Password-protect a PDF with AES-256 and optionally block printing, copying and editing, or remove a password you already know. The file and password never leave your device.
Choose the PDF to protect
Up to 30 MB. The file and password stay on your device and are never uploaded.
Type an open password and get a new file whose content is encrypted with AES-256 from the PDF 2.0 standard. Without the password nobody can read it, which makes quotations, contracts and personal documents safer to email or send by chat.
Tick the permissions to restrict and set an owner password that differs from the open password, or skip the open password to let people read but not print. These are flags in the file that most PDF readers respect; they do not stop screenshots.
Type the original password to remove it. A wrong password unlocks nothing. There is no guessing or cracking here, and a forgotten password cannot be recovered. Use it only on files you are entitled to use.
It runs QPDF (Apache-2.0) compiled to WebAssembly and served from this website. The file, the password and the file name are never sent or saved. See the licence and notices.
Free is fully featured, one file at a time. iToolers Pro handles up to 10 files with the same password and permissions into a ZIP, all on your device.
Finish with Stamp, Sign & Number PDF, Fill & Sign PDF or Compress PDF before you set the password, because a protected file cannot be edited until it is unlocked.
Pick the “Protect” tab, choose the PDF, type the open password twice and create the file. It uses AES-256 encryption from the PDF 2.0 standard, which opens in Adobe Acrobat, Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Preview on Mac. Very old PDF readers (Acrobat 8 or earlier, for example) may not open it. Your original is not changed; you get a new file named original-protected.pdf.
You need the original password. This tool only removes a password from a file you are entitled to use, when you type the correct one. A wrong password does not unlock anything and you are told it is wrong. There is no guessing, brute-force or cracking feature. For a file that opens without a password but has restrictions such as no printing, the correct owner password is needed to remove the restrictions.
We cannot recover it: the password is never sent or stored anywhere, and AES-256 has no shortcut to open a file without it. Look for the password in your password manager, in the email or message that came with the file, or ask the sender for the original. If it is your own file, find a copy made before the password was set. Keep an unprotected original before you set a password.
When you turn a restriction on, the tool sets the document permissions and an owner password (which must differ from the open password). Most PDF readers respect those permissions, but some ignore them, and they are settings inside the file: they do not stop screenshots or content that was already copied. To keep people from seeing the content at all, set an open password, because that is what actually encrypts the content.
No. Encrypting and decrypting run entirely in your browser with the QPDF library (WebAssembly served from this website). Your file, its name and the password are never sent out of your device, never stored in the browser and never part of any usage statistics. Closing the tab discards the password.
Up to 30 MB per file and passwords of up to 127 bytes (Thai letters take 3 bytes each). A file that already has a password must be unlocked before you can set a new one. Protecting or unlocking writes a new file, so any digital signature already in the PDF stops validating; image signatures and all other content stay as they were.
No. Protecting and unlocking one file at a time works in full with no account. iToolers Pro adds doing up to 10 files at once with the same password and permissions and downloading them as a ZIP, still processed on your device.
