Online usually means your document travels to somebody else's server and comes back. This page sets out what an in-browser converter does differently, and what that changes about speed, privacy and device support.
or pick several files at once from your device
Your PDF is processed in this browser and is never uploaded to our servers.
Very large or complex PDFs need more browser memory and may not convert reliably.
A hosted converter needs a connection because the conversion runs on a remote machine: your PDF is uploaded, processed there and returned. A web-app converter is online as well, but its code is downloaded into your browser and the document is then processed on your own device.
Nothing waits in a server queue and no time is spent pushing a large file over the network, so turnaround depends on your device. The counterweight is that the processing power comes out of the browser tab, which means a very long document needs more memory than a server would.
Any current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari works, including their mobile builds on Android and iPhone. There is no desktop application, no browser extension and nothing to install before the first conversion.
The page and its processing code have to be fetched once. After that the work on your document happens locally, which also means the file is not sitting on a remote disk waiting for some deletion schedule you cannot see.
Yes. The converter runs inside the browser tab, so there is no application or extension to download beforehand.
Yes. Mobile browsers are supported, with the same add, convert and download flow you get on a desktop.
Current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, on both desktop and mobile.
The page needs to have loaded before you start, but the conversion itself runs in the browser rather than on a remote server.