Cropping a PDF cuts away the parts of each page you do not need: wide white margins that make text tiny on a phone, the half of a letter-size page that is empty around a 4 x 6 inch shipping label, the scanner's black border, or everything except the one chart you want to send. This tool lets you crop visually on a page preview or with exact measurements, on every page or only the ones you choose.
It runs in your browser with pdf-lib and pdf.js. Your PDF is not uploaded, which matters for shipping labels with addresses, statements and contracts.
How to crop a PDF
- Drop the PDF on the box at the top of this page, or click it and choose the file. Page 1 appears as a preview, with the options beside it (below it on a phone).
- Choose the area to keep in one of three ways:
- Drag on the preview to draw a box. Drag inside the box to move it and drag its handles to resize it. The area outside is dimmed.
- Type the margins to cut off at the top, bottom, left and right, in mm or inches.
- Click Auto-crop white margins to have the tool find the content on the page and set the box around it, with 2 mm of breathing room.
- Read the size line: for example "Page 1 becomes 109.9 x 117.0 mm (4.33 x 4.61 in), from 215.9 x 279.4 mm (8.50 x 11.00 in)."
- Leave Pages to crop empty for every page, or type a range such as
1-3, 7. Use the arrows under the preview to check other pages with the same box. - Optional: tick Auto-crop each page to its own content when pages differ, and Also shrink the page itself (MediaBox) for printers and apps that ignore normal cropping.
- Click Crop PDF and download the file, named after your original with
-croppedadded.
Three ways to set the crop
Drag a box
Dragging is the fastest way when you can see what you want, such as a label, a chart or a single column. The box always stays within the page and cannot get smaller than a quarter inch on either side. The margin boxes update as you drag, so you can drag roughly and then fine-tune the numbers.
Type exact margins
Numbers are better when the crop has to match something: a printer's trim size, a template, or the same crop on many files. Margins are measured from the edges of the page as you see it, so "Top" is always the top of the page in the preview, even on landscape pages and pages stored with a rotation setting.
| Goal | Start page | Margins to cut (top, bottom, left, right) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| US Letter to a 6 x 9 in book page, centered | 8.5 x 11 in | 1, 1, 1.25, 1.25 in | 6 x 9 in |
| A4 to A5 size from the top half | 210 x 297 mm | 0, 148.5, 0, 0 mm | 210 x 148.5 mm |
| Trim 0.5 in of white on every side | 8.5 x 11 in | 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 in | 7.5 x 10 in |
| Keep a 4 x 6 in label in the top left | 8.5 x 11 in | 0, 5, 0, 4.5 in | 4 x 6 in |
The unit you pick is remembered for your next visit. Values are kept to a tenth of a millimeter or a hundredth of an inch, which is far finer than any printer can trim.
Auto-crop white margins
Auto-crop draws the page at 100 DPI and looks for anything darker than near-white. Light scan backgrounds and paper tints count as white, so a slightly gray scan still crops to its text. The box is set around the content with 2 mm of space, and you can adjust it afterward. It works on the page in the preview, and those margins are then applied to every page you crop.
When pages have content in different places, such as a scanned book where odd and even pages sit on opposite sides, tick Auto-crop each page to its own content. Every page in the range is then measured and cropped separately. Pages that are blank are left as they were and listed in the result.
Crop box or MediaBox: how cropping works in a PDF
A PDF page has a few boxes that describe its size. The two that matter here are the MediaBox, the full sheet the page was made on, and the CropBox, the part a viewer actually shows. By default this tool sets the CropBox. Viewers, browsers and most printers then show only that area, and the page size reported by every app becomes the cropped size.
The content outside the box is hidden, not deleted. It is still in the file, and someone who resets the crop box in a PDF editor can see it again. That is good when you might want to undo the crop, but it means cropping is not a way to remove private information. To get rid of a whole page, use Delete PDF Pages; for sensitive text on a page, use a redaction tool.
Ticking Also shrink the page itself (MediaBox) sets the MediaBox to the same area. A few print drivers, label printers and older apps ignore the CropBox and print the whole original sheet; with both boxes set, they have nothing else to print. The hidden content is still in the file either way.
Note: because cropping only changes the page boxes, it does not make the file smaller, and the text, images, links and form fields inside the crop stay exactly as they were. To reduce the file size, run the result through Compress PDF.
Worked examples
A shipping label on a letter-size page
Marketplaces and carriers often deliver a label as an 8.5 x 11 inch PDF with the 4 x 6 inch label taking up part of it, which wastes a whole sheet on a desktop printer and prints tiny on a thermal label printer. Drop the PDF in and click Auto-crop white margins. The box snaps around the label, give or take its border. Tick Also shrink the page itself so a thermal printer driver sees a label-sized page, then print at 100% or actual size. If you print labels every day, it is quicker to choose the 4 x 6 format when you buy the label; eBay and most carriers offer it. For the selling side of eBay, AM Jarvis eBay Research shows units sold per listing and daily best sellers so you can find what to list next.
Wide margins on a phone
A 40-page report has 1.25 inch margins, so the text is small when read on a phone. Type 0.9 in for left and right and 0.8 in for top and bottom, leave Pages empty and crop. Each page becomes 6.7 x 9.4 inches, and the text appears about 25% larger when the page fills the phone screen.
One chart for a slide
Page 14 of a supplier report has the sales chart you want. Type 14 in Pages, go to page 14 with the arrows, drag a box around the chart and crop. Then use Extract PDF Pages to keep only page 14, or turn it into a sharp image with PDF to PNG at 300 DPI.
A scanned book
A 120-page scan has dark edges from the scanner lid and text that sits left on odd pages and right on even pages. Tick Auto-crop each page to its own content and crop all pages. Each page is measured on its own, and the dark edges go as long as they are lighter than the text. If the scanner shadow is very dark, it counts as content; crop those pages with typed margins instead.
Common crop jobs
| Job | Best method | Options to tick |
|---|---|---|
| Shipping label on a letter page | Auto-crop white margins | Also shrink the page itself |
| Read a report comfortably on a phone or tablet | Typed margins | None |
| Scanned book or double-sided scan | Auto-crop | Auto-crop each page to its own content |
| A chart, table or photo from one page | Drag a box | None, then extract that page |
| Match a print trim size such as 6 x 9 in | Typed margins in inches | Also shrink the page itself |
| Remove a scanner's black edge | Typed margins of 3 to 5 mm | None |
Check the cropped file
- Open the download and look at the first, a middle and the last page. Pages with a different layout, such as a landscape table, are where a shared crop is most likely to cut something off.
- Check the page size in your viewer's document properties. It should match the size line the tool showed.
- If you will print, print one page at actual size and hold it against the original or the label stock.
If anything is off, change the box and crop again. Every run starts from your original file, so crops never stack on top of each other.
Crop PDF on a Mac without this tool
In Preview, choose the Rectangular Selection tool, drag a box on the page and press Cmd+K to crop. To crop every page the same way, select all thumbnails in the sidebar first. Preview warns that cropping does not delete the content outside the selection, which matches how this tool works. Preview has no typed margins, no auto-crop and no per-page detection, so for exact sizes or scanned books the tool above is easier. Windows has no built-in PDF cropping.
Troubleshooting
- The printout still shows the full page. The printer or app ignores the CropBox. Tick Also shrink the page itself (MediaBox) and crop again, and print at actual size rather than fit to page.
- Some pages were skipped. Pages smaller than your margins cannot be cropped with them, so they are left unchanged and listed in the result. Crop those pages separately with smaller margins.
- Auto-crop leaves a dark border in. The border is dark enough to count as content. Drag the box edges in or type the margins.
- Auto-crop says the page looks blank. There is nothing printed on it, or only very faint marks. Move to another page with the arrows and auto-crop there.
- The PDF will not open. If it has a password or editing restrictions, remove them first with Unlock PDF (you need the password).
Privacy and limits
The tool is free with no daily limit, no account and no watermark. The PDF is read, previewed and cropped in your browser, and nothing is sent to a server. Cropping itself is instant; auto-cropping each page separately draws every page, so a long scanned file takes longer and is smoother on a computer than on a phone. On a touch screen, dragging on the preview moves the crop box rather than scrolling the page, so scroll using the area outside the preview.