PDF editing.
Without the nonsense.

Edit existing text, OCR scans, create and fill forms, sign, redact, secure, merge and organize PDFs from one Windows desktop app.

Download for Windows Windows 10/11 · v0.6.84
Prefer no install? Download the portable version.
100% free forever No ads No account No subscription Local document processing
PDF CaptainDocument.pdf
—   □   ×
FileEditViewShareFormsAbout
PDF Document.pdf
SelectEdit textAdd textRedactImage−100%+

Simple PDF editing.

Everything you need, without a subscription.

Page 1 of 2Ready
Features

Way more than a PDF viewer.

Everyday editing tools plus OCR, forms, security, document cleanup and full page management.

Edit PDFs

Edit existing text, add new text, move content, work with images, draw, highlight and annotate pages.

OCR & scan cleanup

Make scans searchable with OCR, review uncertain words and clean up skew, rotation, noise, backgrounds and contrast.

Create & fill forms

Fill existing forms or create text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns, dates, signatures, buttons and image fields.

Signatures

Draw, type or import a signature, save signatures locally for reuse, or digitally sign with a P12/PFX certificate.

Redact & sanitize

Permanently redact sensitive content, search for repeated text and sanitize metadata, scripts, comments, attachments and hidden content.

Merge & organize

Merge PDFs, combine open tabs, import, reorder, rotate, duplicate, replace, reverse and delete pages.

Split, crop & extract

Split by page count, size, dividers, blank pages or bookmarks. Extract pages and crop manually or detect white margins automatically.

Review & comments

Add notes, highlights, underline, strikeout, callouts, arrows, stamps and text markup with replies and comment statuses.

PDF security

Protect documents with AES-256 encryption and control printing, copying, editing, commenting, forms and page assembly permissions.

Compress & optimize

Use Email, Balanced or Print presets, downsample images, remove unused data, convert to grayscale and audit what is using file space.

Convert & export

Bring in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, images and PDFs, then export editable or flattened PDFs, PNG, JPEG or WebP.

Document tools

Add bookmarks, links, page labels, headers, footers, watermarks, page numbers and Bates numbering, plus edit PDF metadata.

Also included
Saved signatures Automatic form-field detection Image editing Cross-document search Page resizing Print controls Recovery copies Multiple tabs Fast Web View PDF space audit
100% free forever

No trial. No account. No premium tier.

Download PDF Captain
Privacy

Your documents stay on your computer.

PDF Captain is built as a local desktop editor. Your PDFs and their contents are not uploaded to a PDF Captain server for editing, OCR, form work, redaction or signing.

For transparency, the app may connect to pdfcaptain.tech to check for updates, and some optional OCR, form-detection or document-conversion components may download their required files the first time they are used. Those downloads do not send your PDF to me.

✓

No cloud document processing

Your actual PDF work happens locally on your PC.

✓

No account or telemetry requirement

No sign-in is needed to edit documents, and the editor is not built around harvesting document data.

✓

Local saved data

Saved visual signatures, preferences, recent-file information and recovery files stay on your computer.

Feedback

Break something? Missing something?

Send me bugs, weird PDFs, rough edges and feature ideas. I am actively improving PDF Captain and feedback genuinely helps decide what gets fixed or added next.