PDF Inspector: see your file’s size, privacy and searchability at a glance
You’re about to send a PDF, but you can’t actually see how big it is, whether it carries your name, whether it’s a scan, or whether an old “redaction” really holds. PDF Inspector lays all of that out: drop a file in and, in a few seconds, it builds a report right in your browser — what’s eating the bytes (images vs. fonts vs. metadata), which identifying metadata it exposes (author, creating app, creation date), whether the text is searchable, and whether there’s fake redaction where text is still copyable from under a black box. The key point: to check a sensitive PDF’s privacy you’d never want to upload it to a server — so the whole checkup runs locally, with nothing uploaded. Every issue comes with a one-click fix that jumps straight to the right tool.
You’re about to send a PDF, but you can’t actually see how big it is, whether it carries your name, whether it’s a scan, or whether an old “redaction” really holds.
How to pdf inspector
- 1Drag the PDF you want to inspect into the drop zone, or click to select it.
- 2Click “Run checkup” — compress cat parses the structure, metadata and per-page text layer locally.
- 3Read the report: size breakdown, privacy metadata, searchability, and fake-redaction check.
- 4Hit “fix” on any issue to jump to compress / strip metadata / OCR / true redact.
Why use compress cat's PDF Inspector?
- Privacy checks belong on your machine: inspecting whether a contract carries your identity, by first uploading it to someone’s server, defeats the point. compress cat runs entirely in your browser — the file never leaves your device.
- It makes the invisible obvious: whether images or metadata are bloating the file, whether a scan can’t be searched, whether an old redaction is real or fake — one report flags it all, no guessing.
- See it, fix it: every issue has a one-click fix — strip metadata on the spot, jump to compression when images dominate, or redo a fake redaction with true redaction.
Frequently asked questions
No. Parsing the structure, reading metadata and analyzing each page’s text layer all happen locally in your browser — not a single byte is uploaded. That’s precisely why a privacy checkup has to run locally.
Many tools “redact” by drawing a black box over text, leaving the underlying text fully intact in the file — copy it or pull it out with a tool and it’s all there. That’s a real leak. The inspector heuristically flags pages where extractable text sits under black boxes. It’s a best-effort heads-up that errs toward under-reporting, so verify it yourself — and use True Redact to remove the content for good.
Yes. The size breakdown splits the file into images / embedded fonts / metadata / text & structure, so you can see where the bytes went. Most oversized PDFs are mostly images — one click jumps you to compression to slim it down.
The page content is untouched. Stripping only clears identifying document info — author, title, creating app, creation/modification dates (the producer field shows a generic value) — while the pages stay exactly as they are.
Turn it into an automated flow
Need to batch-process, or chain several steps? Use the workflow builder to combine compress, merge, rotate and watermark into a reusable pipeline.
Updated · compress cat team