How Shrinkal works
Shrinkal's tools run inside your web browser, on your own device. Your images and PDFs are never uploaded — not to us, and not to anyone else.
What happens to your files
- When you open a tool, your browser downloads the tool's code from shrinkal.com, like any web page.
- When you add a file, your browser reads it from your device into its own memory.
- A background worker in the same browser tab does the work — compressing, converting, resizing, or building a PDF — using image codecs compiled to WebAssembly and JavaScript PDF libraries.
- The result is made in your browser's memory, and you save it with an ordinary download.
- When you close the tab, your files and results are gone from the page. Shrinkal never stores them.
You can check this yourself: open your browser's developer tools, go to the Network tab and use a tool. You will see the page load its code, and no request that sends your file anywhere.
What does leave your browser
Requests for the site's pages and code, which our web server logs briefly for security — and, unless you turn it off, simple usage events for Google Analytics, such as which tool was opened and whether it worked. They never include file names, file contents or metadata — only things like a file's format (such as JPEG) and a size range. The privacy page lists exactly what is sent.
Supported formats
| Tools | Take | Make |
|---|---|---|
| Image tools | JPG, PNG and WebP images | JPG, PNG or WebP images |
| PDF tools | PDFs, and JPG, PNG and WebP images to put into a PDF | PDFs, or JPG and PNG images of PDF pages |
HEIC photos from iPhones are not supported yet. When you pick photos in a tool on an iPhone, Safari usually turns them into JPG for you; you can also set Camera → Formats to “Most Compatible”.
Limits
Everything runs on your device, so the limits keep your browser responsive:
- Each image up to 50 MB and 50 megapixels.
- Each PDF up to 100 MB.
- JPG to PDF and Merge PDF: up to 100 files and 250 MB together.
- PDF to JPG: up to 100 pages at a time.
- Merge PDF: up to 1000 pages in the merged PDF. Split PDF: up to 100 PDFs from one split.
- Organize PDF and Rotate PDF: up to 1000 pages.
Large files take longer on phones and older computers. Shrinkal is made for current browsers on computers and phones, and is tested automatically in the engines of Chrome and Safari.
The tools
Open-source software
Shrinkal is built on open-source software, including:
- MozJPEG, libwebp, OxiPNG and the Rust png decoder — reading and writing JPG, WebP and PNG images (through jSquash, from Google’s Squoosh)
- pdf-lib (the @cantoo fork) — making and changing PDFs
- PDF.js — reading and drawing PDF pages (from Mozilla)
- fflate — packing several results into one ZIP download
Their licences and copyright notices are in the open-source notices.
