VisualRefiner

Privacy-first image and video tools that run entirely in your browser.

🔗 Live site: visualrefiner.com

VisualRefiner converts, compresses, resizes, and extracts image and video files without installing software or uploading anything to a server. Every file is processed locally in the browser tab, so your photos and videos never leave your device — and the tools keep working offline.

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Why local processing

Most online converters upload your file to a server, process it there, and send it back. VisualRefiner doesn't. The conversion runs on your own machine using browser APIs (Canvas, WebCodecs) and a few small open-source libraries. That means:

• Private by default — personal photos and videos stay on your device.
• No upload/download wait — nothing is transferred over the network.
• No account, no queue, no limits — open a page and use it.

There is no server-side processing, no tracking of your files, and no sign-up.

For a technical deep-dive on how the in-browser conversion works (Canvas, WebCodecs, lazy-loaded WASM), read Building image & video conversion that never leaves the browser.

Tools

Each tool is a focused page that does one real task:

Images

• Image converter — switch between JPG, PNG, and WebP (HEIC/HEIF input supported)
• Image compressor — reduce file size with a visible quality control
• Image resizer — change pixel dimensions without stretching
• Format-specific converters: HEIC→JPG/PNG/WebP, PNG↔JPG, PNG/JPG→WebP, WebP→PNG/JPG

Video

• Video converter — convert to MP4 or WebM
• Frame extractor — save evenly spaced frames as PNG stills
• Video to GIF — turn a short clip into a looping GIF
• Format-specific converters: MOV→MP4, MKV→MP4, WebM→MP4

Audio

• Audio transcriber — turn speech in audio or video into text with on-device Whisper, then copy it or export TXT, SRT, or VTT

Guides

Plain-language explainers that link to the matching tool:

• WebP vs PNG
• What is HEIC, and how do you open it?
• What compression quality should you use?
• MP4 vs WebM
• How to transcribe audio to text without uploading it

Tech stack

• Next.js (App Router, static export) + React + TypeScript
• pnpm for package management
• Deployed as static assets on Cloudflare
• Browser processing libraries, loaded only on the routes that need them: pica (resizing), mediabunny (video), heic2any (HEIC decoding), gifenc (GIF encoding), @iconify/react (icons)

Getting started

Requires Node.js 22+ and pnpm.

pnpm install
pnpm dev        # start the dev server at http://localhost:3000

Other scripts:

pnpm build      # static export to ./out (+ design-contract check)
pnpm lint       # eslint
pnpm test       # tsx tests/tools.test.ts

Build & deploy

pnpm build runs next build (configured with output: "export") and writes a fully static site to out/. That directory is served by Cloudflare (see wrangler.jsonc); HTTP security headers are set via public/_headers.

Project structure

src/
  app/                 # routes: one folder per tool page + /guides
  components/          # tool workspaces (ImageWorkspace, VideoConverter, …) and page shells
  lib/                 # tools, conversions, guides, and schema.org helpers
public/                # static assets (_headers, og.png, favicon)
scripts/               # build helpers (design-contract injector, og image)

Third-party software

Open-source dependencies and their licenses are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md and on the site's open-source page.

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Built and maintained by @ken-fs · visualrefiner.com