About Orbfile
Why we built this
Most online file converters work the same way: you upload your file to someone else's server, it gets processed somewhere you can't see, and a download link comes back a minute later. That's fine for a random test image. It's a lot less fine for a scanned ID, a client contract, a voice memo, or a family video — the kinds of files people actually convert.
Orbfile started from a simple annoyance: needing to convert a handful of personal photos and not wanting to hand them to a server we'd never heard of just to change a file extension. So we built the conversion tools to run entirely on the WebAssembly runtime already sitting in every modern browser — the same technology that lets streaming video and browser-based games run at near-native speed — and skipped the upload step entirely.
How it actually works
When you open a tool on Orbfile, it reaches for the codecs already built into your browser — the same WebCodecs API that powers native video playback — using Mediabunny to read, remux, and re-encode media directly from that engine. Only when your browser is missing a codec it needs does it fetch a small open-source polyfill encoder for that one format. Images run on the browser's native Canvas API, ImageMagick handles the trickier image formats, and pdf.js and pdf-lib handle PDFs — all compiled to WebAssembly and running locally instead of on a server rack somewhere.
From that point on, your file never leaves the tab. Dropping a file reads it directly from your device's memory, the WebAssembly engine transcodes or compresses it using your device's own CPU, and the result is handed back to you as a download — all inside the sandboxed browser environment. There's no server in the middle to log the request, store a copy, or fail because it's overloaded.
What that means in practice
Private by construction
There's no upload for us to delete in the first place.
No queue, no throttling
Processing speed depends on your own device, not how many other people happen to be converting files right now.
Works offline, once loaded
After the one-time engine download, most tools keep working even if you lose your connection mid-session.
Real engines, not shortcuts
Your browser's own media codecs and ImageMagick under the hood, not a stripped-down reimplementation with fewer format options.
What we don't do
We don't require an account. We don't watermark your output. We don't store your files — we can't, since they never reach us. The only thing Orbfile may optionally cache in your browser is the conversion engine software itself, purely so it doesn't need to be re-downloaded on every visit. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.
Questions or feedback?
We're a small team and we read everything that comes in. If a format is missing, a conversion looks wrong, or something just doesn't work the way you'd expect, we'd genuinely like to hear about it — visit our Contact page to get in touch.