🔥 PDF Forge

An advanced, fully local PDF editor that runs in your browser. Import almost anything, draw & annotate, and export with precise size control — your files never leave your machine.

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✨ Features

Import almost anything

• PDF — rendered page-by-page, original bytes kept for crisp re-export
• Images — PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, BMP, AVIF, ICO
• SVG — vector graphics rasterized to a page
• Text & Markdown — typeset into clean paginated pages (headings, lists, code, quotes)
• Word (.docx) — converted via Mammoth (headings/paragraphs/lists; flagged as simplified)
• Drag-and-drop or multi-file open — files are merged into one document

Draw & edit

• ✏️ Pen (smoothed freehand) · 🖍️ Highlighter (true multiply blend)
• ▭ Rectangle · ⬭ Ellipse · ╱ Line · ➜ Arrow (with Shift to constrain)
• Form-friendly text boxes with inline editing, font size, bold/italic, color, and alignment
• Signatures — draw, type, or upload a signature and place it on the PDF
• Cleanup / whiteout — cover PDF content you are authorized to edit
• 🧽 Annotation eraser, full select / move / resize / rotate, marquee selection
• Per-object color, fill, stroke width, opacity, z-order (bring forward / send back)

Page operations

• Reorder (drag thumbnails), rotate 90°, duplicate, delete, insert blank
• Merge multiple files, export any page range (1-3,5)

Powerful export — the headline feature

• Formats: PDF, PNG, JPG, WebP, SVG, TXT (extracted text)
• Name before download — choose the final file name inside the export dialog
• 🎯 Target-size mode — set a ceiling like "< 7 MB" and PDF Forge auto-tunes render resolution and compression (binary search) to fit under it
• Manual mode — quality + resolution (DPI) sliders
• Export settings are remembered on the same device
• 🗜️ Zip toggle — bundle the export into a .zip (multi-file exports zip automatically)
• Keep PDF text sharp — untouched original pages are re-exported as vectors (tiny & crisp); only annotated pages are flattened
• White-background / flatten option for transparent formats

Workflow

• ⏪ Unlimited undo/redo, zoom & pan (Ctrl+scroll / Space-drag), fit-to-window
• Rich keyboard shortcuts, polished dark UI, fully offline
• No sign-up, plus built-in Terms and Privacy links with contact info

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🚀 Run locally (Windows / macOS / Linux)

npm install
npm run dev

Open the printed URL (default http://localhost:5173). That's it — it's a static app, so it works fully offline and nothing is uploaded anywhere.

Build / preview a production bundle

npm run build     # outputs to dist/
npm run preview

Chrome extension

npm run build:extension

Then open chrome://extensions, enable Developer Mode, choose Load unpacked, and select the generated dist/ folder. The extension popup opens PDF Forge in a full browser tab and can start directly in Sign, Cleanup, or Fill mode.

macOS app wrapper

npm run build
npm run mac:run

The macOS wrapper lives in macos/PDFForgeMac and loads the shared web app from dist/ using WKWebView. It includes native File, Edit, and View menus wired to the editor.

☁️ Deploy to Vercel

This repo is Vercel-ready (vercel.json included). Either:

• Import the GitHub repo at vercel.com/new — framework auto-detects as Vite, or
• npm i -g vercel && vercel

The build command is npm run build and the output directory is dist.

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⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action	Key	Action
V	Select / move	T	Text
H / Space	Pan	I	Place image
P	Pen	S	Signature
M	Highlighter	W	Cleanup / whiteout
E	Erase annotations	Ctrl+Z / Y	Undo / redo
R / O	Rectangle / ellipse	Ctrl+A	Select all on page
L / A	Line / arrow	Ctrl+D	Duplicate
Ctrl+scroll	Zoom	Ctrl+E	Export
Ctrl+0	Fit to window	Delete	Delete selection
Shift (while drawing)	Constrain to square / circle / 45°	Arrows	Nudge selection

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🧪 Testing

npm test                 # unit tests (Vitest) — geometry, size-tuner, importers, range parsing
npx playwright test      # end-to-end tests (Chromium) — real import/export round-trips
swift build --package-path macos/PDFForgeMac

The e2e suite validates real exports by magic bytes (PDF %PDF, PNG, JPEG, ZIP), confirms target-size tuning actually lands under the ceiling, and checks the import pipeline and UI download.

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🏗️ How it works

Concern	Tech
UI	React 18 + TypeScript + Tailwind, built with Vite
State / history	Zustand store with snapshot-based undo/redo
PDF rendering	pdfjs-dist (web worker)
PDF writing	pdf-lib (vector passthrough + raster flatten)
DOCX / Markdown	mammoth + marked → block typesetter on canvas
Zip	JSZip
Drawing	Custom canvas scene-graph (shared renderer for screen and export, so WYSIWYG)

All processing happens client-side — there is no server and no upload.

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📄 License

MIT © Nihar