Synchronizing PDF Annotations on iOS

PSPDFKit for iOS supports two approaches for synchronizing annotations to your server, and across multiple users, devices, or sessions:

Instant synchronization
Building your own solution using our APIs

Both approaches are deployed on your infrastructure and can be integrated with our web, mobile, and desktop SDKs.

	Instant Synchronization	Building Your Own
Backend	Document Engine	Any
Real-time sync	Built in	Not built in
Conflict resolution	Built in	Not built in
User authentication	Built in	Not built in
Offline synchronization	Built in	Not built in
Incremental sync	Built in	Not built in

Instant Synchronization

PSPDFKit Instant is our prebuilt solution for synchronizing annotations to your server, and across multiple concurrent users, devices, or sessions. It’s a licensable component that’s included as part of Document Engine.

Launch Demo

Instant consists of three parts: the Document Engine backend that synchronizes documents and annotations and manages authentication; the PSPDFKit Instant component that handles conflict resolution, version tracking, diffing, and merging; and the web, mobile, and desktop SDKs that integrate into your app.

Learn more about PSPDFKit Instant.

Building Your Own Solution

PSPDFKit web, mobile, and desktop SDKs have easy-to-use APIs for importing/exporting annotations and forms data as part of a robust synchronization solution.

Before starting, take a quick look at the following guides:

Storing annotation data
Conflict resolution
[Instant JSON overview][]
[Event listeners][]

ℹ Info: When building your own solution, our technical support team will gladly help with questions specific to using our SDK. However, due to the complexity of building your own synchronization solution, support is limited to PSPDFKit technology.