Crop PDF

Trim margins and crop pages.

Runs in your browser

Runs in your browser — your file never leaves your device.

Drop your PDF here, or browseOne PDF · cropped locally in your browser

About this tool

Crop PDF pages in your browser — even margins, per side, or the white margins found for you, on every page or the ones you pick. The file stays on your device.

This tool processes files entirely on your device. Nothing is uploaded to a server.

More details

Crop PDF trims the edges of a page so readers see less of it: wide white margins, a scanner's dark border, printer's marks around a proof. You set how much to cut in points (the unit PDF page sizes are measured in), millimetres or inches, either as one value for all four sides or separately for Top, Right, Bottom and Left. Or choose Auto: the tool looks at every page for marks and proposes a crop that keeps them with a small white border, page by page or as one box for every page, for you to check before anything is cropped. The crop can go on every page or only on the pages you type, such as 1-3, 5.

It runs online, inside your browser tab: your browser reads the PDF from your device, rewrites the crop box in memory, and sends nothing to pdf.xyz. The size check comes first, so anything larger than 100 MB, the most this in-browser runner accepts, is refused without being read. Encrypted PDFs are refused when they are opened, including a file that shows its pages without any password but restricts printing or editing, so remove the protection first.

Under the hood the tool shrinks each page's crop box, the region a PDF viewer shows. The page content itself is left as it was: any text you could select before is still selectable, nothing is redrawn, and whatever sits outside the new edges is still in the file, just out of view. Margins are measured from the page's current visible area, so cropping an already-cropped file trims further, and no page is allowed to end up narrower or shorter than 24 points.

When to use it

Remove the dark frame from a scan
Flatbed scans often pick up a grey or black band where the lid did not meet the glass. Trimming just the affected edges in Per side mode makes the page look like paper again.
Make a book PDF readable on a small screen
Generous print margins waste space on a phone or e-reader. Trimming them lets the viewer zoom the text block to fill the display.
Cut printer's marks off a print-ready proof
Press files carry crop marks and bleed around the finished page. Setting each margin to the width of that border gives a clean-looking copy to send for review. The marks are hidden rather than deleted, so keep the untouched original for the press.
Crop just the landscape inserts
Choose Selected pages and list only the wide chart pages, so the portrait pages around them keep their original size. Margins follow each page as your viewer displays it, so on a landscape insert Top trims the edge you see at the top, even when the insert is stored upright and only turned by a rotation setting.

What this tool can do

Crop modes: Uniform margins, per-side control in pt, mm or in, or auto-detected white margins, applied to all pages or only the ones you select.
Hidden, not deleted: Cropping hides everything outside the box, but that content stays inside the file, and anyone with the file can bring it back by resetting the crop in another editor. To remove it permanently, use Redact PDF.

How it works

1Open one PDF
Drag the PDF into the drop area, or click it to pick the file from your device. When loading finishes, a strip above the margin controls gives the file name with its page total and size.
2Set the crop margins
In the Crop margins section, Uniform gives a single All sides slider, while Per side gives separate Top, Right, Bottom and Left sliders. Pick pt, mm or in to set the unit; each slider shows its value in that unit as you drag, and the box beside it takes a typed value. Auto has a Find white margins button instead: it reads every page, then says how many pages it found content on and names any page that looks blank, which is left uncropped. With content on more than one page you can keep Each page its own box or choose Same box on every page.
3Choose the pages
In the Pages section, keep All pages, or pick Selected pages and type a list in the Pages box using commas and ranges, for example 2-4, 7. An open range such as "8-" runs to the last page.
4Check the preview and crop
In Uniform and Per side, Crop preview is a blank outline in page 1's proportions with a dashed box marking what your margins keep; it does not show the page's content. In Auto it shows the page itself under the proposed box, with Previous page and Next page to check each one. Press Crop PDF, then Download cropped PDF, or Start over to go back to an empty picker.

Common questions

Can I crop each side by a different amount?

Yes. Under Crop margins, switch from Uniform to Per side and four sliders appear, one per edge. Setting only Bottom, for instance, removes a footer strip and leaves the other three edges alone.

Why is the Crop PDF button greyed out, or why did it refuse my margins?

The button stays disabled while every slider sits at 0, because there is nothing to crop, and in Auto until Find white margins has found content on at least one page. If the margins you set would leave a page narrower or shorter than 24 points, the run stops and names the first page that failed so you can reduce them. A Pages entry that is empty, backwards or past the last page is also rejected with a message. Each slider stops at a fixed maximum; for a deeper cut, crop the downloaded copy again, since margins are measured from the visible area that is left.

Can Crop PDF find the margins for me?

Yes, with Auto. Your browser renders each page at a low resolution, finds the area that holds anything darker than near-white (text, lines, images, a scanner's grey edge), and proposes margins that keep it with 6 points of white on every side. A page with nothing on it is named and left uncropped. Same box on every page uses, for each edge, the smallest margin any page needs, so no page loses content. A scan with a grey or speckled background has no white to find, so Auto may crop little or nothing there; set the margins yourself instead.

Does Crop PDF work on rotated pages?

Yes. Margins are measured on the page as your viewer shows it, after any rotation setting in the file, so Top always trims the edge you see at the top, whether a page is stored upright and turned for display or stored turned. In Per side mode, move the slider named for the edge you can see. Crop preview draws page 1 in the same displayed proportions, so a portrait page turned a quarter-turn shows as a landscape outline, and its dashed box marks what the sliders keep.

Will the cropped file be smaller?

Not reliably. The hidden content stays in the file and pdf-lib writes the whole document out again in its own layout, which can pack a loosely written file tighter or add a little to an already lean one. The result screen shows the new size next to the number of pages cropped. To make a file smaller on purpose, use Compress PDF.

Can I crop a digitally signed PDF?

You can, but the signature will no longer verify. The crop edits the page settings and the whole file is written out again, so the bytes the signature covered no longer match. Crop a document before it is signed, not after.

Does Crop PDF work offline?

Not fully. The page and its processing engine load over the network, and parts of the engine are fetched the first time a step needs them. The processing itself runs on your device. Rendering a page that holds a JPEG 2000 or JBIG2 image, as scanned documents often do, downloads an image decoder from our site the first time it is needed, and that step needs a connection. Chinese, Japanese or Korean text whose font is not embedded in the PDF needs a character map, downloaded from our site the first time it is needed, and that step needs a connection.

How large can my file be?

Up to 100 MB per file.

Does cropping delete what is outside the crop?

No. Crop PDF changes each page's visible area — the crop box every viewer and printer follows — so what lies outside it is hidden, not removed, and is still in the file. To take something out for good, use Redact PDF.

What units are the crop margins in?

Points, measured in from each edge — 72 points to an inch. A page is never cropped smaller than 24 points in either direction.