Edit & sign
Organize pages
Convert
Free · No watermark · Nothing to install
Retype a sentence, move the pages, shrink the file, lock it. Eighteen tools, most of them running on your own machine — drop a file in, or pick a tool below.
Popular tools
How it works
Most online PDF tools are a website with a server behind it: you upload, it works, you download whatever it sends back. Folio is the tool itself, delivered to your browser and run there.
Drop a PDF onto the page or pick one from your machine. The browser passes the bytes to the tab and no further — there is no upload step, and nothing waiting to receive one.
The editing, cutting, merging, compressing and encrypting all run as code inside the tab, against a copy held in memory. Your own processor is the one doing it, which is also why there is never a queue.
The finished file is assembled in the tab and saved straight to your downloads. No watermark, no account, no emailed link. Close the tab and the document is gone with it.
Runs on our server
Open a PDF and click any line of text to put a cursor in it, the way you would in a word processor. Folio matches the font, size and spacing already on the page, so a correction sits in the paragraph instead of on top of it. You can also drop in a new image, highlight or underline a passage, draw freehand, add a signature, and reflow the pages before you download.
Pages
Merge, split, extract, delete, reorder, rotate, crop. Each one is a whole tool of its own, each one works on pages you can see, and each one runs on the machine in front of you.
Runs in your browser
Add every file you want combined, drag them into the order you want, and download one PDF. Each file keeps its own page size and orientation, so a landscape scan dropped between two portrait reports stays landscape. If you only want part of a file, pick its pages before you merge rather than merging and then deleting.
Runs in your browser
Choose where the cuts go and Folio hands back one file per part. Cut between two particular pages, cut every so many pages to break a long scan into even chunks, or type ranges to say exactly where each part starts and ends. The parts come down together as a zip when there is more than one.
Runs in your browser
Click the pages you want to keep, or type them as ranges, and download just those. The file you started with is left alone. Choose whether the pages come back as one document or as a separate file for each page, which is the quicker route when they are going to different people.
Runs in your browser
Every page is shown as a thumbnail. Click the ones that should go, or type them as ranges when there are too many to click, and download the file without them. Nothing is removed until you download, so you can change your mind about a page right up to the last moment.
Runs in your browser
The whole document laid out as a grid you can rearrange by dragging. Turn a sideways scan the right way up, duplicate a page, delete one, or pull pages in from another file and drop them where you want them. This is the tool to reach for when the fix is not one operation but several.
Runs in your browser
Open a PDF and every page appears as a thumbnail, so you can see at a glance which one came in sideways. Turn a single page with the arrows on its corner, or select several — by clicking, by typing a range, or by asking for every landscape page — and turn them together. The turn is written into the file as the orientation of the page itself, so nothing is re-drawn and nothing loses quality.
Runs in your browser
Drag a box over the page to say how much of it you want to keep, or type the margins in points if you know them. The crop is written as the page box a reader is shown, so nothing on the page is deleted: the words outside it are still in the file, still selectable, and anyone can set the box back. Use one box for the whole document, or step through the pages and give each one a box of its own.
Finish
Make it small enough to send, lock it, take the lock back off, convert it to DOCX, turn photos into one, or send it to be signed.
Runs in your browser
Most of the weight in a large PDF is its images, so that is what Folio works on: pictures are resized and re-encoded until the file comes down, and the text stays sharp because text is not touched. You see the new size before you commit, and you can keep the original alongside the smaller copy.
Runs in your browser
Set a password that has to be typed before the document will open, and decide separately what someone may do once it is open — whether they can print it, copy text out of it, or change it. The file is encrypted on your own machine, so the password itself is never sent anywhere.
Runs in your browser
For a file you can already open: give Folio the password once and get back a copy that does not ask for one, with the restrictions on printing and copying lifted too. This removes protection you are entitled to remove — it does not break into a document whose password you do not have.
Runs on our server
Turns the PDF into a Word document you can open and edit in any word processor, keeping headings, paragraphs, lists and tables as real, editable formatting rather than pictures of them. This is the one tool that needs a server: the file is sent over an encrypted connection, converted, and the copy there is deleted as soon as the result is sent back, unless you are signed in and asked to keep it.
Runs in your browser
Add your JPG or PNG images, drag them into the order you want, and download them as a single PDF. Each picture becomes a page of its own, turned the right way up, at a standard page width with its proportions kept. Everything happens on your machine, so photos of receipts, IDs and signed forms never leave it.
Runs in your browser
Open a PDF and get every page back as a JPG image, sharp enough to read on any screen and to print. A single page comes down as one picture; a longer document comes down as a zip with the pages numbered in order. The pages are drawn in this browser tab, so the file never leaves your machine.
Needs a free account
Send a document to one person or several and get it back signed. Draw a signature box for each person, send it by email or share the link yourself, and follow who has opened and signed it. Signers sign in their browser with no account, and the finished PDF comes with an audit certificate. Needs a free Folio account, so your requests and signed copies are kept.
Runs on our server
Turn a scanned page — a photograph of text with no letters in it — into one you can search, select and copy from. Folio reads the pixels on a server and lays an invisible layer of the recognised words back over the page, so it looks exactly as it did and now behaves like a real document. This is the one recognition step that needs a server; the file is sent over an encrypted connection and deleted as soon as the result is sent back.
What is different
Folio’s advantages are absences, and absences do not show up in a feature list. So here they are, written down.
| What | Folio | The usual arrangement |
|---|---|---|
| Watermark on what you download | Never, on any tool | Common on a free tier |
| Files per hour | As many as you like | Often two or three, then a wait |
| Sign-up before you can download | Never required | Usually the price of the free tier |
| Where your file is processed | In your browser, for fourteen of the eighteen tools | Uploaded, queued, processed remotely |
| Size and page caps | Only on PDF to Word: 50 MB, 50 pages | Usually across the board |
| What it costs | Free, every tool, with no watermark | Free tier plus a subscription |
What it handles
Opens
Writes
Encryption
Limits
Accounts
Every PDF tool works signed out. An account changes where a copy you keep ends up living, and it is what sends a PDF for signature — the people signing need none.
Questions
Eleven answers, all on the page. Nothing to open.
No install, no watermark, no account to open one. The tool is already here.