About
Built so your documents stay yours.
Ember PDF is a free Firefox add-on that handles the everyday PDF jobs without asking you to hand the file over first.
The problem it solves
Almost every free PDF tool on the web works the same way. You upload your document, a server you have never seen does the work, and you download the result. That is fine for a flyer. It is a harder decision for a contract, a medical form, a tax return or a scanned passport.
The usual alternatives are not much better. Desktop PDF software is expensive and heavy for a task that takes ten seconds. Command line tools are capable but require an install and a manual. Neither is something you reach for when you just need to staple three invoices together before an email goes out.
What Ember PDF does instead
Ember PDF puts the tools where the file already is. Click the icon in your Firefox toolbar, a workspace opens in a tab, and the work happens inside that tab using code that shipped with the add-on. There is no upload step because there is nowhere to upload to.
It covers the nine jobs that come up most often: merging, splitting, extracting pages, rotating, resizing, compressing, converting pages to images, building a PDF from images, and pulling out plain text. Each tool shows only the options it needs, so a rotate never asks you about image quality.
How the privacy claim actually holds up
This is not a policy promise, it is an architectural one. The PDF libraries that do the work are bundled inside the extension package rather than loaded from a content delivery network, which means the tools keep working with your connection switched off entirely. The background script of the extension never sees your file data. Nothing is written to a remote store because no remote store is involved.
The straightforward test is the one you can run yourself: disconnect from the internet, open the workspace, and merge two documents. It works.
Choices we made on purpose
A few decisions in Ember PDF are deliberate rather than accidental, and they are worth stating plainly.
- Compression is honest about its cost. The aggressive mode makes files dramatically smaller by turning each page into an image, which permanently removes selectable and searchable text. The interface warns you before running it rather than quietly degrading your document.
- Compression never makes a file bigger. If re-saving would grow the document, you get the original back with a note explaining what happened.
- Switching tools clears the queue. Files staged for one tool are usually the wrong type for the next, and an obviously empty queue beats a silent mismatch.
- Errors are shown as written. When a document is encrypted or damaged, you get the real reason instead of a generic failure message.
Who it is for
Anyone who deals with paperwork in a browser. People combining receipts for an expense claim, students pulling one chapter out of a long reading, freelancers shrinking a portfolio to clear an attachment limit, and anyone who has ever hesitated for a second before dragging a personal document onto a website they do not recognise.