About
Why this site exists, and how it's actually built.
What this is
machinereadable.co.uk is a free collection of file and format tools — metadata viewers, format converters, security scanners, and site-file generators — that all run entirely in your browser. There's no server processing your files, no account, and no upload. Drop a file in, and the JavaScript running on your own device reads it, shows you what's inside, and (where relevant) lets you download a result. Nothing you work with here is ever sent anywhere.
Why it exists
Most "upload your file to see what's inside" tools online exist to collect files, run ads next to the wait, or both. Plenty of the formats this site covers — Office documents, Windows forensic artifacts, EXIF data, PDF internals — don't need a server at all to be read correctly; they just need a JavaScript parser that actually understands the format. This site is that: a growing set of format parsers, built one at a time, that happen to add up to a fairly complete toolkit.
How tools here are built
Every tool on this site is built against the real specification for its format, and tested against genuinely generated or independently-verified real files — not assumed correct because the code compiles. Where possible, output is cross-checked against a second, independent tool (a different library, a different codebase entirely) to confirm the result is actually right, not just plausible-looking. Several tools on this site exist specifically because that process caught a real bug in an early version before it ever shipped.
Where a tool has a genuine scope limitation — a format variant it doesn't fully decode, a heuristic instead of a complete parser — that's stated plainly in the tool's own page and in the FAQ, not left for you to discover the hard way.
What it isn't
This isn't a replacement for professional forensic, legal, or security tooling where the stakes are high — several tool pages say so directly. It's a fast, free, private way to look inside a file without installing anything or trusting a server with it.