Merge-pdf.app – A free, privacy-first PDF Merging tool • Hacker News Board

Merge-pdf.app – A free, privacy-first PDF Merging tool

#1

Post by ry8806 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 8:50 AM UTC

Merge-pdf.app – A free, privacy-first PDF Merging tool
ryansouthgate.com

Re: Merge-pdf.app – A free, privacy-first PDF Merging tool

#2

Post by ry8806 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 8:50 AM UTC

I used to use the other free online services, which send my files to their servers in order to perform the processing.

I moved to using a docker container when I became concerned about privacy (I merge a lot of invoices and financial documents)

So I built my own, free, privacy centric version

Re: Merge-pdf.app – A free, privacy-first PDF Merging tool

#3

Post by php-3 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 10:16 AM UTC

ry8806 wrote: post #2

I used to use the other free online services, which send my files to their servers in order to perform the processing. I moved to using a docker container when I became concerned about privacy (I merge a lot of invoices and financial documents) So I built my own, free, privacy centric version

[dead]

Re: Merge-pdf.app – A free, privacy-first PDF Merging tool

#4

Post by jcynix » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 11:05 AM UTC

Nice exercise, and as a local solution obviously better than all this "give your data and trust me" stuff. But why must everything nowadays be a browser-based tool? I'm still happy with tools like pdfunite from https://poppler.freedesktop.org/

Re: Merge-pdf.app – A free, privacy-first PDF Merging tool

#5

Post by ry8806 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

jcynix wrote: post #4

Nice exercise, and as a local solution obviously better than all this "give your data and trust me" stuff. But why must everything nowadays be a browser-based tool? I'm still happy with tools like pdfunite from https://poppler.freedesktop.org/

totally understand. I think distribution on the Web is a lot easier than building desktop applications for Linux/Mac/Windows. Also, sometimes I need to merge pdfs when I'm on my Android device, which would be another target to build an application for. Web makes it easy for me across a huge variety of devices

Re: Merge-pdf.app – A free, privacy-first PDF Merging tool

#6

Post by jcynix » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

ry8806 wrote: post #5

jcynix wrote: post #4

Nice exercise, and as a local solution obviously better than all this "give your data and trust me" stuff. But why must everything nowadays be a browser-based tool? I'm still happy with tools like pdfunite from https://poppler.freedesktop.org/

totally understand. I think distribution on the Web is a lot easier than building desktop applications for Linux/Mac/Windows. Also, sometimes I need to merge pdfs when I'm on my Android device, which would be another target to build an application for. Web makes it easy for me across a huge variety of devices

In Android I usw Termux which is a more or less Debian installation. But I understand that it's some kind of "generation conflict" where younger developers are more web centric than oldtimers, who know about the command line among other things ;-0

Re: Merge-pdf.app – A free, privacy-first PDF Merging tool

#7

Post by Privavault » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 12:51 AM UTC

Love seeing more privacy-first tools in this space. One thing I've learned building PrivaVault (encrypted doc management, launching this weekend) is that users often underestimate how much metadata leaks even when the content is processed locally. For PDF tools specifically, creation timestamps, software versions, and author info can persist through merges unless explicitly stripped. Would be curious if merge-pdf.app handles metadata sanitization – it's one of those edge cases that matters a lot for privacy-conscious users but isn't always obvious at first glance.