Show HN: BreezePDF – Free, in-browser PDF editor
47 points - today at 1:47 PM
BreezePDF lets you edit, sign, merge, compress, redact, OCR, fill forms, extract tables, and use 30+ more PDF tools — all in the browser, no sign-up. Files never leave your computer.
I built it because when people search Google for common PDF tasks, many of the tools they find upload documents to a server. I wanted an option that keeps files local instead.
I posted an earlier version on HN last spring:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43880962
At the time it only supported a small set of features. Over the last 10 months I rebuilt large parts of it and expanded it to nearly 40 tools, including several ideas that came from comments in that earlier thread.
There is also now a desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux, plus a CLI/SDK for developers.
I don't want to hijack the thread but isn't BentoPDF open source and does all that and more for free? https://www.bentopdf.com
philjohnson
today at 8:37 PM
First thing is it was released much after BreezePDF was.
You could make the same argument with Adobe or any other PDF software. Why doesn't everyone use all use BentoPDF? Things like brand, and simply what shows up when they search on Google are factors.
Also, Bento doesn't have a desktop app a regular person can download. You have to download the GitHub. Non-developers won't do that.
Additionally, each tool is separate. It's not all in one editor. That's a UX consideration. BreezePDF, everything is in one editor interface. It added a lot of development complexity but makes the UX better in my opinion.
I tried Bento and some of their tools are very slow, cause of large downloads to the client. BreezePDF is much faster.
Good for them making an open source tool though. Lots of options out there and everyone can choose for themselves.
Notice the IMO poor behavior of the author on the previous thread. [1] Search for 'philjohnson'. This post removes the contentious word "free" but still does not convey that no sign-up is required but you are apparently limited to 3 files without signup. Reading the previous thread was a turn-off enough for me to warn you.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555636
philjohnson
today at 6:43 PM
Free is still in this post. It's free to use, you can use the editor as much as you want with 40+ tools. Just a limit of 3 exports.
This may be outside your plan, but I really could use a pdf editor that makes Internet Archive book scans more readable.
Apparently, the scanner(s) adopt some compromise setting that renders halftones OK, but gives all text a "dishwater gray" background.
If there are few pictures, I run the PDF through a quartz filter in Preview to threshold the text and later merge graphics pages with the "contact sheet" view from an un-threshold-ed image in Preview.app. This is slow and tedious.
Of course, computers are "smart," so they tell me, and should be able to recognize a picture from a block of text on the same page and render each one appropriately.
I used to do such editing of really important documents (like ads for pioneer computer products and gizmos like GENIAC and such)[0] pretty much by hand, splitting a PDF, if needed, into multiple images and hand/batch editing, then merging again.
I could use ImageMagick ... but it's not adaptive, as described above.
Geniac ad sample (imgbb.com)
[0] https://i.ibb.co/67zpBDgh/OIP-2472099845.jpg
philjohnson
today at 4:34 PM
Neat idea. Basically an "Enhance Readability" button. I'm looking into how it can be done, will report back.
Love it! Bookmarked for the next time I need to sign a PDF and then will pony up the $$.
philjohnson
today at 6:44 PM
Awesome! Would love to get your feedback once you try it.
anytime. Feel free to email me and remind - email in profile.
classicpsy
today at 7:17 PM
I tried it. Looks great. Just few refinements from my side.
- Undo is not working. If you applied something it will be done. I had to reupload the pdf to again make the changes.
- I tried the text editing, it is having a defualt font family of `helvetica` and is automatically applied to the selected text once clicked and there is no way to undo or fix it.
philjohnson
today at 7:27 PM
Thanks for trying it!
In what scenario was undo not working? If you can provide that context, I can dig into it more as to what wasn't undoing properly.
For text editing, I see the issue with that for some of the fonts. Fixing now
Sorry for the trouble!
philjohnson
today at 7:43 PM
Font change for text editing is fixed now
evaneykelen
today at 6:22 PM
Is this a viable alternative to the Adobe PDF app on Windows? I'm looking for an alternative for our company to replace Adobe's bloatware.
philjohnson
today at 6:59 PM
Yes, it definitely is. It handles everything from the basics like editing, signing, and merging to more advanced stuff like OCR, redaction, and digital certificates all in a clean and lightweight interface.
The desktop app is only 58mb and uses effectively zero CPU, so it's about as far from bloatware as you can get.
Shoot me an email at joe@breezepdf.com — happy to jump on a call and walk you through it before you get it for your company.
I've been using pdfgear to some success.
Is it a one shot AI generated site?
philjohnson
today at 7:19 PM
Far from it haha
Some features took a longggg time to do, such as table extraction, text editing, and (surprisingly) preserving positioning of elements (text, images etc.) when rotating the page in the downloaded file - PDF specification has a different orientation system than the web, so this was very intricate to get correct.
A lot of PDF editors have tools that all work independently, meaning you have to use each tool separately. My decision to add all the features I did while keeping it in one editor was because I felt that was a better user experience, but I means that all features become intertwined, which added a ton of complexity managing that.
Nice tool. I like the local approach. I think a nice feature would be to remove all PII from documents, so that users can redact PDFs and upload to their favourite LLM.
philjohnson
today at 2:12 PM
Good suggestion! I'll look into implementing that.
philjohnson
today at 5:44 PM
I made a first version of it if you want to check it out! It's under the "markup" tab
Great idea, though I haven't had a chance to use it much (yet). I especially appreciate the end-user control of the documents - that they never leave the user's computer. A question for any newish PDF application developer:
A valuable feature of PDFs is wide and long compability. What I output now should be fully readable and usable on any system and in 20 or maybe 50 years. [0]
How do you have confidence that what you implement meets that specification? For example, if I edit the text, how do you know BreezePDF isn't subtley corrupting it? If I compress or flatten it, how do you know that about the output?
In fairness, it's a question for any file-based application, but PDF has a special status in it's universal availability and functionality.
[0] Is the timeframe in the spec somewhere?
philjohnson
today at 7:12 PM
Thanks! Feel free to send feedback to joe@breezepdf.com if you get the chance to try it.
Regarding your concern, if a manipulation of the PDF doesn't meet the standard specification, it won't render properly in a PDF viewer as it is in the present day, let alone in 20 years. All PDF viewers/editors worth their salt adhere to the PDF spec. So as long as the PDF specification stays the same, anything that renders correctly now in a PDF viewer will render correctly in the future.
For something like compression, if the file reduces in size and the PDF renders the same (minus expected potential minor quality loss), then you have evidence right there that it worked successfully.
I built BreezePDF with PDF spec adhering libraries, so everything should be up to standards.
Let me know if that answers your question!
Some discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555636
philjohnson
today at 4:29 PM
Yes, yesterday's post got marked as duplicate because I didn't reference the previous post from last year. I got permission from the HN moderator tomhow to repost it again with the reference to last year's post.