Every PDF page carries a /Rotate value of 0, 90, 180 or 270. Readers apply it when they draw the page. The tool above changes that value for the pages you choose and saves the file, so the rotation is permanent and lossless: no pixel is re-rendered.
Use the top row to rotate every page at once, then the arrows under each thumbnail to fix stragglers. Presses add up, so two right turns make 180.
A duplex scanner feeds a stack of forty pages and three come out upside down. A phone camera saves a landscape photo of a portrait document. A finance report mixes portrait text with a landscape table that someone rotated in their viewer and never saved. Every one of these is a rotation problem, and every one is fixed by changing a number rather than touching the content.
How to rotate a PDF
Add the PDF
Drop it or browse. Every page is rendered to a thumbnail in the browser so you can see which ones are wrong before doing anything.
Rotate everything, if everything is wrong
The Left 90, 180 and Right 90 buttons at the top apply to every page. A whole document scanned sideways is fixed with one press.
Nudge individual pages
Each thumbnail has its own arrows. Rotate the three upside-down pages by 180 and leave the rest alone.
Press Apply rotation and download
The flag is written to each page with pdf-lib and the file downloads. It opens the right way up in every reader, on every device.
Only the page's rotation flag changes. Text stays selectable, scans keep their resolution.
0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees. Presses accumulate and wrap around.
Thumbnails are rendered and the file is rewritten in your browser.
Metadata rotation versus baked-in rotation
Two different things can make a page look sideways, and understanding which one you have saves a rescan.
- The flag is wrong. The content was drawn upright but the page carries a rotate value that turns it. Common when a scanner app guesses orientation. Changing the flag fixes it completely.
- The pixels are sideways. The image inside the page was captured rotated, and the flag is 0. Changing the flag still fixes the display, because the reader rotates whatever is on the page. The underlying image remains sideways inside the file, which only matters if another tool later ignores the flag.
For anything you will view, print or send, the flag is enough. If a downstream system is known to ignore rotation flags, and a few old OCR engines and print pipelines do, run the rotated file through Compress in Strong mode to re-render the pages upright, at the cost of the text layer.
Why a page looks fine in one reader and wrong in another
Some viewers let you rotate a page on screen without saving. Preview on a Mac and several phone apps do this, and the page looks correct until the file is opened somewhere else. The rotation lived in the viewer's memory, never in the file. The fix is to apply the rotation with a tool that writes it, which is what this one does.
Rotate, flip and mirror are not the same thing
Desktop tools use these words loosely, and searches for one often mean another.
Turns the page around its centre
- Text stays readable, in a new orientation
- 90, 180 or 270 degrees, per page or for all
- Stored as a flag, lossless and reversible
- What almost everyone with a sideways PDF wants
Reflects the page across an axis
- Text reads backwards, like a reflection
- Used for iron-on transfers and some print plates
- Requires re-rendering the content
- If you searched for this and want readable pages, you want rotate
Changing which page comes first is a third thing again: reordering. That is a job for the Editor, or for Split with the pages typed in the order you want.
Fixing a batch scan efficiently
- Look at the thumbnails first. They render in the browser at load. Wrong pages stand out at a glance in a way they never do while paging through a reader.
- Fix the majority with the top row. If most pages are sideways, rotate all, then correct the few that were right and are now wrong.
- Very large files may skip thumbnails. On a 600-page scan the previews can time out. The rotation still applies; use the page numbers in the result to confirm.
- Landscape tables in a portrait report are a legitimate mixed-orientation document. Rotate only the table pages so the reader can read them without tilting the screen, and leave the rest.
Why it runs in your browser
Rotation is a small edit, and the documents it gets applied to are often not small at all: scanned contracts, identity documents, medical records that arrived sideways. Uploading a 60 MB scan to a server to change a flag is a poor trade in both time and exposure.
After rotating
- Merge it into the rest of the pack with Merge PDF. Rotation flags travel with their pages.
- Number it with Add page numbers. The stamp is placed relative to the page as displayed, so it lands in the right corner on rotated pages too.
- Shrink it with Compress if it has to go through an inbox. Compress after rotating, never before.
The tool is right above
Everything on this page runs in your browser. Scroll up, drop the file, and keep it on your machine.
Common questions
The questions that come up with a sideways scan on screen.
01Is the rotation permanent?
Yes. The rotate flag is written into each page of the saved file, so every reader on every device opens it the right way up. Nothing is stored in a sidecar or a viewer setting.
02Can I rotate just one page?
Yes. Each thumbnail has its own arrows. Rotate the pages that need it and leave the rest untouched.
03Does rotating reduce quality?
No. Only a page's orientation flag changes. The content is not rendered or resampled, so text stays selectable and scans keep their resolution.
04A page looks correct in Preview but wrong everywhere else. Why?
Preview and some phone apps rotate on screen without saving to the file. Open the file here, apply the rotation, and download. The saved copy carries the change.
05What is the difference between rotate and flip?
Rotate turns the page around its centre and keeps the text readable. Flip mirrors it so text reads backwards, which is only useful for transfers and some print work. Sideways or upside-down pages need rotate.
06Can I rotate a password-protected PDF?
Not while it is encrypted. Remove the password from a file you own with the Unlock tool first, then rotate.
07Does it work on a phone?
Yes. Safari, Chrome and Firefox on iOS and Android all run it, thumbnails included. Very large scans render previews more slowly on a phone.
08Is it free?
Free. Every tool, unlimited use, no signup.