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Password Protect a PDF

A contract, a payslip, a passport scan going out by email. One password, set here, and the file becomes unreadable to everyone who does not have it.

The password is set inside your browser and stays only with you. There is no copy of it here, no recovery link and no back door: a forgotten password means a lost file. Write it down before you close this page.

or drop it here · A PDF up to 100 MB

    The file and the password stay in this browser: neither is uploaded anywhere.

    Also on PDFs: Unlock a PDF · Sign a PDF · Add a Watermark to a PDF · Merge PDF

    How to use

    1. Choose a PDF — it is read in your browser, not uploaded anywhere.
    2. Type the password twice and decide what stays allowed to those who open it.
    3. Press the button and download the locked file. Write the password down first.

    Good to know

    The password is real, and so is the loss

    This is not a marker that polite readers agree to respect: the contents are encrypted, and without the password the file is noise. Which means the other half of the deal is just as real. The password is set inside your browser and stays with you alone — there is no copy here, no recovery email, no support desk with a master key. A forgotten password is a lost file, and no tool anywhere will bring it back.

    Two kinds of switch on this page

    The password on opening is a lock. The three checkboxes — printing, copying, editing — are a request: they hold only in programs that choose to honour them, and anyone determined can ignore them entirely. Both are part of the PDF standard, and confusing them is expensive, so the page keeps them apart and says which is which. Reading aloud for accessibility is never blocked here: that permission exists precisely so that a locked document stays available to those who read with their ears.

    What happens to the document

    Pages, text, images, form fields and metadata stay exactly as they were: encryption wraps the file, it does not rebuild it. The owner password — the one that governs the permissions — is generated at random and thrown away, so that whoever knows the opening password still cannot quietly lift the restrictions. And a file that already asks for a password cannot be locked twice: remove the old one first, which is what the tool next door is for.

    Frequently asked questions

    Is my file uploaded to a server?

    No. The document is read, encrypted and saved inside this browser tab, and the password never leaves the page.

    How strong is the encryption?

    Strong enough that the password is the weak part, not the cipher. Eight random-ish characters fall to a patient attacker; a phrase of four unrelated words does not. The page says plainly which of the three your password looks like.

    Can you recover the password if I forget it?

    No. Nothing is stored here — not the file, not the password, not a hash of it. That is the point of doing this in the browser, and it is also why a forgotten password ends the story.

    Will the file still open on a phone?

    Yes. Standard PDF encryption is understood by every common reader — Acrobat, Preview, Chrome, the readers on Android and iOS. They will ask for the password before showing a page.

    Why can I not password-protect an already protected file?

    Because a second lock would have to be put on top of the first, and the result is a file two passwords deep with no way to say so. Remove the first one and set the one you want.

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