The short answer
Drop the PDF on the tool below. The pages appear as thumbnails and are checked one by one; each shows its ink share, and pages counted as blank are marked with a red Blank label and a tick. Look through the marked pages, change the threshold if needed, and press Remove. The button shows how many pages will go. Download the new PDF; the original stays on your device unchanged.
If you only need to remove a few pages you already know, the Organize PDF tool lets you delete pages by hand and also reorder and rotate them.
Try it here: Remove blank pages from PDF
Open the full tool pageWhere blank pages come from
In a document of a few pages this is a small annoyance. In a stack of scanned contracts or invoices, half of the pages can be empty, which doubles the size of the file and makes it slower to read.
- Duplex scanning: a scanner that scans both sides adds an empty back for every single-sided sheet.
- Print layouts: books and reports insert blank pages so that chapters start on a right-hand page.
- Exports from Word or slides: a stray page break or an empty last slide becomes an empty page.
- Merged files: separators or empty cover sheets end up between documents.
- Fax and mail scanning services: cover sheets and empty backs are kept in the PDF.
How blank pages are detected
The tool draws each page small and counts the dark pixels, the ink. A thin strip along the edges is left out, because scanners often leave a gray shadow at the border of the paper. The ink share is the percentage of the remaining area that is dark. A typical text page has 5 to 15 percent ink, a page with a photo much more, and a truly empty page 0 percent.
A page counts as blank when its ink share is at or below the threshold. The default of 0.3 percent removes empty pages and scans with a few specks of dust while keeping pages with even a short paragraph. The ink share is shown under every thumbnail, so you can see why a page was or was not marked.
| Page content | Typical ink share | Marked at 0.3% |
|---|---|---|
| Empty page | 0% | Yes |
| Scan of an empty back with dust | 0.01 to 0.2% | Yes |
| Only a page number | Below 0.01% | Yes |
| A few lines of text | 0.5 to 2% | No |
| Full page of text | 5 to 15% | No |
Adjusting for your document
Raise the threshold when blank scans are not found. Recycled paper, a visible fold, show-through from the other side or heavy scanner noise can push an empty page above 0.3 percent. Move the slider up step by step and watch the marks change. Lower it when pages with very little content are marked, for example a page with only a signature line.
A page that contains only a page number or a header is counted as blank at the default threshold. Often that is what you want, because such pages are the empty backs of a print layout. If you need to keep them, untick them or lower the threshold. Pages you tick or untick by hand keep your choice when you move the slider.
What happens to the remaining pages
Only the marked pages are removed. The other pages are taken from the original file as they are: text stays selectable, images keep their quality, and links and form fields keep working. The removed pages and everything that only they used, such as their images, are left out of the new file completely, so it gets smaller.
The page order does not change. Bookmarks that pointed to a removed page no longer have a target, so check the bookmarks of long documents after saving.
Tips for scanned stacks
If you scan regularly, turning on blank page removal in the scanner software saves this step, but many scanners use a fixed threshold that either misses noisy pages or removes pages with faint handwriting. Checking the marked pages here takes a minute and you see each decision. After removing blank pages, the OCR tool can make the scan searchable, and Crop PDF can trim the scanner border. For very long scans, split the work: check the first pages to find a good threshold, then let the tool run through the rest and only look at pages near the threshold, whose ink share is close to the value on the slider.