[Announcement] Major update to Visual PDF: what it means for you

A bit of history

At the start of 2020, Visual PDF was a small set of seven tools, all in English: JPG to PDF, Merge PDF files, delete pages, reorder pages, Split PDF, duplicate pages and rotate pages. The interface was basic and the experience rough. It was an evenings-and-weekends project that I maintained on my own, whenever I found the time.

Over the years, tools were added one at a time. The app quietly carved out a place for itself, then started drawing more and more people. To understand what actually mattered, I added a simple way for you to tell me what you thought of each tool. Those responses became the raw material for everything that followed: they told me what to improve, what to build, and above all what was getting in your way.

The more I added, the more the app aged from the inside. Every new tool sat on foundations laid in 2020, and that base began to hold everything else back. The question was no longer which tool to add, but how to build the next stage without breaking anything. In the end the answer was clear: rebuild the foundations.

Why this new version

You do not rebuild an app just for fun. If you have been using Visual PDF for a long time, you have noticed the interface changed. But what matters is not what you can see. This rebuild has four goals, and each one answers a real problem.

Better tools, built to save you time

This is the most important one. A PDF tool should be efficient and simple, without forcing you to work around its limits.

The first thing you notice is the live preview. Whatever the tool, you see the result of every change before you download: no trial export, no approximation, the final page is in front of you while you adjust it.

Then come features that remove steps. Crop PDF detects the white margins of a scan and removes them in one click, with "Automatic trimming". Split PDF offers "Split each page": a forty-page document becomes forty separate files in a single action, with colors to show where each page goes. None of this existed before.

And then there is compression, which deserves its own paragraph. It was Visual PDF's weak point, I admit it readily. The tool was rebuilt entirely. You pick one of three levels, "Recommended", "Strong" or "Maximum", and the size gain shows next to the original before you even download. I now consider it one of the best on the market, and I still have good ideas in mind for it.

Compress PDF

Pick a compression level and compare the size before and after.

Drop your file here

Browse files

Alongside that, small details change the everyday experience. Little features that answer your exact need, or simply the fact that everything loads without slowing your device down. Either way, the principle is the same everywhere: drop a file, look, adjust, download.

Your files stay secure

Respecting your data has always been a priority. This version goes further, and I want to explain precisely why that is possible.

Many online PDF tools work like this: you drop a document, it is sent to a server, and someone else processes it. A PDF often holds what is most personal: a contract, an ID card, a payslip, a medical record. Once the file is sent, several things can happen without you knowing. The site can look at its content, or pass it to a subcontractor you have never heard of. An attacker can also break into the processing server without the owner noticing.

Visual PDF was designed differently. Whenever it is technically possible, your file never leaves your device, whether it is a computer or a phone. The processing happens in your browser, on your machine. No third party, not even Visual PDF, has access to your document: nothing is uploaded, stored or scanned.

This technical choice has a nice side effect: speed. Because there is nothing to upload, a large scan opens instantly, where a regular site makes you wait for the transfer to finish. And a hundred-page document is processed in barely a second.

Three tools are the exception, and I would rather say it clearly: the Word, Excel and PowerPoint converters. They are the only ones that use a server for conversion. Your file is transferred over an encrypted connection, converted, then deleted from our server right after processing. It is the single exception to the promise, and it is owned rather than hidden.

You can visit the privacy by design page if you want to learn more.

A rebuilt technical base, built to last

This paragraph will interest few readers, I warn you. Yet it is one of the heaviest projects of these past months, and it is what makes everything else possible.

The old app had grown through successive additions. Each feature piled onto the previous one, and that accumulation made the whole thing fragile: hard to evolve, slow to load, sometimes unreliable depending on the browser. The rebuild meant starting over on a sound base, with tested code and an architecture that is simpler to maintain.

Concretely, for you, this shows up quietly: the app loads faster, crashes less often, and works on more devices and browsers. Fewer bugs, less waiting, fewer surprises.

Available and fast everywhere in the world

Visual PDF is used on five continents, and a site's speed depends a lot on the distance between you and its servers. The new version is served from many points around the world: the app is fast whether you are in Europe, Asia, the Americas or Africa.

The same care applies to language. Visual PDF is now available in ten languages, with every tool and every screen fully translated, not just the homepage. More languages are on the way.

What's next?

The ambition is clear: to make Visual PDF a reference among online PDF tools, and bring a little freshness to an ecosystem that badly needs it.

This work of several months was only a step. It laid solid foundations, on which the next stage can be built without racking up new debt. And the biggest part is still ahead. Concretely, here is what I am working on:

• new tools, to cover more of your PDF needs;
• continuous improvement of the existing tools, guided by your feedback;
• more languages, so people everywhere can benefit from Visual PDF;
• an installable app, to use the tools even without an internet connection.

Thank you for going along with Visual PDF up to here. Your thousands of positive messages keep me going every day: they give me the energy to continue, and give this project its real purpose, improving your daily life, for personal needs and professional ones alike.

This is only the beginning. The best is yet to come.