Type the password once,
and never again.
Drop in the PDFs that ask for a password every time you open them. Type the password they share, or give each one its own, and you get back the same documents with the protection removed — same pages, same text, same links. The decryption runs inside this tab with a WebAssembly build of qpdf, so neither the files nor the passwords ever reach our server.
This browser can't run the unlocker
It needs WebAssembly, which every current browser has. Updating it — or opening this page in Firefox, Chrome, Edge or Safari — is enough.
Use this on documents you are entitled to open. Removing a password you were not given is not something a web page can authorise.
A conventional online converter takes your file, puts it on someone else's disk, does the work there and lets you download the result. Two copies of your file then exist somewhere you cannot see, for as long as that company decides. Here the code that does the work is shipped to your browser instead of your file being shipped to a server: the bytes are read by this tab, transformed in memory, and written back out as a download. Our server never sees them, so there is nothing for us to keep, log or lose.
One thing is counted, and here it is: when a tool finishes, this page tells the server which tool ran and whether it worked — never the file, its name, its size or anything read out of it, none of which ever leaves this tab. It is how we know which tools are worth keeping. The record is the same kind we keep for a one-time link: a truncated IP address, a country and a region.
Once the page has loaded, these tools keep working with the network switched off. That is the simplest proof that nothing is being sent anywhere.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is my PDF uploaded to your server?
No. The PDF is read by this browser tab and decrypted here, by a WebAssembly build of qpdf that runs on your machine. Neither the document nor the password is sent anywhere — you can disconnect from the network after the page loads and the tool still works.
Q: I don't know the password. Can this recover it?
No. This removes a password you already know; it does not guess or crack one. A PDF encrypted with AES cannot be opened without its password, and any site that claims otherwise is either lying or attacking a very old, very weak file.
Q: What about PDFs that open fine but won't let me print or copy?
Those carry an owner password rather than a user password. Drop the file in without typing anything: the restrictions come off in the same pass, since they are part of the same encryption.
Q: Does anything change in the document?
No. The pages, text, fonts, images and links are copied across untouched — only the encryption layer is dropped. Nothing is re-rendered or recompressed.
Q: Can I unlock several PDFs at once?
Yes. Drop in as many as you like. They are worked through one after another, and if they share a password you type it once at the top; any file that needs a different one asks for it on its own row, and the rest are not held up waiting. Unlocked files can be downloaded one by one or together as a ZIP.
Q: Can I join the unlocked files into one PDF?
Yes. Unlock two or more and an offer to join them appears under the list: put the files in the order you want by dragging a row or using its arrows, and you get back a single document. It is joined here in the tab by the same engine that opened them, so nothing is uploaded for that either.
Q: How large a PDF can I unlock?
Around 100 MB. The file is held in the tab's memory while it is worked on, so the real ceiling is your device rather than any server limit.
The same idea, applied to sending things rather than changing them.