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dialegein

SnackPDF

Your PDFs stay on your device.

Jobs Compress Merge Edit Convert Extract Protect OCR

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Opens the vendor's own site.

Jobs covered

Open a task to see exactly what the vendor documentation supports.

Compress Browse all compress tools

compressing PDFs with SnackPDF, where the Compress PDF tool rebuilds one PDF from one input with a fixed choice of three image-quality profiles: Light at up to 220 DPI with higher JPEG quality, Balanced at up to 150 DPI for ordinary screens and sharing, and Smallest at up to 96 DPI for the strongest reduction; the original file is unchanged, and the scope records the three documented profiles and makes no lossless or size-reduction percentage guarantee

Merge Browse all merge tools

merging PDFs with SnackPDF, where the Merge PDF tool combines between two and fifty PDFs in the order of the file list, with every page of the first file before every page of the second and so on, and the page says merging rewrites the PDFs and may change comments, forms, bookmarks, links, metadata and other structures; the scope records the documented combine and ordering operation with that rewrite caveat and no preservation claim

Edit Browse all edit tools

filling PDF forms with SnackPDF, where the Fill PDF form tool inspects a PDF locally for interactive AcroForm fields and exposes text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns and simple choice fields as editable controls, and the page says existing AcroForm fields can be filled directly and flat PDFs use positioned static marks, that the PDF font may limit which characters can be saved, and that the saved completed PDF keeps the original unchanged; the scope is form filling only, with no general text, image or annotation editing claim, and it records that saved AcroForm values stay live rather than flattened

Convert Browse all convert tools

converting PDFs to images with SnackPDF, where the PDF to JPG and PDF to PNG tools render every PDF page to a separate image at 96 DPI for screen, 150 DPI for standard or 300 DPI for print, name the outputs in page order and leave the original unchanged, and the pages note that JPEG is a lossy rendered image while PNG preserves rendered pixels rather than PDF structure; the scope is image output only, with no Office, PDF/A, EPUB or other document-conversion claim

Extract Browse all extract tools

extracting content from PDFs with SnackPDF, where the Extract text tool reads text objects already stored in the PDF and writes a UTF-8 text file without OCR, producing an empty result for an image-only scan, and the Extract pages tool takes page numbers or ranges in the order entered and writes one selected-pages PDF while noting that interactive and document-level structures may change; the scope records the stored-text and page-extraction routes, leaves scanned text to the OCR job and makes no structure-preservation claim

Protect Browse all protect tools

protecting PDFs with SnackPDF, where the Protect PDF tool encrypts a PDF locally with PDF 2.0 AES-256, a real open password and an optional owner password, and the page and terms state that reader permissions are advisory, that conforming readers may honour them but a determined tool can ignore them, and that encryption is not redaction because anyone with the open password can see everything in the file; the scope is the documented password-protection workflow with the advisory-permission boundary, and the separate Redact tool is covered by the redaction field

OCR Browse all ocr tools

running OCR with SnackPDF, where the Extract text from scanned PDF tool renders each page locally, recognises printed English text, shows the result page by page for checking and downloads a plain text file rather than a searchable PDF, and the page distinguishes it from the stored-text Extract tool; the scope records printed-English OCR with a plain-text output, makes no accuracy guarantee and claims no language beyond English

Disclosure

Dialegein is operated by the same person who builds SnackPDF. It is listed on the same terms as every other tool here: no paid placement, no favourable ordering, and its claims are checked the same way.

Three claims below were tested rather than read off the vendor's page, and the difference between them matters: two were tested on Dialegein's own instrument, and the third - AES-256 password protection - was verified by the SnackPDF project's release suite and has NOT been reproduced by Dialegein. Each finding says which, and how little each test covers.

Where your files are processed

Files stayed on your device when we tested

We supplied a test PDF on 20 October 2026 and no file left the device. Our check confirmed the tool actually ran: A download control appeared after processing, so the tool did run. A later check on 21 October 2026 could not confirm the tool had run, so that reading is not counted here.

What it does

SnackPDF processes files on your device rather than sending them to a remote server. Sixteen browser-local tools cover the everyday document jobs - compress, merge, split, extract pages, remove pages, reorder, rebuild, grayscale, PDF to JPG or PNG, extract text, OCR a scan, fill a form, redact, protect with a password, and unlock with a known password - and it works offline once loaded.

The project is free, distributed under AGPL-3.0 in AGPL-compatible mode, and publishes no operating legal entity. Its redaction genuinely removes the content rather than covering it, by rasterising the pages you mark, which costs those pages their text layer.

Best for

Anyone handling documents they would rather not upload to somebody else's server, and anyone who needs a redaction they can trust: the marked pages are rebuilt as images, so the text underneath is gone from the file rather than hidden in it.

Worth knowing

There is no signing tool. The current site lists sixteen tools and has no signature editor, no request-signature flow and no sign route; the sign job tag was removed after the current tool list and a 404 on the signing routes showed no such capability.

Editing is form filling only: the fill-form tool inspects existing AcroForm fields locally, fills text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns and simple choices, and for flat PDFs places positioned static marks, but there is no general text, image or annotation editor, saved AcroForm values stay live rather than flattened, and the PDF font can limit which characters are saved. Conversion means PDF to JPG or PNG at 96, 150 or 300 DPI, not Office or PDF/A conversion.

Extraction has two routes: stored selectable text, which produces nothing on a scan, and a separate OCR tool that renders each page locally and recognises printed English only, returning a page-by-page text file rather than a searchable PDF. Redaction genuinely removes content by rebuilding every affected page as a raster image, so those pages lose their text layer, links and vector structure and the file can grow, while unaffected pages keep their text.

Password protection writes PDF 2.0 AES-256 locally with an open password and an optional owner password, but the reader permissions are advisory and a determined tool can ignore them, and encryption is not redaction. Unlock removes a known password and does not guess, crack or recover an unknown one.

Its redaction works by rasterising whole pages, not just the marked area: one box on page three rebuilds all of page three at 150 to 300 DPI. Processing is browser-local and the tested claim is that document contents, names, passwords, extracted text, metadata and hashes are not sent away for processing, while the application itself is delivered over the network and managed hosting may see ordinary request information.

The project publishes no operating legal entity, and its AGPL-compatible mode does not claim a commercial Ghostscript licence.

Details, and where each comes from

Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.

Versions covered
Web
Website
snackpdf.com
Requires an account
No
Watermark on the free tier
No
Maximum file size
Not verified
Batch processing
Not verified
Data residency
Not verified
Open source
Yes
Self-hostable
Not verified
Licence
AGPL-3.0.

AGPL-3.0. SnackPDF is distributed in AGPL-compatible mode, with the application source, build scripts and licence materials available with the release.

The application is AGPL version 3; the bundled Ghostscript 10.06.0, delivered through the pinned @okathira/ghostpdl-wasm 1.1.0 package, is AGPL-3.0-or-later; and the vendored @pdfsmaller/pdf-encrypt 1.2.0 encryption module and browser runtime notices are MIT. The build does not claim a commercial Ghostscript licence, so a commercial distribution would need the appropriate rights from Artifex and a review of the source and notice obligations.

SnackPDF is a free, independent, browser-local project with no accounts, paid credits, document storage, server-side processing, API, AI features or email collection. No operating legal entity is published, and the terms state that operator details have not been added.

Redaction
Removes the content
Programmatic access
None
Last availability check
Responded in 361 ms 21 October 2026

Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.

What the redaction verdict rests on

Tested by us on 16 September 2026, on our own canary document rather than read off a product page.

What that does not establish

Tested on our own canary document. It removes the content by rebuilding each affected page as an image, so one redacted box costs that whole page its selectable text, links and vector structure.

The test establishes the mechanism and what it costs; it does not establish behaviour on every document.

What the vendor says

Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded - not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.

  • “Your PDFs stay on this device. SnackPDF processes files on your device rather than sending them to a remote server.”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026

    No upload was observed on either surface, and the redaction run made no request at all to any host other than snackpdf.com - the whole job, from file pick to download, ran in the tab. Both tools confirmed they had actually run, by offering a download control afterwards, so neither is a page that failed to load.

    Redaction was chosen as the second surface deliberately: it is the tool that has to read document content rather than just move a container around, so it is the one where an upload would be most tempting and most damaging. This covers two of fifteen tools; the other thirteen were not tested, and this finding does not cover them.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://www.snackpdf.com/
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    45290b1318964a9d62620a30974eeac2b66ee61b81fc3c14bf8534f351982bd7

    How we checked

    Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://www.snackpdf.com/ re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-16. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-www-snackpdf-com-8d986b58.txt.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

  • “Redact PDF content: draw solid redaction boxes, replace affected pages with raster images and save a PDF without the original page text layer.”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 16 September 2026

    The redacted string is gone from the saved file, and so is the unboxed text on the same page: drawing one box on that page removed the whole page's text layer, exactly as the vendor documents. The untouched page kept its text layer and its fonts.

    The file came back as a valid two-page PDF with one image where the redacted page had been, and qpdf reported no syntax or stream errors. This is removal, not covering: the characters are not in the file to be recovered.

    It is not a claim about the marked area alone - the entire affected page is rebuilt as an image, which is the trade-off the vendor states in its own copy and now in ours.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://www.snackpdf.com/redact-pdf
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    41024813391e30b61ec72d61df7f341508b871adc0abaab37fb17b77e4fdb0f4

    How we checked

    The tool was driven in a real browser with a two-page canary PDF. Page one carried CANARYREDACTME7F3A2B, which a box was drawn over, and PAGEONEKEEPVISIBLE, which was left alone.

    Page two carried PAGETWOSTILLSELECTABLE and was never touched. The downloaded result was normalised with qpdf, the reference implementation, and searched for each string.

    A control ran the same search against the unredacted original, where all three strings are present - so the search finds what is there and the absences mean something. Its source page was re-read on 2026-09-21 to record the source hash the original reading did not carry; the wording quoted in the claim is unchanged, so this does not re-date the verification, and sourceHash is of that re-read.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

  • “SnackPDF writes PDF 2.0 AES-256 encryption locally in this browser.”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026

    Confirmed. AES-256 at PDF 2.0, with a required open password and an optional owner password, written in the browser with no upload.

    Three limits are the vendor's own and are recorded rather than inferred: the reader-permission flags are advisory and nothing cryptographic stops a determined tool ignoring them; the implementation throws in a non-secure context rather than silently falling back to the legacy RC4 algorithm; and the vendor states plainly that encryption is not redaction, because anyone with the open password can see content that was only covered.

    NOT reproduced by this index, and the release suite did not run the two acceptance comparisons it wanted either - a qpdf comparison and Acrobat Reader / macOS Preview - because none of the three was available in that environment.

    Standing: Re-read, and the recorded hash was not reproduced

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://www.snackpdf.com/protect-pdf
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    513c35ce5476f388e9be7be861edb2f9646eb1a621ffe632c21fd092ec4beeb6
    Note
    real change on our own page: the rendered text now carries an "Install SnackPDF - optional" prompt that was not there when it was read. Not re-read for the claim itself.

    How we checked

    Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://www.snackpdf.com/protect-pdf re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-17. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-www-snackpdf-com-protect-pdf-f73d17d6.txt.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked - it is not a judgement about anyone.

Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.

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Related reading

How this record was put together

Editorial review.
No editor has signed this record off. That is not the same as nothing having been checked, and the lines below say what has.
Source reading.
3 claims taken from the vendor's own pages, read between 16 September 2026 and 22 September 2026.
Website availability.
The vendor's site was last checked on 21 October 2026.
Behaviour testing.
We ran this ourselves. 1 claim here rest on something we observed rather than something a vendor wrote. The file handling was watched directly.

Sources: snackpdf.com - homepage and the tool pages for redact, fill form, OCR, extract text unlock and protect, read 2026-09-16 and 2026-09-17; plus a direct test of the redaction and form-filling tools on the same date, recorded in docs/snackpdf-verification.md.

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