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