Remove blank pages from a PDF automatically
Duplex scanners scan both sides of every sheet, so a stack of single-sided letters turns into a PDF where every second page is empty. This tool finds those pages for you and lets you remove blank pages from a PDF in one go, whether it came from an office scanner, a phone scanning app or a word processor that left empty pages behind.
Each page is drawn in your browser at a low resolution and its “ink” is measured: how much of the page is noticeably darker than the paper. Real scans are never perfectly white, so the detector ignores the things that make a blank sheet look dirty — scanner grain, single specks of dust, punch holes near the edge, shadows along the border and faint text showing through from the other side. Pages that only carry a page number, or that say “This page intentionally left blank”, are recognised too.
You always stay in control: every page is shown as a preview with its verdict, blank pages are pre-selected, and one tap keeps or removes any page. The PDF never leaves your device.
How to remove blank pages from a PDF
- Drop your PDF onto the upload area or click to choose it. Every page is checked and shown as a thumbnail, with blank pages marked in red.
- Adjust Sensitivity if needed: low values remove only truly empty pages, high values also remove nearly empty ones such as a page with a single stamp.
- Use Ignore edges to skip scanner shadows, staples and hole punches near the edge of the paper.
- Tick Also remove pages that contain only a page number if those should go too.
- Tap any thumbnail to change its fate, then press Remove pages and Download PDF.
Remove Blank Pages from PDF features
Real ink measurement
Pages are rendered and measured pixel by pixel, so it works on scans with no text layer as well as on digital PDFs.
Tolerant of messy scans
Grain, isolated specks, punch holes, faint bleed-through and dark scanner borders are filtered out before a page is judged.
Page-number pages
A page whose only mark is a small number in the header or footer is labelled separately and removed only if you ask.
“Intentionally blank” notices
Pages that just say they were left blank on purpose are detected from their text and marked for removal.
Preview and override
Each page shows its thumbnail, verdict and ink coverage. Tap to keep a page the detector flagged, or remove one it kept.
Private and quick
Everything runs in your browser; a 100-page scan is usually checked in well under a minute.
How blank-page detection works
Each page is rendered at about 50 DPI — plenty to see marks, and fast enough for long documents. The paper colour is taken as the median brightness of the page, so cream or grey scans are judged fairly. A pixel counts as ink when it is at least 48 brightness levels darker than the paper, or strongly coloured, which keeps light bleed-through and scanner noise out.
Touching ink pixels are grouped into marks. Marks of one or two pixels are treated as dust. Round, solid marks 3.5–9.5 mm across within 28 mm of an edge are treated as punch holes. What remains is measured inside the area left after ignoring the edges, and the page is blank when that ink covers less than the threshold set by the sensitivity slider — 0.035% of the page at the default setting. Pages with a few real words in their text layer are never treated as blank.
| Sensitivity | Blank if marks cover less than | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | 0.003–0.012% | Digital PDFs where blank pages are truly empty |
| 4–6 (default 5) | 0.02–0.06% | Typical office and duplex scans |
| 7–8 | 0.1–0.18% | Noisy scans, photocopies with dark speckles |
| 9–10 | 0.3–0.5% | Also removes near-empty pages, such as a single stamp or signature line |
Tips for clean results
- Check the red pages before saving. A page with a faint pencil note or a light watermark can look almost blank. The ink figure under each thumbnail shows how close it was.
- Dark border around every scan? Raise “Ignore edges” to 8–10% so the shadow of the scanner lid is not counted as content.
- Crooked or sideways pages? Straighten them with Deskew PDF or turn them with Rotate PDF after removing the blanks.
- Want to remove other pages too? Use Delete PDF Pages to remove any page by number, or Organize PDF to reorder them.
- Scanning from a phone? Scan to PDF crops and cleans each photo, which makes blank sides easier to spot.
What is kept in the new file
The new PDF is built from the pages you keep, with the document title, author, subject and keywords copied over. Page content, links and comments on those pages are unchanged and nothing is re-compressed, so quality stays exactly as it was. Bookmarks and interactive form logic are not carried over, because they may point to pages that no longer exist.
Remove Blank Pages from PDF FAQ
How do I remove blank pages from a PDF for free?
Open the PDF on this page. Blank pages are found and marked automatically; check the previews, press “Remove pages” and download the new file. There is no sign-up, watermark or page limit.
Can it remove blank pages from a scanned PDF?
Yes. Detection looks at the rendered page, not the text, so it works on scans. It ignores grain, dust, punch holes, edge shadows and faint show-through, which usually stop simple detectors from seeing a scanned page as blank.
Why was a page with content marked as blank?
Its marks cover very little of the page — for example a short pencil note or a faint stamp. Lower the sensitivity or tap the page to keep it. The ink percentage under each preview shows how much was found.
Why wasn’t a blank page detected?
Something on it is dark enough to count as ink, such as heavy show-through, a dark scanner border or a hole punch far from the edge. Raise the sensitivity, increase “Ignore edges”, or simply tap the page to remove it.
Does removing blank pages reduce the file size?
Usually a little, because the removed pages and any images used only on them are left out. For a much smaller file, run the result through Compress PDF.
Is it safe to use with confidential documents?
Yes. The PDF is opened and checked by your browser and the new file is created on your device. Nothing is uploaded.