PDF to Text

PDF to Text pulls the text layer out of a PDF in your browser and saves it as a plain .txt file in UTF-8. It uses pdf.js, the engine Firefox uses to read PDFs, and the file never leaves your device. A PDF doesn't store lines or paragraphs, only pieces of text with positions on the page, so the converter rebuilds the reading order: pieces are grouped into lines by their baseline, sorted top to bottom and left to right, spaces are added where words sit apart, and a blank line marks a paragraph break.

You can add page markers, so each page starts with a line like --- Page 3 ---, which helps when you need to cite or find something later. Without markers, pages are separated by a blank line.

Two limits are worth knowing. Layout is only approximate: table cells on one line are joined with spaces, and pages with two columns can come out with lines from both columns side by side. And scanned PDFs have no text layer at all, only pictures of pages, so the result is empty; those need OCR, which JustYourPDF offers.