PlainFile
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Privacy

PlainFile is built on a simple promise: your files stay on your device.

No uploads

All processing happens locally in your browser using WebAssembly (WASM). We never receive the contents of your PDFs, images, or other files. The "0 bytes uploaded" badge in the header is a statement of fact, not marketing.

How to verify this yourself

You do not have to take any of the above on trust — it is a ten-second check:

  1. Open your browser's developer tools (F12) and switch to the Network tab.
  2. Process a file: redact a PDF, convert a HEIC photo, strip metadata from an image.
  3. Watch the requests. No request carries the bytes of your file — only the page itself, its code and its engine are downloaded.

The second check is even simpler: load a tool once, disconnect from the network entirely, and keep working. Everything needed to process your file is already in the tab. If a file were being sent to a server for processing, neither check would be possible.

Optional analytics

We do not use cookies, analytics pixels, fingerprinting, or any other form of tracking unless you explicitly consent. If you accept cookies, we load Google Analytics to understand how the site is used, improve your experience, develop new features, and support localization. Google processes this data and may use cookies. You can decline or withdraw consent at any time by clearing site data for plainfile.io.

True redaction

Our PDF redaction tool removes content from the file itself, not just draws black boxes over it. After applying redactions, the tool runs an automatic verification step to confirm that the selected terms are no longer present in the output.

EXIF metadata and the optional map

The EXIF viewer and remover parse photo metadata locally — the file never leaves your device. The only exception is the optional GPS map: it loads only after you explicitly click "Show on map", and its tile requests go to openstreetmap.org, revealing the approximate region of the coordinates to that third party. No file data is ever included in those requests. That is also why the map is not enabled by default.

Open source, so the claim is checkable

The code that touches your files is public under the AGPL-3.0 licence: github.com/plainfile/plainfile. This matters more than it sounds. "We do not store your files" is a promise any website can make; a repository you can read, build and self-host turns it into something you can verify without trusting us at all. There is no server-side component that could log or retain your data, and you are welcome to confirm that in the source or by running your own copy.