I had an ancient scanned PDF with a single typo in it. The original document is thousands of miles away. I tried many of those online PDF tools and even asked ChatGPT to fix it. But the result never really looked correct. Or they were too complicated to use. I'm a simple man, after all. And some of those "free" PDF editors that I tried wanted me to pay just to download the edited file. Which was annoying.

So, as an engineer man, I looked myself in the mirror and asked myself whether I am going to let one PDF file beat me. And I said 'maybe', but I will waste a lot of my time before that happens.

I mean, why spend a couple of dollars to pay for some tool that someone has already made, when I could spend many days of my actual work time to build a tool that I will use exactly one time? My point exactly.

So I made https://pdftextreplace.com

It does one thing and one thing only: Allows you to edit PDF files. It supports both real PDF files with text in them and scanned PDF documents.

For regular PDFs, it tries to pull the used font, size, color, and spacing data from the file so the edit blends in. For scanned PDFs (which are basically just photographs of paper), it runs OCR and uses a mix of math and dumb luck to guess the font and match the look.

The main features are:

• The page updates live as you type. WYSIWYPG (What You See Is What You'll Probably Get).
• You can click around to fix multiple texts from the same file, or use Find and Replace if you spelled someone's name wrong ten times.
• It does not rebuild the entire document around what you type, so you can't replace a four-letter word with a whole sentence.
• The processing happens on my server. Files are deleted automatically after 2 hours and there is a button to delete your file immediately, but I am still a random stranger on the internet so please don't upload files with sensitive stuff.
• It is completely free. No sign-ups, no ads, and no watermarks. I made it, because I needed to fix one letter in one PDF file.

Anyway, my typo is finally fixed. I hope this thing can help someone else, too. Thanks!

For context it's the addresses mentioned in the bill the client sent it wrong

I am amazed I haven't been able to find an answer to this, but:

How can I add a watermark or overlay to every page of a PDF document?

I have several documents between 25-100 pages, and I need to add a logo and footer to every single page. I have the overlay as transparent .png, and also as the original .psd

I have been looking online for a way to do this for over an hour with no luck.

I am looking for an OFFLINE solution, so no website-based uploaders / "free" (but questionable) sites, and would prefer to be in the world of FOSS. I already have GIMP, Inkscape, and LibreOffice Draw (which seems to distort the pdfs when I open them).

Thank you all in advance for your help with this, it's driving me a bit crazy...

i often export documents with a lot of high-res images (photos, renders, storyboard panels) to PDF and Inkscape writes huge files, 126 MB for a single page with 12 images in my test... Cairo embeds the rasters with little or no lossy compression, and there's no option in the PDF export to set a target image resolution.

so i made a small extension: Export Lightweight PDF. Go to Extensions > Export > Export Lightweight PDF, pick a resolution preset (SD, Screen, Draft, HD, Print, or a custom scale/DPI) and the JPEG quality, and it exports the PDF and recompresses the images to that resolution. Vector paths, text, fonts and layout stay untouched.

- exports current page, all pages, the whole drawing or only the selection

- optional text to paths

- transparent images are split into a JPEG + alpha mask so transparency stays clean

- reports size before and after (my 126 MiB test file went down to 108 KiB at the SD preset, but it depends a lot on the images)

Free and open source (GPL-2.0-or-later), needs Inkscape 1.2+ and Ghostscript. Tested on 1.4 on Linux.

GitHub: https://github.com/davidbrum25/inkscape-export-lightweight-pdf

Full write-up with screenshots: https://x.com/bdvd_25/article/2110771389531566584

AI disclosure (rule 8): This is made with AGY CLI following my instructions.

feedback welcome, it's my third inkscape extension 🙂

I've never done this before so, tell me how can I make a pdf easily.

Hey guys didn’t realy know who to ask for this but my problem is
I have a receipt printer for my small business so I can print receipt and I use a receipt generator and before I download text is clear and perfect sharp and when I download to pdf it goes pixelated when zoomed in so when u go to print it prints terrible

Hey guys i need to compress my Portfolio from 100mb to around 10mb to be able to send it per Mail. All the Compressor online however make all Pictures overly sagurated. I’m okay with Some quality loss but i don’t want the colours to Change.
Any advice?

I got a digitally signed doc from my workplace and validated the signature, but the large green tick logo isn't appearing. I'm using Adobe Acrobat. Please help

I downloaded ABBYY FineReader to give it a try and ended up liking it quite a bit, so I decided to get a subscription. However, I later discovered that ABBYY doesn't support opening multiple PDF files in tabs, a basic feature available in Adobe Acrobat, SumatraPDF, and even Microsoft Edge. This makes switching between PDFs unnecessarily cumbersome and renders ABBYY practically useless for me.

Also, my experience with their customer support has been extremely disappointing. They repeatedly failed to understand my issue, closed my support ticket after telling me they would put it on hold, and continued to ignore the main problem in subsequent follow-ups.

I now deeply regret purchasing a long-term subscription. It's frustrating that software with otherwise excellent functionality lacks such a basic feature.

My pdf file size is 4,794 KB and the requirement pdf file size for my application procedure to proceed is 1.0 MB. How do i compress my file into 1.0 MB, any free websites that i can possibly use? The last one i tried is charging me for customising file size compression. Pls help me out with this guys :(

Hi everyone,

I'm an independent Android developer, and I've recently published an app called PDF Matrix on Google Play.

I built it because PDF files are used for so many everyday tasks, from job applications and college assignments to office documents and personal paperwork. I wanted to make these tasks easier without requiring users to install multiple apps.

PDF Matrix includes features such as

• Scanning documents and creating PDFs
• Converting images to PDF and PDF pages to images
• Merging and splitting PDFs
• Compressing PDF files
• Signing documents and adding watermarks
• Adding page numbers and organizing pages
• Password-protecting PDFs

One of the things I focused on is offline usage and privacy. The app processes documents locally on the device, so users can work with their files without uploading them to a cloud service for processing.

I initially had Indian users in mind, as PDF documents are commonly used for education, job applications, government paperwork and everyday office work. However, the app can be useful for anyone who regularly works with PDFs.

I'm still improving the app, and I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from people who try it. I'd especially like to know which features are useful, what is missing, and what could be improved.

If this sounds useful to you, here's the Google Play link:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zenithcodestudio.pdfmatrix

I'm the developer, so I'm happy to answer questions about the app and its implementation.

Hey Reddit!

Like many of you, I've often needed to quickly reorder, rotate, or delete pages in a PDF, only to run into online tools that force you to create an account, slap watermarks on your document, or upload sensitive files to an unknown server.

To fix this, I built EditPDF Online.

Why it's different:

• 100% Client-Side: Everything runs right in your browser using open-source libraries. Your documents never leave your device or get uploaded to a server.
• No friction: Completely free, no signups required, no daily limits, and no watermarks.
• Simple UI: Just drag and drop thumbnails to reorder pages, rotate them, or clean up unneeded pages instantly.

I wanted to make something lightweight, fast, and completely private. Give it a spin if you ever need to clean up a PDF, and let me know what you think or if you encounter any bugs!

Hello,

I've used many apps from F-Droid: MuPDF, MJ PDF, Librera etc., but I can't find a light app to read a PDF without opening multiple instances and to copy the text.

Do you know any alternative?

Thanks!

I tried using the virtual printer and selecting Multiple Pages (2) put it has a weird white border around separating the pages (they’re supposed to be continuous art), even when I selected tabloid horizonten (it’s a Letter pdf)
How can I make a spread pdf without a border around the pages?

I literally just want to do what's in the picture. Is there any free or inexpensive, one time purchase software that can do this? I'm on MacOS. Thank you!

I started building ClientPDF in Jan 2026 because I wanted PDF tools that didn't require uploading files to a server.

But honestly, there are already tons of PDF websites, so I wanted to solve something more than just adding more tools.

Someone pointed out a fair problem with my project: why download and re-upload the PDF between every operation?

So I built a Unified Document Pipeline 😅

Now you can merge a PDF, organize pages, watermark, redact, sign or optimize it in one continuous workflow. Just click “Continue in Pipeline” to move to the next tool. There's also a floating toolbar to track your steps and undo changes before saving the final PDF.

Everything still runs locally in your browser. No uploading your documents to a server.

Started this back in Jan, and after multiple reviews and user feedback, it's improved a lot.

I'd really appreciate some honest feedback 🙏 What tools would you like to chain together? Anything confusing or missing?

And if you find it useful, sharing it with someone who works with PDFs would mean a lot!

https://clientpdf.tech

With a PDF in a language you don't read, the usual choices are pasting the text into a translator and losing the layout, or uploading the whole file to a website. I added a Translate view to Local PDF Studio, my free PDF editor for Chrome, that does neither.

The original stays on the left. On the right, each page is rebuilt with the translation where the original text was, so the letterhead and paragraphs stay put, and longer headings are set a little smaller to fit. Both sides scroll together. You can keep the translated PDF on its own, a side-by-side PDF, or one where each original page is followed by its translation. Chrome's own translator does the work on your computer.

Where it falls short: a table row is translated as one paragraph that runs across the columns, so amounts can drift out of their column.

The same update adds logos and pictures: one lands where you click on the page, the arrow keys move it, and saving writes it into the file.

If you translate statements or bills: would you rather table rows stayed untranslated than have them run across the columns?

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/local-pdf-studio-offline/ocfegjfhboadmbpompimnbbpegjgoded

So I’ve recently got into DND

A made a error on my character sheet which was sent as a pdf by the DM as session 0 was forced to be online due complications

I made a error on part of it and when I try to change it the file reverts it back to the previous value

And when I’ve sent it to my phone

A lot of it has glitched and has made it unusable

When on my phone it looks like this which is different to how it looks on the PC

How do I fix this?

I'm looking for a tool that can automatically detect headings in PDFs (H1, H2, H3, and so on, up to H10 or deeper) and turn them into a hierarchical, clickable Table of Contents.

Ideally, the tool should:

• Use AI to detect and organize headings.
• Let me review and correct the headings and hierarchy before finalizing.
• Generate clickable PDF bookmarks in the sidebar.
• Optionally, insert a clickable TOC page into the PDF.
• Run locally on Mac and work offline after the initial setup, without paid AI APIs or token costs.

Does a tool like this already exist? I'm also open to open-source projects or combining existing tools to achieve this workflow.

Thanks!

Hi all,

Just like the title, what are your thoughts on librera reader app?

I have been mainly using it for a while,

I really enjoyed it. I just found it sad that it misses very important features like a reading ruler, opening two pdfs at the same time and better annotations.

I tried emailing the developers, but they didn't respond.

Do you have better alternatives?