Hey r/PDF 👋
I've been quietly building ConvertPrivately (github ConvertPrivately) for the last year; a set of ~250 file tools that all run client-side in the browser. No uploads, no sign-ups, no "free tier with watermark." I wanted to share the PDF side of it here because this sub is the right audience to tear it apart.
The thing that surprised me most while building it: how much stuff a typical PDF carries that the author (and myself) has no idea about. Author name, software fingerprint, edit history, embedded thumbnails of redacted images, hidden form field values, JavaScript actions, even GPS coords from scanned phone photos. So a few of the tools are aimed specifically at that:
- PDF X-Ray — drop a PDF in and it shows you every piece of metadata, embedded font, JS action, and hidden object. Eye-opening on PDFs exported from Word or Acrobat.
- PDF Visual Metadata Stripper — removes the visible-but-forgotten stuff (headers/footers with usernames, "Draft" stamps, comments).
- PDF PII Redactor — actual redaction that rewrites the page content stream, not the "black rectangle on top" trick that people copy-paste right through.
- PDF Repair
+ PDF Validator — for the broken files clients send you at 5pm on a Friday.
Plus the usual suspects, done locally:
- Merge · Split · Compress · Rotate · Unlock
- OCR (PDF → searchable PDF)
- PDF → Word · Excel · Markdown · Text · Images
- Word → PDF · Image → PDF · Website → PDF · Email → PDF
- Batch versions of most converters
- PDF Form Filler
Everything is free. No login. The site is a static React app on Cloudflare Pages — you can literally pull your wifi cable after the page loads and the tools still work. You can also install it on your computer...
There are also write-up of (such as) Private PDF Cleanup Workflow (X-Ray → Redact → Compress → share) for anyone who handles sensitive docs regularly.
What I'd love feedback on:
- Which PDF features are missing that you reach for daily?
- Is "client-side only" actually a selling point for you, or do you not care?
- Has anyone here been burned by a "redacted" PDF that wasn't actually redacted? Curious how common that war story is.
Happy to go deep on the technical side too: pdf.js quirks, Tesseract WASM, why "compress PDF" in a browser is harder than it sounds.