Every Benchmo tool currently runs in your browser. When you open a tool page, your browser downloads the code that does the work. When you drop a file, that code processes it on your device, and the result is created there. Your file is not uploaded.
What happens when you drop a file
- The browser reads the file from your disk into the page’s memory.
- A background thread (a Web Worker) decodes it with WebAssembly versions of established open-source libraries, so the page stays responsive.
- The result is encoded and handed back as a download link that points to memory on your device.
- When you close the tab, the memory is released. Nothing is kept anywhere else.
You can check this yourself: open your browser’s developer tools on the Network tab and use a tool. You will see the page’s code load, and no request carrying your file.
Downloads you might notice
| Tool | Extra download | Why |
|---|---|---|
| HEIC converters | About 2 MB once | The HEIC decoder (libheif) |
| PDF tools | About 1.7 MB once | Mozilla’s pdf.js for drawing pages |
| Remove background | About 20 MB once | The U²-Net-p model and ONNX Runtime |
Browsers cache these, so the second visit is quick. The background-removal model is only downloaded after you choose an image.
Exceptions
- Text to speech uses your browser’s voices. “Online” voices are run by your browser’s maker, which receives the text; “on this device” voices send nothing. The page labels each voice.
- Links to other sites (Google’s Place ID Finder, for example) take you to those sites under their terms.
If we add tools that need a server, such as Word to PDF, their pages and the privacy policy will say so before they launch, and uploaded files will be deleted right after processing.