PDF merging use cases tend to pop up every now and then. For example, when applying for a UK Visitor VISA application for my family, I have to merge lots of files such as payslips and bank statements. Since they are sensitive documents, it doesn’t feel right to use 3rd-party online tools here. So I like to do it locally using Linux tools.
Linux has a command line tool to merge pdf files. It’s as simple as:
pdfunite file1.pdf file2.pdf output.pdf
Bank statements are sometimes encrypted and you will have to decrypt them first. That can be done by:
qpdf --decrypt "in.pdf" --replace-input
That’s it. With these two commands, I locally merge PDFs securely on my device.