of Melbourne annotating a case might write "compare with Carter v Boehm" instead of transcribing the relevant passage. That keeps the note scannable when reviewing later.

For PDFs that contain forms, signatures or freehand markup, tapping the markup icon at the top of the screen swaps the reading view for an editing toolbar. Tools include a pen, marker, pencil, eraser, lasso and a ruler that snaps to nice angles for drawing straight lines. Signatures created under Markup and Sticker can be saved for reuse across multiple documents, which is convenient for anyone who needs to sign contracts remotely while travelling between Perth and Adelaide for work.

Syncing Your Library and Notes Across Devices

Apple's ecosystem does most of the heavy lifting here. As long as iCloud Drive is enabled in Settings and the Books app has permission to sync, every highlight, underline, bookmark and typed note propagates to other Apple devices logged into the same Apple ID. Australian readers who own an iPad for note-taking at a desk and an iPhone for reading on the move will find that the same annotated PDF opens in the same state on both screens within a few seconds.

Sharing annotated documents with others is just as straightforward. From the open document, tapping the share icon reveals options including AirDrop, Mail, Messages and a list of third-party apps. For university study groups that meet on campus, AirDrop is often the fastest way to send a marked-up PDF to a classmate sitting next to you. For colleagues based in another state, sharing through Mail or a cloud storage link keeps a record of who has the latest version of a working document.

It is worth noting that annotations stored in iCloud are tied to the Apple ID and do not export cleanly to non-Apple platforms. If a reader needs to send a PDF with comments to a Windows user, the cleanest approach is to use the Flatten feature inside Markup, which bakes the annotations into the PDF itself. After flattening, the document is no longer editable in the same way, but it will look identical when opened in Adobe Acrobat, Google Drive's preview or any other PDF viewer.

Method	Works On	Syncs to Other Apple Devices	Best For
Highlight and Notes	EPUBs and text PDFs	Yes, via iCloud	Studying, research, long-form reading
Markup tools (pen, shapes, signature)	Any PDF	Yes, but flatten before sharing	Forms, contracts, freehand diagrams
Bookmarks	EPUBs and PDFs	Yes, via iCloud	Marking pages to revisit later
Flattened PDF export	Any PDF	No (becomes a static file)	Sending finalised files to non-Apple users

Readers who want to keep their annotation workflow portable across both Apple and non-Apple hardware might also consider exporting notes manually. Tapping and holding on a note inside a PDF reveals a copy option, and a long press on multiple notes selects them for batch export to the clipboard. Pasting the notes into a Notes app or a third-party service like Notion or Obsidian builds a backup that is not locked to a single platform.

For more hands-on guides covering multitasking on iPhone, eSIM setup on Telstra and Optus networks, and tips on spotting refurbished devices sold through local marketplaces, the rest of the Zack Michaels blog is worth bookmarking. The site breaks down each feature in plain language and tests every step on real Australian hardware before publishing, which makes it a practical companion to the official Apple documentation.