Folia Tools
All tools › Security › Unlock PDF
Unlock PDF
Remove a password you know. Free, no sign-up.
or drop it here
Unlock PDF runs inside your browser — your file never reaches our servers.
How to unlock PDF
Unlocking decrypts a document using the password you already have, and saves an open copy.
- Select the locked PDF. The one you have the password for.
- Enter the password. It is used in your browser and never sent anywhere.
- Download. An unlocked copy that opens without a password.
What is removed along with the password
Unlocking is a decrypt and a re-save. Your browser opens the document with the password you supply, which decrypts every stream inside it, and writes the result out with no encryption dictionary at all. The permission flags go with it: if the file blocked printing or copying, the unlocked copy prints and copies freely, because those restrictions only ever existed inside the encryption that has just been removed.
Nothing is re-rendered. Pages, fonts, images, form fields, annotations and bookmarks carry through as they were, so the unlocked copy is the same document, simply openable without a password. It is not a repair — a file that is damaged rather than locked is Repair PDF's job, and that one rebuilds the document by copying its pages into a fresh file instead of decrypting anything.
Unlock first, re-protect at the end
This is the tool the rest of the site keeps pointing at. Compress PDF, OCR PDF, PDF to Word and the other converters all have to parse the file, and an encrypted file will not parse; the ones that recognise the case tell you to remove the password first, and the rest simply cannot open it. Nothing prompts for a password mid-job. Unlock once, work on the open copy, then run Protect PDF on the finished document if it still needs one.
Then remember what is now sitting on your disk: a copy with no protection, which anyone who receives it can open. If the password was there because the contents are sensitive, keep the unlocked copy local, do the work, and re-encrypt — with a new password, if the old one has been passed around — before sending it anywhere.
Questions
Can this open a PDF I do not have the password for?
No. This removes a password you already know; it does not break encryption. A tool that claimed otherwise would either be lying or helping you open documents that are not yours.
Why would I need this?
Most often to stop retyping a password every time you open your own file, or to make a document you own printable and searchable again.
I am sure the password is right, but it says the file did not open
Check for a leading or trailing space picked up by copy-and-paste, and for capitals — passwords are case-sensitive. If it still fails, two other cases look identical from the outside: a file damaged in transit, which <a href="/repair-pdf">Repair PDF</a> may recover, and a PDF secured with a certificate rather than a password, which needs the certificate itself and cannot be opened by typing anything.
Can I unlock several PDFs at once?
Not on this page — it takes one file at a time, and each file needs its own password in any case. Run them one after another. Starting another file blanks the settings, so the password typed for the last document is never carried into the next one, and nothing is remembered once you close the tab.
Is it legal to remove a PDF password?
Removing protection from your own documents, or from one whose password you were given, is ordinary housekeeping. This tool cannot do more than that: it decrypts with the password you type and has no way to guess one, so it cannot open a document you were never given access to. Whether you may strip protection from someone else's document is between you and them.
Are my files uploaded to a server?
No. Every tool on this site runs inside your browser, using the same engine as the Folia desktop app. Your file is read from your disk into your browser’s memory, processed there, and handed back as a download. It never crosses the internet, so there is nothing for us to store, leak or hand over.
Is there a file size limit?
We impose none. The only ceiling is your own device’s memory, which differs from one computer to another — so we read what your browser reports about this machine and show the resulting limit on the page. Light tools like merge and rotate handle far more than heavy ones like OCR, which must render every page. For anything larger, Folia for Desktop has no limit at all.
Is it really free? Do I need an account?
Yes, and no. Every tool is free and unlimited, with no watermark and no sign-up. Ads pay for the site, and your own computer does the work, which costs us nothing. Signing in with a paid Folia plan simply removes the ads.