Cookie Policy
Last updated: October 6, 2026
This page lists everything PDFTools.studio stores in your browser, what each item is for, which items are optional, and how to change your choice. The short version: the tools themselves need no cookies at all, and the two optional services (Google Analytics and Google AdSense) can be switched off at any time. Advertising stays off until you say yes, and so does Google Analytics where your device's time zone is in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland.
1. What we mean by cookies
A cookie is a small text record a website places in your browser. This page also covers the browser's other storage areas we use (local storage, session storage and IndexedDB), because they hold data on your device in the same way and the same choices apply to them.
2. Necessary storage (always on)
These items are needed for the site to work as you asked and involve no third party. They never leave your browser and we cannot read them.
| Name | Type | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
theme | Local storage | Remembers whether you chose the light or dark theme. | Until you clear it |
pdftools_consent | Local storage | Records the choice you made in the cookie banner or in Cookie settings. | 12 months where the banner is shown, otherwise until you change or clear it |
pdftools_lang | Local storage | Remembers the language you picked, so English pages stop offering a translation. | Until you clear it |
PDFToolsStorage_v3 | IndexedDB | Holds a file you drop on the homepage for the moment it takes to open the tool page you picked. The tool reads it once and deletes it. | The file: seconds. The empty database stays until you clear site data. |
pending_file_b64, pending_file_name, pending_file_type | Session storage | A second copy of the same hand-off, used when the tool page cannot read IndexedDB. The file name and type are always stored; the file itself only when it is under 4 MB. The tool page deletes all three when it reads the file. | Until the tool page opens, and never longer than the tab |
keyval-store | IndexedDB | Keeps the OCR language data (for example ./eng.traineddata) after OCR PDF downloads it, so the next run can skip the download. Written by the Tesseract.js library; it holds no document content. | Until you clear site data |
3. Optional services
Advertising stays off until you switch it on. What happens with Google Analytics depends on your device's time zone. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and when your browser reports no time zone or only UTC, a banner asks on your first visit, Google Analytics is not loaded before you answer, and it stays off if you reject or close the page. In every other time zone no banner is shown, and Google Analytics runs from your first page view until you switch it off in Cookie settings. The site reads only the time zone your browser reports; it does not look up where you are.
| Service | Cookies it sets | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 | _ga, _ga_* | Counts page views and which tools are used, with IP addresses anonymised by Google. Tells us what to improve. | Up to 2 years |
| Google AdSense | Cookies set by Google on google.com and doubleclick.net (for example IDE, __gads) | Not active yet: no ads are shown and no AdSense code loads, whatever you choose. Once it runs, it will show the advertisements that fund the site and may personalise them based on your prior visits to this and other websites. | Up to 13 months |
Google's use of these cookies is described in Google's cookie policy and how Google uses data from partner sites.
4. Requests that are not cookies
The PDF libraries, the OCR engine and its language data are loaded from content delivery networks (cdnjs and jsDelivr), and the handwriting fonts for a typed signature from Google Fonts. Those services receive the ordinary data of a web request, such as your IP address and browser type, but set no cookies and never receive your documents. The HTML to PDF tool's "Webpage URL" mode sends the address you type to that website and, if that does not work, to a public proxy; the privacy policy explains that case.
5. Changing your choice
Click Cookie settings in the footer of any page to turn either optional service on or off. Turning a service off stops new data being collected; to remove cookies Google has already set, delete them in your browser. You can also clear everything the site stored by clearing site data for pdftools.studio in your browser settings.
6. Privacy signals from your browser
If your browser sends the Global Privacy Control signal, the site treats it as an opt-out from advertising cookies: advertising stays off unless you switch it on yourself. We also honour the older Do Not Track setting in the same way where a browser still sends it.
7. Browser controls
Every major browser lets you block or delete cookies and site data, for all sites or just this one. Blocking the necessary items above will not stop the tools working, but the theme will reset on each visit and the cookie choice cannot be remembered: where the banner is shown it will reappear on every page, and elsewhere Google Analytics stays off unless you switch it on for the page you are on.
8. Contact
Questions about this policy go to support@pdftools.studio. How we handle personal data more generally is set out in the privacy policy.