How to Save a Webpage as a PDF (Every Browser, iPhone and Android)

To save a webpage as a PDF, open the print dialog (Ctrl + P on Windows, Linux and Chromebook, Cmd + P on Mac), choose Save as PDF as the printer, and click Save. Every desktop browser has this built in, and iPhone and Android can do it from the share menu. No extra software needed.

Below: exact steps for each browser and phone, how to get a clean PDF without ads or cut-off text, and what to do when you really need the page's text.

1Save a webpage as a PDF in Chrome

Chrome's print dialog has a built-in PDF printer, so this works the same on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chromebook.

1. Open the page and wait for it to finish loading. Scroll to the bottom once so lazy-loaded images appear (more on that below).
2. Press Ctrl + P (Windows, Linux, Chromebook) or Cmd + P (Mac). You can also click ⋮›Print.
3. Next to Destination, choose Save as PDF. If you don't see it, open the list and click See more.
4. Adjust the layout if you need to (see the settings below).
5. Click Save, pick a folder and file name, and click Save again.

The settings worth knowing

• Pages: All, or a Custom range such as 1-3, 5. Handy when the comments or the footer spill onto extra pages.
• Layout: Portrait or Landscape. Landscape stops wide tables and code blocks from being cut off.
• Click More settings for the rest:
• Paper size: Letter in the US, A4 almost everywhere else.
• Margins: Default, None, Minimum or Custom. None gives the most room, but text can touch the edge.
• Scale: choose Custom and type a percentage. Lower it (try 80 or 90) when the right edge of the page is cut off.
• Headers and footers: untick this to remove the date, page title, URL and page numbers Chrome adds to each page.
• Background graphics: tick it to keep background colors and images, untick it for a clean white page that's cheaper to print.

If you select some text before pressing Ctrl + P, Chrome also offers Selection only under More settings, so you can save just that part as a PDF.

Tip: Chrome's PDF keeps the text selectable and searchable, and links usually stay clickable. That makes it better than a screenshot for most documents.

2Save a webpage as a PDF in Safari on Mac

Safari gives you two ways to save a page, and they produce different PDFs.

Export as PDF (one tidy file, no print settings)

1. Open the page in Safari.
2. Click File›Export as PDF.
3. Choose a name and folder, then click Save.

It skips the print dialog and usually keeps the layout closest to what you see on screen.

Print > Save as PDF (more control)

1. Press Cmd + P, or click File›Print.
2. Click Show Details to see paper size, orientation and scale.
3. To drop the date and URL, untick Print headers and footers. To keep colors, tick Print backgrounds.
4. Open the PDF menu at the bottom left and choose Save as PDF. (Open in Preview lets you check it first.)
5. Name the file and click Save.

For a cleaner PDF, use Reader first

Safari Reader strips out the ads, menus and sidebars. Press Shift + Cmd + R (or click the Page Menu button in the address bar and choose Show Reader), then use File›Export as PDF or print as above. You get a PDF with just the headline, text and main images.

3Save a webpage as a PDF in Microsoft Edge

Edge uses the same engine as Chrome, so its print dialog is nearly identical.

1. Press Ctrl + P (Mac: Cmd + P), or click …›Print.
2. Under Printer, choose Save as PDF.
3. Set Layout, Pages and, under More settings, Paper size, Scale, Margins, Headers and footers and Background graphics, exactly as in Chrome.
4. Click Save, then choose where to save the file.

On Windows you'll also see Microsoft Print to PDF in the printer list. It works too, but it goes through the Windows printing system. Save as PDF is the better choice inside Edge, since it keeps text and links intact.

For a cleaner result, open the page in Edge's reader first (press F9, or click the reader icon in the address bar) and print from there.

4Save a webpage as a PDF in Firefox

Firefox has its own print preview with a PDF option and a handy Simplified format.

1. Press Ctrl + P (Mac: Cmd + P), or open the ☰ menu and click Print.
2. Next to Destination, choose Save to PDF.
3. Set Orientation and Pages as needed.
4. Click More settings for Paper size, Scale, Margins, Format, Print headers and footers and Print backgrounds.
5. Click Save, choose a location, and click Save again.

Use Simplified for a clutter-free PDF

On article pages, More settings›Format offers Original or Simplified. Simplified prints the page the way Reader View shows it: headline, text and images, without ads and menus. It only appears on pages Firefox can open in Reader View, and choosing it turns off Print backgrounds.

Note: At the bottom of the preview, Print using the system dialog opens your operating system's print window instead. On a Mac, use it if you want the macOS PDF menu, for example to save straight to iCloud Drive.

5Save a webpage as a PDF on iPhone and iPad

Safari on iPhone and iPad has three ways to make a PDF. The screenshot method is the one most people want, because it captures the whole page as a single long PDF.

Method A: Full-page screenshot (the whole page in one PDF)

1. Open the page in Safari and scroll to the bottom and back so all images load.
2. Take a screenshot: press the side button and volume up together (on iPhone SE, the Home button and the side button).
3. Tap the screenshot preview. (On recent iOS versions the screenshot may open full screen right away.)
4. Tap Full Page at the top. The strip on the right shows the entire page.
5. Optional: tap the crop tool to trim the bottom, or use Markup to highlight.
6. Tap Done (a checkmark on newer iOS versions), then choose Save PDF to Files. Pick a folder and tap Save.

Full Page only shows up in Apple's own apps such as Safari. You won't see it in Chrome for iPhone or in the in-app browsers inside social apps. Open the link in Safari first.

Method B: Share sheet > Options > PDF

1. In Safari, tap the Share button.
2. Tap Options under the page title at the top of the share sheet.
3. Choose PDF and tap Done (or the back arrow).
4. Tap Save to Files, pick a folder and tap Save.

Method C: Print, then save

1. Tap Share›Print.
2. In the print preview, tap the Share button at the top (or pinch out on the page preview to open it as a full PDF, then tap Share).
3. Tap Save to Files.

This gives you normal letter or A4 pages, better if you'll print the PDF later. It also works from Chrome on iPhone, which uses the same iOS print screen.

Tip: For a clean PDF on iPhone, open Reader first: tap the Page Menu button in the address bar, then Show Reader, then use any of the methods above.

6Save a webpage as a PDF on Android

Chrome on Android saves PDFs through Android's print screen.

1. Open the page in Chrome.
2. Tap ⋮ (top right), then Share.
3. Tap Print. (You may need to scroll the share options to find it.)
4. At the top, tap the printer list and choose Save as PDF.
5. Tap the down arrow to change paper size, orientation, color or pages.
6. Tap the round PDF button, choose a folder, and tap Save.

Other Android browsers that offer Print use the same print screen. For a cleaner PDF, open ⋮›Show Reading mode in Chrome first.

7Save the page as clean text or Markdown instead

A PDF is a picture of a page: great for receipts and records, poor when you want the words. Text copied out of a PDF breaks mid-sentence, scrambles tables and picks up page numbers. Save the text instead when you want to:

• Paste the page into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to summarize, translate or ask questions.
• Keep it in notes apps like Obsidian or Notion, where Markdown keeps headings and links.
• Keep saved pages searchable and small: a text file is a few kilobytes, a PDF can be megabytes.

The free URL to Text Chrome extension does it in one click:

1. Add URL to Text to Chrome and pin it to the toolbar.
2. Open the page you want to save.
3. Click the URL to Text icon. The page's main content is copied to your clipboard and opened as clean text in a new tab.

To keep a file, right-click the page and choose URL to Text›Download page as Markdown. The same menu has Copy page as Markdown, Copy page as plain text and Open text in a new tab. Right-click the toolbar icon and choose Options to pick Main content or Whole page, Markdown or Plain text, and whether to Include title and URL. The shortcut Alt + Shift + C (Option + Shift + C on Mac) does the same thing as clicking the icon.

It runs in your browser, so it works on pages behind a login. On a phone or another browser, paste the link into URL to Text and tick Extract Only Main Content with AI.

8Take a full-page screenshot instead

For an exact picture of the page (a design review, a bug report, proof of what a page showed), a full-page screenshot captures everything in one tall image.

Chrome (DevTools, no extension needed)

1. Press F12, or Ctrl + Shift + I (Mac: Cmd + Option + I) to open DevTools.
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + P (Mac: Cmd + Shift + P) to open the Command Menu.
3. Type screenshot and choose Capture full size screenshot.
4. Chrome saves a PNG of the whole page to your Downloads folder.

Edge

Press Ctrl + Shift + S (or …›Screenshot), then choose Capture full page. You can mark it up and save it.

Firefox

Right-click the page, choose Take Screenshot, then click Save full page and Download.

Note: A screenshot is an image, so the text isn't searchable or selectable. Sticky headers can also repeat down the image. If you need text, use method 7.

9Convert webpages to PDF from the command line

Developers can turn webpages into PDFs without opening a browser window.

Chrome headless

Chrome can print any URL to a PDF from the terminal:

# Windows: "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
# Mac: "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
google-chrome --headless --no-pdf-header-footer --print-to-pdf=page.pdf https://example.com

--print-to-pdf saves the file (to output.pdf if you don't give a name), and --no-pdf-header-footer removes the date and URL. Older Chrome versions used --print-to-pdf-no-header instead.

Playwright (Node.js or Python)

For pages that need scrolling, logging in or waiting, a browser automation library gives you full control. Here's Playwright in Python (pip install playwright, then playwright install chromium):

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.launch()
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto("https://example.com", wait_until="networkidle")
    page.pdf(path="page.pdf", format="Letter", print_background=True,
             margin={"top": "0.5in", "bottom": "0.5in", "left": "0.5in", "right": "0.5in"})
    browser.close()

page.pdf() only works with Chromium, not Firefox or WebKit. Puppeteer has the same page.pdf() method for Node.js.

What about wkhtmltopdf?

wkhtmltopdf was the classic tool for this, but it's no longer maintained (its repository was archived in 2023) and it uses an old rendering engine that struggles with modern CSS and JavaScript. Use headless Chrome or Playwright for new projects.

10Save many pages or archive a page

Save several pages at once

There's no built-in "save all tabs as PDF" in any browser. Your options:

• A short list: loop over the URLs with the Playwright script above (put page.goto and page.pdf inside a for loop).
• Text instead of PDFs: the URL to Text API returns clean text or Markdown for any URL, including JavaScript-heavy pages. Much easier to search or feed to AI than a folder of PDFs.

Archive a page so others can see it later

• Wayback Machine: go to web.archive.org, paste the URL into Save Page Now, and click Save Page. You get a public, dated link you can cite, even if the page changes or disappears.
• SingleFile: this free extension for Chrome, Edge and Firefox saves a complete page (text, images and styles) as one HTML file that opens in any browser. It often preserves a page better than a PDF, since nothing is split into printed pages.

How to get a cleaner PDF

• Use reader mode first: Safari Reader, Firefox's Simplified format, Edge's reader or Chrome's Reading mode drop the ads, menus and sidebars.
• Look for the site's own print view: many news, recipe and documentation sites have a Print link that's already cleaned up.
• Use Pages›Custom to skip the comments and footer at the end.

Fix common problems

• The right side is cut off: switch Layout to Landscape, or set Scale to Custom and lower it to 80 or 90.
• Images are missing or blank: many sites load images only when you scroll to them. Scroll slowly to the bottom of the page, wait a moment, then print.
• Dark or black backgrounds: untick Background graphics (Chrome, Edge) or Print backgrounds (Firefox, Safari), or use reader mode.
• A cookie banner or pop-up covers the text: accept or close it before printing. If it won't go away, use reader mode.
• Only the first page prints, or the PDF is blank: the site's print styles are getting in the way. Try reader mode, a full-page screenshot, or clean text.
• You want one long page, not letter-size pages: on iPhone, use the Full Page screenshot method. On a computer, take a full-page screenshot and open it in Preview or Photos to save it as a PDF.

Frequently asked questions

How do I convert a webpage into a PDF on my phone?

On iPhone, take a screenshot in Safari, tap the preview, tap Full Page, then Done and Save PDF to Files. On Android, in Chrome tap ⋮›Share›Print, choose Save as PDF, and tap the PDF button.

Why is my PDF missing images?

The page probably loads images only as you scroll. Scroll all the way to the bottom before you print so every image has loaded. If backgrounds are missing, tick Background graphics.

How do I save a webpage as a PDF without ads?

Open the page in reader mode first, then print or export it as a PDF. In Firefox, choose More settings›Format›Simplified. In Safari, press Shift + Cmd + R, then File›Export as PDF.

Can I save a whole webpage as one long PDF page?

Yes, on iPhone and iPad: the Full Page screenshot in Safari saves the entire page as a single PDF. Browser print dialogs always split the page into paper-size pages.

Will links still work in the PDF?

Usually, yes. Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari keep most links clickable when you use the built-in PDF option. Screenshot-based PDFs (including the iPhone Full Page method) are images, so links don't work.

Is it better to save a webpage as a PDF or as text?

Save a PDF when the layout matters, such as receipts, forms and records. Save text or Markdown when you want to search, edit, quote or paste the content into an AI tool. The URL to Text extension copies any page as clean text in one click.

Wrapping up

On a computer, press Ctrl + P or Cmd + P and choose Save as PDF. On iPhone, the Full Page screenshot saves the whole page as one PDF. On Android, it's Share›Print›Save as PDF. Open reader mode first for an ad-free copy, and when you need the words rather than the layout, copy the page as clean text with URL to Text.