Add a cover page to a PDF
Adding a cover page prepends a newly generated title page to an existing PDF. This tool typesets the title, subtitle, author and date you enter onto a fresh page created at exactly the same dimensions as your document's first page, then inserts it in front — the rest of the file is untouched. The cover is real vector text, not an image, and the whole process runs locally in your browser.
How it works
The tool first reads the MediaBox of your document's first page — the rectangle, measured in points (1/72 inch), that defines the page's physical size. A US Letter page is 612 × 792 pt, an A4 page 595 × 842 pt, and scans are often slightly off both. Whatever the numbers, the new cover is created at exactly those dimensions, so the document's silhouette stays uniform: no odd first page in the print dialog, no size jump when scrolling.
Typesetting the cover uses PDF's standard fonts — the classic set (Helvetica, Times, Courier and their variants) that every conforming PDF reader has shipped since the format's earliest versions. Text drawn with them is encoded in WinAnsi, an 8-bit encoding covering Latin-script languages, which is why the cover handles English, French, or German titles but not Chinese or Arabic (those need an embedded Unicode font, which would add hundreds of kilobytes). The tool measures each line's width at its chosen size to center it optically, places the title block in the upper-middle of the page, and draws the subtitle, author and date beneath it at descending sizes — a plain hierarchy that reads like a report title page, not a template.
Finally comes the structural step: the cover page is inserted at index 0 of the page tree, ahead of the old first page. Insertion is a reordering of the tree's child array, so none of the existing pages are rewritten — their content, annotations, internal links and any bookmarks keep working, simply shifted one physical position later. Because the cover consists of a small content stream plus references to non-embedded standard fonts, the file typically grows by under 10 KB.
Worked example: titling a 24-page engineering report
A consultancy finishes a 24-page structural assessment exported from their CAD suite: A4, 1.14 MB, starting abruptly with section 1 on page 1. Into the tool go a title ("Structural Assessment — Riverside Depot"), a subtitle ("Phase 2 survey findings"), the author ("KLM Consulting Engineers"), and the date ("August 5, 2026").
The output is a 25-page PDF of 1.15 MB. Page 1 is now a clean A4 cover — 595 × 842 pt, matching the rest — with the title centered at large size, and the three smaller lines below it. The old page 1 is now page 2, and the report's internal cross-references ("see figure on page 14") still land correctly because those printed numbers and their link targets moved together. The added 8 KB is the cover's content stream and font references; nothing else in the file changed, which a byte-level comparison of pages 2–25 against the original 1–24 would confirm.
Selecting the title text on the cover works like any typed document — useful when a records system indexes PDFs by their first-page text.
Frequently asked questions
How do I add a title page to the front of a PDF?
Type the title — plus optional subtitle, author and date — into the tool above, load your PDF, and download the result. A typeset cover is generated at the size of your first page and placed before page 1.
Will the cover page match my document's page size?
Yes. The tool reads the width and height of your PDF's first page and creates the cover at exactly those dimensions, so an A4 document gets an A4 cover and a Letter document gets a Letter cover.
Can I use my own design or logo as the cover instead?
This tool generates typed text covers only. For a designed cover, export it as a one-page PDF from your design software and use a merge tool to place it in front of the document.
Is the cover page's text real text or an image?
Real vector text, drawn with one of PDF's built-in standard fonts. It stays sharp at any zoom, is selectable and searchable, and adds only a few kilobytes to the file.
Does adding a cover shift my PDF's page numbers?
Physical positions shift by one — the old page 1 becomes page 2 — but numbers printed on the pages are untouched. Viewers that honor page labels can still show the original numbering if the file defines it.
Can the cover include characters like Chinese or Arabic?
No — the built-in fonts cover Latin-script languages (roughly the WinAnsi character set), so CJK, Arabic and other scripts will not render. Create such covers in a word processor, export to PDF, and merge instead.