How to Save a Webpage as PDF in Chrome

Method 1

Chrome's built-in Save as PDF (Ctrl+P)

Every Chrome installation includes a way to save a page as PDF through the print dialog — Chrome print to PDF is the simplest method available. No extensions, no downloads, no accounts. Here is the step-by-step process.

1

Open the print dialog

Press Ctrl+P on Windows or Linux, or Cmd+P on Mac. You can also right-click anywhere on the page and select Print, or use Chrome's three-dot menu and choose Print.

2

Set destination to "Save as PDF"

In the Destination dropdown at the top of the print dialog, select Save as PDF. This tells Chrome to generate a PDF file instead of sending the page to a physical printer.

3

Configure your settings

Choose your page size (Letter, A4, or others), orientation (Portrait or Landscape), and scale. Expand More settings to toggle headers and footers, background graphics, and margins.

4

Save the file

Click Save, choose a location on your computer, and Chrome generates the PDF. The file appears wherever you saved it, ready to open in any PDF viewer.

Limitations of Chrome's built-in method

The Ctrl+P method works in a pinch, but it has real drawbacks that make it unsuitable for anything you plan to share, archive, or reference later:

URL header and date footer on every page. Chrome stamps the page URL across the top and the print date across the bottom of every single page. You can uncheck "Headers and footers" in More settings, but most people never find that option.
Ads, banners, and cookie popups included. Chrome prints exactly what is on screen. Every ad, promotional banner, newsletter signup form, and cookie consent dialog ends up in your PDF.
Navigation, sidebars, and comments captured. The site header, footer, navigation menu, sidebar widgets, related article links, and comment sections are all part of the output. A 2-page article can easily become an 8-page PDF.
No content extraction. Chrome has no intelligence about what is "content" and what is "chrome." It renders the entire DOM to PDF without distinguishing between an article body and a social media share bar.
No template or style options. You get whatever the site's print stylesheet provides. Most sites have no print stylesheet at all, so the PDF mirrors the on-screen layout with all its responsive quirks.
Broken responsive layouts. Modern websites are built for screens, not paper. Multi-column layouts collapse unpredictably, images overflow page boundaries, tables get truncated, and code blocks wrap in ways that destroy readability.

Method 2

Pretty PDF Chrome Extension

Pretty PDF takes a fundamentally different approach. Instead of printing the raw webpage, it extracts the actual content, removes the clutter, and renders a professionally styled document on the server.

1

Install from Chrome Web Store

Search for "Pretty PDF Printer" in the Chrome Web Store and click Add to Chrome. The extension icon appears in your toolbar. No account is needed to start.

2

Visit any webpage

Navigate to the article, documentation page, GitHub issue, Stack Overflow answer, or any other page you want to save as PDF.

3

Click the Pretty PDF icon

Click the extension icon in your Chrome toolbar. A popup appears with your template and capture mode options. Everything is visible in one place.

4

Choose template and capture mode

Pick a template: Clean for articles, Minimal for notes, Corporate for business, Academic for research, or Dark Mode for developers. Choose Article, Full Page, or Selection mode.

5

Generate and download

Click Generate PDF. The extension captures the page HTML, sends it to the server for content extraction and rendering, and delivers a clean, professionally formatted PDF in seconds.

Why the extension produces better results

Pretty PDF's advantage comes from server-side rendering with WeasyPrint, a professional PDF engine. When you click Generate, three things happen on the server:

Content extraction. The engine identifies the main content area and strips away ads, navigation, sidebars, comments, cookie banners, and social widgets. For eight popular platforms (GitHub, Medium, Stack Overflow, Notion, Dev.to, Substack, Reddit, and Confluence), dedicated parsers understand each site's unique HTML structure for even better extraction.
Template styling. Your chosen template's CSS is applied with professional typography using embedded fonts (Fraunces for headings, Instrument Sans for body text), proper margins, and careful handling of images, tables, and code blocks.
PDF rendering. WeasyPrint renders the final document with full CSS paged media support: correct page breaks, orphan and widow control, and consistent output regardless of which computer you are using.

The result is a document that looks designed, not dumped from a browser print dialog.

Comparison

Side-by-side comparison

How Chrome's built-in Save as PDF stacks up against the Pretty PDF extension across the features that matter most.

Feature	Chrome Ctrl+P	Pretty PDF Extension
Content extraction	None — prints entire page	Smart extraction removes clutter
Ads and banners	Included in PDF	Removed automatically
Navigation and sidebars	Included in PDF	Removed automatically
URL headers / date footers	Added by default	Never added
Professional templates	No templates	5 built-in templates
Embedded fonts	Uses system fonts	Fraunces + Instrument Sans
Page break handling	Cuts mid-paragraph	Smart page breaks
Code block formatting	Often truncated	Monospace, syntax-aware
Site-specific optimization	Generic for all sites	Custom parsers for 8+ platforms
Requires installation	Built into Chrome	Chrome Web Store install

Tips

Chrome-specific tips

A few things worth knowing about how Pretty PDF interacts with Chrome's features and security model.

Chrome profiles

Pretty PDF installs per Chrome profile. If you use separate profiles for work and personal browsing, you will need to install the extension in each profile where you want it. Your settings, templates, and saved PDFs are profile-specific, which means your work documents stay separate from personal ones. This is usually what you want.

Chrome Reader Mode pages

Chrome has a built-in reader mode that simplifies articles (available via the page icon in the address bar on supported pages). Pretty PDF works with reader mode pages, but it is usually better to use the extension on the original page. Pretty PDF's own content extraction is more thorough than Chrome's reader mode, and running both creates double extraction that can miss content. Use Article mode on the original page for best results.

chrome:// pages limitation

Chrome does not allow extensions to run on internal chrome:// pages such as chrome://settings, chrome://extensions, or chrome://flags. This is a security restriction that applies to all Chrome extensions, not just Pretty PDF. If you need a PDF of Chrome's settings, use the built-in Ctrl+P method instead. The same restriction applies to chrome-extension:// URLs and the Chrome Web Store itself.

Incognito mode

By default, Chrome disables extensions in Incognito windows. To use Pretty PDF in Incognito, go to chrome://extensions, find Pretty PDF Printer, click Details, and enable Allow in Incognito. Note that your extension settings and any logged-in account state carry over, but browsing history from Incognito does not appear in your Pretty PDF document library.

Pinning the extension icon

After installation, the Pretty PDF icon may be hidden in Chrome's extension puzzle-piece menu. Click the puzzle piece icon in the toolbar, find Pretty PDF Printer, and click the pin icon next to it. This keeps the Pretty PDF icon visible in your toolbar for one-click access.

Guidance

Which method should you use?

Both methods have their place. The best choice depends on what you are doing with the PDF.

Use Chrome's Ctrl+P when:

You need a quick personal reference and do not care about formatting.
You want to capture the exact visual layout of a page, including navigation and sidebars, for documentation or evidence purposes.
You are on a chrome:// page or another URL where extensions cannot run.
You are on a computer where you cannot install extensions (managed corporate device, shared workstation, guest profile).

Use Pretty PDF when:

You plan to share the PDF with a colleague, client, or professor. Pretty PDF's templates produce documents that look intentional, not accidental.
You want to archive an article for future reference without the noise. Content extraction means your archive is lean and searchable.
You are saving technical content like GitHub issues, Stack Overflow answers, or documentation. The dedicated parsers understand these sites' structures.
You need consistent formatting across multiple PDFs. Templates ensure every document follows the same typographic standards.
You are building a research library and want clean, uniform documents you can scan and find later.

In practice, most people start with Ctrl+P, get frustrated with the output, and switch to Pretty PDF for anything that matters. The free tier gives you 3 PDFs per month with all templates, so you can try it without commitment.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Chrome has a built-in Save as PDF option in its print dialog — you can use Chrome to save any page as a PDF. Press Ctrl+P (or Cmd+P on Mac), set the Destination to "Save as PDF," and click Save. This captures the entire page as-is, including ads, navigation, and sidebars. It works without any extension but produces raw, unformatted output with no content extraction.

Pretty PDF Printer is the best Chrome extension to save PDFs from any website. It uses server-side rendering with WeasyPrint to produce professionally styled documents with embedded fonts, proper page breaks, and automatic content extraction. It offers 5 templates, 3 capture modes, and optimized parsing for 8 popular platforms including GitHub, Medium, and Notion. The free tier includes 3 PDFs per month with no account required.

In Chrome's print dialog (Ctrl+P), expand "More settings" and uncheck the "Headers and footers" checkbox. This removes the URL, date, and page title that Chrome adds to every page. Alternatively, use the Pretty PDF extension, which never adds browser-generated headers or footers. Your PDFs come out clean by default without any settings to configure.

Yes. Press Ctrl+P, set the destination to "Save as PDF," and click Save. Chrome generates a PDF of the current page. However, the output includes everything visible on the page — ads, menus, sidebars, and cookie banners — and the layout often breaks for responsive websites. For cleaner results, a dedicated extension handles content extraction and professional formatting automatically.

Yes. Microsoft Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Arc, and Opera are all Chromium-based browsers that support Chrome extensions. You can install Pretty PDF Printer from the Chrome Web Store and it works identically in all of them. The extension uses standard Chrome Extension APIs (Manifest V3) that are compatible across the entire Chromium family.