Edit a PDF offline: nothing uploads, and you can prove it

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The proof first

Do not take this page’s word for it. It takes 2 minutes:

1. With your connection on, open getpdfs.app/edit and open any PDF. This first file fetches the engine (4.6 MB), and the browser keeps it, with the page, in its own storage on your device.
2. Turn Wi-Fi off, or pull the cable. On a phone, switch on aeroplane mode.
3. Reload the page, or close the tab and open getpdfs.app/edit again. It opens from the copy your browser kept.
4. Open the confidential file. Retype a line, sign it, delete a page.
5. Save. The edited copy lands on your disk.

It works, because nothing in those steps needs the network. The status line at the bottom of the editor (in More on a phone) says the same in 1 line: “Nothing is uploaded · edited on this device”.

The order matters. Opening the page and then turning Wi-Fi off is not enough on a first visit, because the engine comes down with the first file, not with the page. Open 1 file online, and from then on the editor is ready without a connection.

What the network is used for, and when

Here is every request the editor makes, in full:

• The page itself and its scripts, when you open it. A small program the site installs in your browser (a service worker) keeps them, so the next visit opens without a connection.
• The engine, 4.6 MB, the first time you open a file. It is PDFium, the open-source library Chrome uses to show PDFs, compiled to run in the tab. It is kept the same way.
• A font file, now and then. The first time an edit needs a letter the PDF’s own font does not have, the editor fetches a Liberation font from the site; the first typed signature fetches a handwriting font. Each comes down once and is kept.
• Nothing else. The editor sends no count, no file name and no file. The site’s converters and compressors send 1 anonymous count after a job (the tool, whether it worked, a time bracket and a size bracket, never the file); the editor does not send even that.

A second safeguard works even if you never test anything. Every page of the site tells the browser, in a content security policy, that it may connect only to getpdfs.app itself. No analytics service, no font host, no other server. So even a bug or a compromised library on the page could not post your file somewhere else: the browser would refuse. The privacy page lists all of it in plain words.

Why it matters, with a date

Uploading a contract to a free online editor hands a copy to a company you know little about, for as long as it keeps it. Usually nothing happens. Sometimes it does: in July 2024, Cybernews researchers reported that 2 online PDF tools, PDF Pro and Help PDF, had left 89,062 uploaded files readable in an open cloud storage bucket, among them passports, driving licences and contracts. The people who uploaded them did nothing unusual.

That is not a reason to fear every website. It is a reason to prefer a tool that never needs your file in the first place. For other people’s documents (a client’s contract, an employee’s ID) it can also be a rule you are bound by; PDF privacy and protection explains the wider picture. That is an explanation, not legal advice.

What offline does not mean

• The first visit needs a connection. A browser can keep only what it has downloaded once. Open 1 file in the editor online, and the engine is kept from then on.
• Use a normal window to prepare. A private or incognito window may throw away what it kept when it closes.
• Parts you have never used are not kept yet. A font for a letter your files never needed, the handwriting font for a typed signature, pictures added as pages: each is fetched the first time it is used. Offline, that first use fails with a message, and everything else carries on. To be ready for a trip, do 1 of each at home.
• Clearing site data clears the kept copy. Open 1 file online again and it is back.
• Your device does the work. A very large file needs memory on your machine. The editor holds about twice the file’s size to open it and refuses a file it cannot fit, with a sentence giving both numbers, rather than freezing halfway.

The same rule for every tool

Nothing about this is special to the editor. Every tool on getPDF works the same way: the compressor, the converters, OCR, redaction. Each is kept by the browser after its first use, and none uploads a file. Compress a PDF offline runs the same proof for the compressor.

If a computer must never touch the internet at all, not even once to load a page, a web page cannot be the answer, and an installed app is. On a Mac, Preview marks up, signs and moves pages with no connection, though it cannot change existing text. For everything else, open the editor above, and turn the Wi-Fi off while you work if that settles your mind. The editing guide shows what it can do.