PDFGym
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Crop a PDF

or drop one here
Choose a PDF file first.

Type a percentage for each edge and watch the preview tighten. Percentages apply to each page's own size, so one setting fits mixed papers. The crop box hides margins without deleting them: text stays selectable and the file never leaves this browser tab.

Trimming margins, step by step

  1. Open the file

    Press Choose a PDF, or drag the file onto the page. The browser reads it and draws the first page in the Page layout panel, with a page selector for moving through the rest. Nothing is uploaded at any point.

  2. Pick this page or all pages

    Each margin change applies to the page in view or, with the All pages scope, to the whole document at once. If two or more pages already carry individual edits, the whole-document scope locks until those are undone or reset. Undo, Redo and Reset pages walk through everything.

  3. Set the four margins

    Type a percentage from 0 to 40 into the Top, Right, Bottom and Left boxes; anything outside the range is clamped. The preview tightens as you type, so judge wide tables, footnotes and page numbers against the visible frame before moving on.

  4. Press Rotate and crop PDF, then download

    The run button stays disabled until a margin is set. Press Rotate and crop PDF and the result reports pages cropped with the line Crop boxes match the requested margins. The proof line confirms the kept text before Download PDF appears, saving the file with -cropped added to its name.

Cropping here is free and needs no account. The page loads over the web and then does the whole job locally, so your document never travels anywhere.

Forty slides that waste half the handout

A trainer is printing workshop-deck.pdf for 25 attendees: 40 slides, each ringed by a wide empty margin that eats paper and shrinks the content. The deck is fine on screen and wasteful on paper, and the print run starts in an hour.

With the All pages scope, 10 percent off every edge pulls the frames tight across the whole deck in one edit. The download arrives as workshop-deck-cropped.pdf, and each printed slide carries larger text on the same sheet. Before running, the trainer flips through half a dozen pages in the preview, checking that no wide table and no footer page number sits inside the trimmed band.

One slide breaks the pattern: an A3 diagram shrunk onto a slide page, whose caption hugs the bottom edge. It gets the This page scope and a gentler 4 percent at the bottom, because percentages scale to each page's own size yet captions do not move. Mixed decks always deserve a page-by-page glance before the whole-document edit.

Crops that cut too deep

One setting for a mixed deck. Ten percent suits forty slides and beheads the A3 diagram's caption. Skim the smallest and largest pages in the preview before applying margins to all pages, and give outliers their own This page edit.

Footnotes inside the trimmed band. Page numbers and footers live exactly where crops bite. Flip through several pages after typing the margins; a number half-clipped in the preview is a number half-clipped in the download.

Expecting a smaller file. Hidden margins stay in the file, so a crop barely moves the byte count. Shrink the download afterwards with Compress PDF when the mailbox, not the layout, is the problem.

Cropping to hide something sensitive. A margin holding a name, a price or a signature is hidden, not gone: any reader that ignores the crop box shows it again. Destroy such content with Redact PDF instead of covering it.

Fighting the 40 percent cap. The boxes clamp at 40 per edge, so a page that needs more is not a crop job. Rebuild the source page instead of forcing margins the tool refuses.

When a crop is the wrong fix

Cropping frames the page and nothing else. Pages that also need turning belong in Rotate PDF, the same workbench with the rotation buttons present. Pages in the wrong order need Organize pages first, then the crop. Content that must be gone rather than hidden needs Redact PDF.

Several cropped slides per printed sheet is a second step in N-up and booklet: crop first, then impose. Before a professional print run, Print preflight checks the cropped file for resolution and bleed. And a file whose password nobody knows cannot be cropped anywhere until the sender shares it or an unlocked copy.

Short answers about cropping pages

Why percent instead of centimetres?
Because one setting then fits mixed papers: 10 percent off an A4 page and 10 percent off an A3 diagram both read as the same trim. Fixed units would need recalculating per size.
What is the most I can trim?
Forty percent per edge. Anything typed above that is clamped back, so the boxes refuse rather than misbehave. A page that needs more is not a crop job.
Will cropping shrink my file?
Barely. The hidden margin stays in the file, only flagged invisible, so the byte count hardly moves. Shrink the download afterwards with Compress PDF when size is the problem.
Can I crop odd and even pages differently?
Yes. Set the odd pages with the This page scope one by one, then the evens. Undo and Redo walk through the whole mixed history, so a wrong gutter is one press from gone.
Does the hidden margin survive?
Yes, in the file. Readers that honour the crop box hide it; readers that ignore the box show it again. When margin content must die rather than hide, destroy it with Redact PDF.
What is the download called?
The source name with -cropped added. Rename it to anything you like after downloading.

More PDFGym tools for the trimmed file

Each tool below runs in its own browser tab, exactly like this one: your files stay on your machine, every result is reopened and checked before download, and none of them asks for an account.

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