About ConvertShorts

ConvertShorts is a small collection of free tools that run entirely inside your web browser.

Why it exists

It started with a frustration. Converting a landscape video into the vertical format that Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok require should be simple, but nearly every free tool made it painful: sign up, upload the file, wait, then discover a watermark stamped across the result or a paywall in the way.

The technology to do that work in the browser already exists. So we built it that way instead, and kept adding tools that had the same problem.

How it works

Every tool here runs as JavaScript and WebAssembly on your own machine. When you drop in a video, your browser does the encoding. When you convert a PDF, your browser reads and rewrites it. Nothing is transmitted to a server at any point.

That has three consequences worth knowing. It is fast, because there is no upload or download wait. It is private, because your files never leave your device. And it is genuinely free, because we pay no bandwidth or processing costs for the work your own computer does.

What's here

Video Converter — convert between 16:9 and 9:16 with segment-by-segment crop and zoom control.

PDF & File Converter — PDF to Word or images, images to PDF, and spreadsheet formats.

Stickman Animator and Stickman Studio — stick figure animation with action clips, custom poses and timelines.

Infinite Canvas — an endless whiteboard for mind maps and diagrams.

Art Studio — draw, colour in and animate frame by frame.

Stickframe — write a scene in plain English and get a stickman video, with 2,400+ motion-capture moves.

Limitations we're upfront about

Browser-based processing has real trade-offs. Very large files depend on your device's memory. PDF to Word extracts text rather than rebuilding the original layout. PowerPoint conversion is not offered at all, because doing it properly needs a server-side office engine — which would mean uploading your file, and that is the one thing this site does not do.

Why browser-based, and what it costs you

Running everything locally is not just a privacy decision, it changes the economics. A conversion site that uploads files pays for bandwidth in both directions and for the server time spent encoding. Those costs have to come from somewhere, which is why such sites cap your daily conversions, watermark the output, or ask you to subscribe.

Because your own machine does the work here, our costs do not rise with usage. That is the reason there is no daily limit, no watermark and no paid tier. It is not generosity; the bill simply does not exist.

The trade-off is real and worth stating. Your device sets the ceiling. A long 4K video will convert more slowly on an old laptop than a new one, and a very large file can exhaust the memory a browser tab is allowed. Server-based tools do not have that problem because the server is always the same speed. We think the trade is worth it for most people, most of the time.

How the tools are built

The video converter uses FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly, the same engine behind most video software, running inside your browser rather than on a machine we own. The PDF tools use PDF.js for reading and jsPDF for writing. The animation tools draw to an HTML canvas and record it with the browser’s own MediaRecorder. All of these are open-source libraries doing the work locally.

What we collect, briefly

Google Analytics tells us which tools people use so we know what to improve. It records page views, rough location and device type. It does not and cannot see the contents of your files, because those never reach a server. The full detail is in our Privacy Policy.

Who makes this

ConvertShorts is built and maintained by one person, not a company. That means fixes ship quickly when something breaks, and it also means replies to email take a few days rather than minutes. Feature requests genuinely shape what gets built next — several of the tools here exist because someone asked.

What we will not add

Two things, deliberately. We will not add an account system, because nothing here needs one. And we will not add server-side conversion for formats like PowerPoint, even though people ask, because it would mean uploading your file and that breaks the one promise every tool on this site makes.

Get in touch

Feedback and bug reports are welcome. See the Contact page.