Pathine

Compress PDF to 1 MB

Squeeze a PDF under 1 MB without touching its text.

PDF Free · no signup Runs on your device
Compress PDF to 1 MB Nothing leaves this device

Drop a PDF here

Or choose a file. It is opened and rewritten on your device and never uploaded. Text is never touched — only the images inside.

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Requirements

    Your PDF is opened and rewritten in this browser. It is never uploaded, and nothing about it is stored.

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    About the Pathine Compress PDF to 1 MB

    One megabyte is the single most common attachment limit on job applications, and the reason is that a well-made PDF of text is nowhere near it. The moment a scan, a signature page or a photograph goes in, the file is over.

    This re-encodes only the images inside the document, working down through progressively smaller settings and stopping at the first one that lands under 1 MB. Your text is never rasterised, so the document stays searchable and selectable on the other side.


    When you'd reach for it

    A job application that caps attachments

    One megabyte is the default in a great many applicant tracking systems, and the upload usually fails without telling you by how much.

    A portfolio or report with photographs

    Images placed at full camera resolution carry ten times the pixels the page can show, which is where the weight is.

    Emailing a contract for signature

    Smaller files survive corporate mail filters and mobile connections that time out on large attachments.


    How to use it

    1. Drop the PDF in

      Drag a file onto the page or choose one. It is opened on your device and never sent anywhere.

    2. Read the report

      You see the original size, the target, and what the document came out at. Text, fonts and vector artwork are never touched — only the images inside are re-encoded.

    3. Download it

      If the target cannot be reached without destroying the document, you are told how small it can honestly go rather than handed a rasterised page.


    Common questions

    Will my CV still look professional?

    Yes. A CV is mostly text, and text is untouched — it stays as crisp as it was at any zoom level. If there is a photograph or a scanned certificate in it, that is what gets re-encoded, and 1 MB is a comfortable budget for it.

    What if the document is already under 1 MB?

    It is returned unchanged. Compressing a document that already meets the requirement would cost quality for no reason, so the tool checks first and stops.

    Why does this work when "print to PDF" does not?

    Printing to PDF re-renders the whole document, which often converts crisp text into an image and can make the file larger, not smaller. This changes only the image streams and leaves the document's structure alone.

    Can I check what it did?

    The report tells you the size before and after and which image setting it settled on. If nothing was worth changing it says that too, rather than inventing a saving.

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