PDFBox ships a standalone application JAR (Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/apache/pdfbox/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
pdfbox-app) that bundles every command-line utility into a single executable. You can download it from the Apache PDFBox releases page and run any built-in command without additional classpath setup. All commands require Java 11 or later on your PATH.
Download and run
Download the app JAR and invoke it with the subcommand of your choice:help or --help to list available subcommands, or help <command> for per-command usage:
Available commands
| Command | Subcommand name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ExtractText | export:text | Extract plain text, HTML, or Markdown from a PDF |
| ExtractImages | export:images | Save all embedded images to individual files |
| PDFToImage | render | Render each PDF page to an image file (JPG, PNG, etc.) |
| PDFMerger | merge | Combine multiple PDFs into a single document |
| PDFSplit | split | Divide a PDF into separate files by page range |
| Encrypt | encrypt | Apply password or certificate-based encryption |
| Decrypt | decrypt | Remove encryption from a PDF using a password or cert |
| OverlayPDF | overlay | Overlay one PDF on top of another |
| PrintPDF | print | Send a PDF to a printer |
| TextToPDF | fromtext | Convert a plain-text file to a PDF |
| ImageToPDF | fromimage | Pack one or more images into a PDF |
| ExportFDF | export:fdf | Export form field data to FDF format |
| ImportFDF | import:fdf | Import FDF form data into a PDF |
| ExportXFDF | export:xfdf | Export form field data to XFDF (XML) format |
| ImportXFDF | import:xfdf | Import XFDF form data into a PDF |
| ExtractXMP | export:xmp | Extract XMP metadata from a PDF |
| DecompressObjectstreams | decode | Decode and decompress object streams for debugging |
Java 11 or later is required. The
pdfbox-app JAR bundles Bouncy Castle for encryption support — no additional dependencies are needed on the classpath.Individual tool pages
ExtractText
Extract text content from PDF documents
ExtractImages
Save embedded images from PDFs to disk
PDFToImage
Render PDF pages to image files
PDFMerger and PDFSplit
Combine or divide PDF documents
Encrypt and Decrypt
Manage PDF passwords and permissions