Don't save the whole page when you only need a paragraph. Highlight the content you want, click Pretty PDF, and get a focused PDF of just your selection.
Free — 3 PDFs per month. No credit card required.
Sometimes you need one recipe from a cooking site, one answer from Stack Overflow, one code snippet from documentation. You don't need the entire page — you need one specific piece of it.
Most PDF tools give you two options: save the entire page or save nothing. That means your 2-page recipe comes with 8 pages of ads, life stories, and newsletter popups. That single Stack Overflow answer arrives buried in a 12-page document full of related questions, sidebar links, and user profile widgets. The code snippet you wanted is somewhere on page 3 of a 7-page PDF.
Selection mode is the third option. Instead of letting the tool decide what to include, you decide. Highlight exactly the content you want on the page, and Pretty PDF generates a clean PDF containing only your selection — nothing more, nothing less.
Three steps. No configuration. No learning curve. If you can highlight text on a webpage, you can use selection mode.
Click and drag to select the text, images, tables, or code blocks you want in your PDF. Select as much or as little as you need — from a single sentence to multiple sections of the page.
Click the Pretty PDF extension icon and choose "Selection" as your capture mode. The extension detects your highlighted content and prepares it for conversion.
Click Generate and download a clean, professionally styled PDF containing only your selected content. Your chosen template is applied automatically for polished output.
Selection mode captures any content you can highlight in your browser. All formatting and structure are preserved in the output PDF.
Select any amount of body text — from a single sentence to dozens of paragraphs. All inline formatting including bold, italic, and hyperlinks is preserved in the PDF output.
Highlighted code blocks retain their monospace formatting, indentation, and line structure. Long lines wrap cleanly in the PDF instead of overflowing off the page edge.
Data tables maintain their column structure, header rows, and cell alignment. The PDF template applies clean table formatting optimized for print regardless of original table styling.
Bullet lists, numbered lists, and nested sublists keep their hierarchy and indentation intact. The list structure is preserved so the PDF reads exactly as the original page does.
Any images that fall within your highlighted selection are included in the PDF at their original resolution. Figures and their associated captions are captured together and positioned correctly in the document flow.
Your selection does not need to be a single content type. Select a paragraph followed by a code block followed by a table — the PDF includes all of it in the correct order with proper formatting for each element.
Selection works across DOM boundaries. Select content spanning multiple sections, columns, or containers — Pretty PDF reconstructs the selection into a coherent PDF document.
Webpages are built from nested HTML elements — divs, sections, columns, grids, and flex containers. When you highlight content in your browser, your selection often spans multiple containers that have completely different parent elements in the page structure. A naive selection capture would break at each container boundary, producing fragmented output.
Pretty PDF handles this correctly. The extension captures the full selection range from the browser DOM, including all content between the start and end points regardless of how many container boundaries it crosses. The server then reconstructs this content into a single coherent document, preserving the reading order and formatting of each element while stripping away the container structure that only existed for page layout purposes.
This means you can select content that starts in a two-column layout, continues through a full-width section, and ends inside a sidebar — and the resulting PDF will present all of it as a clean, linear document with no layout artifacts or missing content.
Selection mode shines when you need a specific piece of a page rather than the whole thing. Here are six scenarios where it saves you time and page count.
Recipe sites are notorious for burying the actual recipe under paragraphs of backstory and dozens of ad placements. Highlight just the ingredient list and instructions, and get a 1-page PDF instead of a 12-page mess.
Stack Overflow pages contain the question, multiple answers, comments, related questions, and sidebar content. Select just the accepted answer — or the specific answer that solved your problem — and save it as a focused reference document.
Documentation pages often contain dozens of code examples across multiple sections. Highlight only the example you need — with its surrounding explanation — and generate a compact reference PDF you can keep open while you code.
When you need to cite a specific passage from an article or report, highlight just that section. The PDF preserves the text exactly as published, and the source URL is embedded in the document metadata for proper attribution.
Product pages are packed with recommendations, reviews, and promotional banners. Select the specifications table and key details to get a clean comparison document without the shopping site clutter.
Long tutorials cover setup, multiple approaches, troubleshooting, and advanced configuration. Select just the steps relevant to your situation and save a concise how-to PDF tailored to exactly what you need to do.
All 5 PDF templates apply to selected content just as they do to full-page and article captures. Your selection gets the same professional styling, embedded fonts, and print-optimized layout.
Selection mode does not produce raw, unstyled output. The content you select passes through the same template engine used by Article and Full Page modes. Choose any of the 5 built-in templates and your selection will be rendered with that template's typography, margins, colors, and layout rules.
Academic template is ideal for research quotes and cited passages. Its serif typography and generous margins give selected text a scholarly appearance that fits naturally into academic workflows. Select a key passage from a journal article and the output reads like a properly formatted excerpt.
Corporate template works well for business excerpts — a section from a competitor's pricing page, key findings from an industry report, or meeting notes from a shared document. The clean sans-serif styling and professional spacing produce output suitable for presentations and internal reports.
Dark template is purpose-built for code snippets. When you select a code block or a mix of code and surrounding explanation, the dark background and monospace formatting make the output immediately recognizable as a technical reference. Developers who keep PDF references of useful code snippets will find this template indispensable.
The Clean and Minimal templates offer lighter options for general-purpose selections where you want the content to speak for itself without strong visual styling.
Highlight the content you need, generate a focused PDF, and skip everything else. No more full-page clutter.
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