How to Insert Watermark in Google Docs, Insert Draft Text & Image Watermark Easily 2026

The watermark tool hasn't been removed from Google Docs — Google shifted where it sits in the menu structure, which is exactly the kind of small change that throws off anyone who's added a watermark before and expects it in the same place. Knowing that going in saves you from assuming the feature was dropped entirely.

Start from Google Drive with the document you want to watermark. Right-clicking a file gives you the full context menu — Open with, Download, Rename, Share, and more — and selecting it opens the doc in the Docs editor, where the watermark tool lives inside the top menu bar rather than in Drive itself.

Rather than hunting through Insert submenus, click Help in the top menu bar and choose Search the menus (or use the Option+/ shortcut). Typing "watermark" here jumps you directly to the option regardless of which submenu Google has currently filed it under, which makes this the most reliable way to find it after a menu reshuffle like this one.

Selecting Watermark opens a side panel on the right with two tabs, Image and Text. The Text tab includes an Insert text field, a Formatting section for font and style, a Transparency slider, and Placement options for Diagonal or Horizontal. This panel is where every setting for the watermark lives, so leave it open while you build the watermark out in the next step.

With the Text tab selected, type your watermark text into the Insert text field — "DRAFT" is the classic choice, but any short label works. Pick a font under Formatting (Impact is a solid choice for a bold, legible stamp) and drag the Transparency slider down toward 0% if you want the text to appear more solid rather than faded into the background. Diagonal placement is selected by default and tends to read most clearly across a full page of text; Horizontal is there if you'd rather the watermark run straight across.

If you'd rather stamp a company logo than a text label, click the Image tab at the top of the same panel instead of Text — it swaps the field for an upload option where you can select a file from your computer or Drive. The same Transparency and Placement controls carry over, so you can scale a logo down to something subtle in the background rather than something that competes with the page's actual content. Use Remove watermark, visible at the bottom of the panel once one is applied, if you want to clear it and start over.