About KitYards

What KitYards is

KitYards is an independent collection of small, single-purpose web tools — a word counter, a PDF merger, a hash generator, a colour converter and a dozen more. Each one does one job, loads in under a second, and works without an account, an email address or an install. There is no free tier and no paid tier: every tool is complete, and every feature is available to everyone.

Why we built it

Most "free online tools" work by uploading your file to a server, processing it there and handing you a download link. That model is convenient for the operator and terrible for you: your contract, your ID scan or your unreleased draft ends up on a machine you do not control, under a retention policy you did not read. Modern browsers can do almost all of that work locally — Canvas can resize an image, Web Crypto can hash a file, WebAssembly can rewrite a PDF. We built KitYards to prove that the upload was never necessary in the first place.

How our tools actually work

Every tool on this site is client-side. When you open a tool page, your browser downloads a small JavaScript module and runs it on your own device. The file you drop in is read with the FileReader API into your browser's memory, transformed there, and written back out as a download through a temporary blob URL. There is no upload step because there is nowhere to upload to — KitYards is a static site with no application server and no database.

• Images are decoded and re-encoded with the Canvas API, off the main thread in a Web Worker where the browser supports it.
• PDFs are parsed and rebuilt with pdf-lib and rendered for previews with pdf.js, both running as ordinary page scripts.
• Hashes use the native Web Crypto API for SHA-1, SHA-256 and SHA-512; MD5 ships as a small bundled implementation because browsers deliberately omit it.
• Passwords use crypto.getRandomValues, the browser's cryptographically secure random source — never the predictable Math.random.
• Text tools (JSON, CSV, Markdown, Base64, colour) are pure functions over strings, with no network access of any kind.

You can verify this yourself

You do not have to take our word for it. Open your browser's developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and use any tool on this site — resize a photo, merge two PDFs, hash a file. You will see the page assets load, and then nothing. No request carries your content anywhere. For the strongest guarantee, load a tool page once and then disconnect from the internet: every tool keeps working offline, because everything it needs is already on your device.

Who is behind KitYards

KitYards is a small independent project, not a venture-backed company. It is designed, built and maintained by one team that writes every tool, every guide and every translation on this site. We are reachable at the address on our contact page and we answer questions about how a specific tool works, including the awkward ones.

How KitYards is funded

The site is paid for by advertising, shown through Google AdSense. We want to be direct about what that means: ad networks use cookies and similar technologies, and that is the one part of this site that involves a third party. It never touches the content you process — ads are placed around the tool, not inside it, and the advertising script has no access to the text or files you work on. We do not sell data, we do not run affiliate links inside tool output, and we do not gate any feature behind a payment.

How we write these pages

Each tool page is written by hand by the person who built the tool, not generated from a template. That is why the technical sections name specific APIs and specific libraries: they describe what the code on that page really does. We include a limitations section on every tool because a browser-only implementation genuinely cannot do everything a desktop application can, and you deserve to know where the edges are before you hit them.

• Every guide is written against the shipped tool and re-checked whenever that tool changes.
• Every page carries the date it was last reviewed, so you can judge how current it is.
• We state what a tool cannot do as plainly as what it can.
• All four language versions are written and reviewed as real translations, not machine output.

How KitYards is built

The site is built with Astro and Tailwind CSS and deployed as static HTML. Pages ship almost no JavaScript beyond the tool you actually opened, which is why they load close to instantly even on a slow mobile connection. The interface works in both light and dark themes, follows the operating-system preference by default, and is fully keyboard-navigable.

Suggest a tool

Most of the tools on this site exist because somebody asked for them. If there is a small utility you keep looking for and keep finding behind a signup wall, tell us — if it can run entirely in a browser, we will look at building it.