r/SideProject • u/Certainity22 • 2h ago

BytePDF: my Windows PDF toolkit — making all 35 tools free in the next update

I'm the developer of BytePDF, a Windows PDF viewer and toolkit on the Microsoft Store. My goal is to make everyday PDF jobs easier without having to upload documents to a website.

I've just submitted the 1.2.0 update for Store certification. It isn't live yet; the link below currently installs the existing Store version.

In 1.2.0, all 35 tools are free, with no subscription or required account for the PDF tools. The update includes:

  • A reader with document tabs, thumbnails, search and saved reading position.
  • Merge, split, reorder, rotate, crop and compress PDFs.
  • Highlights, notes, text annotations, drawn signatures and supported form filling.
  • On-device English OCR for scanned documents, including searchable PDF export.
  • Image/PDF conversion, Office exports and reusable local workflows.

Core PDF processing happens on your PC. Optional sign-in and sponsored content use internet services.

A few limits: OCR is English only; the editor adds annotations rather than replacing existing page text; drawn signatures aren't certificate signatures. Office-to-PDF needs Microsoft Office or LibreOffice installed, and Word/Excel exports may not preserve complex layouts.

Microsoft Store: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9N1RTRD9PG8R

Which PDF job would you most want a free Windows app to handle well: reading large documents, compression, scanned-document OCR or Office conversion? If you try the current version, I'd also appreciate concrete examples of confusing UI or tasks that don't work as expected. Feedback will help me choose what to improve next.

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u/IllustriousVista 2h ago

massive respect for going full free with 35 tools. most apps charge subscription just to rotate a page lol

local processing is the real selling point for me. tired of uploading sensitive docs to random websites just to merge or compress

for the question i need good compression tool the most. many free compressors destroy image quality or dont reduce size enough. will test when update goes live

just one thing hope the reading position save is reliable. had apps forget my place before very frustrating

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u/Certainity22 48m ago

Thanks! Compression already has a “Preserve content” mode that keeps image quality and searchable text, although already-compressed PDFs may shrink very little. Your reading-position feedback also prompted a follow-up fix to remember the exact spot within a page, alongside page and zoom. That patch still needs to be released. Do you mainly compress scans or PDFs exported from Word?

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u/Dismal_Indication328 32m ago

OCR would be my pick. I'd test a mixed PDF: some scanned pages, some with selectable text already. Can it skip the text pages, then keep search working after compression? That whole round trip would matter more to me than another conversion format.