Do I need an account?

No. There is no sign-up, no email and no payment. Open a file and start working.

Is there a file size limit?

There is no artificial cap. The practical limit is your device’s memory, because the work happens in your browser rather than on a server. Very large scans are best handled in smaller batches.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes — the editor is touch-aware, and there is a native Android app. On iOS the web version works in Safari and can be added to the home screen.

Can I use it without an internet connection?

Yes. After the first load the editor is cached and keeps working offline; the desktop and Android builds are offline from first launch.

Where are my files stored?

On your device only. Nothing is uploaded, so there is nothing on our side to store, leak or delete.

Home › Haven PDF help

● Files are never uploaded

Haven PDF help

Everything on this page is about the editor itself: how to get a document in, how to work quickly, what happens when something goes wrong, and where the honest limits are.

One thing worth stating first, because it changes what the rest means: your files are never uploaded. Every operation described here runs inside your browser on your own machine. That is also why some limits exist — a browser tab has less memory than a server farm.

Open Haven PDF →

Opening a document

Drag a file anywhere onto the page.
Click the open area and pick a file from your device.
Paste an image straight from the clipboard.

Accepted formats: PDF, Word (.docx), and JPG, PNG or WebP images. Images and Word files are converted to PDF as they are opened — again, on your device.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl / ⌘ + Z	Undo
Ctrl / ⌘ + Shift + Z	Redo
Ctrl / ⌘ + C · V	Copy and paste the selection
Ctrl / ⌘ + D	Duplicate the selection
Ctrl / ⌘ + A	Select everything on the page
Ctrl / ⌘ + F	Find (and replace) across the document
Ctrl / ⌘ + P	Print
Space + drag	Pan the page
← ↑ → ↓	Nudge the selection by one step
Delete · ⌫	Delete the selection
Esc	Deselect / close the dialog
?	Show the shortcut list in the app

Press ? inside the editor to see this list without leaving the page.

Alt (⌥) + double-click on existing PDF text selects the whole paragraph rather than a single line — useful when you want to rewrite a block instead of a word.

Working offline and installing it as an app

Haven PDF is a progressive web app: once loaded, it keeps working with no connection. You can install it from your browser’s address bar, and it then opens in its own window like any other program.

There are also native builds for macOS, Windows, Linux and Android that bundle the same editor, so they run fully offline from the first launch and can be set as the default handler for PDF files.

macOS app · Windows app · Android app

Password-protected PDFs

If a document is encrypted, the editor asks for the password before it can render anything; a wrong password is reported as such rather than failing silently. The password is used in your browser to decrypt the file locally and is never transmitted.

You can also add a password to a document, or remove one you know, from the protect tools. Removing a password you do not know is not possible — that is encryption doing its job, not a missing feature.

Protect a PDF · Remove a password

When something goes wrong

Symptom	Most likely cause	What to do
A very large scan is slow or the tab crashes	Browser memory, not the file being invalid	Split it, or process fewer pages at a time; close other heavy tabs
OCR stalls on a huge scanned page	Very high-resolution pages inflate the recogniser’s memory	Compress or downscale the scan first, then run OCR
Copied text comes out as gibberish	The PDF’s font has no usable character map	Use OCR to build a fresh text layer
The page looks right but export differs	A font that could not be embedded	Re-check the font choice; report it if it persists
Nothing happens when opening a file	An unsupported format	Confirm it is PDF, DOCX, JPG, PNG or WebP

There is a report button in the toolbar. It sends only the message you type — never your document, and never its filename. Automatic error reports are off by default and are only sent if you explicitly agree.

What a browser can and cannot do

Running everything locally is what keeps your documents private, and it is also the source of the real limits. It is only fair to state them:

Memory is bounded by the tab, not by a server. Very large scans — hundreds of high-resolution pages — can exhaust it, and the honest fix is to work in smaller batches.
OCR runs on your CPU. It is accurate but slower than a datacentre GPU, and it works page by page for exactly that reason.
The first load has to download a real PDF engine. After that it is cached, and subsequent visits are fast even offline.
Nothing can be recovered from our side if you lose a file, because we never had a copy of it.

What leaves your device

Your documents: never. No page, no filename, no fragment.
Anonymous usage counts: which tool was opened, cookieless, with no file information attached.
Error reports: only if you turn them on, and with filenames and local paths stripped out.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an account?: No. There is no sign-up, no email and no payment. Open a file and start working.
Is there a file size limit?: There is no artificial cap. The practical limit is your device’s memory, because the work happens in your browser rather than on a server. Very large scans are best handled in smaller batches.
Does it work on a phone?: Yes — the editor is touch-aware, and there is a native Android app. On iOS the web version works in Safari and can be added to the home screen.
Can I use it without an internet connection?: Yes. After the first load the editor is cached and keeps working offline; the desktop and Android builds are offline from first launch.
Where are my files stored?: On your device only. Nothing is uploaded, so there is nothing on our side to store, leak or delete.