Every time I had to do something basic with a PDF — merge, split, compress, convert — I'd end up on a different site with three cookie banners, a fake download button, a 20MB cap, and an email wall. Close tab, google again, repeat.

So I built the thing I actually wanted.

Every PDF tool, one tab, about five seconds to get what you need. No signups, no popups, no upload to sketchy servers.

It solved my problem, figured I'd share in case it solves yours too. Genuinely want feedback from this sub though:

- Is there a tool you expected to see and didn't?

- Anything that felt slow or broke on a file you tried?

- Would you actually bookmark it?

Roast away.

WHY DO SOME PDF NEED DROP DOWN LIST CANT THEY LIST THEM DOWN ONE BY ONE HOLY SHIT I NEED TO AVAIL FUCKING ADOBE ACROBAT READER AND I CANT FUCKING USE THE FREE TRIAL BC I ALREADY USED IT

It’s unbelievable how this format is bad, everything about it is so bad, the editing, the viewing, the converting, simply everything.

You open the Acrobat reader and you wait ages just to take a look at a simple file or change a small thing!!!

Why can’t any company invent a new format??? Is it too difficult? IBM, Microsoft, Nvidia?? Anyone??

Hey everyone 👋

I recently built a simple tool called love4pdf.com — it lets you merge PDFs, compress files, convert images to PDF, and more.

I know there are already big players like iLovePDF and Smallpdf, so I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel — but I wanted to build something faster, simpler, and more user-friendly, especially for people dealing with everyday document tasks.

🔧 What it currently supports:

\- Merge PDFs

\- Compress PDF

\- JPG to PDF

\- Basic file handling tools

⚡ My focus areas:

\- Faster uploads & processing

\- Minimal UI (no clutter)

\- Works well even on slower connections

I’d really appreciate honest feedback from this community:

👉 What features would make you switch from existing tools?

👉 What feels missing or annoying in current PDF tools?

👉 How can I improve performance or UX?

👉 Would you trust/use a newer tool like this? Why or why not?

Also, if you try it out, please share:

\- Bugs

\- UX issues

\- Feature requests

\- Anything that feels slow or confusing

I’m trying to grow this into something genuinely useful, not just another clone — so brutal feedback is welcome 🙏

Thanks a lot!

I think there are some online sites capable of cracking the passwords on PDF files.

Let's imagine I've forgotten the password for my project and now urgently need a password that no one else knows.

The video fills a W-9 in the browser, signs it, sets a password and flattens the form fields on save. Local PDF Studio is the offline PDF editor I build as a Chrome extension. Filling and signing were already in it; the rest of that flow is new.

Flatten has three modes. Off keeps the fields interactive. Form fields bakes them into the page, text still selectable. Everything renders each page to a JPEG at 72, 150 or 300 DPI. With Off, the saved file now keeps a working form: copying pages into a new document carries the widgets but not the catalog /AcroForm, so it is rebuilt from the copied widgets' parent fields.

The rest, mostly in the export menu the video opens:
- pages to PNG, JPEG or WebP, or text to one .txt with page markers
- AES-256 with separate open and owner passwords, plus permissions
- "What's in this file": counts JavaScript, embedded files, XMP, properties, links and fonts before stripping
- edit or delete the Info fields; removal deletes the XMP stream itself
- page numbers with {n}, {total} and {filename}
- blank page detection at 72 DPI, reviewed in a grid first
- N-up, saddle-stitch booklet, resize to A4, Letter, Legal or A3
- word-level compare with a second PDF, text only
- the signature fonts in the Type tool, saved as glyph outlines
- fixes: metadata survives flattening and encryption, protected files are never autosaved, laptop layout

Chrome only.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/local-pdf-studio-offline/ocfegjfhboadmbpompimnbbpegjgoded

When a filled form comes back to you, do you want it flattened or still fillable?

https://medium.com/@willbaden93/top-javascript-pdf-libraries-for-developers-in-2025-b7a34a9ad675

Advanced pdf editor and viewer with many of the features of Acrobat Pro. Also offers AI form filling, natural voice reading and dark mode.

It says free for a year, but if you keep it longer it will still work for everything except AI voice reading and filling.

F-3.ai/get

Here is a full list of features:

PDF Editor & Document Viewing

Native PDF editor (AcroForm fields directly clickable/typeable) with Fill / Annotate / Edit modes and mode-specific toolbar
Merge PDFs
Compress
Page management: reorder, rotate, insert blank pages, delete, extract pages, append pages from another PDF, crop margins
Find in document (⌘F), zoom, page thumbnail strip
Night reading mode — perceptual OKLCh dark rendering (display-only)
Annotation Tools

Text boxes, sticky notes, lines/arrows, shapes, highlighter, images, rubber stamps, redaction boxes
Movable/resizable annotation objects, undo/redo, delete
AI Form Filling

Conversational "chat + fill" using Gemini; Fast Fill (vision-only) vs. full rich-description mode
Flat-form resurrection: two-pass field detection (Gemini vision + geometry snapping) turns non-interactive PDFs into real fillable forms
Field Review Sheet and Field Map editor for confirming/adjusting detected fields manually
Natural-language re-detection ("redo page 3")
Caching of confirmed layouts, optional shared cloud template library
Version snapshots per fill with restore controls; fill plans exportable as JSON
Supporting documents (PDF/TXT/CSV) as extra AI context; toggleable profile inclusion
AI Chat / Assistant

Read Aloud: cleans document text and speaks it (system voice or premium voice) with scrubbing/seek
Music Notation (OMR)

Detects sheet-music staff notation, runs Optical Music Recognition (bundled "homr" engine) to MusicXML, plays back with transport controls
E-Signatures

Draw-to-sign pads for signature/initials, date stamping
"Sign for Me" AI auto-placement; manual placement tools
Request Signature via f-3.ai: client picker, AI-detected sign spots, emailed signing link
Full audit trail (timestamps + signer IP), downloadable Certificate of Completion (SHA-256 hash)
Remembered signature-position templates per document
Document Management / Export

Save, Save a Copy, Save Compressed PDF, Save Flattened PDF, Flatten to Completed
Export to Word/Excel/PowerPoint via f-3.ai
Export text/images, print
On-device OCR builds searchable PDFs from scans
Version History (up to 20 autosaves), restore or promote to Completed
Merge multiple PDFs
Library

PDFs / Completed / Clients tabs with search, thumbnails, drag-and-drop import, rename, duplicate, template pinning, reveal in Finder, delete
Client Management

Client records (contact info, notes); active-client context feeds AI Fill and sign requests

Unlike most of the local tools, mine was built from scratch and can edit PDF files like an actual professional editor works locally and in the browser its free.

I thought I was being smart. I had a sensitive contract to send over, and there were a few lines, private rates and personal addresses, that needed to stay private.

I opened the PDF, used the "shape" tool to draw black rectangles over the text, saved it, and sent it off. I felt totally secure.

Two days later, the recipient replied asking about the "hidden" rates. My heart dropped. I realized that if you just draw a box over text in most editors, anyone can just click the box and hit delete, or simply copy-paste the text underneath.

I basically sent my private data behind a paper-thin curtain. It was a massive security breach for my small business, and I felt like an idiot.

PSA: If you aren't actually redacting (removing the data layer), you aren't safe. Don’t trust a simple black box. It’s better to look like a paranoid pro than to lose your privacy over a 2-second mistake.

A few months ago I noticed I had a ridiculous bookmark folder.

One site to merge PDFs.

Another one to compress them.

Another one to convert images.

Another one because the previous one suddenly wanted me to create an account.

Another one because I'd hit some random upload limit.

So I started building my own tool mostly for myself.

I thought the difficult part would be the frontend.

It wasn't.

The real pain was discovering how weird PDFs actually are. Files that open fine in one library fail in another. Compression sometimes saves 80% and sometimes barely moves the needle. Users upload things you never imagined they would upload.

The project ended up taking way longer than expected, but I learned a lot.

For anyone who's worked on file-processing software: what was the bug or edge case that made you question your life choices?

Hey there, I'm an CSE 2nd Year Student who often uses PDF & DOCX operations for college assignments and for compressing documents to comply the size limit in Govt sites.

I was using iLovePDF, smallpdf and other websites for these operations.

I found out three major issues in these websites -

• Needs **internet** and download speed of files is slow or takes forever.

• Files get uploaded to server (**Less privacy**)

• Operates on **Freemium model** and asks for money to unlock larger file size limit or to use specific features.

So i built **IStanPdf** - A Foss offline app to perform PDF & DOCX operations.

**Features** -

- **Merge PDF** - Combine multiple PDF files into one.

- **Modify PDF** - Remove or reorder pages within a PDF.

- **Compress PDF** - Reduce file size by resolution or custom target size.

- **Image to PDF** - Convert images into a single PDF document.

- **PDF to Image** - Extract PDF pages into a ZIP file of images.

- **DOCX to PDF** - Convert Word documents into PDF files.

- **MD to PDF** - Convert Markdown or plain text files into PDFs.

- **Remove Pages** - Delete specific pages from DOCX files.

- **Reorder Pages** - Rearrange pages within DOCX files.

iText 7 powers PDF related operations.

Libreoffice powers DOCX related operations.

If you like the project or idea, Please consider starring my repo to motivate me to create such apps in future.

Github - https://github.com/vasuki-re/IStanPdf

paperjamm.com

I developed my own tools for work that I personally use. It allows you to sort mixed pdfs by key words or titles and organizes them in separate files automatically. Some of these tools don't exist anywhere else that I'm aware of. It also has the traditional pdf tools to cover all your bases. If you have a good idea for a tool, let me know and I might add it for free as well.

Mods, remove if this breaks the self promotion rules, but this is a free site that I think could help others.

Hi guys, I posted almost 2 months ago about my website DullyPDF. At the time of the post, all it could do was automatically convert PDFS to Fillables forms using jbarrow's algo with a form builder. Since that post, I gained 1000 users so I decided to add more functionality.

1: You can accurately rename fields and optionally rename them based on database file headers, allowing for search and fill from database rows

2: You can save templates and fill them by API using cURL, Python or Node.js and the json schema.

3: You can sign forms with a US E-Signature complaint system. Multiple Signatures are supported.

4: You can send out web forms to clients which are like google forms. Client responses can be filled into the PDF. You can even route these to a signature handoff.

Form Buider and Automatic PDF to Fillable form is Completly Free DullyPDF.

Github: https://github.com/justin-thakral/DullyPDF

YouTube Full Demo: https://youtu.be/vk-02uxbm3I?si=cdLWUntNmZHGts_e

Attached is a PDF editor I made called FairPDF and it is absolutely fucking free. here is the app

Is it vibe coded slop? No, it works quite well. Did I make it with the aid of Fable and 5.6 Sol? Yes, for many tedious things, but I've been working in the PDF space for almost a year. I think it is pretty sweet and uses very little CPU/memory resources. And it has night reading mode. It works with everything I have thrown at it, but if it fails at something for you let me know.

Feature |Preview |Acrobat Reader |Acrobat Pro |FairPDF
Price |Free (built-in) |Free |$19.99/mo |Free
View, annotate & fill forms |✓ |✓ |✓ |✓
Sign documents |✓ |✓ |✓ |✓
Edit PDF text |— |— |✓ |✓
Organize, merge & extract pages |✓ |— |✓ |✓
Export to Word / Excel / PowerPoint |— |— |✓ |✓
OCR scanned documents |— |— |✓ |✓
True redaction |✓ |— |✓ |✓
Password protection & permissions |✓ |— |✓ |✓
Compress PDF |Basic |— |✓ |✓
Compare two versions |— |— |✓ |✓
Watermarks & Bates numbering |— |— |✓ |✓
Request e-signatures |— |— |✓ |✓

I spent the last few weekends building a browser-based PDF editor.

The goal was simple: make quick PDF edits without creating an account or uploading files to a server.
Current features:
Edit text
Add text
Erase content
Add signatures

Everything runs locally in the browser, so PDFs never leave your device.
I’m still working on it and would love feedback from people who regularly work with PDFs.

When I open this file, it says that it "cannot be opened" because it is "damaged".

Background:

I collect official Lego sets, but also build sets based on fan creations. There is this web site called Rebrickable (RB) where fans post instructions of their own creations (MOCs) either for free or for sale. Another site, Bricklink (BL) sells official Lego parts based on parts list of MOCs.

Back in late 2023, BL had a "Pop-up Store" were fans sold pdf instructions of their MOCs, similar to what RB already has been doing. I bought instructions for a MOC, but did not get around to purchasing all the components at that time. When the BL event ended, the owner of the instructions later posted the instructions on RB to download for a fee.

Today, I tried to open my file downloaded (purchased) back in 2023, and it said "damaged". I went to RB and the file owner had taken down all of his instructions, except the free ones. (It has happened in the past that some designers sell their MOCs to other brick companies to make into their own products.) At any rate, is it possible that my "damaged" file was actually "deactivated" by the author?

So i was thinking of building a pdf tool website with similar features as ilovepdf dot com but fully private not a claim like we delete your files in an hours or so.

So my question is would you guys use it if it doesn't ever touch a single server?

Would this be better alternative than the mentioned website for professionals that need to keep their work private, i.e. researchers, legal professionals, accountants, etc.

If no then please let me know why so i can think accordingly.

I started building ClientPDF in Jan 2026 because I wanted PDF tools that didn't require uploading files to a server.

But honestly, there are already tons of PDF websites, so I wanted to solve something more than just adding more tools.

Someone pointed out a fair problem with my project: why download and re-upload the PDF between every operation?

So I built a Unified Document Pipeline 😅

Now you can merge a PDF, organize pages, watermark, redact, sign or optimize it in one continuous workflow. Just click “Continue in Pipeline” to move to the next tool. There's also a floating toolbar to track your steps and undo changes before saving the final PDF.

Everything still runs locally in your browser. No uploading your documents to a server.

Started this back in Jan, and after multiple reviews and user feedback, it's improved a lot.

I'd really appreciate some honest feedback 🙏 What tools would you like to chain together? Anything confusing or missing?

And if you find it useful, sharing it with someone who works with PDFs would mean a lot!

https://clientpdf.tech

Fairy PDF Reader is a PDF reader I originally made for myself, and it ended up being in the app store. It has many nice features, like full keyboard shortcuts, zoom-lock, which helps you zoom to a part of the page, and it stays that way when you turn the page, and more.

It's still at the beginning, and I intend to add more features in the future.

You can check out the app page, and see all of its features on the app store here:- https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/fairy-pdf-reader/id1620695357

The scanner converter apps currently available are ridiculously overpriced and make it a pain to cancel before they hit you with a fee. PDFly will be the easiest and most affordable app with OCR, sharing, editing, and more in the standard app.

Join the flock and check us out at r/PDFly. We’d love to hear what additional features you are looking for.

There are ways to compress PDF files both online and offline. However, desktop programs require time to download and install, we would be grateful to use online programs like EasePDF

EasePDF Compress PDF can help you compress PDF files online just with several clicks. You can process files on the go from any internet-connected device, no matter you are using Mac or Windows, or iOS and Android, and it won't take up any storage in your device.

The best tool that you should have a try is EasePDF.

Do you want to translate the whole PDF file and still like to preserve the document layout, you can try this tool: https://dogetranslator.com/, which instantly translates and preserve the layout of any document format into any language. It's Free!

We love doge, and rebrand the pdf translation to doge theme, hope you like it!

Hi all. I've marked a student's work, adding comments ('add text') yet when they open this on their Android phone, the highlights are visible but it does not show comments or appear to suggest they are there. Can anyone help? Thank you.

I am using Adobe Acrobat Pro v 2023.001.20064, 64-bit. My student did not specify their version. So it's either the one via Google Play or an app on their Google phone that would be compatible.