PDF Password Remover

A modern CLI tool to recursively remove passwords from PDF files.

Features

• Recursive processing: Processes all PDFs in a directory tree
• Structure preservation: Maintains folder hierarchy in output
• Multiple password strategies: Empty password, preset password, or interactive prompt
• Atomic writes: Safe file writing prevents corruption
• Rich CLI: Progress bars and colored output
• Input validation: Pydantic-validated configuration

Installation

# Clone or download, then:
uv sync

# Or install dependencies directly:
uv add typer rich pydantic 'pypdf[crypto]'

Usage

Basic usage

uv run pdf_password_remover.py --input ./encrypted --output ./decrypted

With a known password

uv run pdf_password_remover.py -i ./pdfs -o ./output --password "secret123"

Try empty password first (common for view-only restrictions)

uv run pdf_password_remover.py -i ./pdfs -o ./output --allow-empty-password

Force overwrite existing files

uv run pdf_password_remover.py -i ./pdfs -o ./output --force

Combined options

uv run pdf_password_remover.py \
    --input ~/Documents/encrypted \
    --output ~/Documents/decrypted \
    --allow-empty-password \
    --password "backup-password" \
    --force

Options

Option	Short	Description
--input	-i	Input directory containing PDF files (required)
--output	-o	Output directory for decrypted PDFs (required)
--allow-empty-password	-e	Try empty password before prompting
--password	-p	Password to try for all encrypted PDFs
--force	-f	Overwrite existing output files
--help		Show help message

How It Works

1. Discovery: Recursively finds all .pdf files in the input directory
2. Decryption: For each encrypted PDF:
   • Tries empty password (if --allow-empty-password)
   • Tries preset password (if --password provided)
   • Prompts interactively (up to 3 attempts)
3. Output: Writes decrypted PDFs atomically to preserve data integrity
4. Metadata: Preserves PDF metadata when possible

Requirements

• Python 3.12+
• typer
• rich
• pydantic
• pypdf[crypto]

Exit Codes

• 0: All files processed successfully
• 1: One or more files failed to process