Show HN: I built a 20MB PDF editor using Flutter (vs 300MB industry standard)(revpdf.com)
revpdf.com
Show HN: I built a 20MB PDF editor using Flutter (vs 300MB industry standard)
https://revpdf.com/blog/how-i-built-a-15mb-pdf-editor
3 comments
why futter?
I chose flutter due to some reasons,
- I had experience with it.
- Easier for doing cross compilation.
- Better communities support and my friend circle know this as well.
Hey HN, author here.
I built RevPDF after trying to edit my resume on the bus and finding nothing good on mobile - everything was either cloud-based (didn't want my resume on random servers), subscription-locked, or 100s of MBs.
The blog post breaks down how I got it to ~20MB vs the typical 150-300MB:
Key decisions: - Flutter + C++ instead of Electron (saved ~100MB right there) - No cloud infrastructure - everything local (privacy + smaller size) - Minimal dependencies - custom components where possible - Smart asset management - Google Fonts instead of bundling
Trade-offs I made: - No OCR, 3D PDF support, or advanced signatures - But for basic editing, forms, annotations - it's much faster - Desktop is free, mobile has small one-time payment
A German tech blog found it and wrote about the "no cloud requirement" - turns out privacy-conscious users were desperate for this. Now at 10k+ downloads.
Genuinely curious: 1. For Flutter developers - any size optimization tricks I'm missing? 2. What PDF features do you actually use daily vs what's just bloat? 3. Would open-sourcing the rendering layer be useful?
Happy to answer technical questions about the implementation!
I built RevPDF after trying to edit my resume on the bus and finding nothing good on mobile - everything was either cloud-based (didn't want my resume on random servers), subscription-locked, or 100s of MBs.
The blog post breaks down how I got it to ~20MB vs the typical 150-300MB:
Key decisions: - Flutter + C++ instead of Electron (saved ~100MB right there) - No cloud infrastructure - everything local (privacy + smaller size) - Minimal dependencies - custom components where possible - Smart asset management - Google Fonts instead of bundling
Trade-offs I made: - No OCR, 3D PDF support, or advanced signatures - But for basic editing, forms, annotations - it's much faster - Desktop is free, mobile has small one-time payment
A German tech blog found it and wrote about the "no cloud requirement" - turns out privacy-conscious users were desperate for this. Now at 10k+ downloads.
Genuinely curious: 1. For Flutter developers - any size optimization tricks I'm missing? 2. What PDF features do you actually use daily vs what's just bloat? 3. Would open-sourcing the rendering layer be useful?
Happy to answer technical questions about the implementation!