PDFMango
A free, open-source PDF tool that runs entirely in your browser. Merge and rearrange PDFs, turn photos, Word and text files into PDF, save pages as images, and shrink files to email size. Your files never leave your device.
Use it at https://pdf.mangoidiots.com · Generated with Claude Opus 5.5 (how it was built)
Why PDFMango
I often need to do simple things with PDFs: put the pages in the right order, turn a page that is the wrong way round, join two documents, or make a large file small enough to send by email. Every time I looked for a tool for this, I ended up with something full of ads, cluttered with features I did not need, wanting me to upload my documents to someone else's server, or working on only one platform. I could not find one that I felt was reliable, safe, modern and simple, all at the same time.
So I decided to have one built. PDFMango brings together well-established open-source PDF libraries, and I used Claude AI to design and develop it. Your files never leave your device; all the work happens inside your browser. There are no ads, no sign-ups and no clutter, and it works the same way on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iPhone.
PDFMango is completely open source. The full source code is on GitHub, free for anyone to use, learn from, improve and benefit from.
— Venkatarangan Thirumalai
Features
Bring in anything
- PDFs, JPG/PNG photos, Word (.docx) and text (.txt) files, all turned into pages you can merge into one PDF.
- Word and text files work in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, the main Indian languages (Tamil, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi and Odia) and Arabic/Urdu. Other scripts aren't supported yet; leaving them out keeps the font download small, and each font is only fetched when a file needs it.
- Photos become upright pages, A4 or original size, with GPS and other hidden details removed.
Arrange pages
- Reorder (drag, or Alt+Arrow keys), rotate and delete; undo and redo every change.
- Page tools: duplicate pages, insert a blank page, reverse the order, and select odd or even pages.
- Select pages and a bar appears with Extract as PDF and Extract as images.
Save and share
- Save all pages as one PDF, with four compression levels: Lossless, Balanced, Strong and Scan.
- Preview the finished PDF, with its size and whether it's small enough to email, then download it or share it to other apps from the phone's share sheet.
- Save pages as PNG or JPG images (Auto picks per page) at screen, standard or print resolution. On phones, share up to 10 images at a time, for example straight to Photos or WhatsApp; on computers, any number download as one ZIP.
- Downloaded PDFs start with empty document properties: the originals' author, title and hidden metadata are not copied. You can add a title of your own.
Everywhere, privately
- Keeps Tamil, CJK and all other text selectable. Handles password-protected and damaged PDFs, up to 1,000 pages.
- Works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iPhone, and offline after the first visit. No upload, account or ads.
- Signing and comments: PDFMango leaves these out on purpose. Since August 2026, Google Chrome on Windows, Mac and Linux can sign and annotate PDFs itself, so open your PDF there.
Screenshots
Made with the test files in tests/fixtures/.
Privacy and analytics
PDFMango uses Google Analytics to count anonymous visits to the live site. Nothing about your files (their names, contents, pages or sizes) is ever collected or sent anywhere; your PDFs, images, Word and text files are processed entirely inside your browser. Analytics runs only on the live site (never while testing locally), waits until the app has fully loaded, and skips itself automatically if you are offline or your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal. Google sets its own first-party cookies to measure traffic; see Google's privacy policy for details. PDFMango's full source is open on GitHub.
If you change Settings, only your choices are saved in your browser. In the GA4 property, keep Enhanced measurement's "File downloads" and "Outbound clicks" switched off.
How to use
- Drop PDFs, photos, Word or text files on the page, or press Choose files.
- Drag pages into order.
- Select pages to rotate or delete them. Page tools (on a phone, More) duplicates pages, inserts a blank page, reverses the order and selects odd or even pages.
- To save the whole document, press Save all pages and pick a compression level, or switch to Images.
- Press Preview & Share to check the result, then Download or Share it. (Direct Download skips the check.)
- To save only some pages, select them and use Extract as PDF or Extract as images in the bar that appears.
Development
Needs Node.js 22.
npm ci # install
npm run dev # run locally at http://localhost:5173
npm test # unit tests
npm run build # build into dist/
npx playwright test # browser tests (after npm run build)
npm run fixtures regenerates the test files; npm run brand, npm run icons and npm run screenshots regenerate the icons and images.
Deployment
Every push to main is tested, built and published to GitHub Pages by .github/workflows/deploy.yml.
One-time setup, already done for pdf.mangoidiots.com:
- Repo Settings → Pages → Source: GitHub Actions.
- DNS: a
CNAME record from pdf to venkatarangan.github.io (on Cloudflare, set it to DNS only).
- Settings → Pages → Custom domain:
pdf.mangoidiots.com, then tick Enforce HTTPS.
- Verify
mangoidiots.com under your GitHub account's Pages settings.
Configuration
Defaults live in src/pdfmango.config.ts: analytics ID, size and page limits, image page size and margins, saving pages as images (format, resolutions, the 10-image phone limit), compression settings, the credit line written into each PDF, and whether restricted PDFs are refused. Visitors can override some of these for themselves in the app's Settings.
Project structure
| Folder | What's in it |
|---|
src/ | The app: components/ (screens and dialogs), lib/ (page list, settings, helpers), worker/ (PDF engine) |
about/ | The About page |
public/ | Logo, icons, domain file, and the Noto fonts for Indian scripts and Arabic (fonts/, OFL) |
tests/ | Unit tests, browser tests and test files |
scripts/ | Generators for test files, icons and screenshots |
spike/ | The engine checks done before building (SPIKE.md) |
The original plan is in spec.md.
Credits and licence
Built on MuPDF.js by Artifex, mammoth.js (Word files), Noto fonts, Svelte, SortableJS, Comlink, Workbox and Material Symbols (full list).
Licensed under the GNU AGPL-3.0, as MuPDF.js requires. The mangoidiots name and logo are Venkatarangan Thirumalai's own branding.
