About

Why this exists

Search for an image converter and you will find dozens of sites that all work the same way: you upload a file, a server converts it, you download the result. They are free, they are convenient, and every one of them requires handing your photo to a stranger's computer.

For a screenshot of a spreadsheet that hardly matters. For a passport scan, a medical document, a photograph of your family with GPS coordinates in it, or anything covered by an employer's policy, it matters a great deal — and the friendly interface tells you nothing about what happens to the file afterwards.

The interesting part is that the upload has been unnecessary for years. Browsers gained the ability to decode, resize and encode images on their own, and to do it on a background thread without freezing the page. The architecture just did not catch up, because a server is what everybody already knew how to build.

How it is built

Every page is plain prerendered HTML, so it loads instantly and is readable without JavaScript. The conversion tool is a small piece of interactive code that appears on top of that, and the image work happens in a background worker so the interface never freezes. For formats browsers cannot read natively — HEIC most of all — a decoder is downloaded the first time you need it, from this domain, and run on your device.

One consequence is worth stating plainly: because your device does the work, serving you costs us almost nothing. There is no infrastructure bill that eventually has to be paid for by studying your files or selling something derived from them. The incentive that makes most free tools worth distrusting is simply absent.

Being honest about it

This approach has real limits, and how it works lists them — including the cases where you would be better off with desktop software. A page that only lists strengths is advertising, and the whole argument here rests on being checkable rather than persuasive.