How to Unlock a Password-Protected PDF — Remove Restrictions Safely

import { PDFDocument } from 'pdf-lib';
import fs from 'fs';
 
async function unlockPdf(inputPath, outputPath, password) {
  const pdfBytes = fs.readFileSync(inputPath);
  
  // pdf-lib automatically decrypts when you provide the password
  const pdfDoc = await PDFDocument.load(pdfBytes, {
    password,          // User or owner password
    ignoreEncryption: false,
  });
  
  // Save without encryption — the resulting PDF has no password
  const unencryptedBytes = await pdfDoc.save();
  fs.writeFileSync(outputPath, unencryptedBytes);
  console.log(`Unlocked PDF saved to ${outputPath}`);
}
 
await unlockPdf('protected.pdf', 'unlocked.pdf', 'ViewOnly123!');

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
 
def unlock_pdf(input_path: str, output_path: str, password: str) -> bool:
    reader = PdfReader(input_path)
    
    if not reader.is_encrypted:
        print("PDF is not encrypted — copying as-is")
        # Still re-save to remove any permission restrictions
    
    # Attempt decryption with provided password
    result = reader.decrypt(password)
    if result == 0:
        print("Wrong password")
        return False
    
    writer = PdfWriter()
    for page in reader.pages:
        writer.add_page(page)
    
    # Write without encryption
    with open(output_path, 'wb') as f:
        writer.write(f)
    
    print(f"Unlocked → {output_path}")
    return True
 
success = unlock_pdf('protected.pdf', 'unlocked.pdf', 'ViewOnly123!')

# Unlock with user password
qpdf --password='ViewOnly123!' --decrypt protected.pdf unlocked.pdf
 
# Unlock with owner password (removes all restrictions)
qpdf --password='AdminSecret456!' --decrypt protected.pdf unlocked.pdf
 
# Batch unlock all PDFs in a directory
for f in *.pdf; do
  qpdf --password='MyPassword' --decrypt "$f" "unlocked_${f}" 2>/dev/null || echo "Failed: $f"
done
 
# Check if a PDF is encrypted
qpdf --show-encryption protected.pdf

gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER \
   -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
   -sPDFPassword='ViewOnly123!' \
   -sOutputFile=unlocked.pdf \
   protected.pdf