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← Go dark · Mission 9 of 17

Stop uploading your documents to random PDF websites

A black box drawn over your account number often hides nothing: the text is still underneath, one copy and paste away. Stirling PDF redacts properly, and also merges, splits, compresses, password-protects and OCRs PDFs, all running on your own PC. No account, no installer, and your files never leave your computer.

30 minBeginnerTools: FreeStep 1 free
Tested 9 Oct 2026 · Stirling PDF 2.14.3 (3.1.0 also tried), Temurin Java 25.0.4.1, Tesseract 5.5.3, Windows 11
Redaction that really removes the text, not a black box on top, and a 10-second test to prove it
Your own PDF toolbox in the browser, with 50+ tools, running on your PC
Merge, split, compress, password and OCR, shown on a fictional invoice and scanned letter
  • Real results: a 6MB invoice shrunk to 513KB, and every number on a dusty scan read correctly
Before you start
  • A Windows 10 or 11 PC with about 500MB of free disk space
  • About 600MB of free RAM while it's running
  • A PDF to practise on. Use a copy, not your only original
  • Never used a terminal? Do Terminal survival kit first. You'll paste a few commands, nothing more
  • On a Mac or Linux? The commands here are for Windows. Stirling's own guides cover Mac ↗ and Linux ↗, and once it's running, steps 4 and 5 work the same
01/05Download Stirling PDF and its own copy of Java0 done
STEP 01 of 05~5 min

Download Stirling PDF and its own copy of Java

No installer and no admin rights: everything lives in one folder you can delete later.

  1. Every "free PDF" website works the same way: you upload your payslip or bank letter to someone else's server and hope they delete it. Stirling PDF (github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF ↗, about 94k stars) gives you the same tools as a web page that runs on your own PC.

    TipEverything in this mission is free, with no account: the core code is MIT-licensed, and the paid plans only add business extras like single sign-on and audit logs for organisations.

  2. It's written in Java, so it needs Java to run. Instead of installing Java system-wide, we download a portable copy (Eclipse Temurin, from adoptium.net ↗) into the same folder. Open PowerShell and paste this whole block:

    Windows PowerShell
    $ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'
mkdir $HOME\StirlingPDF; cd $HOME\StirlingPDF
Invoke-WebRequest "https://github.com/adoptium/temurin25-binaries/releases/download/jdk-25.0.4.1%2B1/OpenJDK25U-jre_x64_windows_hotspot_25.0.4.1_1.zip" -OutFile jre.zip
Expand-Archive jre.zip .
Rename-Item jdk-25.0.4.1+1-jre jre
Remove-Item jre.zip
Invoke-WebRequest "https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF/releases/download/v2.14.3/Stirling-PDF.jar" -OutFile Stirling-PDF.jar

  3. That's a 58MB Java download and a 287MB Stirling PDF file, usually under a minute. Check Java works:

    Terminal
    .\jre\bin\java -version
    Output
    openjdk version "25.0.4.1" 2026-08-18 LTS
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Temurin-25.0.4.1+1 (build 25.0.4.1+1-LTS)
...
    TipThis pins version 2.14.3 on purpose: the 3.x Windows download currently breaks Merge and Redact (issue #8321 ↗). Once that issue is closed, swap v2.14.3 for the newest version in the last line. (Stirling's desktop app is a different route: its docs say OCR there needs Stirling Cloud or your own server, so this mission keeps everything on your PC.)
✓
Checkpointjava -version prints a version, and your StirlingPDF folder has a jre folder and Stirling-PDF.jar.
If it breaks'Expand-Archive' or 'Rename-Item' says the path already exists + 1 more
'Expand-Archive' or 'Rename-Item' says the path already exists
You've run the block before. Delete the folder with Remove-Item -Recurse -Force $HOME\StirlingPDF and paste the block again.
The download is very slow
Make sure you pasted the first line too. Without $ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue', older PowerShell downloads crawl because it redraws the progress bar.
Still stuck? Ask the community
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