Although you don't find yourself having to convert a webpage to PDF very often, it's one feature that's conspicuously missing from Safari on iOS 7. You can't save a webpage as a PDF file on your iPhone or your iPad. At least, not through Safari.
So how do you capture a webpage as PDF then? If you use the iPad or the iPhone for browsing and can't jump to a desktop just to save websites as PDF, what is the solution? Turns out there's one.
Pdfmyurl.com is a web-based service that will convert any webpage into a PDF file on-the-fly. The only trick you need to learn is how to get that service running on your iPhone or iPad (Safari). The solution is to add a bookmarklet to the Bookmarks bar in Safari.
There is one thing you need to do before you can begin saving webpages as PDF files. Here's what:
- Open Safari and go to any website. (the website doesn't really matter. If you are reading this on your iPad or iPhone, you don't even need to open a separate website)
- Tap on the Share icon and then tap on Bookmark icon
- Change the name of the bookmark to ‘Save as PDF‘ (or anything that says it's a bookmark to convert the webpage to PDF. Also, make sure it's saved under Bookmarks folder and not Favorites or elsewhere).
- Tap on Save to save the bookmark.
- Now, let's edit the Bookmark:
- First off, copy this piece of code on your iOS device. (Type it out in Safari address bar or Notes app and copy the whole thing to the clipboard):
javascript:pdf_url=location.href;location.href='http://pdfmyurl.com?url='+escape(pdf_url)
- Tap on the Bookmark icon in Safari.
- Tap on Edit
- Tap on Save to PDF so we can edit the URL of this bookmark.
- Tap on the URL and clear it out. Paste the copied URL (from above) into this field.
- Tap on Save to save the bookmark.
This new bookmark is your tool to convert webpages into PDF, courtesy the website at Pdfmyurl.com.
To Save Webpages as PDF
- Go to the website/webpage that you want to save as PDF
- Once you are on the webpage, tap on Bookmarks icon and then tap on the Save as PDF bookmark.
- After a few seconds, the webpage should open as a PDF file within Safari. To save the file, tap on “Open in iBooks” link. The PDF file will be saved to the iBooks library. (for this, you need to have iBooks installed. Alternatively, you can tap on the share icon to transfer the file to Dropbox or other compatible app that you run on your iPhone/iPad).
There were apps like Print to PDF which Apple removed from the store. We hope that either Apple lets such apps or incorporates a Print to PDF feature within Safari for iOS.
