About

Tools that work on your device, not ours

The short version

OrchidLines is a collection of free utilities — image editing, design, audio and video editing, and on-device AI — that all run inside your web browser. When you drop a file onto a OrchidLines tool, that file is read from your own disk into your own browser’s memory, processed there, and handed straight back to you. It is never uploaded anywhere.

Why that matters

Almost every other “online converter” works the opposite way. You upload your file, their server does the work, and you download the result. That model has costs, and those costs get passed on to you as restrictions:

  • File size caps, because bandwidth and storage cost money.
  • Daily limits and queues, because CPU time costs money.
  • Sign-up walls and paid tiers, to recover those costs.
  • A privacy question you can’t answer — your file is now on someone else’s computer, and you are trusting a policy document about what happens to it next.

Because OrchidLines never receives your files, none of those costs exist for us, and none of those restrictions exist for you. Process a thousand images. Use it all day. Drop in a 400 MB video. We are not paying for any of it.

How is this technically possible?

Browsers have quietly become very capable. The same engine that renders your photos and plays your videos is available to web pages through standard APIs:

  • Canvas decodes, resizes, crops, filters and re-encodes images.
  • Web Audio cuts, mixes, and processes sound in real time.
  • WebCodecs gives pages direct access to the hardware video encoder and decoder.
  • WebAssembly runs real compiled libraries — the same ones that power desktop software — at close to native speed.
  • WebCrypto provides audited, hardware-accelerated encryption and hashing.
  • WebGPU runs AI models on your graphics card, locally.

None of these need a server. They just needed someone to build the interface.

Verify it yourself

Do not take our word for it. Open any tool, press F12 to open your browser’s developer tools, and switch to the Network tab. Now use the tool. You will see the page’s own files load and you will see advertising requests — and you will not see your file transferred anywhere, because it isn’t.

The stronger test: load a tool page, then turn off your internet connection entirely, then use the tool. It still works. A tool that needed a server could not do that.

So how is it free?

Advertising on the page, and nothing else. There is no premium plan, no watermark you have to pay to remove, no export limit, and no account. We do not sell data about you — and since your files never reach us, there is no file data to sell in the first place.

If you use an ad blocker, the tools still work exactly the same. We are not going to hold a JPEG hostage.

What OrchidLines is not good at

Being honest about the limits is part of the deal:

  • Very large files are bound by your device’s memory. A phone will struggle where a laptop won’t.
  • The first use of an advanced tool (AI, video encoding) may download a one-time engine or model. After that it is cached and instant.
  • Professional print work needing 16-bit colour or exotic colour profiles is outside what browsers expose.
  • Nothing syncs between your devices, because nothing is stored anywhere but your device.

What is actually here

The catalogue runs to a hundred and forty-nine tools across five categories: image tools, design tools, audio editors, video editors and on-device AI. The largest by count is design — documents, cards, templates and generators — followed closely by image editing. The site carried a great deal more than this until recently, and will again. Whole sections were taken down in September 2026 so the ones that remain could be brought up to standard properly rather than in parallel; they are archived intact, not deleted, and will return in groups as they are finished.

A handful are considerably more than utilities: a layered image editor, a canvas design editor, a diagram editor, a video editor, and a set of tools that run real AI models — background removal, image generation, captioning and proofreading — on your own graphics card, without an API key or an upload. Those are the ones worth opening if you want to see how far a browser now goes.

Every tool is listed in the tool directory, numbered and grouped by category, if you would rather scan a list than use the search box.

How tools get chosen

Mostly from requests, and from noticing that an ordinary job needs a sign-up somewhere else. The bar for adding something is that it has to be genuinely doable in the browser and genuinely useful — a tool that half works because the platform cannot support it properly is worse than no tool, because it wastes your time before failing.

The same rule cuts the other way. Ideas that need a server get turned down however good they are: sending email, storing your work between visits, fetching pages from other sites, anything that has to run while your browser is shut. That is not a roadmap item to get to later. It is the boundary of what this site is.

How the written guides are made

Every tool has its own instructions on its own page, below the tool itself — what each control does, a worked example, the mistakes that are easy to make, and where a different tool would suit you better. These are written for that specific tool rather than assembled from a generic template, which is why the video speed changer talks about frame rates and pitch, and the net worth calculator talks about which assets are liquid.

They are also written to be checkable. Where a page states a number, a formula or a limit, that claim is meant to match what the code actually does. When the code changes and the words do not, the words become a small lie, and finding those is part of the work of keeping the site honest.

When we get it wrong

Some of these tools do arithmetic that people rely on. Mistakes in that arithmetic matter more than a broken layout, and they are treated that way: a reported wrong answer goes to the front of the queue.

If you have checked a result against a source you trust and the two disagree, please say so. The contact page sets out what to include so the problem can be reproduced. There is no support desk and no ticket system — the mail goes to a person.

How the site pays for itself

Advertising, through Google AdSense, and nothing else. There are no sponsored tools, no paid placements in the tool list, and no affiliate links dressed up as recommendations. Where a tool suggests another tool, that is because it fits the job, not because anyone paid for the mention. The privacy policy covers what advertising means for cookies and how to opt out.

Get in touch

Found a bug, or want a tool that isn’t here yet? We would like to hear it. Write to hello@orchidlines.com, or see the contact page for what to include in a bug report and what this inbox can and cannot help with.