🔒 PrivatePDF

Full PDF management in your browser — merge, split, protect, redact, and more.

User Manual

Overview

PrivatePDF uses pdf-lib for PDF creation and manipulation and pdf.js for rendering previews. Pages are displayed as thumbnails; select them to operate on specific pages. All processing happens in your browser using the File API and Canvas API.

Loading Files

• Click ➕ Add PDF to browse for one or more PDF files.
• Drop PDF files directly onto the main area.
• Multiple files can be loaded at once. They appear as page thumbnails in the workspace.

Selecting Pages

Click individual page thumbnails to select them. Use the quick-select buttons:

• Select All — select all pages across all loaded files.
• None — deselect everything.
• Invert — flip the current selection.

Page Operations

Rotate

• ↻ CW — rotate selected pages 90° clockwise.
• ↺ CCW — rotate selected pages 90° counter-clockwise.
• ↕ 180° — flip selected pages upside down.

Delete

Click 🗑 Delete to remove the selected pages from the document.

Export

Extract

Extracts selected pages into a new PDF and downloads it.

Split

Splits the document into multiple PDFs. Three modes:

• By Range — enter page ranges (e.g. 1-3, 5, 7-9). Each range becomes a separate PDF.
• By Bookmarks — splits at each top-level bookmark in the document.
• Every N Pages — splits the document into equal chunks of N pages each.

Download Pages

Downloads the current document (with all edits applied) as a PDF.

Annotate

💧 Watermark

Adds a text overlay to pages. Options:

• Watermark text, font size, opacity (0–1), colour.
• Position: center (diagonal), top center, bottom center.
• Apply to: all pages, selected pages only, odd pages, or even pages.

🔢 Page Numbers

Adds page numbers to the document. Options:

• Position: bottom center, bottom right, bottom left, top center, top right.
• Starting number and font size.
• Format: 1, 2, 3… / Page 1, Page 2… / 1 of 10, 2 of 10…

Security

🔐 Protect

Password-protects the PDF.

• User Password — required to open the document.
• Owner Password (optional) — controls permissions such as printing and copying.

🔓 Unlock

Removes password protection from an encrypted PDF. You must supply the existing password.

Document

📝 Metadata

Edit the document's metadata fields: Title, Author, Subject, Creator, Keywords. Changes are applied when you download the PDF.

🗜 Compress

Reduces the file size of the PDF.

Redaction

Click ⬛ Redact on a page preview. Draw black boxes over the content you want to permanently remove. Click Apply Redactions when done.

Downloading

Click ⬇ Download PDF at any time to save the current state of the document to your computer.

Privacy

PrivatePDF processes everything locally using pdf-lib and pdf.js. Your PDF files are never uploaded to any server.