Frequently asked questions

Yes. There is no sign-up, no watermark on your results and no limit on how many files you process.

Dev PDF is created and maintained by Arpit Dev. You can reach me at arpitdev.pro@gmail.com.

Any recent version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari on desktop, tablet or phone. Very old browsers are not supported.

Please do — use the Suggest a tool form. It goes straight to my inbox.

No. Files are opened and processed inside your browser. They are never sent to a server — which is why Dev PDF can be this private. See the Privacy Policy.

Open your browser’s developer tools, go to the Network tab, and process a file: you will see no upload requests. Your PDFs never appear in those requests. The only connections the site makes are to its own files, to Google Analytics (anonymous visit statistics, see the Privacy Policy) and to Google (used only to deliver the suggestion form to the owner’s Gmail); the page’s Content Security Policy permits nothing else.

Yes. On Chrome, Edge and Android a bar at the top of the site offers an Install app button; on iPhone/iPad open the site in Safari, tap Share and choose Add to Home Screen. The installed app opens full-screen from your home screen or desktop and still needs an internet connection. Once it is installed the bar disappears, and if you uninstall it the button returns. Installing is optional and free — there is no sign-in.

No — Dev PDF is an online app. You need an internet connection to open it, even when it is installed on your home screen; installing only adds a shortcut and a full-screen window. Once a tool has loaded, your files are still processed on your own device and are never uploaded.

300 MB per file and up to 60 files at once. Real limits depend on your device’s memory — a phone will handle fewer and smaller files than a laptop.

Some PDFs are already optimised. Dev PDF always keeps your original if the compressed result would be larger, and tells you so. If your file contains big photos, try “Balanced” or “Smallest size”. PDFs that are mostly text or vector graphics rarely shrink much without quality loss.

The “Lossless” level never changes how your pages look. The other levels re-encode large photos as JPEG at a lower quality or size, and only when that makes them clearly smaller. Text, vector graphics and line art are never degraded.

PDF stores positioned text, not flowing paragraphs, so converting back to an editable document is an approximation. Dev PDF extracts text, headings and paragraphs; tables, columns and images are not reproduced. It works best for text-based documents.

Not yet. Scanned pages are images, and Dev PDF does not include OCR. Use “Enhance PDF” to clean up a scan, or a dedicated OCR tool for text recognition.

It reads the .docx and typesets text, headings, lists, tables and basic formatting using standard PDF fonts. Complex layouts, text boxes, headers/footers and images may be simplified, and non-Latin scripts are not supported in this tool. For pixel-perfect results, export to PDF from Word itself.

Sign PDF places a picture of your signature (drawn, typed or uploaded) on the page, like signing a printout. It is not a certified digital (cryptographic) signature. Whether it is accepted depends on who asks for it and on local law — check with the receiving party if it matters.

No. Draw & Annotate and Sign PDF place your marks on the page as part of the page picture, so they cannot be moved or edited later. Keep your original file and redo the edit if you need changes.

Pages with a black box are rebuilt as pictures with the box burned in, and the saved file is built from new pages — the hidden text is not kept underneath. Bookmarks, links and form fields on redacted pages are not carried over. Always open the result and check it before sharing.

It works with PDFs that have interactive form fields. A plain or scanned document has none — use “Draw & Annotate” to type or write on it instead.

No. It uses the speech voices built into your browser and plays them live — browsers do not allow that audio to be captured as a file. Available voices depend on your device. Some browsers use online voices that send text to the browser vendor; choose an offline voice if that matters.

Marketplace and courier PDFs often put several shipping labels on one sheet. Label Crop detects each block and creates one label per page in a size such as 4 × 6 in, ready for thermal printers. Always check the result before printing.

Dev PDF cannot open PDFs that require a password or that are corrupted. Try opening and re-saving the file in a PDF viewer first.

Large files with many pages can use a lot of memory, especially when rendering images. Try fewer pages, a lower resolution, or a computer instead of a phone.

Please refresh once. If it persists, email arpitdev.pro@gmail.com with the tool name and your browser — it helps me fix it quickly.