Personal builds · 2026
PixelPress
A privacy-first PDF compressor for sensitive documents, running entirely in your browser without sending them to a cloud service.
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Why it existed
PDF compression was usually part of a cloud service or a larger paid application. That creates a problem when the document is sensitive: uploading it to a 3rd party cloud is not acceptable, and I did not want another expensive subscription.
The friction it answered
PixelPress addresses two related gaps:
- Privacy: Sensitive PDFs should stay on the device itself.
- Compression: PDFs exported from Figma or FigJam (UI design tools) are surprisingly large, especially when they contained many screens and diagrams.
What was built
PixelPress runs entirely in the browser. Files are processed locally in a Web Worker using Pyodide, which lets Python run in the browser, and PyMuPDF. Nothing is uploaded to a cloud service.
The browser's Origin Private File System (OPFS) handles larger files and keeps results locally. Tesseract can optionally add searchable text to pages without usable text.
PixelPress chooses a compression strategy per page: preserve pages that are already efficient, and flatten clearly vector-heavy exports. A dedicated Figma preset keeps the more aggressive flattening workflow for screens and diagrams.
To try the tool, click here.