Flatten PDF
Bake form answers and annotations into the page so they cannot be changed.
Drop files here
Or paste them, or pick them from this device. Nothing is uploaded: the work happens in this tab.
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A TrueType or OpenType font, for answers in a script the form’s own font cannot draw.
Flatten the file
Add a file to get started.
What this does
Flattening bakes interactive content into the page: form answers, annotations and signature appearances stop being things a reader draws on top and become part of the page itself. It is what you do to a filled form before sending it, so the recipient sees what you filled in and cannot change it. It cannot be undone, which is the point of it.
What it will not do
Every tool here says what it cannot do, in its own words, before you rely on it.
- Flattening cannot be undone. The answers become part of the page, and nothing can read them back out as a form — which is the point of it.
- A box the document never drew is drawn first, so that a form filled in by another tool is baked with its answers rather than blank. A box whose current state the document deliberately left blank — an unticked box — stays blank.
- An annotation carrying no appearance has nothing to bake, so it is left as it is and reported.
- Links are left working. Baking one would delete the jump and draw nothing in its place.
- A hidden annotation is taken away rather than drawn, because a reader does not draw it either and a page that gained it would not be the same page.
- A signature is not re-drawn. Its appearance is the signer’s, and flattening a signed document breaks the signature that covered it.
Questions people ask
Can I un-flatten a document?
No. The answers have become the page — there is no form left to read them out of. Keep the un-flattened copy if you may need to edit it again.
Do links stop working?
No, links are left alone. Baking one would delete the jump and draw nothing in its place, so they stay as they are.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The work happens in this browser tab, on your own machine. There is no server in this product to send a file to, which is why the promise is checkable rather than something you have to take on trust: open your browser's network panel and watch it do the work without making a request.
Is there a size limit, or a limit on how many files?
None that we impose. The limit is your own machine's memory, because that is where the work happens — a few hundred megabytes is comfortable on a laptop, and less on a phone. There is no daily task counter, no queue and no account.
What does it cost, and what is the catch?
Nothing, and there is no paid tier that unlocks features: the whole product is the free one. That is affordable because running it costs us nothing — your computer does the work — so there is no per-file cost to recover, no advertising and no data to sell.