Toolwhere is a small collection of tools for the jobs that interrupt real work: an image that is too big to upload, three PDFs that need to be one, a percentage you would rather not do in your head.
What we are trying to get right
Most free tool sites make the same three trades, and we would rather not. They upload your files to a server when there is no need to. They ask for an account before the second use. And they wrap two fields of actual functionality in enough advertising that the page takes six seconds to become usable.
So: the file tools run in your browser, there is nothing to sign up for, and pages load a single stylesheet and a single script plus, for two tools, one library. Everything else is our own code.
How the tools work
The image compressor uses the canvas element built into every browser to re-encode your picture at a lower quality. The PDF merger uses pdf-lib, which runs in the page rather than on a server. The password generator draws from your browser’s cryptographic random number generator. The calculators are plain arithmetic. In every case the work happens on your device.
How it is paid for
Toolwhere is free and intended to be supported by advertising. We have laid the pages out with room for ads that sit beside the tools rather than on top of them, and we will not use pop-ups, interstitials or layouts designed to catch accidental clicks. If advertising ever cannot pay for the site without ruining it, we will say so rather than quietly making the tools worse.
What we will not do
- Publish invented reviews, testimonials or user counts.
- Upload your files when the job can be done in the browser.
- Ask for personal details a tool does not need.
- Add a tool we would not use ourselves, purely to have more pages.
Suggestions
If a tool has a bug, or there is something you keep needing and cannot find a decent free version of, tell us. That is how the list grows.