Merge several PDFs into one, reorder or delete pages, split a document, draw and annotate on a page, and redact areas before exporting. The finished file can be compressed and locked with a password, and a PDF that already has a password opens here once you type it. The output settings - cover page, page numbers, watermark, split and compression - can be saved in this browser and reloaded, so a repeated job does not have to be set up again each time.
Most online PDF tools upload your document to a server. This one does not — the file is read and rewritten in the page. The password and compression options use qpdf, which the page downloads the first time you use one of them. It is free to use, with no account and no upload limit, and it runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded, and while the page stays open, a feature you have already used keeps working offline.
- Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?
- No. The document is read and rewritten inside the page by pdf-lib, PDF.js and qpdf, which run in your browser. That is the difference that matters for a contract, a payslip or a medical letter - the usual free PDF site uploads the file to a server you know nothing about.
- Does redaction remove the text, or just cover it?
- It removes it. Any page you redact is rendered to an image on export, so the text underneath is gone rather than hidden. Nothing of the original page is carried into the file through a link or a form field on another page either - checked by redacting a page that another page links to and finding its text nowhere in the file, compressed or not. The trade-off is that the whole of that page becomes a picture: nothing on it stays selectable, searchable or readable by a screen reader, and the file gets larger. The same happens to any page you add text or a drawing to. Other pages keep their text and images, and links between kept pages still work, but the file is rebuilt from its pages, so its form fields, bookmarks, page labels, layers and document properties are not carried over. If you only rotate pages, nothing is rebuilt and all of that is kept.
- Can I change the text that is already in a PDF?
- Not on this page, which adds text on top of a page. Edit PDF Text changes the words themselves - click a line and retype it - in the PDF's own font where it has the letters, keeping the page's text selectable and searchable.
- Can I split one PDF into several files?
- Yes. Split Export in the Advanced Output Studio turns each page group you type, such as 1-3, 4-7, into its own PDF, named with a prefix you choose. The parts download together as one ZIP, because browsers block a page that tries to start several downloads at once. Compression and a password, if you choose them, are applied to every part.
- How do I take the password off a PDF I already know the password to?
- Drop the PDF in and type its password in the box that appears under the file. The page decrypts it with qpdf, and from then on it behaves like any other PDF here: preview it, edit it, or press Generate Output PDF to save a copy without the password. This only works with a password you already know. It does not guess, crack or recover one, and a wrong password is simply refused. A PDF that opens without a password but restricts printing or copying is opened the way any PDF reader opens it, and the copy you save does not keep those restrictions.
- How strong is the password it puts on the output PDF?
- Password under Advanced Output Studio encrypts the file with AES-256, the strongest encryption the PDF format has, which Adobe Acrobat and Reader open, as do the PDF viewers in Chrome, Edge and Firefox. The one password both opens the file and owns it, so no printing or copying limits are set. It is never saved, not even by Save Setup, and nothing is sent anywhere, which also means nobody can recover it for you if it is lost. As with any password, length is what makes it hard to guess.
- How much will compression shrink my PDF?
- It depends on what the file is made of. Photos and colour or grey scans shrink the most: they are re-saved as JPEG at the quality you choose, and any image bigger than the pixel limit is scaled down, so a document built from phone photos can end up a fraction of its size. A PDF that is mostly text shrinks a little, from packing its structure tighter and recompressing its streams. Black-and-white fax-style scans and JPEG 2000 images are left as they are, and choosing lossless leaves every image untouched. Text stays real text rather than becoming a picture. The status line shows the size before and after, and if nothing made the file smaller you get it uncompressed, never a bigger one.
- What is Save Setup for?
- It keeps the Advanced Output Studio settings - the cover page, numbering, watermark, split and compression options - in this browser, so a job you repeat every month does not have to be set up again. It is stored on this machine only, and clearing site data removes it. A password is never stored.