Hi folks!

I’m the creator of BentoPDF. It is an open source PDF toolkit that runs entirely in your browser. Your documents stay private, by design.

BentoPDF started as a small side project, but over time it has grown into something much bigger. With our latest major update, BentoPDF now includes 100+ tools, all running fully client-side.

You can do the basics like merge PDFs(while preserving bookmarks), split documents, extract or delete pages, reorder files, rotate pages, and compress PDFs. Thee are also some advanced tools.

You can edit and annotate PDFs directly in the browser: highlight text, add comments, draw shapes, insert images, fill(including XFA) and create forms, manage bookmarks, generate tables of contents, redact, add headers, footers, watermarks, and page numbers.

BentoPDF also supports an extensive range of file conversions. You can convert Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenOffice, Pages, CSV, RTF, EPUB, MOBI, comic book formats, and many more into PDFs, and also convert PDFs back into Word, Excel, images, Markdown, CSV, JSON, and plain text.

For images, BentoPDF supports a massive variety of formats, including HEIC, WebP, SVG, PSD, JP2, and and aalso other formats such as EPUB, CBR/CBZ. You can convert images to PDFs, extract images from PDFs in their original format, or rasterize PDFs with full DPI control.

There are also organization and optimization tools: OCR, PDF/A conversion, booklet creation, N-up layouts, page division, attachment management, layer (OCG) editing, metadata inspection and editing, repair tools, and advanced compression algorithms that rival commercial solutions.

The latest update also includes AI ready extraction tools to export PDFs to structured JSON, extract tables as CSV/Markdown/JSON, and prepare PDFs for RAG and LLM workflows.

All of this works entirely in the browser, without accounts, uploads, or tracking.

This is my first post here and I hope you like it. Any feedback or feature requests are appreciated. Thank you.

Github Link: https://github.com/alam00000/bentopdf

  • 🖖USS-Ethernet@startrek.websiteEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    So just got this up and running yesterday and today my wife used it for the first time. She did what she needed to do, but we may have come across a bug. I don’t know. She had to take a 72 page PDF and break it out into multiple smaller PDFs. While she was doing that, multiple pages in the preview window would keep going blank/white. Not sure if you’re aware of something like that, if not I can try to reproduce and grab logs and post them on github.

  • Konraddo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    7 days ago

    Some features seem to limit the working area to only the middle part of the browser. For example, the Multi Tool use 100% width but the Editor uses 33% only. Would love to see all features making full use of the screen size.

    • alam@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      7 days ago

      There is a use full width toggle which you can find under preferences in setting button in the search bar. I will make this the defult in next release

      • Konraddo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        7 days ago

        Perfect! Honestly though, I would expect the gears icon to appear in the top right corner, not in the search bar😅

  • electric_nan@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    Thanks for this! I saw this post yesterday, and decided to check it out. I installed it locally on my laptop, and am evaluating it for work. If I recommend it for use, we’ll get a license :).

    Since the idea would be to replace Adobe for non-Pro (and maybe some Pro accounts), ease of use for low-tech users is at the front of my mind. Not being able to “set as default” for PDFs is not ideal, but I understand the limitation comes from running in the browser. Is there some way to open the PDF, and then choose which tool to use? Rather than how it seems now: choose the tool/function, then upload the PDF.

    • alam@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      In next week we are going to be releasing Desktop apps, so you can download it and then set as default viewer

  • 🖖USS-Ethernet@startrek.websiteEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    Saw this as an option in TrueNAS earlier and will probably be standing this up when I get home today. I was curious about the difference between this and Stirling, but that appears to have been answered. Thank you for what you do and I’ll definitely give it a try.

    Update: got it up and running. Works great. Wife deals with PDFs a lot and she loves it. Thanks again!

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    181·
    8 days ago

    Can it also redact text from documents without allowing you to just copy and paste it back out again?

    Asking for a friend.

  • tburkhol@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    8 days ago

    Great project. I like the 1-star reviews complaining about the lack of advertising and tracking.

  • rotkehlchen@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    32·
    8 days ago

    Thank you so much. Why did you start this project, which certainly involves a lot of work? ( aka why are you so cool?)

    • alam@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      342·
      8 days ago

      Thank you! It started off as a simple tool as I wanted to merge PDFs visually by applying page ranges and I couldn’t find any offline tool for that. I happened to then post it on reddit, and people asked me to open source it. After which I kept adding features on request and here we are 😂

  • Lowlands@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    8 days ago

    Been using this for a while now, wife and kids are also very pleased with it. Easy to use and great layout, thank you so much!

    • Luckyfriend222@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      8 days ago

      Does each user have their own account? Or can anyone and everyone see all the pdfs? Or are the pdfs only stored for the duration of the browser session?

      • alam@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        21·
        8 days ago

        There are no accounts or signup. All the processing happens locally in your browser. In fact, you can even use it offline once the page is loaded, and only you have access to the PDFs

        • psycotica0@lemmy.caEnglish
          4·
          8 days ago

          Everything local, I assume, means no upload? My dad does house inspections and so there’s like 4 or 5 pdf forms he fills out all the time. If he were using this, would he upload the template every time, or could he upload it once and then fill it out multiple times?

          I assume also that it wouldn’t keep a history of each finished file, and it’s all ephemeral?

          • alam@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            9·
            8 days ago

            It never keeps any history, the TTL for the document is only as long as you are not done with the processing. There is no template system now. However I am planning to include a JSON based templating system which you can upload once and save and can be reused to auto fill forms

  • NullPointerException@lemmy.zipEnglish
    26·
    7 days ago

    The day I can digitally sign PDFs from this, it’d be the PDF editor. You’re doing the Lord’s work, thank you very much for this!

  • Limeade3425@lemmy.zipEnglish
    21·
    8 days ago

    Thank you so much for this. We just started using it at our school. We were using StirlingPDF, but they went open core 🫤. Personally, I like that there is no auth, it keeps it simple.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    8 days ago

    I’ve used it before for a job application! I needed to send them sensitive data. Tysm!

    Great intuitive UI, does what it says, and it’s fast. 5/5

    • alam@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      9·
      8 days ago

      Not sure, as I haven’t used Stirling and at the same time I didn’t make it to compete with other tools. Hence I never mention its better than xyz tool either on our github or website. Users would have to do their own due diligence in this case. However it does have the best bookmark tool in the market(yes, better than adobe acrobat) and also a form creator tool, among others, which you can’t find in other OS tools.

    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      8·
      8 days ago

      Honestly, I think this is just one where you try it for yourself. The compose file is about 4 lines long, I had the whole thing up and running in about 30 seconds (OK, 45; I forgot a port was already in use and had to redeploy).

      So far my one big complaint would be that the self-hosted version replicates the entire website, including all of the “Why choose Bento PDF” and “Try now” and so on. It’d be nice to just have the tools right there when I load it up. Other than that, well, it looks cool, I’ll know more once I actually try out the available options.

    • krash@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      As someone who have been using both, you don’t need an account to use bentopdf. All the data is processed locally, making it excellent for a single user scenario. I drink Sterling has a very handy omni-tool, but I dare say it’s a matter of preference.

      I go with bento where I can, and use sterling as a fallback.

  • stephaaaaan@feddit.orgEnglish
    15·
    8 days ago

    What I would love to see is batch processing of mapped form fields from a PDF template, e.g. to fill out training certificate template pdfs with name, date, company, and instructor from a given CSV file, add a signature and print it. Is something like that possible? 🙂

    We currently use nodered, python and reportlab and I‘m looking to somewht simplify the process :)