PDF Cropper
Open a PDF, drag a rectangle over the page and download the cropped file. The page is drawn and the new boxes are written inside this browser tab, so nothing is uploaded, there is no account and no queue, and the usual online crop, which is an upload followed by a wait, does not happen here. The rectangle is held in points on the page as you see it, which is what makes a page turned on its side crop where you drew the box rather than a quarter turn away from it, and the same rectangle is written to every page in the range you name, clamped to each page's own edges when a page is smaller. Pages outside the range are written back exactly as they arrived. The four numbers beside the preview are the rectangle itself, in points from the top left, so a crop can be typed rather than dragged and repeated on another file later. Undo steps back through the rectangles you have drawn. One thing is said plainly here that the rest of this results page leaves out: a crop moves the visible box, it does not delete what is outside it, so this is a page trimmer and not a redaction tool.
The four numbers are points from the top left of the page as you see it, and the same rectangle is written to every page in the range.
The page appears here, with the crop box over it.
· or drop one anywhere on the stage
No PDF chosen yet. The page appears here once you add one.
Drag a box over the page, or drag its corners. Tab to the box and the arrow keys move it, with shift and an arrow resizing it. Undo steps back through the boxes you have drawn, and the four numbers are always the rectangle the file will be written from.
Common questions
- Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?
- No. There is no server in this. The file is read in the page, decoded for the preview by a renderer that runs in the tab, rewritten by a PDF library that also runs in the tab, and handed back to you as a download. No byte of the document is sent to an endpoint, to analytics or to error reporting. The only thing written to your browser's storage is the page range and the last rectangle you used, both of them numbers and never the file, and if storage is blocked the tool still works.
- Does cropping delete the text and images outside the box?
- No, and this is the part worth being clear about. A crop writes a new crop box and media box on the page, which is the rectangle a viewer draws and a printer prints. Everything outside it is still in the file, and anyone who opens the document with a tool that reads the raw page can put the box back or pull the text out. That is true of any tool that crops by changing the page box, which is what cropping a PDF means. If you need the content gone rather than hidden, you need redaction: remove the content in the editor that made the document, or export the cropped pages to images and rebuild a PDF from those.
- Will a page that is rotated crop where I drew the box?
- Yes. A PDF page can carry a rotation of 90, 180 or 270 degrees, and its stored box is in the unrotated coordinates, which is why some croppers land the rectangle a quarter turn away from where you put it. Here the rectangle is held in points on the page as it is displayed, and it is turned into the page's own coordinates only at the moment of writing, using the same transform the renderer draws with. A page that is 400 by 500 points in the file and turned 90 degrees is 500 by 400 on screen, and the box is measured and clamped against that.
- What are the size and page limits?
- Up to 50 MB and up to 300 pages. Both are there because the whole document is held in your tab's memory while it is previewed and rewritten, and a larger file on a modest phone would simply stop rather than finish. A file past either limit is refused with a message that names the limit and what to do, never a half written PDF. Inside those limits nothing is queued, watermarked or counted.
- Can I crop only some of the pages?
- Yes. The page field takes a list like 1-3, 7, 10- where an open end means the rest of the document and an open start means the front of it, and it opens on 1- which is every page. The same rectangle is written to each page you name; a page too small for it is clamped to its own edges rather than skipped. Every page outside the list is written back byte for byte, with its own boxes, its rotation and its content stream exactly as they arrived.
- Does it change the crop box or the media box?
- Both, on the pages you choose. The crop box is what almost every viewer shows, and the media box is what some printers and older tools measure the sheet by, so setting only one of them can give you a page that looks cropped on screen and prints uncropped. They are set to the same rectangle, in points, and the page keeps the rotation it arrived with.
- Can I set the crop exactly, without dragging?
- Yes. The four number fields are the rectangle itself: the left edge, the top edge, the width and the height, all in points from the top left of the page as you see it, and there are 72 points to an inch. Typing in them moves the box on the preview immediately. You can also tab to the box and move it with the arrow keys, hold shift with an arrow to resize it, or tab to any of its four corners and move that corner alone. Undo steps back through the rectangles, and it undoes the crop only: the Start over button above the tool is the one that forgets everything.
- What happens with a password protected PDF?
- It is refused, with a message saying so. An encrypted document cannot have its pages rewritten without the password, and this tool never asks you for one. Remove the protection in the application that made the file, then crop the copy.
Exact on the numbers: the crop box is written to the pages you choose in PDF points, and every other page is byte-identical. A crop hides content, it does not delete it, so text outside the box can still be recovered from the file.