Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor (breezepdf.com)

54 points by philjohnson 3mo ago ↗ HN

Edit, sign, merge, compress, redact, OCR, fill forms, extract tables, and 30+ more tools — all in the browser, no sign-up. Files never leave your computer. Now with a desktop app (macOS/Windows/Linux) and a CLI/SDK for developers.

Last time this was posted it was in it's infancy, and how I've added a bunch more to it

11 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 22.5 ms ] thread

beh 3mo ago ↗

Is this any different from your other submission of the same tool[0] or simply a duplicate?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43880962

kykat 3mo ago ↗

Tried to convert to docx, got failed to import js module error.

maxloh 3mo ago ↗

Several open-source alternatives already exist. All are powered by pdf-lib, with the first two also utilizing PyMuPDF.

- BentoPDF (12.3k stars): https://github.com/alam00000/bentopdf

- PDFCraft (3.6k stars): https://github.com/PDFCraftTool/pdfcraft

- PDFLince (31 stars): https://github.com/GSiesto/pdflince

Since this project likely uses the same stack, I’m not sure what the selling point of a more limiting product is.

fabioz 3mo ago ↗

I usually go for https://simplepdf.com/ (gets the job done, files never leave the browser either).

thangalin 3mo ago ↗

Related: My FOSS tool allows uploading PDF files to a private server for annotating within a browser. Annotations are saved server-side in JSON format, which can be viewed and modified by anyone with the URL.

https://repo.autonoma.ca/repo/notanexus/blob/HEAD/README.md

The software uses PHP and PDF.js for displaying and annotating. Screenshot:

https://i.ibb.co/gL39qGdc/notanexus.png

madhacker 3mo ago ↗

my goto -> pdf24

souvlakee 3mo ago ↗

>This will use 1 of your free monthly downloads. You have 3 remaining.

If this is in [my] browser, why should I pay?

zemlyansky 3mo ago ↗

"You've used all 3 free downloads this month" much free very no signup

hackernewds 3mo ago ↗

Bit bummed to see many posts pitching their own products (often paid) rather than give OP feedback which is the spirit of a ShowHN. There should be a blanket policy of disallowing that.

raphman 3mo ago ↗

Looks nice.

Redacting text seems to actually work. However, editing existing text results in both the original text and the edited version being shown in the PDF after download.

(The page downloads mupdf (WASM) for rendering the PDF. When "downloading" (= saving) the PDF, the page first checks whether the allowed three downloads have been reached via a POST request (no PDF data uploaded), then it downloads PyIodide and some Python wheels (pdfrw, defusedxml) before creating the PDF file.

bl4kers 3mo ago ↗

Not interested in using a tool like this unless it's open source and we can verify it is privacy respecting