Unlock PDF with a known password
Remove PDF encryption using an opening or owner password you already know.
Preparing your tool…
How to use it
- Choose an encrypted PDF or load the genuinely encrypted synthetic example.
- Enter its known opening or owner password. The public example uses Vitali-Sample-2026!; use your own document's actual password for other files.
- Create the unencrypted copy. A wrong password gives an error without a download; correct it and retry.
- Review the checked page preview and download unlocked.pdf. Reopen it in your reader to confirm that opening no longer asks for a password.
- Reset when finished to clear the source, entered password and generated result from this tool's active state.
The example button first creates a synthetic PDF and actually encrypts it. An incorrect password must fail; Vitali-Sample-2026! must produce a readable copy with the original pages, text and vectors.
Details & limits
Up to 25 MiB input/output and 100 pages; 60 seconds per operation. Signed PDFs, XFA, embedded files and active document actions are rejected. Checked JPEG and unfiltered/Flate images are supported within decoded-resource limits; inline images, JPEG 2000, JBIG2 and CCITT are unsupported. No PDF/A, PDF/UA or signature-validity certification. Passwords must contain 1–127 UTF-8 bytes and no line breaks or NUL. The local qpdf 12.4.1 engine loads about 2.25 MB on use. Its WASM memory is capped at 512 MiB; total browser memory can be higher. Passwords are not guessed or recovered. Unsupported decrypted content remains blocked.
Can this recover a forgotten password or break encryption?
No. It only uses a supplied known password and offers no guessing or cracking. An unencrypted source is identified explicitly. Reader permission flags are not a substitute for an opening password; this tool still requires you to provide a password before attempting decryption. The downloaded copy is unencrypted, so keep and share it accordingly.