pdfunlockercli 1.0.0

A CLI tool to remove passwords from PDF documents

🔓 pdfunlock

A fast CLI tool for macOS & Linux to remove passwords from PDF documents.

Features

• Single file — unlock one PDF at a time
• Batch mode — process an entire directory of PDFs
• Recursive scanning — find PDFs in nested subdirectories
• Flexible output — save alongside originals, to a separate directory, or overwrite in-place
• Smart detection — skips already-unlocked files, handles owner-only passwords automatically
• Clean exit codes — 0 on success, 1 if any files failed (great for scripting)

Installation

# Clone and install
git clone <your-repo-url>
cd CLI_password_remover
pip install .

# Or install in development mode
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Usage

# Unlock a single PDF (will prompt for password)
pdfunlock document.pdf

# Provide password directly
pdfunlock document.pdf -p mypassword

# Save to a specific output file
pdfunlock document.pdf -o unlocked_document.pdf

# Overwrite the original file
pdfunlock document.pdf -p mypassword --overwrite

# Unlock multiple files at once
pdfunlock file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf -p password

# Process all PDFs in a directory
pdfunlock --dir ./my-pdfs -p password

# Recursively scan subdirectories
pdfunlock --dir ./my-pdfs --recursive -p password

# Save unlocked files to a separate folder
pdfunlock --dir ./my-pdfs -o ./unlocked -p password

How It Works

pdfunlock uses pikepdf (built on QPDF) to:

1. Open the PDF with the provided password
2. Save a new copy without any encryption

It does not crack or brute-force passwords — you must know the password.

Running Tests

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -v

License

MIT