Remove password protection from PDF files you own. Unlock for editing, sharing, merging, or any other operation.
Password-protected PDFs are useful for security, but they become a barrier when you need to share the document without requiring a password, merge it with other files, compress it, or process it with other tools.
Our unlock tool removes password protection from PDFs when you provide the correct password. The document content is unchanged — only the protection layer is removed.
Remove password and restrictions from your PDF files instantly.
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Maximum file size: 50MB
PDF unlocking removes password protection from a PDF document. PDFs can be protected with an 'open' password (required to view the document) or a 'permissions' password (restricts what can be done with the document). Unlocking removes these restrictions, producing a standard unprotected PDF. You must know the current password to unlock — this tool is for removing protection from documents you own, not for bypassing security on documents you don't have access to.
Use cases include:
Removing a password from a PDF you created years ago that you no longer need to protect.
Unlocking a PDF before merging it with other documents.
Removing restrictions before compressing or editing a PDF.
Sharing a document without requiring recipients to enter a password.
Unlocking a PDF before running OCR or other processing operations.
Unlocked PDFs can be shared freely, processed with other tools, and used without password barriers.
Provide the password, remove the protection.
Upload the password-protected PDF.
Enter the current password to authenticate.
Download the unlocked PDF — same content, no password required to open or use.
Upload, enter password, download the unlocked document.
The encrypted PDF is uploaded. The password you provide is used to derive the encryption key.
The document content is decrypted using the derived key. The decrypted content is verified for integrity.
A new unencrypted PDF is written containing the same content as the original. The output opens without a password.
PDF encryption uses standard encryption algorithms to protect document content.
PDFs use AES (128-bit or 256-bit) or RC4 encryption. The document content is encrypted using a key derived from the password.
When you provide the correct password, the tool derives the encryption key, decrypts the document content, and writes a new unencrypted PDF.
The output PDF contains the same content as the original but without the encryption layer. It opens without a password in all PDF viewers.
Password protection is useful when needed, but becomes a barrier when it's not.
You get a tool that’s:
When a password is blocking your workflow, unlocking removes the barrier in seconds.
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Find answers to common questions about our PDF tools
No. To remove a password from a PDF, you need to know the current password. Our tool removes the password protection from PDFs you already have access to — it's not a password cracking tool. If you don't know the password, you'll need to contact whoever set it.
Common reasons: the password was set years ago and is now inconvenient, you want to share the document without requiring recipients to enter a password, you need to process the file with another tool that doesn't support password-protected PDFs, or you want to merge, compress, or edit the file.
PDFs can have two types of passwords: an 'open' password (required to view the document) and a 'permissions' password (restricts editing, printing, or copying). Our tool removes both types when you provide the correct password.
No. The document content — text, images, layout, formatting — is completely unchanged. Only the password protection is removed.
Yes. Files are uploaded over encrypted HTTPS connections. The password you enter is used only for the decryption operation and is not stored. Files are permanently deleted from our servers within minutes of your download.
Yes. PDFs with permissions restrictions (can't print, can't copy text, can't edit) can be unlocked to remove those restrictions, provided you have the permissions password.
Can't find the answer you're looking for? Please chat with our friendly team.
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