PDF Utilities tools
Inspect, measure, extract, compare, compress and OCR. 12 free pdf utility tools.
Before you send a PDF somewhere it usually has to satisfy a rule: under a file size limit, a specific page count, the right page dimensions, or free of the metadata your word processor quietly attached. These utilities inspect and adjust those properties. Several of them exist because Indian application portals check them and reject uploads without explaining why.
All pdf utilities tools
When these tools are useful
- A portal rejects your file for being too large or the wrong page size.
- You need to know what metadata a document is carrying before sharing it.
- You want the text or the embedded images out of a PDF.
- You need to compare two versions of a document, or OCR a scan.
PDF Utilities — common questions
How much can a PDF actually be compressed in the browser?
It depends entirely on what is inside it. A PDF full of large scanned images can often be reduced substantially by re-encoding those images at a lower resolution. A text-only PDF is already efficiently compressed and will barely shrink — there is nothing large to remove. The tool reports the actual reduction achieved rather than promising a percentage.
Does removing metadata make a document anonymous?
No. It removes the document information dictionary — title, author, producer, dates — which is where most identifying information sits. It does not remove text inside the document, information embedded in images such as EXIF data, or any digital signature. Treat it as tidying, not anonymisation.
Why does the text extractor find nothing in my PDF?
Because the PDF is a scan. It contains an image of a page, not text characters. Run it through the OCR tool instead, which recognises characters visually.
How accurate is browser-based OCR?
Good for clean, printed, high-contrast English text; noticeably worse for poor scans, unusual fonts, complex layouts and multi-column pages; and unreliable for handwriting. It runs entirely on your device, so nothing is uploaded, but it is slower than a server-based service and you should always proofread the output.