True redaction removes the text and images from the file — not a black box on top. Plus real in-place text editing, fill + sign, reorder pages, and OCR.
LaunchEdit text in place, sign, redact, fill forms, and reorganize PDF files in your browser — all on your device. No upload, no subscription.
Drop two versions of a contract or drawing set. Moved notes read as moves, changed values light up digit by digit, and hidden text is named.
LaunchSide-by-side or overlay PDF diff driven by one engine that reads each file into a structured model — text, vector geometry, images, form fields, annotations — and compares the models. Moves show as moves, edits show only where they happened, and any PDF type works without picking a mode.
Drop a Gerber ZIP, an ODB++ .tgz or an IPC-2581 .xml and inspect every layer — compare revisions, snap-to-pad measure, run DRC and preview the board in 3D.
LaunchOpen Gerber, Excellon, ODB++ and IPC-2581 PCB files. Inspect layers, measure traces, run DRC, export to PNG / SVG / DXF.
Open a .step / .stp part and it measures itself: volume, thinnest wall, draft and undercuts on load, and a hole list with a BOM in one click. Measure, section, export STL.
LaunchOpen a STEP / STP part and it measures itself — volume, thinnest wall, draft and undercut checks on load, plus hole detection with a BOM. Measure, section, export STL. Rust + WASM B-rep kernel, runs in your browser.
Compress, merge, split, convert, and manipulate PDF files.
Resize, compress, convert, and transform images.
Convert, compress, and cut audio and video — MP3, WAV, MP4, WebM, Opus — all in your browser, nothing uploads.
Simulate a canning process down to its F0 sterilizing value.
Encrypt files, share encrypted notes as links, and inspect tokens, IDs, and Windows event logs.
Analyze packet captures, move files between devices, and console into network gear — nothing uploads.
Scan receipts into an expense ledger — your receipts and spending stay on your device.
View, measure, and repair CAD and 3D files — STEP, STL, OBJ, PLY, GLB, 3MF, DXF, and Gerber — right in your browser. Nothing uploads.
Effective: May 10, 2026 · Updated: October 8, 2026 · Version 1.3
Notice of change. From October 25, 2026 (00:00 UTC), our first-party analytics also records how each page load started, and one event when a tool finishes a run (§3.4). Neither is recorded before then.
This Cookie Policy explains what storage technologies Loft Tools uses on your device, what they’re for, and how to control them. It supplements our Privacy Policy.
Loft Tools sets no advertising cookies, no third-party trackers, and no cross-site fingerprinting. We run our own first-party analytics on a same-origin endpoint (/_/c) — no data leaves Cloudflare, our infrastructure provider. For each page view we record the path, UTC timestamp, country (from request headers), referring site host, how the page load started, and a one-way SHA-256 hash of (rotating daily salt + IP + User-Agent + site host). When a tool finishes a run, we also record the tool’s id, how long the run took, the input size rounded down to a coarse step, and whether it succeeded. Section 3.4 lists every field. No file name or file content is ever sent. The salt is regenerated every 24 hours and the previous salt is destroyed, so the hash cannot be linked across days. Raw IP, User-Agent, and any file content are never written to disk.
We do use device-local storage (localStorage, IndexedDB, and a Service Worker cache) to make tools work offline and to remember your preferences. None of this data leaves your browser or is shared with us or anyone else.
We will update this page at least 14 days before anything material changes — for example, before we change analytics providers or before we serve any advertising.
When privacy laws (the EU ePrivacy Directive, the UK PECR, the CCPA, etc.) talk about “cookies,” they often mean any technology used to read or store information on your device. That includes:
| Technology | What it is |
|---|---|
| Cookies | Small text files set by a website and sent back to the server with each request. |
| localStorage | A larger key-value store kept by your browser per site. Stays until cleared. |
| sessionStorage | Like localStorage but cleared when you close the tab. |
| IndexedDB | A larger structured database kept by your browser per site. |
| Service Worker cache | Files saved by your browser so the site can work offline. |
| Pixels / web beacons | Tiny invisible images that report back when loaded. |
| Browser fingerprinting | Building a “fingerprint” from the combination of your browser settings and capabilities. |
We refer to all of these as “storage technologies” below. Where a particular law uses the word “cookies” we mean it in the broad sense.
We use the following storage technologies, all of which are strictly necessary to provide a function you’ve explicitly requested. Under the ePrivacy Directive (recital 25 / Art. 5(3)) and equivalent rules, strictly necessary storage does not require prior consent.
| What | Where | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
| App shell cache | Service Worker cache | Make the Service work offline and load fast | Until you clear browser site data, or we update the cached version |
| Tool preferences | localStorage / IndexedDB | Remember your last-used unit, theme (dark/light), most-recently-used tools, draft text in a notepad-style tool | Until you clear browser site data |
| Recent files index (where applicable) | IndexedDB | Show “recent” entries inside a tool that you reopened. Files themselves are not stored unless the tool offers an explicit “save” option. | Until you clear browser site data |
These do not identify you, are not shared with anyone, and are not used for advertising or analytics.
Cloudflare, our hosting provider, may set the following cookies for security and abuse prevention. These are considered strictly necessary and do not require prior consent under EU/UK rules.
| Cookie | Set by | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
__cf_bm |
Cloudflare | Bot management — distinguish humans from automated traffic | 30 minutes |
cf_clearance |
Cloudflare | Records that you have passed a security challenge so you don’t have to repeat it | 30 days (only set when triggered) |
We don’t read or share these cookies. Cloudflare’s cookie policy: cloudflare.com/cookie-policy.
When you open the sponsorship checkout on /sponsor, Stripe loads its hosted Checkout form inside an iframe served from js.stripe.com and checkout.stripe.com. Stripe sets cookies on its own domains to operate that form — for example, to maintain your checkout session, to fingerprint for fraud detection, and to remember “Link” saved cards across other Stripe-powered sites. Those cookies are governed by Stripe’s Privacy Policy and Stripe’s Cookie Settings, not by us. We do not read or share Stripe’s cookies.
/_/c)We run our own analytics on a same-origin endpoint. No third-party scripts, no advertising cookies, no fingerprinting, no cross-site tracking. We record how each page load started, and tool_run events, from October 25, 2026 (00:00 UTC).
What we collect per page view:
/tools/pdf-tools/compare-pdf/)navigate (a link or a typed address), reload, back_forward, prerender (a page your browser loaded ahead of time, counted only once you open it), or update (the reload that applies a new version of the site)utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, plus a yes/no flag for an ad click ID (the ID itself is not sent)What we collect when you use a tool:
tool_run). One event when a tool finishes a run. It holds the tool’s id (for example compare-pdf), the run time in whole milliseconds, the input size rounded down to one of eight steps (0, 1 KB, 10 KB, 100 KB, 1 MB, 10 MB, 100 MB or 1 GB), and whether the run succeeded.tool_saved_as), exporting a PDF (pdf_export_done), pinning a tool for offline use (tool_pinned) or installing the app (pwa_app_installed). It holds the action’s name and, where the action has them, the same run time, size step and success flag.Each event also carries the page path, timestamp, country and visitor hash listed above. From the request, our server adds the browser family, operating-system family and device type (phone, tablet or desktop), and the Cloudflare data centre that answered. For a page view it also notes whether the view started a new session (after 30 minutes without one) and the session’s first page.
What we DO NOT collect:
Device storage for the update label: just before the site reloads a tab to apply an update, it writes a timestamp to sessionStorage (loft:nav:update-reload). The next page view reads and deletes it, so that load is labelled update and not counted as a visit. The timestamp never leaves your browser.
Salt rotation: the daily salt is regenerated every 24 hours and the previous salt is destroyed. This means the visitor hash cannot be linked across days — your visit on Monday cannot be associated with your visit on Tuesday by us or anyone else, even with database access.
Storage: events are written to our Cloudflare D1 database (managed by Cloudflare, region pair selected at infrastructure-provision time) and to Cloudflare Workers Analytics Engine. Raw event rows are retained for 90 days in D1 and for three months in Analytics Engine; aggregate daily counts are kept indefinitely.
Lawful basis (GDPR): Article 6(1)(f) — legitimate interest in audience measurement, with CNIL Article 82 audience-measurement exemption criteria met (first-party, no cross-site tracking, anonymised, no third-party sharing). We do not consider this analytics setup to require a prior consent banner.
To opt out: enable the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal in your browser (we honour Sec-GPC: 1 server-side — when the header is present we drop every event entirely, page views, tool runs and goals alike, before any hashing or storage), or use a privacy extension that blocks lofttools.com/_/c. See §6.
Rate limit: we apply a per-IP soft cap (120 page views / minute) at the beacon endpoint. Excess beacons are silently dropped — no error is returned to the client — and never stored.
When you click through to another third-party donation platform (Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-fi, GitHub Sponsors, or similar), that platform may set its own cookies on its own domain, governed by its own cookie/privacy policy. We do not see or share those cookies.
For clarity, we do not currently use:
We will update this list and section 5 before any of this changes.
We expect to add the following:
We are honest about our roadmap: advertising is planned for free-tier surfaces (likely a small number of category and tool pages). When advertising goes live:
We do not plan to use any of the following: tracking children under 13, building cross-device identity graphs, retargeting based on sensitive categories (health, religion, sexual orientation, financial distress), or selling personal data for monetary consideration.
You can control storage technologies through your browser. Each browser handles this slightly differently; the major ones are:
You can also:
Sec-GPC: 1 server-side: when present, the analytics beacon write is dropped before any data is processed, regardless of jurisdiction);If you block strictly necessary cookies (e.g., the Cloudflare bot-management cookie), parts of the Service may not work correctly.
Material changes will be highlighted at the top of this page for at least 30 days, and announced via a banner on the home page. We will not enable any new tracking, analytics, or advertising technology without first updating this page and giving at least 14 days’ advance notice.
A complete change history is available on request to [email protected].
Email: [email protected] Postal address for formal legal notices: available on request at the same address.