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Look, I know what you're thinking. "Another PDF tool? Really?" Trust me, I had the same thought when I started this project.

Here's the thing though - I built PDF Page Picker out of frustration. Real, genuine frustration.

The Problem Nobody Talks About

I was trying to extract a few pages from a 200-page conference proceedings PDF. Just pages 47-52 where my colleague's paper was published. Sounds simple, right?

Option 1: Adobe Acrobat. Great tool, but $15.99/month for a task I do maybe once a month? No thanks.

Option 2: One of those "free" online PDF tools. So I upload my document... to where exactly? Some server in who-knows-where? And then there's a watermark plastered across every page unless I upgrade to Premium. Hard pass.

Option 3: Install some random desktop software that probably bundles in a toolbar and three different "PC optimizers." Yeah, no.

The Lightbulb Moment

I'm a developer. I know browsers these days are incredibly powerful. We have the File API, we have JavaScript libraries like pdf-lib that can manipulate PDFs entirely in the browser. Why isn't anyone building tools that actually respect user privacy?

So I spent a weekend building it. No servers, no uploads, no accounts, no watermarks, no tracking. Just a simple tool that does one thing well - extracts pages from PDFs right in your browser.

What Makes It Actually Different

I'm not going to bore you with marketing speak. Here's what actually matters:

It's genuinely private. Not "we respect your privacy" while secretly uploading your data. I mean architecturally impossible to see your documents. There's no backend. There's nowhere for your PDF to go. Open your browser's Network tab and watch - after the page loads, zero network requests when you process files.

It's actually free. No "free trial," no premium tier, no feature gating. The whole thing. Forever. Why? Because once you load the page, everything runs on your computer. I'm not paying for servers to process your PDFs because I'm not processing them - you are, in your browser.

It's fast. No upload time, no "processing your file" spinner while it sits in a queue. Your PDF never leaves your computer, so it's just your CPU doing the work. On a modern laptop, extracting pages from a 50-page PDF takes maybe 2-3 seconds.

The Stuff That Still Needs Work

I'm not going to pretend it's perfect. Right now you can't reorder pages (they come out in their original order). There's no visual preview of pages before extraction. Password-protected PDFs don't work.

But here's my philosophy: I'd rather ship something simple that works well than promise everything and deliver a bloated mess. Those features might come eventually if people actually want them.

Use It, Don't Use It

Honestly, I built this tool for me first. It solves my problem. If it solves yours too, great. If you need something more powerful, Adobe and Foxit make excellent products (and they're worth paying for if you use them regularly).

But if you're like me - you just occasionally need to grab a few pages from a PDF without uploading it to some random company's server or subscribing to yet another service - well, that's why this exists.

Try it. Don't try it. It's the internet - you've got options.

PDFs are everywhere, but most people treat them like mysterious black boxes. You get a PDF, you open it, you print it or send it along. But there's some genuinely useful stuff you should probably know.

1. PDFs Can Contain Invisible Metadata (And It Can Bite You)

Every time you create a PDF, it quietly saves metadata - your name, company name, computer name, software used, even edit history. I learned this the hard way when I sent a "final" proposal to a client, and they could see the document properties showing I'd named it "lowball-offer-v1.pdf" before exporting. Awkward.

Most PDF readers let you view this under File > Properties. If you're sharing sensitive documents, you want to strip this metadata first. Adobe has a "Remove Hidden Information" feature. For free tools, pdf-lib (what PDF Page Picker uses) actually doesn't copy over metadata by default, which is a privacy win.

2. "Printing to PDF" and "Saving as PDF" Are Not the Same Thing

This confused me for years. When you "print" a document to PDF, you're essentially taking a picture of each page. The result is usually larger files and you lose things like selectable text from Word documents (it becomes an image of text).

When you "Save As" or "Export" to PDF from apps like Word or Google Docs, the program creates an actual PDF with real text, hyperlinks, and all that good stuff preserved. File sizes are smaller, text is searchable, and it's just... better.

Use "Print to PDF" only when you need to capture exactly what you see on screen (like a web page with special formatting). For documents, always use Export or Save As.

3. PDFs Can Execute JavaScript (Yes, Really)

This one's a bit scary. PDFs can contain JavaScript code that runs when you open them. Mostly this is used for forms and interactive features, but it's also been a vector for malware.

Most modern PDF readers disable JavaScript by default or prompt you before running it, but it's worth checking your settings. In Adobe Reader: Edit > Preferences > JavaScript, and make sure it's disabled unless you specifically need it.

I've been reading PDFs for 20 years and I've never once needed JavaScript enabled. Better safe than sorry.

4. Compressed PDFs Aren't Actually Smaller Files

Here's a weird one: "Compressing" a PDF doesn't work like zipping a file. A PDF is already using internal compression for images and text. When you use a "PDF compressor" tool, it's usually downsampling images (making them lower quality) or converting color spaces.

You might get a smaller file, but you're losing quality. The original PDF was probably already as "compressed" as it could be without quality loss.

If you need smaller PDFs, your best bet is to go back to the source document and export with lower quality image settings. Don't trust "lossless compression" claims for PDFs - it's mostly snake oil.

5. Extracting Pages Creates New PDFs, It Doesn't Delete Anything

When you extract pages from a PDF (like with PDF Page Picker), you're creating a new document. The original stays untouched. This seems obvious but I've had people ask if they're "removing" pages from their original file.

Nope. Extract away. Your source PDF is safe. You're just making a new file with copies of specific pages.

This also means if you extract all pages from a 10MB PDF, you'll end up with a 10MB extracted PDF. You're not saving space by splitting - you're duplicating the content into new files.

Bonus: Why PDFs Are Called PDFs

Portable Document Format. Adobe created it in the 1990s to solve a problem: how do you share a document that looks exactly the same on everyone's computer, regardless of whether they have the fonts installed or the same software?

The "portable" part meant it embedded everything needed to display the document - fonts, images, formatting - so it looked identical everywhere. Revolutionary at the time. Now it's just... how documents work.

But that's why PDFs are so stubborn about editing. They were designed to be viewed exactly as created, not modified. Fighting a PDF is fighting its original design purpose.

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Got other PDF tricks or questions? I might write more of these if people actually read them. But honestly, there are only so many interesting things to say about PDFs before it gets boring.

Privacy discussions online tend to swing between two extremes: "I have nothing to hide" and "burn all your devices and live in a cave."

Let's talk about digital privacy like adults. You probably don't need to hide from the NSA, but you also don't need to hand your data to every website that asks nicely.

What Privacy Actually Means (For Normal People)

Privacy isn't about having secrets. It's about control. It's about deciding who gets your information and what they can do with it.

Think about your house. You have blinds, right? You're not running a meth lab - you just don't want strangers watching you eat cereal in your underwear. That's privacy. It's normal.

Digital privacy is the same thing. You're not hiding illegal activity by avoiding sketchy websites that want to upload your documents to "process" them. You're just... being reasonable.

The "I Have Nothing to Hide" Fallacy

This argument drives me nuts. You have plenty to hide - not because it's shameful, but because it's nobody else's business.

Your medical records? Your salary negotiations? Your kid's school photos? That draft email where you vented about your boss before deleting it? None of that is illegal. All of it is private.

Companies love when people say "I have nothing to hide" because it makes data collection sound like a non-issue. It's not. Your data has value - that's why they want it.

Privacy Doesn't Require Being a Hermit

You don't need to quit social media, use a burner phone, and route everything through Tor. That's great if you want to, but it's not realistic for most people.

Here's what actually matters:

Think before you upload. Once you upload something to a website, you've lost control of it. Doesn't matter what their privacy policy says - they have your file, and you're trusting them not to do anything stupid with it.

This is why I built PDF Page Picker to work entirely in your browser. Not because I think you're hiding state secrets in your PDFs, but because... why should you have to upload them? The browser can do the work just fine.

Read the room (and the permissions). When an app asks for access to your contacts to "enhance your experience," ask yourself: does a flashlight app really need my contacts? Probably not.

Same with websites. If a simple PDF tool asks you to create an account and provide an email, why? What are they doing that requires an account? Usually it's either tracking or upselling.

Use the privacy tools that don't make your life harder. Browser extensions like uBlock Origin block ads and trackers. It takes 30 seconds to install and you never think about it again. That's a good privacy trade-off.

Quitting Google entirely and self-hosting your own email server? That's dedication I respect but can't personally maintain. Pick your battles.

The Privacy Theater Problem

Some privacy measures are performative. They make you feel secure without actually improving security.

Example: Those "Do Not Track" browser settings? Companies can completely ignore them, and most do. It's privacy theater - looks good, does nothing.

Another one: VPNs marketed as "complete privacy." A VPN hides your traffic from your ISP... by routing it through the VPN company instead. You've just moved the trust, not eliminated it. VPNs are great for specific uses (public Wi-Fi, geo-blocking), but they're not magic privacy wands.

What I Actually Do

I'm not a privacy extremist, but I'm also not cavalier about my data. Here's my practical approach:

- I use Firefox with uBlock Origin because it takes zero effort and blocks most tracking.

- I avoid uploading documents to random websites when I can process them locally (hence building a client-side PDF tool).

- I use a password manager (Bitwarden) because remembering unique passwords for 100+ accounts is impossible.

- I don't post anything online I'd be devastated to see leaked. Not because I'm paranoid, but because data breaches happen.

- I pay for some services instead of using "free" versions where I'm clearly the product. Spotify, email hosting, cloud storage - if I use it daily, I'd rather pay cash than pay with data.

The Honest Truth About Privacy

Perfect privacy doesn't exist if you want to participate in modern society. Your bank knows your transactions. Your phone company knows your location. Your email provider could read your emails (they don't, but they could).

But you can make reasonable choices that reduce unnecessary data sharing without becoming a hermit. You can ask "do they actually need this?" before handing over data. You can use tools that respect your privacy when equivalent tools don't.

It's not about paranoia. It's about not being a sucker.

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This is the stuff I think about when building tools like PDF Page Picker. Could I have made it "free with account required" and collected emails? Sure. But why? The tool works fine without it, and I'd rather not have a database of user data that could leak someday.

Privacy by design isn't about fear - it's about not creating problems that don't need to exist.