PolishPDF is a privacy-first Chrome PDF editor that lets you edit, sign, annotate, highlight, whiteout, and reorder PDFs without uploading them to a server. It works directly from Chrome and adds an Edit PDF button to Gmail attachments.
How did Astra change the scope or ambition of what you built?
Maker
Astra helped me push PolishPDF beyond a simple “edit a PDF from Gmail” utility into a more complete, privacy-first PDF workflow inside Chrome. With Astra, I was able to iterate faster on technically difficult parts such as local PDF processing, text editing behavior, Gmail attachment integration, page management, annotations, signatures, and UI refinement.
The biggest change was in ambition: instead of building a small convenience feature, I started treating PolishPDF as a lightweight alternative to traditional cloud PDF editors. The goal became to let users open, edit, sign, annotate, reorder, and finish a PDF without uploading the document to a third-party server or leaving their browser workflow. Astra made it practical to explore more complex features, debug edge cases, and keep improving the product while maintaining that local-first architecture.
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Maker
📌
Hey Product Hunt 👋
I built PolishPDF because editing a tiny thing in a PDF still creates a surprisingly big workflow.
You get a PDF in Gmail. You download it. Find a PDF editor. Upload the document. Make the change. Download it again. Find the right file. Attach it again.
That felt like far too much work just to sign a page, fix some text or add an annotation.
So I built PolishPDF.
It adds an Edit PDF option directly to PDF attachments in Gmail and also works with PDFs opened in Chrome.
You can edit and annotate PDFs, highlight content, add signatures, whiteout information, work with pages and make the common changes you'd expect from a PDF editor.
The part I care about most is how the document is handled: PolishPDF processes PDFs locally instead of requiring you to upload your document to a third-party server.
The goal isn't to build another massive document-management platform.
It's to make the moment when you think, “I just need to fix this PDF,” dramatically easier.
We are coming with the next big update on PolishPDF. Checkout our Instagram and linkedln profile for the updates.
I'd particularly love feedback from people who regularly handle PDFs through Gmail:
What is the one PDF task you still find unnecessarily frustrating?
Thanks for checking out PolishPDF.
— Priyans