# PDF Bookmarks Editor - Add, Edit and Auto-Generate PDF Outline Online

> Free online PDF bookmark editor: read the outline, then add, rename, nest and reorder bookmarks, set pages by clicking thumbnails, or paste a table of contents.

- URL: https://qilingtools.com/en/pdf/bookmarks
- Category: PDF Tools (https://qilingtools.com/en/pdf)
- Tags: [PDF](https://qilingtools.com/en/tags/pdf), [Documents](https://qilingtools.com/en/tags/document)
- Last updated: 2026-10-26
- Price: Free, no sign-up
- Privacy: Runs locally in the browser; files are never uploaded

A long PDF without bookmarks — an ebook, a scanned textbook, a thesis or a tender — is painful to navigate. Upload it and the tool first reads any bookmarks the file already has. Rename, add and delete entries right in the list, move them up and down, indent or outdent them to change the level, and select one then click a page thumbnail to set where it jumps. The fastest route is Generate from text: paste the table of contents, one entry per line, with indentation for the level and the page number at the end of the line (dot leaders like “Chapter 1 ...... 1” are recognised) or at the start, add a page offset for front matter, and a full multi-level outline appears in one go. Bookmarks are written as standard PDF outline objects, with every title encoded as UTF-16 so Chinese, Japanese, accents and emoji never turn into garbage, and the saved file is read back with PDF.js to confirm every bookmark made it. Optionally open the bookmarks panel automatically and choose expanded or collapsed. Everything runs locally in your browser.

## How to use

1. Upload a PDF; existing bookmarks are loaded automatically
2. Add, rename, nest and reorder bookmarks and click thumbnails to set pages — or paste a table of contents to generate them
3. Click Save bookmarks & download to get the PDF with its new outline

## Features

- Reads and edits existing bookmarks
- Multi-level: indent, outdent, move up and down
- Click a page thumbnail to set the target page
- Generate from pasted TOC text with dot leaders and page offset
- Unicode (UTF-16) titles, verified by reading back
- Runs locally, files never uploaded

## FAQ

### How should I format the table of contents text?

One bookmark per line. Indent with a tab or two spaces to make an entry a child of the line above. Put the page number at the end, like “1.2 Method ...... 5” or “1.2 Method 5”, or at the start, like “12 References”. Lines without a page number reuse the previous one.

### The printed page numbers don’t match the PDF pages — what do I do?

Front matter is often unnumbered, so printed page 1 may be PDF page 9. Enter 8 as the page offset and the generated bookmarks will jump to the right pages.

### Will non-English bookmark titles display correctly?

Yes. Every title is written as UTF-16BE, the Unicode text format defined by the PDF specification, so Chinese, Japanese, Cyrillic, accents and emoji display correctly in Acrobat, browsers and macOS Preview.

### Can I remove all bookmarks from a PDF?

Yes. Click Clear all and save; the output contains no outline and no longer opens with the bookmarks panel.

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