What is it?
PDF to Black and White turns a colour PDF into Grayscale (photos and shading become shades of grey) or Black & white (pure black text on a clean white background, ideal for scanned pages).
Who is it for?
Students and offices printing on black-and-white printers, people submitting documents to portals that ask for B&W scans, and anyone saving costly colour ink.
How to use it
- Choose a PDF.
- Pick the Style: Grayscale or Black & white.
- For Black & white, move the Darkness cut-off (lighter ↔ darker) until text is dark and the background clean. Choose the Quality.
- Tap Convert and download.
Which style when?
- Black & white: scans of typed or printed documents, receipts and forms. Makes faint text bolder and files smaller.
- Grayscale: documents with photos, charts or signatures in light ink.
Example
A yellowed scan of a mark sheet: Black & white with the cut-off slightly darker gives white paper and black print, and prints far more clearly than the colour scan.
The PDF is opened and changed inside your browser; it is never uploaded. Close the page and it is gone.
Errors and how to fix them
- “This PDF is password-protected. Remove the password first”: open it once with Remove PDF Password (you need the password), then use the unlocked copy here.
- Text disappears or breaks up: the cut-off is too light; move it darker.
- Background turns grey or speckled: move the cut-off lighter, or use Grayscale.
- Text can’t be selected afterwards: pages are redrawn as pictures. If you need searchable text, run the result through the OCR tool.
Open the tool: PDF to Black and White
Still stuck?
Contact support. Tell us which tool or page you were using, what you tapped, what you saw, and your phone or computer and browser (for example: Android phone, Chrome). We reply by email.
Questions, or an error not listed here?
Tell us in the comments: what you were doing, the exact message you saw, and your device and browser. We read every comment and add new fixes to this article.