Published
Open the chat, tap the attachment icon (a paperclip on Android and Web, a plus on iPhone), choose Document, then pick your PDF. Always attach it as a Document rather than a photo — that is the path that keeps a PDF intact. If it refuses to send, compress it below 16MB first.
The attachment menu is the paperclip beside the message box.
iOS puts attachments behind the plus button, and PDFs usually live in the Files app rather than the photo library.
On a computer you can also drag the PDF straight from your desktop or file manager into the open chat window, which skips the menu entirely. Otherwise use the paperclip or plus icon in the top bar of the chat, choose Document, and pick the file.
This is the mistake worth avoiding. If you share a PDF through a share sheet in another app, or through the photo/gallery picker, WhatsApp may route it down the media path — which is capped far lower than the document path and can mangle or reject the file.
Attaching through Document explicitly keeps the PDF as a PDF, transferred byte for byte, and the recipient sees a proper document card with the filename, page count and size.
Documents can technically be very large, but in practice anything much over 16MB starts causing trouble: uploads time out on mobile data, the share sheet may route it as media and hit the 16MB cap, and the recipient has to be willing to download it. Aiming under 16MB makes it work everywhere, first time.
Almost all oversized PDFs are big because of embedded images — a scanned contract, photographed notes, or a slide deck full of artwork. Compressing those images is where essentially all of the savings come from, and it can usually be done without any visible loss on a phone screen.
PDFs are often the most sensitive things people send — contracts, bank statements, medical results, ID scans. Most online PDF compressors upload your document to their servers to do the work. The compressor here runs entirely inside your browser, so the file never leaves your device and there is no copy sitting on anyone else’s infrastructure.
Open the chat, tap the paperclip on Android or Web (the plus button on iPhone), choose Document, then select your PDF and send. On desktop you can also drag the file into the chat window.
You are probably in the photo picker rather than the document picker. PDFs do not appear in the gallery. Choose Document, then browse to where the file is saved — Files on iPhone, or "Browse other docs" on Android.
The document path allows very large files, up to 2GB, but files above roughly 16MB frequently fail in practice through timeouts or being routed as media. Compressing below 16MB is the reliable approach.
No, not when it is attached as a Document — it is transferred unchanged. Quality is only lost if you compress the file yourself first, or if it gets sent down the media path.
They receive whatever you sent. An ordinary PDF can be edited with the right software. A PDF compressed by re-rendering its pages as images is much harder to edit, and its text is no longer selectable.