PDF Studio › About PDF Studio

About PDF Studio

PDF Studio is a set of free PDF, Word, Excel and image tools made by MakHub Studio, an independent studio that also builds Android apps and games. The idea behind it is simple: you should not have to send a bank statement or an ID card to somebody else's server just to make it smaller.

How it is different

Most online PDF services upload your file, process it on their servers and send a result back. PDF Studio does the work on your own phone or computer instead. When you pick a file, your browser reads it into memory, the tool changes it there, and the finished file is saved straight back to your device. There is no upload step, so there is nothing for us to store, and no account to create.

This has a practical side effect too: once a tool has loaded, it keeps working even if your connection drops, and large files are not held back by a slow upload.

What is inside

PDF Studio is built on well-known open-source libraries, each doing the job it is best at:

• pdf-lib creates and edits PDF files: merging, splitting, rotating, watermarks, page numbers and password protection.
• PDF.js from Mozilla reads PDFs, draws page previews and pulls out the text for PDF to Word, Excel and Text.
• SheetJS reads and writes spreadsheets, mammoth reads Word files and docx writes them.
• jsPDF with its table plugin lays out spreadsheets as PDF tables, and JSZip repacks Word, Excel and PowerPoint files when compressing their pictures.

The code for these libraries is downloaded from public content networks the first time you open a tool that needs it. Your documents never travel with those requests.

What it cannot do (yet)

• Scanned pages stay as images. PDF to Word and PDF to Excel rebuild text that is really stored in the PDF. A scan is a photo of a page, so it comes across as a picture; there is no text recognition (OCR) yet.
• Unlocking flattens the file. Removing a password rebuilds each page as a high-quality image, so the text is no longer selectable afterwards. You also need the current password; the tool does not crack passwords.
• Very large files depend on your device. Everything happens in your browser's memory, so a 300-page scan that is fine on a laptop can be too much for an older phone.
• Some fonts are substituted when editing. PDFs often carry only the letters they use from a font, so a replacement word may fall back to a similar font. The Edit PDF page explains why.

Is it really free?

Yes. There is no sign-up, no page or file-count limit and no watermark added to your documents. The site is supported by advertising.

Android app

An Android version of PDF Studio with the same tools is in development and will be published by MakHub Studio on Google Play.

Get in touch

Found a bug or want a tool that is missing? Write to makhubsupport@gmail.com or see the contact page for what to include.