Apple Pencil Mark-ups on pdf not saving

Please read the rest of this thread. This "solution" is not helpful. Please get Apple to fix and make the Apple Pencil work the way it was made to. I bought this iPad for specifically this reason, to use the pencil to markup papers from my students without having to save them to my iPad. This is a great feature. But it's gone now and I'm wondering why I bought the iPad instead of the Samsung tablet? I don't want all these pdfs on my iPad when I should be able to use it as I bought. I really regret moving up to 15.3. It's the worst.

Been running into this same problem for the last couple of weeks including on a long edit yesterday. For me, it’s not fixed. I duplicated the issue with the advice from Ace_responder above (thanks), but am still not 100% sure what triggers it. It seems way too easy to inadvertently flip the switch so that only the fist part of the edits are saved. Like others, this feature is why I have the IPadPro and Pencil—in receive hundreds of emails with attached letters in PDF format, review and edit and sign and email them back to the sender. All has been great for a couple of years and now since this update, I have stuff disappearing. Saving to a file or taking a screen shot is just not practical or efficient, so hopefully Apple will provide the fix ASAP. Hoping for that fix or if anyone has more input on the workaround, please post. Thanks very much.

Hello ManJor, after I updated my IPad /OS. 15.3.1/ I have a problem with saving my notes written with Apple pencil on PDF files. I have tried the way you explained, but it doesn’t work. My changes are available only on Book app ( and only on my Ipad) not any other Apple devices.

Is anyone from Apple moderating this discussion? Can anyone from Apple make a response to all these questions? This does not appear to be an isolated problem. It would be nice to at least hear that someone is looking at this problem and at least trying to see what is going on.

this is ridiculous. the same thing is happening to me. Ill try the work around but bought the ipad for this reason to mark up, sign and edit docs rather than a clumsy time consuming process. If apple knows about the bug surely good sense wold be to fix it!

I’m having same problem. I use my iPad to review search and arrest warrant applications and issue warrants. Frequently this happens in the middle of the night. It was so easy. Open email, open pdf, read, sign click done, reply all, go back to bed. No more. I’ve been using adobe and just typing in info and using save signature but nearly as easy as before. This needs to be fixed ASAP

I don’t suppose Apple has realised the sort of issues that this bug can cause.

for example i still need ,for certain transactions with my broker, to return a signed pdf to him.

after this bug my broker informed me that my order couldn’t be made on time as the signature on page 2 was missing!

i was lucky - no Financial damage , but it could have been really nasty.

please issue fix as priority, the issue is silent, deadly, and potentially very expensive…

As of today, 4/19/22, this is still very much an issue... just happened to me, and my documents were very time-sensitive. Ended up doing screenshots of each page and sending that - not ideal. Really need this fixed Apple!

OK, I have two words - PA THETIC. Yeah, yeah. I know, that is one word but it demands emphasis. I have AppleCare, for which I paid a lot. I used AppleCare to examine this issue, AND it just did it again. COME ON GOOGLE (I mean APPLE). This is the Apple Pencil on the biggest, baddest iPad you make. This worked before. How about you stop NOT HAVING ANY IDEA WHAT THE ISSUE IS and NOT KNOWING HOW TO FIX IT, and become, I don’t know, A MAJOR MANUFACTURER OF HARDWARE THAT JUST, I don’t know, WORKS!?!

Just lost more than 4 hours of hard work. Assumed that my brand new iPad Air 5th (5th generation) would be saving my notes on my PDF automatically, and when I saved the file to the iCloud, all of the notes disappeared. Could not retrieve them. Very frustrating. Unbelievable that this should happen.

I have exactly the same problem. Just started this past week.

100% agree this is not a good fix. We need it to work how it used to.

Ace_responder that’s really helpful, thank you. I’ll try that in the meantime.