About whatevertool

whatevertool started as one tool: an exact-size file compressor built for the government and exam portals that reject a photo or PDF for being a few kilobytes over their limit. It's grown into a broader set of browser-based utilities — 280+ tools across 15 categories, from PDF and image editing to JSON/CSV processing, unit conversion, hashing, encoders, date math, color tools, generators, and more — but the original rule still governs every one of them: your file never leaves your device, and nothing ships until it's genuinely useful, not just another wrapper around a library.

How the compression works

For the exact-size compressor and image/PDF tools specifically: everything — decoding, resizing, quality search, and re-encoding — happens on your device, in the tab you have open. Hitting a byte ceiling isn't a one-shot compression — we search across encoder quality against your target range, converging on the highest quality that still fits, and downscale dimensions if quality alone can't reach it. If the target genuinely can't be met (for example, a locked pixel size and a ceiling too small for it), the tool says so rather than handing back a file that will get rejected at the portal.

Why portal-specific pages exist

Pages like the US visa (DS-160) photo tool aren't generic — they're pre-configured to that specific portal's published requirements: exact format, size range, and pixel dimensions. The requirement text on each page is sourced from the portal's own documentation and re-verified periodically; the verified date is always shown so you can judge how fresh it is. Coverage currently spans passport and visa photo specs (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Schengen, and more) alongside high-volume exam and government portals (SSC, UPSC, IBPS, and others).

Everything else on the site

Outside the portal-spec pages, the rest of the site is general-purpose tools grouped into categories — PDF Tools, Image Tools, JSON Tools, CSV Tools, Unit Converter, Text Tools, Encoders/Decoders, Hash & Crypto Tools, Format Tools, Generators, Date Tools, Color Tools, Calculators, Legal Generators, and Dev Tools. Each one runs the same way as the compressor: no upload, no account, no server processing — the computation happens in your browser and the tab can be closed the moment you're done.

Verification process & trust

Each specification on this site is verified by hand against official government documentation or portal publication sources. We track requirements regularly and verify them at individual intervals. If any official guidelines change, we update our specifications immediately. The "last verified"timestamp on each page shows exactly when that specific portal rule set was last checked against the official guidelines.