[HN Gopher] Show HN: BreezePDF - Free, in-browser PDF editor
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Show HN: BreezePDF - Free, in-browser PDF editor
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.
Author : philjohnson
Score : 64 points
Date : 2026-03-29 13:47 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (breezepdf.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (breezepdf.com)
| intoXbox wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Good suggestion! I'll look into implementing that.
| philjohnson wrote:
| I made a first version of it if you want to check it out!
| It's under the "markup" tab
| k310 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Neat idea. Basically an "Enhance Readability" button. I'm
| looking into how it can be done, will report back.
| fn-mote wrote:
| Sounds like a job for ScanTailor. I'm not aware of an actively
| developed alternative. The version on my system comes from
| ScanTailor Advanced [3].
|
| [1]: https://scantailor.org/ [2]:
| https://github.com/scantailor/scantailor [3]:
| https://github.com/4lex4/scantailor-advanced
| npilk wrote:
| Some discussion yesterday:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555636
| philjohnson wrote:
| 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.
| evaneykelen wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| nosrepa wrote:
| I've been using pdfgear to some success.
| mmooss wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| fn-mote wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| i000 wrote:
| Imagine a pizza place that allows you to pick from 40+
| toppings but you can only order a margherita ;) /s
| philjohnson wrote:
| Bad analogy
|
| Imagine a pizza place where you can try three slices for
| free before you order one?
|
| Or that you can make a pizza at the shop, add and remove
| topping as you wish until you're satisfied?
| gwerbret wrote:
| You've had enough arguments with people in both this thread
| and the previous that I'm pretty sure you understand what the
| issue is with your use of the word "free".
|
| What you are offering is NOT a free tool -- it is a demo, for
| a tool for which you are charging $12/month. No reasonable
| person would interpret a grand total of 3 exports as enough
| to justify calling this a "free" tool.
|
| This is to say nothing of your violation of AGPL on the use
| of MuPDF, which has been pointed out here and elsewhere.
|
| But of course, you're free to Show HN a paid product; just
| kindly don't insult our collective intelligences in the
| process.
| arrsingh wrote:
| Love it! Bookmarked for the next time I need to sign a PDF and
| then will pony up the $$.
| philjohnson wrote:
| Awesome! Would love to get your feedback once you try it.
| arrsingh wrote:
| anytime. Feel free to email me and remind - email in profile.
| opem wrote:
| Is it a one shot AI generated site?
| philjohnson wrote:
| 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.
| colesantiago wrote:
| Note that this "free" PDF editor uses MuPDF under the hood which
| uses an AGPL license with the desktop version is being
| commercial.
|
| Unless BreezePDF is open source, (it is not) it is in violation
| of MuPDFs AGPL license.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47556806
|
| https://artifex.com/licensing
| classicpsy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Font change for text editing is fixed now
| eahm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| pshirshov wrote:
| > Lots of options out there and everyone can choose for
| themselves.
|
| You are shilling your stuff at a wrong place, I think. Better
| apply to YC or, I dunno, go public. Also add some nice catch
| phrases (e.g. "Blazing Fast", "Production Ready") and emojis
| here and there.
| philjohnson wrote:
| Show HN is show your product. That's what I'm doing. It's
| not an open source forum. The only shilling is mentioning
| other products on someone else's post...
| pshirshov wrote:
| > BentoPDF (12.3k stars):
| https://github.com/alam00000/bentopdf
|
| > PDFCraft (3.6k stars):
| https://github.com/PDFCraftTool/pdfcraft
|
| > PDFLince (31 stars):
| https://github.com/GSiesto/pdflince
| pshirshov wrote:
| Well, all the agents, including free and even local ones could do
| this for less money and without AGPL violations.
|
| Just tell them what you need to change/merge and they literally
| do it just fine. Or they could write reusable python/whatever
| scripts for you.
|
| These days $12/month for a vibe-coded PDF editor running locally
| is a robbery.
|
| Also, let me quote:
|
| > BentoPDF (12.3k stars): https://github.com/alam00000/bentopdf
|
| > PDFCraft (3.6k stars): https://github.com/PDFCraftTool/pdfcraft
|
| > PDFLince (31 stars): https://github.com/GSiesto/pdflince
| philjohnson wrote:
| If it's so easy then just do it!
|
| Regular people don't use PDF editors from GitHub.
| pshirshov wrote:
| What exactly? Agents do that for me, if I want to do
| something manually - I have, for example, Bento.
| kevlened wrote:
| For those looking for an MIT alternative, there's an embeddable
| solution which uses PDFium (Apache) compiled to wasm instead of
| MuPDF (AGPL): https://www.embedpdf.com/
|
| There's a hosted version for quick edits:
| https://app.embedpdf.com/
|
| Discussion from several months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44901683
|
| Neither fully handles XFA, but that's a perennial struggle.
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