PDF tools · Case study
fixtdoc.com
Sixteen PDF tools that never see your files.
The problem
Why this needed to exist
Most online PDF tools work by uploading your file to a stranger's server. The documents people most often need to merge, sign, or redact are exactly the ones that should never be uploaded: contracts, bank statements, medical forms, and identity documents.
Desktop software solves the privacy problem but adds installs, licenses, and operating system limits for what are usually one-off tasks.
What I built
The product
fixtdoc has sixteen tools in four groups. Assemble: merge, split, organize, and rotate. Mark up and sign: page numbers, watermark, fill and sign, and permanent redaction. Read and inspect: OCR in more than 60 languages, an accessibility checker against WCAG 2.2 and PDF/UA, protect, and unlock. Convert and shrink: compress PDF, images to PDF, PDF to images, and compress image.
Redaction is the tool I cared most about getting right. It permanently removes the underlying text and graphics, so blacked-out content cannot be recovered by copying the page text, which is where casual redaction tools fail quietly.
How it works
Under the hood
Files are opened with the browser's own file APIs and processed locally with PDF libraries compiled for the web, with heavy work kept off the main thread. The download you get back is generated on your device.
Because nothing is transmitted, there is no upload progress bar, no server queue, and no retention question to answer. The privacy model is the architecture, not a policy page.
Results
Where it stands
- 16 tools live across assembly, markup, reading, and conversion.
- OCR and text extraction in more than 60 languages, running on device.
- Accessibility checking against WCAG 2.2 and PDF/UA built in, not bolted on.
- Zero file uploads, by construction rather than by promise.