The Small Tool I Built for Everyday Paperwork

Most important things in life come with paperwork. A residence permit, a visa, a new flat, a job application. Each one asks for a stack of documents: passport, contracts, payslips, certificates, bank statements. And almost every upload form has the same rule: a size limit, often for all the files together.

My residence permit application was where it got me. I had a dozen PDFs, the portal accepted only a few megabytes in total, and I had to compress every single file to make them fit. Then the next application came, and I did it all again.

Every site I tried had a catch. Some free versions stopped after two files. Others asked for payment only after I'd uploaded. Some "compressed" PDFs came back blurry, or hardly smaller than the original. And each time I was handing my passport scan to a site I knew nothing about.

So I built my own: ConvertAny. It does the boring jobs I actually need:

• Compress PDF when a portal has a size limit
• Merge PDF to send one document instead of a pile of scans
• JPG to PDF to turn phone photos of documents into a proper PDF
• HEIC to JPG for photos straight from the iPhone
• Word to PDF for letters and cover letters

It's free, with no account and nothing to install. Uploaded files are deleted automatically after an hour, or immediately if you press delete. Text tools like the JSON formatter run entirely in your browser and never upload anything.

What surprised me is how far it travelled. I shared it with a few friends who were going through the same applications, they passed it on, and now hundreds of people I know use it whenever a form asks for one more document.

If you deal with documents more often than you'd like, give it a try at convert.hsalem.com. And if a tool you need is missing, tell me.