Add a password to your PDF file
Add password protection to a PDF so only people who know the password can open it. Upload your document, choose a password, and download an encrypted version. Free, immediate, and the encryption is the genuine article rather than a token gesture.
Documents travel further than we intend. An email gets forwarded, a file lands in a shared folder that more people can reach than expected, a laptop is left on a train. Encryption means that in all of those cases the contents stay unreadable to anyone without the password.
It also matters for compliance. Financial records, medical information, employee data, and client details all carry obligations about how they are handled, and encrypting a file before sending it is one of the simplest ways to meet the basic standard of care.
Worth being precise about, because PDFs support two very different things that both get called protection.
Permission flags tell a reader that printing or copying should be disallowed. They are requests. The file is not encrypted, the content is fully readable, and any tool that chooses to ignore the flag simply does.
Password encryption — what this tool applies — scrambles the file's actual contents. Without the password there is nothing to read, whatever software you point at it. The document is genuinely protected rather than politely marked.
The encryption is only as strong as the password guarding it, and short passwords fall quickly to automated guessing.
Length beats complexity. A passphrase of several unrelated words is both easier to remember and harder to break than a short string of substituted symbols. Aim for at least twelve characters.
Do not reuse a password you use elsewhere, particularly not one attached to an email or bank account.
Avoid anything guessable from context — the company name, the project name, the current year, or the recipient's surname are all poor choices precisely because they are the first things anyone would try.
This is the most common mistake and it undoes everything. If the encrypted PDF and its password arrive in the same email, anyone who reads that email has both. Use a different channel entirely: phone the recipient, send a text message, or use a separate messaging app. The two pieces should never travel together.
Accountants and financial advisers encrypt statements and tax documents before emailing clients. HR departments protect contracts, payslips, and personnel records. Medical and legal practices secure documents containing personal information. Businesses restrict access to pricing, forecasts, and board material. Anyone sending identity documents — passport scans, bank details, certificates — over email.
Upload your PDF by dragging it onto the box or clicking to browse. Enter the password you want to set, taking a moment to choose something long and not reused. Download the encrypted document. Test it once by opening it and entering the password before you send it anywhere, so you know for certain the password works.
If the password is lost, so is the document. This is not a limitation we could remove — a recoverable password would mean a back door, and a back door means the encryption protects nobody. Save the password in a password manager or write it somewhere secure before you close the tab. This is genuinely the most common way people lose access to their own files.
The document is processed in memory and discarded the instant your download completes. The password is used for that single operation and never stored. Nothing is written to disk, nothing is logged, and no copy is retained anywhere.
Unlock PDF removes password protection from a file you can already open. Redact PDF permanently deletes sensitive content rather than just restricting access to it. Watermark PDF marks a document as confidential, and PDF Metadata lets you clear hidden author and revision information before sharing.