Scanned pages often come with dark borders from the scanner lid, and some PDFs have margins so wide that the text is tiny on a phone. Crop PDF trims the edges of every page by the percentages you choose, with a preview of the first page as you go.
Cropping changes what is visible, not what is in the file. The content outside the kept area is hidden rather than deleted, and editing software can bring it back. To remove sensitive information, delete the whole page with Remove Pages or use a real redaction tool.
Step-by-step
- Open the Crop PDF tool, or click its card on the home page.
- Click the drop zone or drag in your PDF. A preview of page 1 appears.
- Under "Margins to cut (% of the page)", set "Top", "Bottom", "Left" and "Right". Each starts at 5% and can go up to 45%.
- Watch the preview: the area inside the dashed line is kept, and the darkened edges are cut. The same margins apply to every page.
- Click "Process now." Your browser downloads cropped.pdf. Open it and scroll through the pages to check that no text was cut on pages with a different layout.
Common mistakes
- Using crop to hide sensitive content. The cropped area is only hidden and can be restored. Remove the page instead, or redact it properly.
- Checking only the first page. The preview shows page 1, but every page gets the same margins. Pages with wider content can lose text at the edges.
- Cutting too much. Start with small values and increase them while watching the preview.
- Expecting a smaller file. Hidden content stays in the file, so the size barely changes. Use Compress PDF to reduce it.
FAQ
Does cropping delete the content outside the area?
No. Cropping changes the visible area of each page (its crop box). The hidden content is still in the file and can be brought back with editing software, so don't use cropping to remove sensitive information.
Can I crop each page differently?
The tool applies the same margins to every page. To crop one page differently, extract it with Split PDF, crop it, and put it back with Merge PDF.
Does cropping reduce quality or file size?
Quality stays the same, because text and images aren't touched. The file size also stays about the same, because the content outside the area is hidden rather than removed.
Is my file uploaded to crop it?
No. The crop is applied in your browser with pdf-lib, and the file never leaves your device.
Checklist
- The document has no sensitive content that needs real removal
- The margins were set with the preview
- All pages were checked in cropped.pdf, not just the first
- The original file is kept in case the crop needs to change