How to Crop a PDF for Free: Trim Pages to Any Size

Quick summary: To crop a PDF for free on Mac, open it in Preview, go to Tools → Rectangular Selection, drag to select the area you want to keep, then Tools → Crop (or Cmd+K). On Windows, use the free PDF Crop web app or LibreOffice Draw. On iPhone, the Markup tool can crop individual pages. All methods work without Adobe Acrobat.

Cropping a PDF resizes the visible area of each page — removing white borders, cutting down a landscape scan to just the content area, or trimming a full-page poster down to a usable size. It takes under a minute on most platforms. Once cropped, you can upload the result to our PDF summarizer to read or extract the content instantly.

Important note on PDF cropping: PDF pages have two separate boundaries — the visible crop box and the underlying media box. Most free tools adjust the crop box (changing what is visible) without removing the data outside it. The hidden margins remain in the file and can be revealed by changing the viewer settings. Only rasterizing the PDF (converting pages to images) truly deletes the cropped area.

How to crop a PDF on Mac — Preview

Preview has a built-in crop tool that is fast and free:

1. Open the PDF in Preview.
2. Go to Tools → Rectangular Selection (or press R).
3. Drag to draw a selection rectangle over the area you want to keep on the first page.
4. Go to Tools → Crop (or press Cmd + K).
5. Preview crops the current page. To apply the same crop to all pages:
   • Hold Cmd + A to select all pages in the sidebar.
   • Repeat the Crop command.
6. Save with Cmd + S (or File → Export as PDF to keep the original).

Tip: To make the selection precise, use Tools → Show Inspector (Cmd+I) while dragging — the Inspector shows the exact pixel coordinates of your selection.

How to crop a PDF on Windows

Windows has no built-in PDF cropping tool, but two free approaches work well:

Option A: LibreOffice Draw

1. Download and install LibreOffice from libreoffice.org.
2. Open LibreOffice Draw and go to File → Open → select your PDF.
3. LibreOffice imports each page as an editable canvas.
4. For each page, select all content (Ctrl+A), then use Format → Position and Size to reposition the content group within the page.
5. Alternatively, select individual objects and delete the border elements.
6. Go to File → Export as PDF to save.

LibreOffice Draw works well for simple documents but may reflow complex layouts.

Option B: Free online crop tool

Several browser-based tools crop PDFs without sign-up. Search for “crop PDF free” and choose any well-reviewed option:

1. Upload your PDF.
2. Set the crop margins (top, bottom, left, right) in the tool.
3. Download the cropped PDF.

Privacy note: Your file is uploaded to a remote server. Do not use online tools for sensitive documents.

How to crop a PDF on iPhone

1. Open the PDF in the Files app.
2. Tap the file to open it in Quick Look.
3. Tap the Markup icon (pencil in a circle).
4. Use the Lasso or Rectangular Selection tool to draw around the area you want to keep.

Limitation: iOS Markup is designed for annotation, not page resizing. For true cropping (changing page dimensions), convert the PDF page to an image first (see how to convert a picture to PDF on iPhone), crop the image in the Photos app, then convert back to PDF.

How to crop a PDF with Ghostscript (command line)

For precise crops or batch processing, Ghostscript sets page boundaries directly:

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \
   -c "[/CropBox [x0 y0 x1 y1] /PAGES pdfmark" \
   -f input.pdf \
   -sOutputFile=cropped.pdf

Replace [x0 y0 x1 y1] with the crop rectangle in PDF points (1 point = 1/72 inch). For an A4 page (595 × 842 points) trimmed by 50 points on each side: [50 50 545 792].

This sets the CropBox for all pages. The underlying content is preserved in the MediaBox — see the note above about true vs. visual-only cropping.

How to find the right crop coordinates

Before cropping, you need to know the page size and where to set the crop box:

• Preview on Mac: Open the PDF → go to Tools → Show Inspector (Cmd+I). The Inspector shows the page size in points and the current selection coordinates as you drag.
• Online tools: Most browser-based croppers show live dimensions as you drag the crop area.
• Command line: Run pdfinfo input.pdf (from the Poppler tools package) to see page size in points.

Common page sizes in PDF points:

Page size	Width (pt)	Height (pt)
A4 portrait	595	842
US Letter portrait	612	792
A4 landscape	842	595
US Letter landscape	792	612

How to remove white borders from a scanned PDF

Scanners often add large white margins around scanned content. To remove them:

1. Open the PDF in Preview (Mac).
2. Use the Rectangular Selection tool to draw a tight box around the actual content.
3. Crop (Cmd+K).
4. Repeat per page if needed.

For a document with consistent margins, measure the margin width once and crop all pages to the same dimensions.

Related guides

• How to compress a PDF for free — reduce file size after cropping
• How to edit a PDF for free — make content changes alongside cropping
• How to convert a picture to PDF on iPhone — convert before cropping on mobile

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Does cropping a PDF permanently delete the cropped area?

In most free tools, no. Cropping adjusts the CropBox — the viewable area — but the MediaBox (the full original page) is still in the file. To permanently delete the cropped area, convert the PDF pages to images (e.g., PNG), crop the images, then convert back to PDF. This is called rasterizing and it makes the file slightly larger but truly removes the content.

Why does my cropped PDF show the full page again in some viewers?

The viewer is showing the MediaBox instead of the CropBox. This happens in some versions of Chrome and Acrobat when the “Crop box” display option is off. It does not mean the crop failed — the CropBox is set correctly. For a viewer-independent crop, rasterize the pages as described above.

Can I crop only one page in a multi-page PDF?

Yes in Preview: navigate to that page in the sidebar, select and crop — Preview only crops the currently selected page(s). In Ghostscript, add a page selector: -dFirstPage=3 -dLastPage=3 to crop only page 3.

How do I resize a PDF to a specific paper size?

Cropping reduces the page; scaling to a different size is a separate operation. In Preview, go to File → Print → Paper Size and choose a different size, then Save as PDF. In Ghostscript, use -sPAPERSIZE=a4 or -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=595 -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=842 along with -dFIXEDMEDIA -dPDFFitPage to scale content to fit.

How to crop a PDF without Adobe?

On Mac, use Preview: open the PDF, draw a rectangular selection, then go to Tools → Crop. On Windows, use an online crop tool (search “crop PDF free”) or LibreOffice Draw. Ghostscript also crops via the -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS / -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS flags. None of these methods require Adobe Acrobat.

How do I cut a specific part of a PDF?

Cropping changes the visible page area but does not extract a region as a separate image. To isolate a specific section — a chart, a photo, a block of text — take a screenshot of the page and crop it in a photo editor (Preview on Mac, Paint on Windows, Photos on iPhone). For extracting specific pages rather than regions, see how to extract pages from a PDF for free.

How do I crop an image out of a PDF?

PDF editors do not directly export embedded images as standalone files. To get an image out of a PDF: take a screenshot of the page, crop to the image area in Preview or a photo editor, and save as PNG or JPEG. In Adobe Acrobat Pro, go to Tools → Export PDF → Image to extract all embedded images at once. On Mac, you can also use the select-all shortcut in Preview to see if images are selectable, then copy and paste into a photo editor.