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PDF Expert update adds handwriting recognition, expands Apple Pencil support, more

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Why This Matters

Readdle's update to PDF Expert taps into new iOS 27/iPadOS 27 APIs to make handwritten notes searchable across a user's entire document library, a meaningful upgrade for professionals and students who rely on handwritten annotations. It also shows how third-party apps are quickly building on Apple's latest OS-level tools, like PKStrokeRecognizer and Apple Pencil Pro gestures, to differentiate their products.

Key Takeaways
Worth a Look

Apple Pencil Pro — With PDF Expert's new handwriting recognition making handwritten notes searchable across your library, an Apple Pencil Pro is the perfect companion for jotting down annotations directly on your PDFs. Its precision tip makes handwriting more natural and legible, which pairs nicely with the new recognition engine indexing your notes. Great for students and professionals who want to mark up documents quickly and find them later just by searching.

See Apple Pencil Pro on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.

Readdle updated PDF Expert for iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 this week, adding several new features, including searchable handwriting in 29 languages. Here are the details.

PDF Expert now indexes handwritten notes

Readdle’s classic PDF editor, PDF Expert, was updated this week with several features that leverage new possibilities introduced with iOS 27 and iPadOS 27.

Chief among them is a new Handwriting Recognition feature, which works both within individual PDFs and across the user’s entire library, including existing handwritten annotations and notes added in other apps.

PDF Expert now indexes these notes as regular text, making it easier to find something the user might remember jotting down but can’t quite recall where it was.

The company notes that Handwriting Recognition currently works with 29 languages, matching the language support offered by Apple’s new PKStrokeRecognizer API. Presumably, as Apple expands language support for the API, PDF Expert and its users will benefit as well.

Importantly, Handwriting Recognition and library-wide search are available to PDF Expert Premium users. Free users can still use the Text tool to write by hand and have their handwriting converted to typed text as they write.

Additionally, the update adds support for the Apple Pencil Pro’s squeeze gesture, which opens PDF Expert’s tool palette.

Here’s Readdle:

Users can switch between pens, markers, highlighters, shapes, stamps, signatures, and measurement tools. They can also adjust color, thickness, and opacity, access recent or favorite tools, switch to the eraser, or undo and redo an action.

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