Sanitize PDF
Remove embedded JavaScript, launch actions, attached files and hidden metadata from a PDF, while the pages themselves stay exactly as they were. Free, private, processed in memory.
Complete the security check to begin
The parts of a PDF that never appear on the page
It is easy to think of a PDF as a picture of a document, and for most files that is all it is. But the specification also allows a document to carry instructions, and those instructions have their own places to hide. An action can be attached to the document itself so it fires the moment the file is opened. It can be attached to a page so it fires when you scroll to it. It can be attached to an annotation so it fires when your pointer passes over a region of the page. None of these leave a mark on the page you are reading.
The instructions themselves are not limited to JavaScript. A PDF can hold a launch action that asks the reader to start an external program, a submit-form action that posts data to a web address, an import-data action that pulls content in, and a remote go-to action that opens a different document elsewhere. It can also carry entire files inside it as attachments. Modern readers restrict much of this by default, and that protection is real, but it depends on the reader, its version, its configuration and whether the file has been passed through something else along the way.
This tool removes that machinery from the file rather than relying on the reader to decline it. The document that comes out has the same pages, the same text and the same images, and no longer contains anything that can act on its own.
- JavaScript removed everywhere it can live, including automatic open, close and page triggers
- Launch, submit-form, import-data and remote go-to actions removed
- Embedded and attached files removed, along with portfolio containers
- XFA form definitions removed - a scriptable engine inside the document
- Screen, movie, rich-media, 3D and file-attachment annotations removed
- Document metadata and the XMP block cleared
- Text, images, layout, fonts, bookmarks and ordinary hyperlinks preserved exactly
- A per-file report of what was found, rather than a bare claim of success
Need to remove something that is visible on the page? That is a different job - use Redact PDF, which permanently deletes marked text and areas and performs this same active-content strip as part of its work. To take the password off an encrypted file first, use Unlock PDF.
Further reading: why drawing a black box over text does not redact it, and if your application accepts uploads, the same question for SVG.
A converter built around your privacy
Most online tools upload your files to a server, keep them for days, and may mine them for AI training or resale. PrivConvert was built the opposite way - around your privacy.
Runs in any modern browser on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS - no install, plugin or desktop software needed.
Each job runs in an isolated in-memory sandbox, so most conversions finish in seconds instead of waiting in a queue.
We never keep a copy. Once your PDF is delivered, both the original and the result are gone - there is nothing left to leak or misuse.
Every conversion runs in its own locked-down process with no network access, so files can never leak or interfere with one another.
A tool you do not have to worry about
Thousands of people trust PrivConvert with their files because privacy here is structural - enforced by how the service runs, not just promised.