PDF Unlock Tool

PDF Unlock Tool is a simple-to-use application designed to remove password protection and user restrictions from PDF documents. It features just a couple of options that are intuitive enough to be tackled even by inexperienced users. It doesn't require Adobe Acrobat.

Setup and interface

The setup procedure doesn't take long and requires minimal intervention on your behalf. There are no prerequisites involved.
As far as the interface is concerned, PDF Unlock Tool opts for a single window with a plain and simple structure which shouldn't give you any trouble, thanks to the fact that it displays all options available.

Remove PDF password protection

All you have to do is select the PDF document you want to decrypt, enter its password, specify the output directory and name of the new file, and click a button to unlock the PDF and construct the new file with identical contents and eliminated restrictions. This means that the original file is left intact, so there's no need to perform file backups before using this program.

Evaluation and conclusion

Although it hasn't been updated for a long time, we haven't encountered any compatibility issues with newer Windows models in our evaluation. It didn't hang, crash or prompt error messages. It unlocked PDFs quickly and error-free, running on a low amount of CPU and RAM, so it didn't hamper the system's performance in the meantime.
On the other hand, the utility comes packed with a light set of features and doesn't make room for customization, such as editing the metadata of the new PDFs or configuring page settings. On top of that, it doesn't support batch processing, so you can decrypt only one PDF doc at a time. Nevertheless, you can test PDF Unlock Tool for yourself.