4 Ways to Change Highlight Color in PDF[Free and Paid Options]

Highlighting text in a PDF is easy thanks to many PDF highlighter tools. But, sometimes you’ll want to change or remove the highlight color for various reasons. So, how can you do this?

Don’t worry. In this post, we will guide you through four easy ways to change the highlight color in PDF using PDFgear Desktop, Adobe Acrobat, Foxit, or Preview.

How to Change Highlight Color in PDF for Free Using PDFgear Desktop

PDFgear Desktop is an excellent PDF editor that provides various advanced editing tools, allowing you to make extensive edits, including edit and format PDF text, copy the text from PDF, and add annotations to PDF.

It also can work as a PDF highlighter, allowing you to customize the highlighter color for text within the PDF. To change the highlight color in PDF for free using PDFgear Desktop, follow these steps:

Step 1. Open a PDF in PDFgear Desktop

To experience all the advanced features of PDFgear for free, click the button below to download PDFgear Desktop on your Mac or PC.

Open the PDF file you want to edit with PDFgear Desktop.

Step 2. Highlight the PDF text

Select the “Highlight” tool from the Annotate tab, then highlight the text you want to change the color of by clicking and dragging your cursor over it.

Step 3. Change the highlight color

Once the text is highlighted, left-click on it, and you should see options for changing the highlight color. PDFgear offers nearly 50 preset highlight colors and even allows you to customize highlight colors

Choose your desired color from the available options. The selected text will now be highlighted in the new color. Save your PDF file to preserve the changes.

That’s it! You’ve successfully changed the highlight color in your PDF using PDFgear Desktop, and it’s completely free to use.

How to Change Highlight Color in Adobe Acrobat

Adobe has long been the PDF industry standard, with its Acrobat software effortlessly handling a wide range of PDF-related tasks, from PDF highlighting to changing highlight colors.

Here is how to use Acrobat to change highlight color in PDF:

Step 1. Open the target PDF file in Arobat, then click “Tools” > “Comment” to access the Comment toolbar. Your added comments will appear on the right side of the document.

Step 2. From the top menu bar, choose the “Highlighter” tool.

Step 3. Highlight the text, right-click, and choose “Properties.” In the Highlight Properties dialog, pick a color from the Color panel, then click OK.

Note: To set this color as the default, tick the “Make Properties Default” box before clicking OK.

How to Change Highlight Color in PDF at Once in Foxit

For the sake of time-saving, PDF editors like Foxit allow you to change all highlight colors at once. Instead of selecting each highlighted area one at a time, you can select them all and change the colors all at once.

Step 1. Open Foxit PDF Editor or Foxit PDF Reader and go to the Comments panel in the left corner. Organize comments by type.

Step 2. Double-click the comment type to expand all highlighted comments in the panel. Then, select all highlighted comments by clicking the first one, holding the “Shift” key, and clicking the last one under ‘Highlight.’

Step 3. Right-click the selected highlighted comments and choose “Properties.” This opens the “Highlight Properties” dialog box.

Step 4. In the “Highlight Properties” dialog, click the color box under the “Appearance” tab to access the color palette. Pick a new color for all the selected highlighted comments. Now, the selected text will now be highlighted in the new color.

How to Change Highlight Color With Preview on Mac

For Mac users, you might be familiar with the Preview application, as it allows you to open and view PDF files. It also provides some basic PDF editing features like adding text boxes and highlighting text within the PDF.

If you want to use it to change the highlight color in a PDF, you don’t need to download any third-party software because it comes pre-installed with your Mac. However, the highlight tool in Preview allows one to select among a small number of colors.

Step 1. Open your PDF using Preview on your Mac.

Step 2. Highlight text by selecting it and clicking the top-of-the-screen highlighter icon. Your selected text will be highlighted.

Step 3. The default color is yellow, but you can change it by clicking the down arrow next to the highlighter.

Step 4. You can now choose a new color, underline, or strikethrough. Your chosen style will be automatically applied to the highlighted text.

Conclusion

That’s how you can change the highlight color in a PDF. These four methods can all assist you in changing highlight colors efficiently. If you’re a one-time user, the prices of Acrobat and Foxit may not be cost-effective for you.

Additionally, Preview on Mac offers a limited selection of highlight colors. PDFgear is a better solution for changing highlight colors because it’s user-friendly and free.