How to summarize a PDF without uploading the file

Most PDF summarizers ask you to upload the file. Reduz takes a different route. It reads the text out of the PDF inside your browser, then sends that text, and only that text, to the AI provider you picked.

How it works

1. Open the PDF in Chrome.
2. Click the Reduz icon and choose Bullets, Post, or Full.
3. If Chrome asks, allow Reduz to read that page. Access is requested only when you summarize.
4. Reduz extracts the text locally and sends it to your provider with your own API key.

The file itself never goes to Reduz, because Reduz has no server to receive it. Your provider sees the extracted text, the same way it would for a web article. Your key and your saved summaries stay in your browser.

When a PDF has no text

Some PDFs are photos of pages. A scanned contract or an old journal article often has no text layer at all, so there is nothing for Reduz to read. A quick test: try to select a sentence in the PDF. If nothing highlights, the file needs OCR first.

Run it through an OCR tool, save the new PDF, and summarize that version instead.

Where extraction gets messy

Text extraction is reliable for ordinary reports and papers. It struggles with a few layouts:

• tables, where columns can come out in the wrong order,
• equations, which often lose their structure,
• multi-column pages, where lines from two columns can mix,
• scanned pages with a weak OCR layer.

If a summary seems to miss a section or mangle numbers, the extraction is the usual suspect, not the model. Compare the summary with the PDF before you rely on it for anything technical or legal.

Ask better questions of long documents

The built-in formats work for most reading. For research papers, a custom prompt can ask for the question, the method, the findings, and the stated limitations, and tell the model to say when the paper does not answer something. That keeps the summary honest about what is actually in the document.