everyday mac tools

Remove the password from a PDF you own, on a Mac

· 6 min read

Open the PDF in Preview and type the password. Then choose File, Export, set the format to PDF, and make sure the Encrypt option is switched off before you save. The new file opens without a password and the original is left as it was.

That is the whole procedure, and it only works because you knew the password. Nothing on a Mac removes a password you do not have, and nothing in this article pretends otherwise.

The two kinds of PDF password

PDFs can carry two different protections, and confusing them is why people follow instructions that do not match what they are seeing.

An open password (sometimes called a user password) is the one that stops the document opening. Preview asks for it the moment you double-click the file, and until it is entered there is nothing to look at.

A permissions password (sometimes called an owner password) does not stop the document opening at all. The file opens straight away, but it is marked as not allowed to be printed, copied from, or edited. Whether that mark is obeyed depends entirely on the software doing the opening: it is a request, not a lock, and different PDF viewers honor different parts of it.

A file can have both, one, or neither. If yours opens without you typing anything but refuses to let you copy text, you are dealing with the second kind, and the section further down covers it.

Remove an open password with Preview

  1. Double-click the PDF and enter the password when Preview asks.
  2. Choose File, Export. If your version of Preview shows Export as PDF instead, hold Option while opening the File menu to reveal the full Export item.
  3. Set Format to PDF.
  4. Look for the Encrypt checkbox in that sheet and make sure it is clear. If it is checked, uncheck it; the password fields underneath gray out.
  5. Give the file a name and choose where it goes. Do not save it over the original in the same folder.
  6. Save.

The exported copy is a full, unencrypted PDF. Text stays selectable, annotations stay live, and the page content is unchanged. The original stays encrypted where it was, which is usually what you want: the copy is for circulation, the original is the record.

One detail that catches people out: Preview may have already stored the password for you. When you open an encrypted PDF, the password sheet offers to remember it in your keychain. If you accepted that at some point, the file opens without asking, and it is easy to conclude that the password is gone when it is not. Anyone else opening the same file, or you on another Mac, will still be asked.

The print route, and what it flattens

There is a second way, and it produces a different file.

  1. With the document open, choose File, Print.
  2. In the PDF menu at the bottom-left of the dialog, choose Save as PDF.
  3. Leave Security Options alone (that button is how you would add a password rather than remove one) and save.

This redraws every page through the printing path. The result has no password, and it also has no live annotations, no fillable form fields and no clickable links: everything that was floating on top of the page becomes part of the page. For a signed agreement heading to an archive that is an advantage. For a document somebody still has to fill in it is a problem.

It also re-encodes images, so a scanned document can come out looking different and at a different size. Compare a page from each before you commit.

Dealing with permission restrictions

When the file opens freely but printing is grayed out or text will not copy, the restriction lives in the file’s permission flags. Preview is comparatively relaxed about these, so in many cases exporting through the steps above simply produces a copy without them. When it does not, the print route usually does, since printing a document that renders on screen is something the system can do regardless of what the file requests.

Be clear about what that means. Bypassing a permissions flag is not a technical feat, because the flag was always advisory. It records what the document’s author wanted, and whether ignoring it is reasonable is your call, not the software’s.

Decide whether you actually want it gone

Removing the password is a one-way change in the sense that matters: from that point on, the file protects nothing. It sits unprotected in Mail attachments, in backups, and on the recipient’s Mac after they forward it. Encrypted PDFs are also excluded from Spotlight’s index, so removing the password is what makes a document turn up in searches later.

There are usually three sensible options rather than two. Keep the password and send it through a different channel than the file. Remove it and accept that the contents are now readable by anyone who receives the file. Or remove the old one and set a new one that you are willing to share, using the same Encrypt checkbox in Preview’s export sheet, or Security Options in the print dialog.

While you have the file open, the properties are worth a look too. A document that was locked because it was sensitive is exactly the document whose author name, revision history and embedded attachments you would rather not pass on with it: Remove metadata from a PDF on a Mac before you share it covers that pass.

Handling a lot of them

Preview is a one-file-at-a-time tool, and macOS ships no command-line PDF password utility, so a folder of thirty locked statements is a tedious afternoon.

Basalt has a Passwords tool that adds or removes protection on documents you can already open, and a Procedures tool for repeating the same steps on the next batch. It runs entirely on the Mac and writes a new file every time. What it explicitly does not do is crack a password you do not have, and neither does anything else described here. It is a paid app after a free day with every tool available.

If you do not have the password

Then this is a dead end, and it is better to say so than to send you looking. macOS has no facility for recovering or bypassing an open password, and none of the built-in routes above will even get the document open.

The realistic paths are the human ones: ask whoever sent the file, check whether your keychain or password manager stored it at some earlier opening, or ask the issuing organization for an unlocked copy. Banks and government bodies that mail out encrypted statements usually document the pattern they use, often a date of birth or part of an account number, which is worth checking before assuming anything is lost.

Questions

Does removing the password change the pages at all? Through the export route, no. The page content is copied across untouched and only the encryption layer is dropped. Through the print route, yes: the pages are redrawn and images are re-encoded.

Why does the exported file still ask for a password? Almost always because Encrypt was left checked in the export sheet, and Preview carried the old password fields forward. Export again and confirm that checkbox is clear before you save.

I removed the password and now the file is much larger. That points to the print route rather than the export route, since printing re-encodes every page image. Go back to the original and export instead.

Can I combine several unlocked statements into one document afterwards? Yes, and it is a common next step once a year of encrypted bank statements has been opened up. Merge PDFs on a Mac without uploading them anywhere covers the Preview and Finder routes for that.