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Free alternatives to desktop converters

You need to turn a PDF into Word once a month, shrink a scan for a portal, or convert an iPhone photo for a form. Installing a desktop converter for that feels excessive, and many of them are trials that watermark the output or nag for a licence. So you search for "convert PDF to Word" and get a hundred sites that look identical.

Almost all of them work the same way: your file is uploaded to a server, converted there, and stored for a period nobody tells you about. For a holiday photo that is fine. For a signed contract, a passport scan or a payslip, it is a decision worth making consciously. This guide covers three options in order: what your operating system already does, how to tell whether a website uploads your file, and which jobs can run entirely on your own machine.

Option one: what your system already does

Before reaching for any converter, check whether the job is already covered. Often it is.

Making a PDF

  • Windows. Any program that can print can create a PDF: choose Print, then the printer called Microsoft Print to PDF. Word and the other Office apps also have Save as PDF.
  • macOS. Every print dialog has a PDF button with Save as PDF. Preview exports images and documents to PDF from the File menu.
  • iPhone and iPad. In the Files app, select images and choose Create PDF. From the share sheet, Print and then a pinch-out on the preview also produces a PDF.
  • Android. The system print dialog offers Save as PDF.

Signing a PDF

  • macOS. Preview has a signature tool in the Markup toolbar; you can capture your signature with the trackpad or the camera.
  • iPhone and iPad. Open the PDF in Files, tap Markup, then the plus button and Signature.
  • Windows. The built-in browser can open PDFs and draw on them with ink, but there is no dedicated signature placement.

Images

  • macOS Preview exports to JPEG, PNG and HEIC, can resize, and has a Reduce File Size filter for PDFs. That filter is aggressive and often leaves scans blurry, but for a quick job it may be enough.
  • Windows Paint opens common formats and saves as PNG, JPEG, BMP or GIF, and resizes by percentage or pixels.
  • iPhone can be set to save photos as JPEG instead of HEIC in the camera format settings, which prevents the problem for future photos.

Where built-ins fall short

Converting PDF to an editable Word document, compressing a PDF under a specific size without destroying text, batch processing, stripping location data from photos, and anything with video or audio. That is where people go looking for converters.

Option two: check whether a site uploads your file

You do not need to trust a site's marketing copy. Your browser can tell you what happens.

The developer tools test

  1. Open the converter page and press F12 (on a Mac, Cmd+Option+I) to open developer tools.
  2. Go to the Network tab and clear the list.
  3. Convert a small test file, not the real one.
  4. Look at the requests. A POST or PUT request carrying roughly the size of your file means it went to a server. If the list stays quiet apart from small requests, the work happened on your machine.

The offline test

Load the page, use the tool once with a test file so its engine is cached, then switch off Wi-Fi and convert again. If it still works, nothing is being sent. Turn the connection back on before closing the tab.

Local processing in a browser became practical with WebAssembly: the same FFmpeg, PDF and OCR engines that desktop programs use, compiled to run inside a tab.

Why uploading matters more than it sounds

  • Retention is rarely specific. "Files are deleted after a few hours" is a promise, not a mechanism, and it says nothing about backups or logs.
  • The upload itself is recorded, with your IP address, on servers in a jurisdiction you did not choose.
  • Some services index or reuse what they receive. A free service has to be paid for somehow.
  • Workplace policies often forbid it. Many organisations explicitly ban uploading internal documents to unknown sites, and a contract template or a customer list counts.
  • Metadata travels too. A phone photo can carry the GPS coordinates of where it was taken. Uploading it to an unknown converter hands over your location along with the picture.

Option three: tools that run on your machine

Most tools on this site run in the browser. Compressing a PDF, converting it to Word, signing it: the file is read by your own device and the result is written back without being transmitted.

Compressing a PDF

The browser path redraws each page as a JPEG at the quality you choose. That is very effective on scans, which often shrink several times over, but the text becomes part of the picture and can no longer be selected. If the result would be larger than the original, which is typical for typed documents, you get the original back. For text documents, the page also offers a server engine that keeps text as text.

Compress PDF onlineReduce PDF file size in your browser. Best for scanned and image-heavy PDFs. Files never leave your device.

PDF to Word

The browser path rebuilds the text into real paragraphs and headings, ready to edit. Images, tables and columns are not reproduced; for a near copy of the layout, the page offers a server conversion with LibreOffice.

Convert PDF to Word onlineConvert PDF to an editable Word document in your browser. Headings and paragraphs kept, nothing uploaded. Full layouts: one free server run a day.

Signing

Draw your signature or upload a photo of it on white paper, place it on the page and download the signed file. The PDF and your signature image never leave the device.

Sign a PDF onlineSign a PDF in your browser: draw your signature or upload a photo of it, place it on any page and download. The file never leaves your device.

Removing location from photos

Before sending photos anywhere you do not control, strip the GPS position, time and device details. The pixels stay identical; only the metadata sections are removed.

Remove EXIF metadataStrip EXIF, GPS location and other metadata from JPG, PNG and WebP without re-encoding. Pixels stay untouched. Batch clean and download as ZIP. Private.

Other everyday jobs that stay local include HEIC to JPG, merging PDFs, password protection, and converting video with tools such as MOV to MP4.

The honest exceptions

Some jobs cannot be done well in a browser, and on this site those pages say so in plain text before you choose a file:

  • Excel and PowerPoint to PDF need a full office layout engine; they run on LibreOffice on the server.
  • OCR PDF creates a searchable PDF with a server-side OCR engine.
  • Transcription, video translation and subtitles need speech recognition models far too large for a browser tab.
  • Large files. Several browser tools offer an optional server path for files above their browser limit or for slow devices. It is always a separate, visible choice.

Server files are deleted automatically: the uploaded file when the job finishes, the result about an hour after the job was created. Nothing is kept beyond that. If a file must not leave your device under any circumstances, use the browser path or your system's built-in tools.

Checklist

  1. Check whether your operating system already does the job.
  2. For anything sensitive, test an unknown site with a dummy file and the Network tab or the offline test.
  3. Prefer tools that run in the browser for contracts, IDs, payslips and medical documents.
  4. Strip location data from photos before sending them anywhere.
  5. Use a server tool only when you know it is one, and download the result promptly.
If a tool does not tell you where your file goes, assume it leaves your device, and decide whether this particular file can afford that.

Published 2026-10-08