PDF Password Protect & Remove
Lock a PDF with a real AES-128 or AES-256 password and separate permission controls, or decrypt one you know — encryption happens on your device, not a server.
🔒 Processed entirely in your browser — your PDF is never uploaded. This adds or removes a real PDF open password (standard encryption). To remove a password you must know it — this is not a password cracker.
Drop PDFs here or click to choose
Several at once is fine.
Encrypt a PDF, or remove a password you know
Add mode locks a PDF with a standard open password, so it cannot be opened without it — the same encryption a PDF reader enforces when it prompts you for a password. You type the password twice, so a typo cannot lock you out of your own file, and a strength meter says what it is missing while you type. Choose AES-128, which any reader from Acrobat 7 (2005) on opens, or AES-256, which is stronger and read by Acrobat 9 and everything since. You can also set a separate owner password and choose exactly what readers may do: print, print at full quality, copy text and images, edit, annotate, fill in forms, add and reorder pages, and read the text out with a screen reader. Drop in several PDFs and they are all locked with the same password and come back as one .zip. Remove mode does the opposite — give it a PDF and its current password and it saves a fully decrypted copy that opens with no password. Everything runs in your browser using the pdf-lib library, so your file is never uploaded.
You must know the password — this is not a cracker
Removing a password requires knowing it. This tool decrypts a file you can already open; it does not guess, brute-force, or bypass an unknown password, and there is no way for it to. The unlocked copy is the same document with its encryption taken off rather than a rebuild of it, so its bookmarks, form fields, attachments and metadata all survive. If a PDF opens with no password at all but refuses to let you print or copy, it is not encrypted against you — it carries owner restrictions, and Remove PDF Restrictions takes those off without any password. Everything is processed locally and nothing leaves your device, so even confidential files stay private, and once it has been used it works offline.
What a PDF password can hold
AES-128 PDF encryption stores a password one byte per character (Latin-1), so a password written in Hangul, kana or emoji has nothing to be written as. The tool says exactly that, and names the characters, rather than failing later for a reason that looks like something else. AES-256 is stricter still: its passwords are specified as UTF-8 while the encrypter writes single bytes, so it takes plain ASCII only. Letters, digits and punctuation are safe with either choice.
Frequently asked questions
Is this real PDF encryption?
Yes. Add mode applies the standard PDF open-password encryption enforced by PDF readers, so the output cannot be opened without the password — it is not just visually hidden. It is AES-128 by default, or AES-256 if you choose it, and never the 40-bit RC4 that an old source file would otherwise have selected. The encryption runs entirely in your browser using the pdf-lib library.
Can it remove a password I do not know?
No. Removing a password requires the correct password — the tool decrypts a file you can already open and saves an unprotected copy. It is not a cracking tool and cannot guess, brute-force, or bypass an unknown password.
Can I use a Korean password?
Not in this tool. With AES-128 the PDF format itself stores a password as Latin-1, one byte per character, so Hangul has nothing to be written as. The AES-256 format allows Unicode passwords, but this tool writes them as plain ASCII, so it refuses Korean there as well. Rather than failing with a misleading message, the tool refuses the password up front and names the characters that cannot be stored. Use letters, digits and punctuation instead.
Can I protect several PDFs at once?
Yes. Drop in as many as you like and they are all locked with the same password and the same permissions; a single file downloads on its own and several arrive as one .zip. Removing a password works the same way, as long as all the files share the one password.
How do the print and copy restrictions work?
They apply to anyone who opens the file with the open (user) password. To actually enforce them, set an owner password that differs from the open password and share only the open password, because opening a PDF with its owner password always grants full, unrestricted access. If you leave the owner password blank it defaults to the open password, so anyone who can open the file has full access and the restrictions are not enforced.