Repair a damaged PDF.
Two recovery strategies, tried in order: a structural rebuild that keeps your text, and a rescue mode that saves whatever can still be drawn. All on your device.
Open your network tab while it runs: zero requests. Your document stays yours.
How PDF repair works
- Select the damaged PDF — the one that won't open, or opens with errors.
- Structural rebuild — the file is re-parsed leniently and saved fresh — fixing broken cross-reference tables, truncated endings, and junk objects. Text stays selectable.
- Rescue mode (fallback) — if the structure is beyond rebuilding, every page that can still be drawn is re-captured as an image into a new PDF. Content saved, text not selectable.
Honest scope: some corruption is unrecoverable, and if both strategies fail we tell you so instead of returning a broken file. It runs on the same in-browser engine as our PDF merger, PDF splitter, and PDF to Markdown converter — the file never leaves your machine.
Repairing PDFs, honestly answered
No — and be wary of tools that promise otherwise. If the file's content streams are destroyed, no software can conjure them back. This tool fixes the common cases: broken cross-reference tables, truncated files, invalid objects — and clearly tells you when it can't.
No. Both repair strategies run entirely in your browser. A damaged file is often a sensitive one — it never leaves your device.
If the structural rebuild succeeds — yes, everything stays real text. If rescue mode had to re-capture pages as images, the result says so and text on those pages won't be selectable.
Usually an interrupted download or transfer that truncated the file, an email client that mangled it, or a crash while saving. If you can re-download the original, that's always better than any repair.
Yes — free, no account, no file limit.
Still something on your mind? Try it yourself — it's free
Ready to fall in love with PDFs again?
Free, no account — and your files never leave your device.
Try PDFLove AI — It's Free →Coming soon · Premium
Take every tool offline — native apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS & Android.
- Every tool on this site, running natively on your device
- Fully offline — files never even touch a browser tab
- Batch-process whole folders of documents locally
The native apps will be a one-time paid upgrade when they launch — everything in the browser stays free, always.