Best of all, they’re completely free. These have allowed me to cancel my paid PDF editor subscription and save money.
Here are the Google Drive features that made me stop paying for premium PDF apps, like Adobe Acrobat.
Drive’s PDF scanning feature is a real gem
It’s absolutely free and efficient
I’ve had the scan feature in Google Drive for years, but I only started using it regularly on my Google Pixel 9 Pro XL and Xiaomi 15T in the last couple of years. Maybe I overlooked it because there used to be better dedicated mobile scanning or PDF editor apps.
Whatever the reason, Drive’s scanner has now become an essential tool for me. I use it almost daily to turn physical documents into digital files so I can attach them to an email or share them through message quickly.
Even better, Drive and its scanner tool recently received a major upgrade, featuring a cleaner Material 3 Expressive UI. The improvement in layout and usability is noticeable.
When scanning documents, the carousel view shows larger pages or cards. It also lets you easily swipe through pages, edit, delete, or even insert photos from your gallery.
I also noticed that the app is generally more optimized than before. It doesn’t stutter or slow down even when I handle several pages at once.
Replacing a page is simple, too. Select the page you want to retake and tap the retake button. You can also scan multiple pages at once and have them rearranged before rendering into a file.
I tried laying several documents on a table, and Drive often quickly and precisely detects and scans them as individual pages before saving them as a PDF or back as a JPG image.
This has saved me a huge amount of time compared to scanning each page separately with a different PDF editor app or painfully having each page go through our printer.
Editing and managing PDF documents is a breeze
The cleanup tool is a favorite
Even with the improved scanner quality and addition of AI, some pages still need a little cleanup. Fortunately, Drive offers surprisingly effective built-in editing tools.
Besides the default optimized mode, you can apply preset filters, such as the Black and White style, to reduce glare and sharpen text, without the overblown highlights that sometimes appear when using the automatic scanning option.
However, my favorite tool is the AI-powered cleanup feature. It lets me remove stains, blots, and smudges with a simple brush.
The different brush sizes are handy. I can use a fine brush to address small imperfections without accidentally erasing text or other important elements.
These in-scanning tools have made a big difference in the quality of my final PDFs.
You can use Google Docs to convert PDF files to Word documents with readable, searchable text.
Sign and annotate documents right in the viewer
And you don’t need to pay for them
Drive’s PDF viewer may not have dedicated Fill & Sign and e-signature tools like in Adobe Acrobat, but it still offers a very usable pen and highlighter for annotations.
I regularly use the pen tool to sign documents directly in the app. It’s convenient enough that I no longer need to grab my Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE tablet and its S Pen for simple signatures.
However, I still wish to see the ability to save my signature and to support filling out forms. But given that these work well and are free, I can’t really complain.
Drive’s annotation feature is not a full replacement for professional e-signing with audit trails or tracking. However, for one-off personal or casual documents, it works perfectly as a free workaround.
I use Gemini to summarize and search text in a PDF
It’s a decent alternative to the OCR technology
One remaining weakness in Drive is that it doesn’t automatically apply OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to every scanned PDF. To make a document fully searchable, you still need to open it with Google Docs and convert it.
Alternatively, you will need to opt for a full-fledged PDF editor to make text readable in a PDF.
However, Google has integrated Gemini directly into Drive, and it’s a game-changer.
I can now ask Gemini to summarize long documents, extract key points, or search for specific information — all without leaving the Drive viewer.
This is part of the model’s multi-modal capabilities, allowing Gemini to understand both text and visual elements in PDFs. It’s also free, so you don’t need to pay for the Pro subscription to utilize Gemini for PDFs.
9/10
- SoC
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Google Tensor G4
- RAM
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16GB
- Storage
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128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB
Want an affordable flagship smartphone? The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL is currently on sale at major retailers.
Is Google Drive good enough to replace a paid PDF editor?
You’re paying $0, so there’s no reason to skip it
Sure, from a certain perspective, Drive’s PDF editor seems basic.
I would still love to see native OCR conversion for flat PDFs and a more robust built-in e-signature tool with proper tracking. The lack of advanced form-filling is also a noticeable limitation compared to dedicated PDF apps.
But at the end of the day, the features that are already available in Google Drive are more than enough for my needs. The fast scanning, solid editing tools, annotation capabilities, and Gemini integration make it a surprisingly capable everyday PDF solution.
When you combine all of this with tight integration across Google services, it’s easy to see why so many people rely on Google Drive. For most everyday tasks, these hidden features are genuinely all I need.
