Screenshot to PDF
Combine JPG, PNG, or WebP screenshots into a single PDF. Choose page size, orientation, and margins.
Screenshot to PDF
How to make a PDF from screenshots
Add your images
Drop one or more screenshots onto the dropzone or click to choose them. JPG, PNG and WebP work in every current browser; HEIC photos open only in Safari, and a file the browser cannot open is named in the status line rather than silently dropped. Files never leave your device — pdf-lib runs entirely in your browser tab.
Reorder if needed
The PDF page order matches list order from top to bottom. Use the up/down arrows or drag a row to rearrange. The first image becomes page 1, the second becomes page 2, and so on.
Pick the page layout
Page size: A4 for global standard, Letter for US, or Auto to make each page the image's own size plus the margin. Fit: Contain keeps the whole image visible with margins (default). Cover fills the page edge-to-edge (may crop). Actual uses the image's native dimensions in PDF points.
Click Build and download PDF
The PDF is generated locally and downloaded as screenshots.pdf. Many or large images take a few seconds. A JPEG going into JPEG mode, or a PNG into PNG mode, is embedded from the original file, unchanged; anything else is redrawn and re-encoded, and the status line says which. JPEG embed is the default; switch to PNG embed for screenshots of text and line art, where JPEG leaves smudges around sharp edges.
Why people make PDFs from screenshots — and how to do it well
Packaging a run of screenshots as one PDF comes up constantly: a chat thread for a customer record, a sequence of error messages for a support ticket, a set of mock-ups for a client, receipts for an expense claim. PDF is the right container because it looks the same everywhere and keeps pages in order. The one question people ask about doing it online is whether their screenshots — often full of other people's messages — get uploaded. Here they do not: the PDF is assembled in your browser by pdf-lib.
What makes a screenshot PDF good
Three things: pages of a consistent size, text in the screenshots that stays sharp, and a file small enough to send. The defaults — A4 portrait, the image fitted inside a 20-point margin, JPEG embedding — aim at all three. The biggest lever on quality is not re-compressing. Since 30 September 2026 a JPEG you add in JPEG mode goes into the PDF as its original bytes; before that, every image was redrawn and saved again as a JPEG at quality 92, a second round of loss. On one test screenshot the old re-encode was 15% larger than the file it started from, as well as slightly worse.
The best-quality JPEG in a PDF is the one nobody re-saved. A JPEG you add in JPEG mode goes in byte for byte.
When to use JPEG vs PNG embed
JPEG is right for photos and for screenshots that are mostly images. PNG is right for screenshots dominated by text — code, terminal output, spreadsheets, chat — and for diagrams, because JPEG's compression blurs the hard edges of letters and PNG does not. PNG files are usually larger for photographic content and can be smaller for flat, text-heavy screens, so the only reliable way to choose on size is to try both. One thing JPEG cannot hold is transparency; transparent areas are filled with white when an image is converted for JPEG mode.
Page sizes, and what "Auto" means
PDF measures pages in points, 72 to the inch. A4 is 595.28 × 841.89 points, US Letter exactly 612 × 792. "Auto" makes each page the image's pixel size in points plus the margin, so nothing is scaled — but a phone screenshot is big: the iPhone 15 Pro Max's 2796 × 1290-pixel display makes a page 38.8 inches tall. That is well inside the PDF limit of 14,400 points (200 inches) a side and reads fine on screen, but it will not print on standard paper; choose A4 or Letter for printing.
What this tool doesn't do
It doesn't add captions or annotations, and it doesn't run OCR, so text in the screenshots is part of the picture and cannot be selected or searched. It doesn't add bookmarks, crop or rotate images, or password-protect the output — pdf-lib, the library it uses, has no encryption support at all. Add a password afterwards in desktop PDF software if you need one.
Points at 1/72 inch, a 38-inch phone page, and why EXIF rotation matters
A PDF page is measured in points, 1/72 of an inch. A4 (210 × 297 mm) is 595.28 × 841.89 points; US Letter (8.5 × 11 in) is exactly 612 × 792.
The PDF standard's own limits for a page are 3 × 3 up to 14,400 × 14,400 units — at the default 1/72-inch unit, about 0.04 inch to 200 inches a side. Since PDF 1.6 a page can declare a bigger unit.
A JPEG is stored in a PDF as-is, under the DCTDecode filter: the bytes in the PDF are the JPEG file. That is what lets this tool embed one without re-encoding.
A PNG is not stored as a PNG. pdf-lib decodes it and saves the pixels with Flate compression, plus a separate greyscale "soft mask" if it has transparency — lossless, but a different file.
PDF viewers ignore a JPEG's EXIF rotation tag, which browsers obey. A phone photo tagged "rotate 90°" would come out sideways, so this tool redraws those instead of embedding the original.
Apple lists the iPhone 15 Pro Max display at 2796 × 1290 pixels, 460 pixels per inch — so its full-screen screenshots are 2796 × 1290 too.
At "Auto" size that screenshot becomes a page 2796 points tall: 38.8 inches, several times the height of A4 (11.7 inches).
Converting to JPEG means losing transparency: JPEG has no alpha channel, so transparent areas of a PNG are filled — white, here — when it is re-encoded for JPEG mode.
pdf-lib, the library that builds the PDF, is 525,099 bytes minified (about 206 KB gzipped), is MIT-licensed, and states in its documentation that it does not support encrypted documents.
HEIC, the iPhone's default photo format, opens in Safari 17 and later but in no version of Chrome, Edge or Firefox, so HEIC files only work here in Safari.
FAQ
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No. The pdf-lib library runs entirely in your browser. Images are read into memory, embedded into the PDF in memory, and saved to your downloads. Verify in DevTools → Network: zero outbound requests during the build.
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JPEG embed keeps JPEG files exactly as they are and converts anything else to JPEG at quality 92, which is compact and fine for photos. PNG embed is lossless, better for text and line art, and keeps transparency; for photos it is usually larger. A file already in the chosen format goes in from its original bytes either way.
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Auto makes each page the size of its image, plus the margin, so nothing is scaled or cropped — good for tall phone screenshots or wide desktop captures viewed on screen. The pages are not a standard paper size and can be very large (a phone screenshot is over three feet tall at this size), so use A4 or Letter if you will print.
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Contain (default): image fits within the page minus margin, no cropping. Cover: image fills the page edge-to-edge, may crop content. Actual: image uses its native pixel dimensions as PDF points (warning: a 4K screenshot would overflow A4).
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There is no fixed limit; the constraint is your device's memory, since every image and the finished PDF are held in the browser at once. Phones run out sooner than laptops. If a build fails, split the images into two PDFs.
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Not in this tool. Crop in your operating system's screenshot tool or an image editor first. Photos whose rotation is recorded in their EXIF data are drawn the right way up automatically.
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No. A screenshot is a picture of text, and this tool puts pictures in the PDF, so there is nothing to select or search. For searchable text, run the finished PDF through OCR software such as Adobe Acrobat or Tesseract.
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Yes, in current Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android. Tap the drop area to choose images; dragging files in works on desktop only. Large batches can run a phone out of memory, so build long sets in parts.
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No. pdf-lib, the library that builds the PDF in your browser, has no encryption support, so this page cannot add a password. Add one afterwards in desktop PDF software.
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Set Page size to "Auto (match image)": each page is exactly its image plus the margin, and the image is drawn at one point per pixel. Set the margin to 0 for no border.
Method & sources
What this tool implements
- Until this review every image was re-encoded through a canvas while the page said JPEGs went in untouched; on a test screenshot the re-encode was 15% larger than its source. A null canvas encode left the build stuck; undecodable files (HEIC outside Safari) vanished silently; Auto size ignored the margin.
- ISO 32000-1 Annex C: pages 3×3 to 14,400×14,400 units (200 in at 1/72 in). An iPhone 15 Pro Max screenshot (2796×1290 px, Apple) is a 38.8-inch-tall Auto page.
- pdf-lib states it does not support encrypted documents; the page had said it supports encryption. HEIF/HEIC displays only in Safari 17 and later (caniuse).
Sources
- ISO. ISO 32000-1:2008, Portable document format — Part 1: PDF 1.7 (Annex C, Architectural limits; 7.4 Filters). https://www.iso.org/standard/51502.html
- Apple. iPhone 15 Pro Max — Technical Specifications. https://support.apple.com/en-us/111828
- Hopding A. PDF-LIB — Encryption handling. https://pdf-lib.js.org/
- Deveria A. Can I use: HEIF/HEIC image format. https://caniuse.com/heif
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