Nothing you upload ever leaves your browser
Every tool here — the video editor, the background remover, the PDF toolkit, all of them — runs entirely on your own device. When you drop in a photo, a video, or a document, it's processed right there in your browser tab using the same technology that powers the page itself. It's never sent to a server, never stored anywhere by us, and never seen by anyone but you.
This isn't a policy we promise to follow — it's how the tools are actually built. There's no upload button pointing anywhere, because there's nowhere for it to point.
No accounts, no sign-up, no tracking your files
You won't be asked to create an account or hand over an email address to use any tool on this site. Come back next week, next year, or never again — nothing about you or what you've made is tied to an identity or stored between visits, beyond the ordinary, anonymous analytics most websites use to see how many people are visiting.
The one exception is a small set of streaming features. The Streaming Dashboard and the streamer games ask you to log in with Twitch or Kick, so that your layout can be saved to your account and your chat can connect to the games. The login is handled by Twitch or Kick, and we never see or store your password.
The one thing that does get counted
Each tool sends a single anonymous signal when you successfully finish something — export a video, download a GIF, that kind of thing — so we can show public usage stats for the site. That's genuinely the only network request any tool makes on your behalf. It carries no IP address, no session, no filename, and nothing about what you actually made — just a running total per tool, nothing tied back to you or your visit.
Free, and staying free
Building and running all of this costs real time and money, and the way that gets covered is ads — the same as most free sites. We don't sell your data, because we don't have any to sell; the ads here are just ordinary display advertising, not anything built on top of what you upload or create.
If you use an ad blocker, every tool still works exactly the same — the only difference is a small watermark on what you download, as a way of keeping the lights on for everyone else.
What Cwtch.es is
Cwtch.es is an independent collection of free tools for everyday jobs: editing video and audio, shrinking and fixing images, working with PDFs, making posters and cards, checking pay and leave, and running games and overlays for live streams. It is built and looked after by its owner rather than a large company, and it grows according to what people ask for.
Cwtch (pronounced roughly "kutch") is a Welsh word for a cuddle, and also for a cosy little nook. It is the feeling we are aiming for: a small, friendly corner of the web where a tool does what it says and then gets out of your way.
How the tools are made and checked
Each tool is written to run inside your browser, using standard web features, so that it keeps working on Windows, Mac, Linux and most phones without anything to install. Before a change goes live it is tried in a real browser, including the unhappy paths such as a corrupt file, a cancelled download or a missing permission. When something still breaks, the changelog records the fix, and the roadmap shows what is planned and lets you vote for what should come next.
Where a tool gives you a number or a recommendation, such as a pay, leave or redundancy calculation, it is an estimate to help you plan. It is not legal, financial or professional advice, and each of those pages says so.
Guides
Alongside the tools there is a growing set of plain-language guides, for example on choosing an image format, compressing a video, making a QR code that scans, creating a strong password and using overlays in OBS. They are written to be useful on their own, whether or not you ever open the related tool, and each one shows the date it was last updated.
Corrections and contact
If something on the site is wrong, out of date or unclear, please tell us. Use the contact page and say which page it is on. Our privacy policy explains what is collected, and our terms of use set out the rules for using the site. You can also see every tool on one page.
Something not working, or missing?
This is a growing collection of tools, and it gets better based on what people actually need. If something's broken, confusing, or you've got an idea for a tool that should exist, we'd genuinely like to hear it.