strip-footers-and-page-numbers

name	strip-footers-and-page-numbers
description	Remove footer text and page numbers from a PDF — useful when reprinting a doc whose pagination no longer matches, or stripping a journal/report footer before binding. Triggers on phrases like "remove footers", "strip page numbers", "delete the footer from this PDF".

Strip Footers and Page Numbers

Erase footer content (page numbers, dates, document IDs, copyright lines) from every page of a PDF.

Inputs

• Input PDF path (required).
• Footer height (optional) — default 50 pt from the bottom of the page. Adjust if the footer is taller or sits higher.
• Mode (optional):
  • whiteout (default) — paint a white rectangle over the footer area; preserves PDF structure and is fast.
  • text-aware — use pdftotext to identify footer text, then redact only matching text runs. Slower but no white box.
• Output path (optional) — defaults to <input>-no-footer.pdf.

Tooling

• pdftk, qpdf, ghostscript, mutool (mupdf-tools), pdftotext (poppler-utils).
• For overlay-based whiteout: generate a 1-page overlay PDF with a white rectangle at the footer Y-range and stamp it onto every page using pdftk ... background or qpdf --overlay.

Whiteout recipe (qpdf + ImageMagick or Python ReportLab)

1. Probe page size: pdfinfo input.pdf | grep "Page size".
2. Generate a single-page overlay PDF the same size, with a white filled rectangle covering (0, 0) to (pageWidth, footerHeight).
3. Stamp onto every page:

   qpdf input.pdf --overlay overlay.pdf -- output.pdf
   

Verification step

After stamping, render page 1 and the last page to PNG and visually confirm the footer is gone and no body content was clipped:

gs -sDEVICE=png16m -r100 -o /tmp/check-%d.png -dFirstPage=1 -dLastPage=1 output.pdf

If text-aware mode: run pdftotext output.pdf - | tail and confirm the page-number/footer line no longer appears.

Caveats

• Whiteout leaves a white band — not a problem on white-paper prints, but visible if the page background is colored.
• Footer height varies — when in doubt, ask the user or render a preview and let them confirm the band height.