31 August 2026

How to work with PDFs when there is no internet

Airplane mode is the honest test of any tool that says your file never leaves your device. If a page still does its job with the network switched off, the file has nowhere to travel, because there is no wire left to travel on. Khallas passes that test now: save one copy and every tool keeps running on a plane, in a basement, or on a phone with no signal.

The offline page

The test you can run yourself

Turn on airplane mode, open a tool you have used before, and merge two files. If a document comes out, then nothing in that operation touched a server, and no marketing sentence could have told you so as plainly as the test just did. That is why the saved copy is worth the download even for someone who is never far from a signal: it turns a promise about privacy into something you can check in ten seconds, on your device, with your file. Every other claim on this site rests on you believing a written sentence. This one does not.

Why the site needed a connection at all

Every tool here has run inside your browser since the first day. A merge, a compress, a page number, all of it happens in the tab, and your file is never uploaded. What still crossed the network was the code itself: the software that performs the merge, the Arabic fonts that draw the numerals, the pages that hold the buttons. That comes to roughly 8 MB, and it came down again whenever your browser had not kept it. The saved copy pins those files to your device, so the site stops needing the network to hand you its own tools.

Saving a copy, and what it costs you

Open the offline page and press the save button. The download is around 8 MB, the page shows you the exact size before you commit to it, and a counter tells you how many files have landed. Nothing moves the other way: no file of yours is uploaded and no account is involved, because what is being transferred is the site coming down to you. Ordinary visits save nothing on their own, and that is deliberate, since someone who never asked for an offline copy should not pay megabytes of mobile data for one. Delete it whenever you like from the same page, and clearing the site's data in your browser removes it too.

Installing it as an app

Once the copy is saved, Khallas can be added to a home screen, where it opens as an app in its own window with no address bar. On an iPhone that is the share button in Safari, then Add to Home Screen. On Android, the three-dot menu in Chrome, then Install app. On a computer, the install icon at the end of the address bar in Chrome or Edge. The app is the same site, so nothing about how it works changes. What changes is that it stops presenting itself as something that needs the internet, which for a tool that no longer does is simply the honest presentation.

What the copy leaves out, and why

Arabic OCR is not in it. The recognition engine is close to 20 MB, larger than the whole of the rest of the site put together, and including it would make every visitor pay for the one tool most of them will never open. Run it once while you are online and your browser keeps the engine anyway. The use-case pages and the blog, this article included, are also left out: they are read online, and none of them is something you need to act on with no signal. The two optional cloud features need a server by definition, so they do not work offline and do not pretend to. Everything else, every tool in both languages, is in the copy.

Frequently asked questions

Does saving an offline copy upload my files?

No. Nothing in Khallas uploads a file, with a saved copy or without one. Saving moves data in the opposite direction: the site's own code and pages come down to your device. There is no account, no sign-in and no upload step in any tool here, which is why cutting the network changes nothing about what the tools can do.

How much space does it take, and can I remove it?

About 8 MB today, a fraction of a single photo-heavy PDF. The offline page shows the exact size before you press the button and the file count afterwards. Delete the copy from that same page whenever you like, and clearing the site's data in your browser settings removes it as well.

Why does the OCR tool need a connection the first time?

Because recognising Arabic text uses a trained model that has to reach your device once, and it is larger than the rest of the site put together. It is left outside the offline copy on purpose so the download stays small. Run the tool once while online and the browser holds on to the engine, after which it works with no connection like everything else.

Does the feature work in a private or incognito window?

No, and that is the browser's rule rather than ours. Private windows switch off the service worker the saved copy depends on, so the save button reports that the feature is unavailable. Every tool still runs as usual in a private window while you have a connection, and your file is still never uploaded either way.