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✏️ PDF Editor Guide

Edit PDF Online Free
20 Tools. No Account. No Watermark.

A full-featured browser-based PDF editor with 20 annotation tools, an interactive AcroForm form builder, a vector path editor, and prepress tools — all edits applied server-side via PyMuPDF and permanently embedded into the PDF. No subscription, no account, no watermark, and zero data retained after download.

20
Annotation tools
7
AcroForm field types
12
Stamp types
0
Accounts required
0
Data retained
✏️ Edit a PDF Now — Free

No account. No watermark. Edits embedded server-side, instantly downloadable.

The workflow

How the PDF Editor Works

The editor runs page-by-page in the browser with server-side rendering for precision. Here is the full workflow:

📤
1. Open or Create a PDF
Drop or select a PDF (up to 50 MB), or click "Create New Blank PDF" to start from scratch with a custom page size. The file is uploaded over HTTPS to the server for page rendering.
🖼️
2. Pages Render Server-Side
Each PDF page is rendered server-side at 1.5× scale by PyMuPDF and delivered as a high-resolution image. Annotations you place on the canvas are positioned at exact page coordinates — not approximate pixel offsets — so the final embedded location is accurate regardless of your screen resolution.
✏️
3. Select and Apply Tools
Choose from 20 tools in the left toolbar. Click or draw on any page to place annotations. Each tool shows its configuration panel — colour, font, size, style — when selected. Use the page panel to navigate and annotate across all pages.
🔄
4. Undo, Redo, and Draft
Per-page undo and redo let you correct mistakes without losing other pages' work. Auto-save stores a draft to your browser's IndexedDB every 15–300 seconds (configurable). Save Draft on demand at any time.
⚙️
5. Apply Edits
Click "Apply Edits". All annotations across every page are collected and sent to the server in a single request. PyMuPDF applies each annotation, flattens reflow frames, resolves text overflow, and builds the final PDF structure.
✅
6. Download and Done
The finished PDF downloads immediately. The server deletes the file as the download streams — nothing is retained. The result is a standard PDF: no proprietary format, no edit layer, no watermark, readable in any viewer.
Use cases

Who Uses a Free Online PDF Editor?

Most people encounter a PDF they need to modify and cannot justify a $23/month Acrobat subscription for a one-time task. A free, no-account editor that embeds changes permanently — without a watermark — covers the overwhelming majority of real-world PDF editing needs:

📝
Filling and Annotating Documents
Adding text to a form that isn't interactive, highlighting key clauses in a contract, drawing attention to specific figures in a report. These are the most common PDF editing tasks — and they require nothing more than a text or highlight tool.
🏢
Business & Legal Documents
Adding approval stamps, inserting a signature, whiting out superseded clauses, adding a date field — tasks that arise constantly in business workflows without justifying an enterprise subscription for occasional use.
🎓
Education & Research
Annotating academic papers, marking up student assignments, adding comments to a draft thesis. Sticky notes and highlight tools are the right tools — and should not require a monthly subscription.
🖨️
Print & Prepress
Graphic designers and prepress operators who need to add crop marks, registration marks, CMYK colour bars, or bleed areas to a client-supplied PDF before sending to press — without rebuilding the file in InDesign or Illustrator.
📋
Form Builders
Converting a static PDF into an interactive fillable form by adding Text fields, CheckBoxes, RadioButtons, and dropdown lists — with no need to pay for Adobe Acrobat's form authoring feature.
🔐
Privacy-Conscious Users
Documents containing personally identifiable information, medical records, or proprietary data that cannot be uploaded to an Adobe or Google cloud service for editing. PQ PDF deletes the file the moment the download completes — no copy stored.
How the alternatives compare

PQ PDF vs. Adobe Acrobat Pro, Foxit PDF Editor & PDF-XChange Editor Plus

Adobe Acrobat Pro (~$23/month), Foxit PDF Editor+ (~$14/month), and PDF-XChange Editor Plus ($79 one-time) are the industry's leading paid PDF editors. Here is how PQ PDF — free, with no account and no file retention — compares against all three:

Feature PQ PDF
Free · No account		 Adobe Acrobat Pro
~$23/month		 Foxit PDF Editor+
~$14/month		 PDF-XChange Editor Plus
$79 one-time
Cost ✓ Free — unlimited ✗ ~$23/month subscription ✗ ~$14/month subscription ⚠ $79 one-time perpetual license
Account required ✓ No account needed ✗ Adobe account required ✗ Account required for subscription activation ✓ License key only — no account
No install — runs in browser ✓ Works in any browser — nothing to install ✗ Desktop app install required ✗ Desktop app install required ✗ Desktop app install required
Zero file retention ✓ Deleted as download streams — no copy kept ✗ Stored in Adobe Document Cloud ✓ Deleted after processing (per Foxit privacy policy) ✓ Local only — no cloud backend
No third-party tracking ✓ CSP blocks all external scripts ✗ Adobe telemetry and analytics ⚠ Usage telemetry — opt-out available in preferences ✗ Device and interaction telemetry collected
Edit existing body text ✓ Direct text-run editing in content streams ✓ Full paragraph reflow ✓ Full paragraph reflow as you type ✓ Direct editing and overtype mode
Edit / replace embedded images ✓ Replace any embedded image XObject ✓ Yes ✓ Move, resize, rotate, and replace images ✓ Replace images with clipboard content, recompress
OCR / Make Searchable ✓ Built-in — invisible text layer added to scanned pages ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes — enhanced OCR engine in Plus
Password protect (AES-256) ✓ User + owner password, per-permission flags ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Compress PDF (in-editor) ✓ Configurable compression, lossless or lossy ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes — optimize with image recompression
Merge / Split / Extract pages ✓ All three — from within the editor session ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Find & Redact (pattern search) ✓ Regex across all pages, all matches in one operation ✓ Yes ⚠ AI Smart Redact for common PII types — regex pattern search not confirmed ✓ Redaction code sets with custom patterns
Interactive AcroForm builder ✓ 7 field types — Text, CheckBox, RadioButton, ListBox, ComboBox, Signature, PushButton ✓ Full form authoring ✓ Full form creation ✓ All field types including barcode — Plus tier only
Vector path editor ✓ Reposition, recolour, and delete native PDF paths ✓ Via "Edit PDF" mode ⚠ Not confirmed on current Foxit product pages ⚠ Shape tools confirmed — full path-level editing not detailed
Reflow text frames ✓ Linked frames that flow across pages — full font-metric word-wrap, resolved server-side ✓ Live in-place reflow as you type in existing body text ✓ Live in-place reflow as you type in existing body text ⚠ Direct/overtype editing — paragraph reflow not confirmed
Prepress tools ✓ Crop marks, registration marks, CMYK bars, bleed, page-box management ✓ Via print production tools ⚠ Not confirmed on current Foxit product pages ✗ Not mentioned on any PDF-XChange product page
Annotation tools ✓ 20 tools — text, draw, shapes, highlight, whiteout, redact… ✓ Full annotation suite ✓ Highlights, strikeout, underline, sticky notes, callouts, stamps, shapes, freehand ✓ 48 annotation types — including measurements, 3D comments, audio/video
Signature pad ✓ Draw, type, or upload image ✓ Yes ✓ Yes — draw, type, or image ✓ Yes — FreeSign tool (free in v11)
QR code generator ✓ Built-in — embed any URL as a QR code ✗ No ⚠ Not confirmed on current Foxit product pages ✓ Yes — barcode and QR code generation
Stamp library ✓ 12 stamp types + custom stamps ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Dynamic custom stamps — Plus tier only
Bookmark / TOC editor ✓ Full navigable bookmark tree editor ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ 23 bookmark features — generate from TOC, regex text processing
Create blank PDF from scratch ✓ Custom page size, unlimited pages ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
Accessibility checker (PDF/UA) ✓ WCAG 2.1 / PDF/UA audit with remediation guidance ✓ Yes ✓ WCAG checks + PDF/UA-1 workflow support ✓ Accessibility checker with report pane
OCG Layers panel ✓ Toggle layer visibility, inspect hidden content ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Create, edit, merge, and flatten layers
File Attachments management ✓ View, add, and remove embedded file attachments ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes — dedicated Attachments pane
Document metadata editing ✓ Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator, Producer ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes — import/export with metadata templates
Repair PDF (recover corrupted files) ✓ XRef rebuild, object recovery via PyMuPDF ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ⚠ Sanitize and normalize tools — full XRef recovery not confirmed
Flatten annotations (make permanent) ✓ All annotation layers merged into page content ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes — licensed feature in v11
Active Content Inspector ✓ View and remove all JS, actions, and URI triggers ⚠ "Sanitize Document" removes active content — no per-item inspection ⚠ JavaScript support present — per-document action inspector not confirmed ✓ JavaScript console + full action management
Built-in forensics scan ✓ 44-engine scan launchable from within the editor ✗ No ✗ No ✗ No

The honest assessment: PQ PDF has full paragraph reflow — text reflows word-by-word within and across linked frames using precise font-metric measurement, resolved server-side when edits are applied. Adobe Acrobat Pro and Foxit PDF Editor+ offer live in-place reflow as you type directly in existing body text; PQ PDF delivers the same result through the linked text frames workflow. For everything else in this table — annotation, forms, vector editing, prepress, OCR, compression, password protection, merge/split, find & redact, accessibility checking, layer management, and the built-in 44-engine forensics scan — PQ PDF covers it completely, free, with no account, no install, and no file retention.

Feature breakdown

All 20 Annotation Tools Explained

Every tool is configurable from its own panel that appears when selected. Configuration changes persist across pages within a session so you do not need to re-set colours or sizes for each annotation.

📝
Text & Typography
Tools 1–4
TOOL 1
Text Annotation
Click anywhere on the page to place a text annotation. Configure font family (Helvetica, Times, Courier, Georgia, Verdana, Impact, Inter, Mono), size (6–96 pt), colour, bold, italic, and alignment (left, centre, right, justify). Text is embedded as a native PDF text annotation at exact page coordinates.
TOOL 2
Text Box
Draw a rectangular text box anywhere on the page. The box clips text to its bounds and is embedded as a FreeText annotation with a configurable border. Supports the same font family, size, colour, and alignment options as the text tool. Useful for adding labelled boxes to forms and diagrams.
TOOL 3
Callout
A text box with a leader line that points to a specific location on the page. Draw the callout box and the pointer end is set at the initial click position. The callout text and pointer location are both embedded in the PDF as a single FreeText annotation with a callout structure — not a workaround using separate objects.
TOOL 4
Reflow Frame
Draw linked text frames that flow content across multiple areas and pages. Click the chain icon to link one frame to the next. When text overflows a frame, it automatically continues in the linked frame — resolved server-side by PyMuPDF when you apply edits. The final PDF contains correctly distributed text without manual line breaks.
✏️
Drawing & Shapes
Tools 5–12
TOOL 5
Freehand Draw
Draw freehand paths with configurable stroke colour and width (1–20 pt). Strokes are captured as polylines and embedded as Ink annotations in the PDF — a native PDF annotation type preserved by all standards-compliant viewers. Ideal for circling items, hand-drawn arrows, and sketch-style markup.
TOOL 6
Eraser
Paints white strokes over existing content — effectively a white freehand draw. Useful for covering small areas of text or graphics without using a full whiteout rectangle. The eraser is implemented as a white Ink annotation on top of the existing content.
TOOL 7
Line
Draw straight lines with configurable stroke colour, width, and style (solid, dashed, dotted, dash-dot). Embedded as a native Line annotation. Useful for separators, underscores, and connecting elements in diagrams.
TOOL 8
Arrow
Draw arrows with a configurable arrowhead at the endpoint. Same stroke options as the line tool. Arrows are embedded as Line annotations with the ending style set to the arrowhead type. Ideal for callouts, pointers, and process flow diagrams.
TOOL 9
Rectangle
Draw rectangles with independent stroke and fill colours. Stroke style (solid, dashed, dotted, dash-dot) and width are configurable. Fill opacity is separately adjustable — a semi-transparent fill lets the underlying content show through. Embedded as a native Square annotation.
TOOL 10
Ellipse
Draw ellipses and circles with independent stroke and fill colours. Identical configuration options to the rectangle tool. Embedded as a native Circle annotation. Useful for circling figures, diagram elements, and areas of interest in charts.
TOOL 11
Polygon
Click to place vertices — each click adds a point, and the path closes automatically when you click the first vertex again. Configurable stroke and fill. Embedded as a Polygon annotation. Useful for irregular area highlights, territory maps, and custom shape callouts.
TOOL 12
Polyline
Like the polygon tool but the path does not close — ideal for open-path annotations such as flow lines, measurement paths, and multi-segment connectors. Embedded as a PolyLine annotation.
🖍️
Text Markup & Coverage
Tools 13–16
TOOL 13
Highlight
Drag over text to highlight it in yellow (or a configurable colour). The highlight is embedded as a Highlight annotation — a native PDF markup type that is preserved and displayed correctly in Adobe Reader, Foxit, and all standards-compliant viewers. The underlying text remains selectable and searchable.
TOOL 14
Whiteout
Draw a white-filled rectangle over any area to cover content. Unlike redact (which permanently removes content from the PDF structure), whiteout is an annotation that paints over the visible area. The original content beneath is still in the file — use the redact tool for permanent removal.
TOOL 15
Strikethrough
Drag over text to add a strikethrough line. Embedded as a native StrikeOut annotation. Used in legal and editorial workflows to visually mark removed or superseded text while keeping the original readable.
TOOL 16
Underline
Drag over text to add an underline. Embedded as a native Underline annotation. Useful for emphasis, citation notation, and editorial markup workflows.
📎
Content Insertion
Tools 17–20 + extras
TOOL 17
Sticky Note
Place a collapsible comment popup anywhere on the page. Sticky notes appear as a small icon that expands to show the comment text when clicked — a native PDF Text annotation with popup. Widely used in document review workflows for reviewer comments that should not print with the document.
TOOL 18
Hyperlink
Draw a link rectangle over any area and set a URL or internal page destination. The area becomes a clickable hyperlink in the final PDF — embedded as a Link annotation with a URI or GoTo action. Useful for adding navigation to tables of contents, cross-reference links, and external URLs.
TOOL 19
Measure Distance
Draw a measurement line with a configurable scale (pixels, millimetres, centimetres, inches). The measured distance is displayed on the annotation at the set scale. Useful in architectural drawings, engineering PDFs, and maps where on-page measurements need to be annotated.
TOOL 20
Redact
Draw a redaction rectangle and click Apply — PyMuPDF permanently removes all content (text, images, vector paths) under the redaction area from the PDF structure. Unlike whiteout, the underlying data is gone from the file: it cannot be recovered by removing an annotation layer. The redacted area can be filled with black, white, or a custom colour.
EXTRA
Image Insert
Upload a PNG, JPEG, GIF, or WebP image and place it on any page at any position. Drag to resize. The image is embedded as a native XObject in the PDF — not an annotation — so it is part of the page content and renders correctly in all viewers.
EXTRA
Signature Pad
Draw a signature with mouse or touch, type your name in a signature font, or upload a PNG image of your handwritten signature. The signature is placed on the page as an embedded image. For cryptographic PDF signatures, use the Sign PDF & PAdES tool.
EXTRA
QR Code Generator
Enter any URL and a QR code is generated and embedded as an image on the page at the position you choose. Unique to PQ PDF among free online editors — useful for embedding landing page links, verification URLs, and contact cards in printed documents.
EXTRA
Stamps (12 types)
12 built-in stamp types: Approved, Rejected, Draft, Confidential, Not For Distribution, For Review, Sign Here, Initial Here, Void, Received, Paid, and a custom stamp where you supply your own text or image. Stamps are placed as rubber-stamp annotations that can be shown or hidden by the viewer's annotation visibility setting.
📋
AcroForm Form Builder
7 field types
FIELD 1
Text Field
Adds a standard text input field. Configurable as single-line, multiline, or password type. Set a maximum character length, default value, required flag, read-only flag, font size, and text colour. The field name and tooltip are set independently — the tooltip appears when the user hovers over the field in Adobe Reader.
FIELD 2
CheckBox
A standard toggle checkbox field. Set the field name, default checked/unchecked state, and required flag. CheckBox fields are fully compatible with AcroForm-aware PDF viewers and can be read by server-side PDF processing libraries when forms are submitted.
FIELD 3
RadioButton
Adds a radio button that belongs to a named group — all buttons in the same group are mutually exclusive. Use the same group name for all options in a multiple-choice question. The selected value is stored as the export value of the chosen option.
FIELD 4
ListBox
A scrollable list of options where users can select one or multiple items (multi-select mode configurable). Enter one option per line when adding the field. The selected value(s) are returned as the field value when the form is submitted or processed.
FIELD 5
ComboBox
A dropdown list of predefined options with an optional free-text mode (editable ComboBox) that lets users type a custom value not in the list. Useful for fields like country selectors where a predefined list covers most cases but edge cases need manual input.
FIELD 6
Signature Field
Reserves a designated area in the PDF for a cryptographic digital signature. The field is a placeholder — the signer fills it using Adobe Reader or any PDF viewer that supports digital signing. Different from the signature pad annotation tool, which embeds a visual image of a signature without cryptographic proof.
FIELD 7
PushButton
An interactive button that can be wired to a PDF action: submit a form, reset all fields, open a URL, or run a JavaScript action. Set the button label, font, colour, and the action to fire on click. Useful for building self-contained interactive PDF forms with clear submit and reset controls.
⚙️
Advanced Editing
Vector, Prepress, Bookmarks
ADVANCED
Vector Path Editor
Opens a panel that lists native vector paths from the PDF's page content streams — lines, curves, filled shapes, and graphic elements drawn by the original application. Select any path to reposition it, change its stroke or fill colour, or delete it entirely. Changes are applied by PyMuPDF directly to the page content stream.
ADVANCED
Prepress Tools
Adds professional printing marks to the PDF: crop marks (corner and centre), registration marks (crosshair targets for colour alignment), CMYK colour bars (patch rows for press calibration), and bleed area indicators. Also manages the four PDF page boxes: TrimBox (final trim size), BleedBox (bleed extent), CropBox (visible area), and ArtBox (meaningful content area) — used by RIPs and print workflows to interpret the page geometry.
ADVANCED
Bookmark Editor
Builds and edits the PDF's bookmark tree (formally the document outline) — the navigable table of contents displayed in the bookmarks panel of Adobe Reader, Foxit, and browser PDF viewers. Add, rename, delete, and reorder entries. Each bookmark links to a specific page number. Nested bookmarks (chapters and sub-chapters) are supported to unlimited depth.
ADVANCED
Page Numbers & Headers/Footers
Add page numbers, running headers, and footers to every page in a single operation. Configure the position (top/bottom, left/centre/right), font, size, colour, and starting page number. Headers and footers are applied server-side by PyMuPDF and embedded as page content — they appear in print, in all viewers, and cannot be removed without re-editing the file.
ADVANCED
Blank Page Insertion & Per-Page Rotation
Insert blank pages anywhere in the document from the page panel — choose the insertion point and page size. Each page can also be individually rotated in 90° increments (0°, 90°, 180°, 270°) independent of all other pages. Rotation is applied to the page's media orientation, not as a transform annotation, so the page renders upright in all viewers.
ADVANCED
Per-Page Undo & Redo
Undo and redo operate per page — correcting a mistake on page 3 does not affect the annotation history on page 1. Each page maintains its own independent history stack within the session. Undo/redo is available in the Edit menu and via keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y).
ADVANCED
Export Options & Print
Export Options lets you configure the output before applying edits: choose whether to flatten all annotations into the page content (making them non-editable in the downloaded PDF), set compression level, and strip or preserve metadata. Print sends the current document state to the browser's native print dialog, using the server-rendered page images as the print source.
ADVANCED
Unlock PDF & Remove Password
Open a password-protected PDF directly from the File menu by supplying the open password. PyMuPDF decrypts the file server-side for the editing session. The resulting edited PDF is saved without a password by default — you can re-apply password protection via the Protect PDF tool after downloading if needed.
Page management

Page Panel & Organisation

The Page menu and the page panel on the left give full control over the document's page structure — not just annotations on individual pages.

📄
Page Operations
Add, duplicate, delete, rotate
PAGE
Add Blank Page at End
Appends a new blank page at the end of the document in the configured page size. Blank pages are useful for adding space for handwritten notes, additional content, or as separators in composite documents.
PAGE
Insert Page Before / After
Inserts a new blank page immediately before or after the currently viewed page. Lets you add pages at any position in the document, not just at the end.
PAGE
Duplicate Page
Creates an exact copy of the current page — including all its existing content and any annotations you have added — and inserts it immediately after. Useful for creating template pages or repeating a layout across multiple copies.
PAGE
Delete Page
Permanently removes the current page from the document. The deletion is applied server-side when you click Apply Edits — it is not reversible after download.
PAGE
Rotate 90° CW / CCW
Rotates the current page 90° clockwise or counter-clockwise. Each page in the document can be rotated independently. Rotation is applied to the page's media orientation — not a content transform — so the page renders upright in all viewers.
Document-level tools

Document Menu — Properties, Processing & Security

Beyond per-page annotation, the Document menu exposes a full set of whole-document operations: metadata editing, body-text and image editing, OCR, processing, security, and document reorganisation. All operations run server-side via PyMuPDF.

ℹ️
Properties & Inspection
Metadata, fonts, layers, attachments
DOC
Document Properties
Edit the PDF's metadata dictionary: Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator, and Producer. These fields are embedded in the file and indexed by search engines, document management systems, and PDF viewers. Clearing or updating stale metadata is a common step before distributing a finalised document.
DOC
Edit Text Content
Opens a panel for direct editing of existing body text in the PDF's content streams — not an annotation overlay, but the actual underlying text objects. Click a text run on the page to select and modify it. Useful for correcting typos, updating dates, or revising short passages in a document where you don't have the source file.
DOC
Edit Images
Displays a panel listing all embedded image XObjects in the document. Select any image to replace it with a new file (PNG, JPEG, WebP) while preserving the image's position and dimensions on the page. Useful for swapping logos, updating diagrams, or replacing placeholder images in a template PDF.
DOC
Font Inspector
Lists every font used in the document — name, type (Type 1, TrueType, CIDFont, etc.), encoding, and whether it is fully embedded or subset-embedded. Identifies fonts that are not embedded at all (likely to substitute or fail on other systems) and flags unusual encoding that can indicate obfuscated text.
DOC
File Attachments
Lists all files embedded as attachments in the PDF. View, download, add new attachments, or remove existing ones. PDF attachments are hidden from normal view but present in the file structure — the attachment panel is the only way to see them without a forensics scanner.
DOC
Layers (OCG)
Shows all Optional Content Groups (OCG layers) in the document and their current visibility state. Toggle individual layers on or off to show or hide content. Useful for documents exported from InDesign, AutoCAD, or Illustrator where content is organised into named layers — and for checking whether a PDF contains hidden content in invisible layers.
DOC
Accessibility Check
Runs an accessibility audit against WCAG 2.1 / PDF/UA criteria: checks for missing Alt text on images, untagged content, missing document language, reading order issues, and table structure problems. Reports failing items with remediation guidance so the document can be made accessible for screen reader users.
DOC
Fill Form Fields
Switches to a form-filling mode for existing interactive AcroForm fields in the document — type into text fields, tick checkboxes, select radio buttons and dropdowns. Different from the form builder (which creates new fields); this mode fills fields that already exist in the PDF.
⚙️
Document Processing
OCR, compress, repair, grayscale, deskew, flatten
PROCESS
Make Searchable (OCR)
Runs optical character recognition on scanned or image-based PDFs and embeds an invisible text layer behind the images. The result is a searchable, copy-pasteable PDF that retains the original scanned appearance. Particularly useful for scanned contracts, invoices, and archival documents that need to be indexed or have text selected.
PROCESS
Convert to Grayscale
Converts all pages to greyscale — removing colour from images, vector objects, and text. Applied server-side by PyMuPDF. Useful for reducing file size before printing to a black-and-white printer, or for producing a greyscale version of a colour document for distribution.
PROCESS
Auto-Deskew
Automatically detects and corrects page rotation and skew in scanned documents — aligning text lines to the horizontal and the page to its correct orientation. Runs server-side and applies the corrected rotation to each page's content stream. Particularly effective for documents scanned at an angle.
PROCESS
Repair PDF
Attempts to recover a corrupted or malformed PDF by rebuilding its cross-reference table, resolving broken object references, and reconstructing the trailer dictionary. PyMuPDF's recovery parser can salvage many documents that other tools cannot open.
PROCESS
Flatten Annotations
Merges all annotation layers into the page content stream, making them a permanent part of the page — identical to the result of printing and re-scanning, but without quality loss. After flattening, annotations cannot be selected, edited, or removed. Useful before sharing a marked-up document when you want to prevent recipients from altering the markup.
PROCESS
Compress PDF
Reduces file size by re-compressing image streams, removing redundant objects, and optimising the cross-reference structure. Configurable compression level (lossless vs. lossy image resampling). Runs server-side — the compressed PDF downloads immediately.
🔐
Security & Privacy
Password, watermark, active content, find & redact, forensics
SECURITY
Password Protect
Adds a user password (required to open the PDF) and/or an owner password (restricts printing, copying, and editing). Configure individual permission flags: allow or deny printing, text copying, annotation, form filling, page extraction, and content accessibility. Encryption uses AES-256.
SECURITY
Add Watermark
Stamps a text or image watermark on every page — configurable opacity, position, rotation, font, size, and colour. Text watermarks (e.g. "CONFIDENTIAL", "DRAFT") are applied as content-stream text at a specified diagonal or horizontal angle. Image watermarks use an XObject placed at the defined coordinates. Applied to all pages in a single operation.
SECURITY
Active Content Inspector
Surfaces all active content in the document — embedded JavaScript, OpenAction triggers, AcroForm JavaScript handlers, /Launch actions, and URI actions — in a readable panel. Each item shows its trigger type, the associated object ID, and the raw script or URI. Allows you to review and selectively remove active content before distributing a document received from an untrusted source.
SECURITY
Find & Redact Text
Search the document for a text string or regular expression and permanently redact every match across all pages in a single operation. Unlike the redact annotation tool (which requires manually drawing a rectangle over each area), Find & Redact Text locates the exact text positions and applies redaction marks to all occurrences automatically — then applies them server-side. Ideal for redacting names, account numbers, or other recurring sensitive terms at scale.
SECURITY
Forensics Scan
Launches the PDF Forensics Scanner directly from within the editor on the current document — running all 44 forensic engines including behavioral sandbox, YARA rules, ML anomaly detection, and threat intelligence. Useful when editing a PDF received from an external source and you want to verify it is clean before embedding additional content or distributing it.
📂
Combine & Reorganise
Merge, extract, split, N-up
COMBINE
Merge Another PDF
Appends a second PDF to the end of the current document — or inserts it at a specified page position. Upload the second file and choose where to insert it. Both documents' annotations, bookmarks, and form fields are preserved. Useful for appending addenda, appendices, or cover pages to an existing document without leaving the editor.
COMBINE
Extract Pages
Exports a selected range of pages from the current document as a new standalone PDF — without closing or modifying the original. Specify a page range (e.g. "2–5, 8, 11–14") and the extracted pages download as a separate file.
COMBINE
Split PDF
Splits the current document at specified page boundaries and downloads the resulting parts. Split modes: every N pages, at specific page numbers, or by file size. Each part is a self-contained PDF. Useful for splitting a large report into chapter-level documents for distribution.
COMBINE
N-up / Imposition
Arranges multiple pages from the document onto a single physical sheet — 2-up, 4-up, 6-up, 8-up, or 9-up layouts in portrait or landscape. Applied server-side: each output sheet contains the configured number of source pages scaled and positioned within a grid. Standard imposition layout for booklet printing and presentation handouts.
Privacy & security

Your Document Stays Private

Documents you edit may contain confidential business terms, personal data, or sensitive financial information. PQ PDF is designed so that your document never leaves our server — and the server deletes it the moment you download the result.

🗑️
Deleted during download
The edited PDF is streamed to your browser and deleted from the server simultaneously. By the time your download completes, the file is gone. No archive, no backup, no copy.
💾
Drafts stay in your browser
Auto-save stores your draft state — annotation positions, text content, tool settings — in your browser's IndexedDB. The draft never leaves your device between sessions. Only your annotations are sent to the server when you click Apply, not intermediate drafts.
🔒
HTTPS everywhere
All file transfers — upload, page rendering, final download — are encrypted via TLS. HSTS with preload is enforced. The CSP policy blocks all mixed content and external connections.
👤
No account, no identity
No login, no email, no registration. There is no way to associate an editing session with a user identity because no identity is collected. The session token used during editing is discarded with the file.
📡
No third-party scripts
The Content Security Policy blocks all external script sources. No Google Analytics, no ad pixels, no social tracking. Your document and its content never pass through a third-party service.
🔧
Server-side isolation
Each editing session runs in an isolated temporary directory. PyMuPDF applies edits in-process — no external tools with network access are invoked. The temporary directory is cleaned up immediately after the response is sent.
Common questions

Frequently Asked Questions

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