True redaction removes the text and images from the file — not a black box on top. Plus real in-place text editing, fill + sign, reorder pages, and OCR.
LaunchEdit text in place, sign, redact, fill forms, and reorganize PDF files in your browser — all on your device. No upload, no subscription.
Overlay two PDF revisions and catch every changed pixel — plus word-level text, metadata, and form-field diffs, with drag-rect exclusion zones. Built for dense AEC drawings.
LaunchSide-by-side or overlay PDF diff with a document-type selector — Document (contracts, reports), AEC / Blueprint (drawings, schematics), or Image-Scan. Highlights pixel-level differences plus a word-level text diff in a modal.
Drop a Gerber X2 + Excellon ZIP and inspect every layer — compare revisions, snap-to-pad measure, probe trace widths, preview the board in 3D, and share a snapshot URL.
LaunchOpen RS-274X / X2 Gerber and Excellon files. Inspect layers, measure traces, export to PNG / SVG / DXF.
Open a .step / .stp part and it detects the holes, fasteners + BOM, wall thickness, draft, undercuts, sharp corners, and mass automatically. Measure point-to-point, section it, export a PNG. Built on the open-source truck Rust kernel.
LaunchOpen a STEP / STP part and it measures itself — holes, BOM, wall thickness, draft + undercut checks, and mass, detected automatically. Measure, section, screenshot. Rust + WASM B-rep kernel, runs in your browser.
Compress, merge, split, convert, and manipulate PDF files.
Resize, compress, convert, and transform images.
Format, encode, decode, and validate code and data — safe for production secrets.
Convert, compress, and cut audio and video — MP3, WAV, MP4, WebM, Opus — all in your browser, nothing uploads.
Recipe scaling, canning processing times — kitchen math you should not memorize.
AES-256 file encryption and self-destructing encrypted notes.
Analyze packet captures and run sysadmin diagnostics in your browser — nothing uploads. PCAP Analyzer ships first.
Chart-overlay technical analysis and precision financial math — your screenshots and numbers never leave your device.
Open CAD, BIM, medical, and enterprise files without paying $300-30K/year for the native software. Gerber Viewer ships first.
When you close a Loft Tools tab in the middle of editing a PDF, where does the work go? Three answers depending on what you were doing, and the rule for getting your work out before you walk away.
Reference page for Loft data lifetime. Updated when behaviour changes. Last reviewed 2026-05-27.
The lifetime of any data inside a Loft tool is determined by which of three storage layers it lives in:
| Data | Lives in | Survives tab close | Survives browser restart | Survives “clear site data” |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| File you dropped in | tab heap | no | no | no |
| Intermediate processing buffers | tab heap | no | no | no |
| Rendered preview canvases | tab heap | no | no | no |
| Result Blob (before download triggers) | tab heap | no | no | no |
| Pinned tools list | IndexedDB (loft-pins) |
yes | yes | no |
| Theme preference | localStorage | yes | yes | no |
| Compare PDF parsed cache | IndexedDB (loft-compare-pdf-cache) |
yes | yes | no |
| OCR / ML model weights | service-worker cache (loft-ocr) |
yes | yes | no |
| Per-tool small preferences | IndexedDB / localStorage | yes | yes | no |
| Astro asset chunks | service-worker cache | yes | yes | no |
| User file content (any) | n/a — never persisted | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Event | Tab heap | Persistent storage | Server-side |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close tab | cleared | preserved | (none) |
| Refresh tab | cleared | preserved | (none) |
| Lose power mid-edit | cleared | preserved | (none) |
| Switch browsers | cleared (different tab) | new browser starts blank | (none) |
| Clear site data | cleared | wiped | (none) |
| Browser quota eviction | cleared (eventually) | non-pinned caches first | (none) |
Download the result before you leave the tab. Every Loft tool that produces an output triggers a download or exposes a download button at completion. If the file is in your downloads folder, it exists outside the tab. If it isn’t, it doesn’t.
There is no recovery path for an in-progress edit that wasn’t downloaded. We cannot help because we have nothing to help with. The only copy was the one in the tab; the tab closed; the heap freed.
loft-pinsThe IndexedDB store for pinned tools. Each record is one pinned
tool. The key field is toolId; other fields include toolPath,
pinnedAt, and optional version-tracking fields (version,
buildSha, refreshedAt). No file content is stored here.
loft-compare-pdf-cacheThe IndexedDB store used by the Compare PDF tool. Holds parsed metadata for recently-opened comparisons keyed by file fingerprint. Used so a second compare of the same file is fast. The original PDFs are not stored — only parsed metadata.
loft-ocrThe service-worker cache for OCR model weights. Empty until the first time you use an OCR tool. After first use, holds the PaddleOCR model files (~10–15 MB per language) and/or Tesseract language data, cached so future OCR runs are offline-capable.
The tab heap forgets everything it held the moment you leave; the persistent stores were never given the file in the first place.
A cloud-side PDF tool typically holds your file on its server for a retention window (one hour to 24 hours, depending on operator). “Close the tab mid-edit” on that kind of tool may leave a copy behind that survives in their database until their delete cron runs.
For Loft, the equivalent question doesn’t apply. There is no server-side state to leave behind because there is no server-side state at all.
This page is updated when Loft’s data behaviour changes. If we ever add a new IndexedDB store, change a retention rule, or alter the no-persistence-of-user-files rule, the change lands here first. Last updated 2026-05-27.
If you spot behaviour on the live site that doesn’t match this page, send us a note. We’d rather fix the documentation than leave the gap.