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Guides that assume you have a job to finish

No “10 mind-blowing PDF hacks”. Just the practical answers: which format to send, how small a file really needs to be, what an online converter can see, and where the limits are.

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These guides are here because “just use a PDF tool” is not an answer when a job portal rejects a 3 MB file, a print shop asks for TIFF, or a contract needs a password before it leaves your outbox. Each one ends with the specific PocketPDF tool that does the job, and says plainly what the tool cannot do.

Images08 November 20266 minHow to open HEIC photos on a PC, free and without uploading themHEIC is half the file size of JPG, which is why iPhones use it — and why Windows greets it with a blank stare. Here is how to actually look at, print and share those photos.Read the guide PDF guides08 November 20266 minWhy is my PDF so big? Fonts, images and the honest fixNot every fat PDF is a scan. Some are 30 MB because of fonts, duplicate images or export settings — and the wrong compression makes them worse.Read the guide PDF guides02 November 20266 minHow to merge PDFs on an iPhone or Android phoneNeither iOS nor Android ships a merge button. You do not need an app store download to combine two PDFs — the browser can do it, if you know where the files go afterwards.Read the guide PDF guides02 November 20266 minWhy you cannot select text in a PDF, and how to fix itSometimes the words are not text at all — they are a photograph of text. Sometimes they are real but encoded badly. The fix is different for each case, and one of them cannot be fixed at all.Read the guide Privacy02 November 20266 minRemove location data from photos before you share themA phone photo is not just pixels. It can carry the exact GPS coordinates of where it was taken, the time, the device model and a serial number. Most people never see this, because it is stripped by every app that uploads it — except when it is not.Read the guide PDF guides02 November 20267 minWhy scanned PDFs are so big, and how to shrink one properlyA scan is a photo album wearing a PDF costume. That is why normal compression barely dents it, and why the fix is resolution, not a quality slider.Read the guide Privacy21 October 20267 minAre online PDF tools safe? What to check before you uploadA file upload is a copy, not a move. These are the questions that separate a local tool from a server that keeps your document.Read the guide PDF guides18 October 20266 minHow to compress a PDF for a job applicationPortals reject files for boring reasons. Here is how to hit the limit while keeping the text selectable and the layout intact.Read the guide Images14 October 20268 minJPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, TIFF or SVG: which to use?A practical map of the formats, what each one is good at, and the conversion mistakes that quietly ruin quality.Read the guide Privacy10 October 20267 minHow browser-based file tools actually workFile API, WebAssembly, Blob downloads, and a Network-tab test that takes half a minute.Read the guide Security06 October 20267 minHow to password-protect a PDF — and what it does not protectA real password is useful. A permission checkbox is not a security boundary. Here is the difference, and how to share the password without defeating the point.Read the guide Images01 October 20266 minHow to get an image under 100 KB without destroying itResize first, choose the right format, then compress in small steps. A 100 KB target is usually a dimension problem before it is a quality problem.Read the guide

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File formats, privacy, compression, accessibility, and the unglamorous parts of sharing documents. If a guide recommends uploading something sensitive to a random server, it doesn’t belong on this site.

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