PDF Permissions

How to use PDF Permissions

1. Open PDF Permissions — no sign-up or software download is required.
2. Drag and drop your file(s) into the tool, or click to browse and select them from your device.
3. Choose any options you need, such as order, quality, page range or output format.
4. Click the action button and let the tool process everything locally in your browser.
5. Download the finished file. Your originals are never changed or uploaded.

Why use PDF Permissions?

• 100% free with no limits, no sign-up and no watermarks.
• Private by design — your files are processed in your browser and never uploaded to a server.
• Fast and lightweight, with instant results even on a phone or a slow connection.
• Works everywhere — any modern browser on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android or iOS.
• Part of a full pdf tools suite, so related pdf permissions tasks are one click away.

What people use PDF Permissions for

• Restricting printing or copying on a document you are circulating for review.
• Preventing casual editing of a finalised document.
• Meeting a requirement to mark a document as restricted.

PDF Permissions: limits and things worth knowing

• Permissions are enforced by the reader, not by the file. Compliant readers such as Acrobat honour them; plenty of other software ignores them entirely, and the content is not encrypted against extraction.
• This is a deterrent to casual copying and not a security control. To make a document genuinely unreadable without authorisation, encrypt it with an open password using Protect PDF.
• Setting permissions requires an owner password. Do not lose it — changing the restrictions later needs it.

Is it private and secure?

Your privacy is built in. PDF Permissions does all processing on your own device using client-side code, so your files are never transmitted, stored or seen by anyone — including us.

Network activity: none. Nothing is sent and nothing is fetched. This tool makes no network request at all once the page has loaded — which is why it keeps working if your connection drops.

You do not have to take that on trust — our privacy proof page publishes the Content-Security-Policy that enforces it, lists every third party it permits, and shows how to verify the whole claim yourself.

We also measured the competition. Our PDF upload audit recorded how many bytes each of 20 online PDF tools actually transmits: 12 of the 13 measurable services uploaded the whole test file, and Filevane transmitted 0.00 MB.

Learn more

PDF Passwords Explained: What They Do and Don't Protect — What a PDF password actually encrypts, why permissions restrictions are weaker than they look, and why a forgotten password means the document is gone.