unlockR – Stupid Simple App to Remove PDF Password in Linux & Windows

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⏳ Last active: 23 Sep 2025 at 14:41

📅 Created: 25 Jul 2022 at 09:49

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For those want to unlock / decrypt PDF files, there’s now a stupid simple graphical tool to do the job in Linux.

It’s easy to encrypt you PDF files in Ubuntu Linux since the built-in LibreOffice office suite has the option on ‘Export as PDF’ dialog. However, there seems no easy way to remove password for PDF file, other than using ```

qpdf

qpdf --decrypt --password=<PASSWORD> input.pdf output.pdf

unlockR is a new GTK4 application that use Libadwaita to provide a modern simple user interface to decrypt your PDF files.

![Image](https://ubuntuhandbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/unlockr-selectfile.webp)

It’s so simple that you just need to click ‘<em>Open a File</em>‘ to select your PDF, then type the password, and finally hit ‘Decrypt’. It doesn’t change the original file, but generates a new PDF without password protect.

![Image](https://ubuntuhandbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/unlockr-dark.webp)

As the picture shows, it has both light and dark mode that switches automatically according your system color scheme.

<strong>NOTE: This app is NOT about to crack password on a PDF file. You need the password to be able to decrypt it.</strong>

<h3>How to Install unlockR</h3>

It is a free open-software software works on both Linux and Windows. For Windows package, just grab the zip from github releases page:

<a href="https://github.com/jkotra/unlockr/releases" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">unlockR releases</a>

For Linux, it offers the binary package via universal&nbsp;<a href="https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.jkotra.unlockr" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Flatpak</a>. Ubuntu user need to first press&nbsp;<strong>Ctrl+Alt+T</strong>&nbsp;on keyboard to open terminal, and run command to install the Flatpak daemon:

sudo apt install flatpak

![Image](https://ubuntuhandbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/apt-flatpak-jammy.webp)

Next, install the app package via command:

flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/com.github.jkotra.unlockr.flatpakref

![Image](https://ubuntuhandbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/flatpak-unlockr.webp)

Like normal applications, search for and open it from ‘Activities’ overview (or start menu) after installation.

<h3>Uninstall:</h3>

To remove the Flatpak package, open terminal and run command:

flatpak uninstall --delete-data com.github.jkotra.unlockr

You may also clear useless runtime libraries via ```

flatpak uninstall --unused

```.