Privacy

Last updated: August 2026

Clearly is a document-cleaning tool. This page explains, plainly, what happens to your files and the text extracted from them.

What Clearly does with your file

When you upload a PDF or image, Clearly reads it directly in your browser using two open-source libraries: PDF.js for PDF text extraction and Tesseract.js for image and scanned-document OCR. In the current version of Clearly, this processing happens entirely on your device — the file itself is not transmitted to a server for extraction.

What Clearly stores

Clearly does not save your uploaded files or the text extracted from them. Everything lives in your browser's memory for the current session only. Closing the tab, reloading the page, or clicking "Start over" or "Delete result" removes it.

Clearly keeps one small, local record on your device: a count of how many files you've processed in the last 24 hours, stored in your browser's local storage. This is used only to apply a soft usage limit and prevent obvious abuse of the free tool. It contains no file content and is not sent anywhere.

What we don't do

• We do not require an account, email address, or payment to use the core tool.
• We do not sell or share your documents or extracted text.
• We do not run analytics that track the content of your files.
• We do not claim your files are "100% secure" — no system can honestly promise that. We minimize risk by keeping processing local and not retaining files.

If server-side processing is ever used

Clearly is built to work entirely client-side for its basic features. If a future version adds an optional server-assisted extraction step (for example, for very large files), any file sent to a server for that purpose would be processed transiently and deleted afterward — it would not be kept in permanent storage. That functionality is not part of the current MVP.

Browser storage

Clearly uses local storage only for the lightweight usage counter described above. You can clear this at any time through your browser's site data settings, which will also reset your usage count.

Third-party libraries

Clearly loads PDF.js and Tesseract.js from a public content delivery network (cdnjs.cloudflare.com) and a webfont from Google Fonts. Loading these resources may expose your IP address and browser information to those providers, as is standard for any website that uses a CDN or webfont, independent of anything you upload.

Children's privacy

Clearly is a general-purpose utility and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that affects how your files are handled, we will update the date at the top of this page.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be directed to the site operator listed in the project's README.