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Built a privacy-first PDF tool suite using PDF.js - client-side only, no uploads #21852
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It would be awesome to have this tool also distributed in a downloadable single HTML-file openable locally via E.g. for simple split/merge/sign PDFs It would be great to have a tool like this directly at https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/ |
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Thanks Vadim — that's a genuinely interesting idea and one we've thought
about.
A single-file distribution would work well for the pure PDF.js tools
(rendering, splitting, merging via pdf-lib) since those are pure JS with no
worker dependencies.
The constraint is the WebAssembly tools — tesseract.js (our OCR engine)
uses dedicated workers that browsers block under file:/// for security
reasons. Chrome and Firefox both enforce this. So a full-suite single-file
build isn't possible without either a) stripping OCR out entirely, or b)
requiring users to launch Chrome with --allow-file-access-from-files which
is a security footgun we wouldn't want to recommend.
A realistic path would be a curated PDF-only single-file bundle — merge,
split, compress, rotate, protect — with PDF.js + pdf-lib inlined. No OCR,
no image tools, but genuinely offline-capable.
Is that the use case you have in mind, or are you thinking about something
narrower (e.g. just the viewer)?
…On Fri, Sep 25, 2026 at 4:38 PM Vadim Kantorov ***@***.***> wrote:
It would be awesome to have this tool also distributed in a downloadable
single HTML-file openable locally via file:///
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Yes, even no-OCR split/merge/digitally sign would be great. It would even be better if it could be published/distributed at https://mozilla.github.io or at https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/ - as people trust Mozilla Is the problem only for using WebAssembly in WebWorkers? If so, maybe for offline mode could use WebAssembly in the main thread (would be hanging, but working). Or maybe the old asm.js or some mode like this could be used for working in WebWorker? Or do browsers block WebWorkers under |
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Hi PDF.js community,
Sharing a real-world production implementation using PDF.js (pdfjs-dist) for client-side PDF text extraction and rendering.
What we built: ihaveatoolforthat.com - a suite of browser-based PDF and file tools that process everything locally with no uploads.
How PDF.js is used:
Why we chose PDF.js:
The privacy constraint was architectural - we needed PDF processing that could run entirely client-side with zero server involvement. PDF.js made that possible at scale.
Technical implementation writeup: https://ihaveatoolforthat.com/privacy-guarantee (covers the full in-browser pipeline: FileReader ? ArrayBuffer ? PDF.js Worker ? output ? Blob ? download)
Happy to share specific integration details if useful for the community. Also using pdf-lib alongside PDF.js for PDF creation/modification - the two complement each other well for full client-side PDF workflows.
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