Show HN: BreezePDF – Free, in-browser PDF editor
by philjohnson on 3/29/2026, 1:47:32 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.<p>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.<p>I posted an earlier version on HN last spring: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43880962">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43880962</a><p>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.<p>There is also now a desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux, plus a CLI/SDK for developers.
Comments
by: eahm
I don't want to hijack the thread but isn't BentoPDF open source and does all that and more for free? <a href="https://www.bentopdf.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.bentopdf.com</a>
3/29/2026, 8:23:41 PM
by: fn-mote
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.<p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555636">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555636</a>
3/29/2026, 6:38:11 PM
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3/29/2026, 7:53:33 PM
by: colesantiago
Note that this "free" PDF editor uses MuPDF under the hood which uses an AGPL license with the desktop version is being commercial.<p>Unless BreezePDF is open source, (it is not) it is in violation of MuPDFs AGPL license.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47556806">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47556806</a><p><a href="https://artifex.com/licensing" rel="nofollow">https://artifex.com/licensing</a>
3/29/2026, 7:08:17 PM
by: k310
This may be outside your plan, but I really could use a pdf editor that makes Internet Archive book scans more readable.<p>Apparently, the scanner(s) adopt some compromise setting that renders halftones OK, but gives all text a "dishwater gray" background.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I could use ImageMagick ... but it's not adaptive, as described above.<p>Geniac ad sample (imgbb.com)<p>[0] <a href="https://i.ibb.co/67zpBDgh/OIP-2472099845.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.ibb.co/67zpBDgh/OIP-2472099845.jpg</a>
3/29/2026, 3:33:51 PM
by: arrsingh
Love it! Bookmarked for the next time I need to sign a PDF and then will pony up the $$.
3/29/2026, 6:39:59 PM
by: classicpsy
I tried it. Looks great. Just few refinements from my side.<p>- Undo is not working. If you applied something it will be done. I had to reupload the pdf to again make the changes.<p>- 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.
3/29/2026, 7:17:06 PM
by: evaneykelen
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.
3/29/2026, 6:22:07 PM
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3/29/2026, 8:05:13 PM
by: opem
Is it a one shot AI generated site?
3/29/2026, 7:07:20 PM
by: intoXbox
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.
3/29/2026, 2:06:05 PM
by: mmooss
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:<p>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]<p>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?<p>In fairness, it's a question for any file-based application, but PDF has a special status in it's universal availability and functionality.<p>[0] Is the timeframe in the spec somewhere?
3/29/2026, 6:31:00 PM
by: npilk
Some discussion yesterday: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555636">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555636</a>
3/29/2026, 4:22:53 PM