Why a PDF
A PDF is the easiest way to pass an XD design to someone who will never install a design tool: a client who needs to sign off screens, a print shop, a colleague reading on a phone, or an archive. Every computer and phone opens it, it keeps the order of the artboards, and it can be printed or annotated.
How to do it here
- Drop the .xd file on this page, or choose it with the button.
- Look through the artboards in the grid. If a font has been swapped, the note above the grid says which and for what; install the original font and reload if exact type matters.
- Open the Export tab and choose All artboards as PDF. Each artboard becomes one page, sized to match it, with a bookmark named after it so you can jump around in any PDF reader.
The PDF is made in your browser and saved straight to your device. The design isn’t uploaded to make it.
What the PDF is, honestly
Each page is a high-resolution picture of the artboard, drawn at twice its size so text stays crisp when you zoom or print. That makes the PDF reliable, since it looks the same everywhere, but it also means the text in it isn’t selectable and shapes aren’t editable vectors. If you need editable vectors, export SVG instead (see XD to SVG and PNG); if you need the words, the handoff sheet lists every text layer as a spreadsheet and as plain text, per artboard.
Very large artboards, such as long landing pages over about 8,000 pixels tall, are drawn at a lower resolution because browsers limit how big a picture they can make. When that happens you are told which pages were affected.
Free and paid
Viewing every artboard and saving any single one as a PNG or SVG is free. The all-artboards PDF is part of the one-time £9 unlock, together with the ZIP exports and the handoff sheet. There’s no subscription and no account.
Without this page
If you still have Adobe XD, File › Export › PDF does the same job with selectable text. Photopea, a free browser editor, can also open many XD files and export artboards; it is a full Photoshop-style editor, so it’s worth trying if you need to change the design rather than just view and export it.