Privacy Policy
Last updated: June 2026
The short version
18PDF does not collect, store, or transmit your files. Every operation runs locally in your browser. We do not have a backend that processes user content. There is no account system, no analytics, and no tracking.
What we do not do
- We do not upload your files to any server.
- We do not store copies of your files anywhere.
- We do not log file names, content, or metadata.
- We do not use third party analytics such as Google Analytics, Plausible, or PostHog.
- We do not use cookies for tracking. The only storage is local storage for your UI preferences.
- We do not fingerprint your device or browser.
- We do not sell or share any data, because we do not collect any.
What runs in your browser
18PDF loads the following libraries into your browser to process files locally:
- pdf-lib for merge, split, rotate, reorder, metadata, watermarks, page numbers, crop, and form filling.
- PDF.js for rendering page previews and extracting text.
- jsPDF for HTML to PDF conversion.
- Tesseract.js for OCR. The OCR tool downloads the English language data file on first use and caches it locally.
Local storage
We use the browser local storage to remember your UI preferences. Specifically:
- The accent color you picked (key:
pdf-toolkit-accent). - The light or dark mode preference (managed by next-themes).
You can clear this at any time from your browser settings. No personal or file related data is ever stored.
Network requests
When you first load the app, your browser fetches the static page assets from our hosting provider. After that, the app makes no further network requests, except in two cases:
- The OCR tool downloads the Tesseract English language data on first use. Subsequent uses are served from your browser cache.
- If you click an external link such as Buy Me a Coffee, GitHub, or LoomLess, your browser navigates to that site. Their privacy policies apply once you leave 18PDF.
AI crawlers and search
Our robots.txt file allows most AI crawlers, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google Extended, and others, so that AI assistants can describe the tools accurately. This is opt in on their end; we do not share any data that we do not already publish on this site.
Children's privacy
18PDF does not target children under 13 and does not knowingly collect any information from children. Since the app does not collect any information from anyone, this is a non issue in practice.
Changes to this policy
If we ever change this policy in a meaningful way, we will update the date at the top of this page. Since we do not collect data, changes will only be clarifications.
Contact
Questions, concerns, or to report a privacy issue, open an issue on the GitHub repository.