How to compress a PDF
- Choose your PDF. Click the box above and pick the file. It opens in this tab; nothing is sent anywhere.
- Pick a level. Balanced suits most files. Strong gets under email and upload limits. Light keeps the most detail.
- Compress and download. You’ll see the size before and after, then save the smaller PDF.
Good to know
- Best for scans and photos. Scanned documents and image-heavy PDFs usually shrink the most.
- Pages become images. Each page is redrawn as a JPEG, so text in the result can’t be selected or searched, and links and form fields are dropped. For a text document you need to edit later, keep the original too.
- Already-small files may not shrink. If the result would be bigger, the tool says so and you keep your original.
- The levels: Strong renders pages at 72 dpi, Balanced at 110 dpi and Light at 150 dpi.
Your PDF stays on your device
Most online compressors upload your PDF to their servers. Here, every page is rendered and rebuilt inside this browser tab, using the open-source PDF.js and pdf-lib libraries.
The page’s security policy tells your browser to block uploads, so the document can’t leave your device even by accident. You can check: open your browser’s developer tools, watch the Network tab, and compress a file. How InTheTab works
You’ll also see a few small requests to Google Analytics. That’s our visit counter, and it never receives your files. Privacy policy
Questions
Is it safe to compress a confidential PDF here?
Yes. The file is read and compressed by your own browser and is never uploaded. We never get your files or text: the site has no accounts, and its only analytics, Google Analytics, counts visits without ever seeing what you add here.
Is there a file size limit?
There’s no fixed limit; it depends on your device’s memory. Large PDFs with hundreds of pages take longer, so keep the tab open until it finishes.
Will the text still be searchable after compressing?
No. Pages are saved as images to make them smaller, so the text becomes part of the picture. That’s ideal for scans, which have no real text anyway. For a text PDF you need to search or copy from, keep the original.
Do I need to install anything or sign up?
No. It runs in any modern browser on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android or iPhone. It’s free, there’s no sign-up and no watermark is added.