Files never leave your device.How it works
How to crop a PDF
- 1Drop your PDF above (or click to select).
- 2Drag the crop box to frame the area you want to keep. It applies to all pages.
- 3Click Crop, then download the cropped PDF.
Frequently asked questions
- Do my files get uploaded anywhere?
- No. The crop is applied entirely in your browser — your PDF never leaves your device.
- Does cropping delete the content outside the box?
- It hides it by setting the page's crop box, so readers show only the framed area. The underlying content stays in the file; to remove it permanently, print the cropped PDF to a new PDF or use another tool.
- Can I crop each page differently?
- The same crop box is applied to every page, which is what you want for a document with consistent margins. Per-page cropping isn't supported yet.
- What about rotated or mixed-size pages?
- The crop box is mapped into each page's own coordinate space, so it lands correctly on rotated pages and adapts to pages of different sizes.
Trim a PDF down to what matters
Scanned documents come with black borders; slides have wide margins; a page you only need part of carries a lot you don't. Cropping frames just the part you want to keep. HivePDF lets you drag a box over the page and applies it to every page at once, right in your browser, with nothing uploaded.
One box, every page
Drag the crop box to frame the content, and HivePDF maps that rectangle into each page's own coordinate space — so it lands correctly even on rotated pages or a document whose pages aren't all the same size. Cropping sets the page's crop box, the standard way PDFs define their visible area, so every reader shows the trimmed result.
Good to know
Because it runs locally, even a sensitive scan stays on your device. Cropping hides the area outside the box rather than deleting the data; to shrink the file afterwards use Compress, or to rotate pages first use Rotate.
Crop box vs. trimming pixels
Cropping a PDF sets the page's CropBox — a rectangle in the page's coordinate system that tells readers and printers which region to display. It's the same mechanism professional layout software uses, which is why a cropped PDF looks right when printed, not just on screen. Nothing outside the box is deleted or re-rendered; the full page content still exists underneath, which is also why file size barely changes after cropping.
Real-world uses
Crop out the black border a flatbed scanner leaves around a page, trim wide slide margins down to just the content before printing handouts, or cut a scanned book page down to a single column of text. Because the same crop box maps onto every page, it works best when pages share a consistent layout — a mixed batch of different page sizes may need a wider crop area to fit all of them.