Unlock PDF

Two different locks — work out which one you have

PDFs can be locked in two ways, and almost every page on this subject treats them as one thing. They are removed differently, so it is worth knowing which you are facing.

An open password means the file asks for a password before it will display at all. The document's contents are genuinely encrypted, and the only way in is the correct password. Type it into the field and the file is decrypted.

Permission restrictions are different. The file opens straight away, but printing, copying text or editing is greyed out. Nothing is encrypted here — these are flags that ask reader software to withhold features, and rebuilding the file drops them. Leave the password field empty for this case; there is nothing to type.

If you are not sure which you have: if it opened without ever asking you for anything, you have the second kind.

This does not crack passwords

Worth being direct, because several tools in this category are vague about it. If a PDF needs a password to open and you do not know that password, no tool here or anywhere else can reliably get you in — that is the whole point of encryption. You need the password from whoever sent the file.

Passwords from a bank or an employer are usually a documented pattern rather than a secret: your date of birth, part of an ID number, the last digits of an account. It is nearly always written in the covering email or on the provider's site.

Why doing this in the browser matters more here than anywhere

Think about what the upload-based tools ask of you. To unlock a document you deliberately encrypted, you send that document to a stranger's server — and then you also send them the password. Of everything people do with online file tools, that is the combination with the most to lose, and payslips, bank statements and medical letters are precisely the documents that end up in it.

Here, the decryption happens on your own machine. The file does not travel and the password never leaves the page.

What encryption is supported

The standard schemes: RC4 at 40 and 128 bits, AES-128 and AES-256. Between them that covers essentially every password-protected PDF produced by ordinary software.

The result is then checked before you get it. If the output still contains encryption for any reason, the tool refuses to hand it over rather than giving you a file named "unlocked" that still will not open — and a wrong password produces a clear error instead of a broken download.

Only unlock documents you have the right to

The obvious point, stated once: this is for your own files, or files you have permission to use — your statements, your payslips, a report you were sent and need to print. Stripping protection from someone else's document to get around a restriction they intended is a different matter, whatever the tool makes technically possible.

Related tools

Protect PDF does the reverse and adds a password, also in the browser. Once a file is unlocked, PDF to Word can convert it and Merge PDF can combine it with others — both of which a locked PDF blocks.