Remove password protection from a PDF right in your browser — enter the password, and download an unlocked copy with no password required to open it. Nothing, including your password, is ever uploaded to a server.
Everything happens in your browser — your PDF and password are never uploaded to a server.
Drag and drop a password-protected PDF here, or click below to browse.
PDF passwords are useful right up until they become friction — a form you need to fill out, edit, or merge with other files but can't because it's locked for editing; a document you have every right to access but that now demands a password you'd rather not type in every single time; an old archived file whose protection no longer serves any purpose but still blocks basic actions like copying a paragraph of text or printing a page. Unlocking removes that friction for files you're already authorized to open, turning a restricted PDF back into an ordinary one you can freely work with in any tool.
This comes up constantly in practical situations: a scanned form your employer password-protected before emailing it to you, an old personal document you protected years ago and no longer need locked, or a report from a vendor that's needlessly restricted from printing or copying even though you're the intended recipient. In every case, the goal is the same — you already have legitimate access to the content; you just want the password requirement gone.
When a PDF is password-protected using the standard security handler, the file's text, images, form data, and other content aren't stored openly — they're encrypted using a key mathematically derived from the password (or passwords) set on the file, combined with a per-file random identifier and a permissions value, following a precise, publicly documented algorithm (the same algorithm every compliant PDF reader implements to open protected files in the first place). Removing the password isn't a trick or a workaround: it means running that exact same key-derivation algorithm with the password you provide, using the resulting key to decrypt every protected piece of the file, and then saving the result with the encryption structure stripped out entirely.
This tool implements that standard algorithm — the RC4-based 'standard security handler' — from the published PDF specification, entirely in JavaScript that runs in your browser. It's the same fundamental process a desktop PDF editor's 'remove password' feature performs, just running locally on your device instead of in a desktop application or a remote server.
The PDF standard has evolved its encryption method over time. Older and more common implementations use RC4, a relatively simple cipher that's straightforward to implement correctly and remains widely supported for backward compatibility, even though it's no longer considered strong enough for protecting genuinely sensitive secrets by modern standards. Newer implementations increasingly use AES, a substantially stronger and more complex cipher, especially at higher security settings some PDF software now defaults to.
This tool supports RC4-protected files — the method used by the majority of password-protected PDFs you're likely to encounter day to day — but does not support AES. When you upload an AES-protected file, the tool detects this from the file's own encryption settings immediately and tells you plainly, rather than pretending to try and failing in a confusing way. If you regularly need to unlock AES-protected PDFs specifically, a desktop tool like Adobe Acrobat (which supports both methods) will be necessary for those particular files.
Password protection exists to control access to a document's contents, and removing it is meaningful only when you're already entitled to that access — because you set the password yourself, because you're the intended recipient who was given the password, or because you otherwise have the legal right to the document's content. This tool removes a password you provide; it has no capability to guess, brute-force, or bypass a password you don't already have, and using it (or any similar tool) to access documents you aren't authorized to access would be inappropriate regardless of the tool's technical capabilities. The overwhelming majority of real-world use is exactly the mundane kind described above: your own old files, or documents you were properly given the password to.
Unlock PDF removes existing password protection. These related PDF tools cover the rest of a typical PDF workflow — adding protection back, and combining or converting documents.