---
title: "Android PDF bookmark management guide"
canonical_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/android/bookmarks/"
md_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/android/bookmarks.md"
last_updated: "2026-05-21T20:35:00.905Z"
description: "Learn how to add, remove, and manage bookmarks in PDF documents on Android using Nutrient for a seamless reading experience."
---

# Efficiently manage PDF bookmarks on Android

Bookmarks provide a convenient way of marking where you last stopped in your PDF documents. The PDF spec doesn’t contain a standardized way to store bookmarks in PDF documents, so for this reason, Nutrient will store bookmarks as part of the XMP metadata in a way that’s compatible with Nutrient on all platforms, as well as with Apple Preview.

## Working with bookmarks

For most use cases, you don’t need to interact with the bookmarks model yourself, as Nutrient provides a UI for users to add, remove, and sort bookmarks depending on the configuration in use. It then automatically [stores them in the PDF document](https://www.nutrient.io/blog/just-a-simple-bookmark/) they belong to. However, when you want to provide either your own UI or your own bookmarks store, you need to access the model that Nutrient provides for you.

The bookmarks model essentially consists of two classes: [`Bookmark`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/android/nutrient/com.pspdfkit.bookmarks/-bookmark/index.html), which is the bookmark itself and contains information about its name and what to do if a user selects a bookmark; and [`BookmarkProvider`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/android/nutrient/com.pspdfkit.bookmarks/-bookmark-provider/index.html), which is the container that keeps track of all the bookmarks of a document. You can access the bookmark provider through [`PdfDocument#getBookmarkProvider()`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/android/nutrient/com.pspdfkit.document/-pdf-document/get-bookmark-provider.html). This can then be used to retrieve, sort, add, and remove bookmarks.

### Accessing bookmarks

To access bookmarks, you can use [`getBookmarks()`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/android/nutrient/com.pspdfkit.bookmarks/-bookmark-provider/get-bookmarks.html) or [`getBookmarksAsync()`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/android/nutrient/com.pspdfkit.bookmarks/-bookmark-provider/get-bookmarks-async.html). This will give you a list of all bookmarks sorted correctly.

### Adding and removing bookmarks

To add bookmarks, call [`addBookmark()`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/android/nutrient/com.pspdfkit.bookmarks/-bookmark-provider/add-bookmark.html) or [`addBookmarkAsync()`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/android/nutrient/com.pspdfkit.bookmarks/-bookmark-provider/add-bookmark-async.html) on the bookmark provider, passing in the bookmark you want to add to the bookmark provider. If you instead want to remove a bookmark, call [`removeBookmark()`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/android/nutrient/com.pspdfkit.bookmarks/-bookmark-provider/remove-bookmark.html) or [`removeBookmarkAsync()`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/android/nutrient/com.pspdfkit.bookmarks/-bookmark-provider/remove-bookmark-async.html). If you want these changes to be stored, you need to save the associated document, which in turn will make sure the bookmark provider saves its content. By default, Nutrient automatically saves changes to a document at specific points.

### Updating bookmarks

If you want to make changes to a bookmark, you can modify the object you received by calling [`getBookmarks()`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/android/nutrient/com.pspdfkit.bookmarks/-bookmark-provider/get-bookmarks.html). Any changes you make will automatically be synced to the bookmark provider.
---

## Related pages

- [Best practices](/guides/android/best-practice.md)
- [Contributing to Nutrient projects](/guides/android/miscellaneous/contributing.md)
- [Cordova](/guides/android/cordova.md)
- [Explore top PDF SDK demos for Android apps](/guides/android/demo.md)
- [Effortlessly compare documents on Android](/guides/android/compare-documents.md)
- [Download our Android library](/guides/android/downloads.md)
- [Ionic](/guides/android/ionic.md)
- [Comprehensive Android PDF SDK](/guides/android.md)
- [Android guides: Integrate our PDF library](/guides/android/intro.md)
- [Knowledge base](/guides/android/kb.md)
- [Kotlin PDF library for Android](/guides/android/kotlin.md)
- [Troubleshooting](/guides/android/troubleshoot.md)
- [Upgrade and migration guides](/guides/android/upgrade.md)
- [Xamarin.Android PDF library](/guides/android/xamarin.md)
- [Changelog for Android](/guides/android/changelog.md)