TIFF Viewer for Google Chrome™

Overview

TIFF Viewer for Google Chrome™ — version 4.7 WHAT THIS EXTENSION DOES Open multi-page TIFF and fax files instantly and privately, then do real work with them: read them, search them, convert them, and — on supported devices — summarize, question, and translate them with on-device AI. Everything runs on your own computer. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and the extension requests zero browser permissions. Version 4 began as a ground-up rebuild that fixed the original's biggest complaints — only the first page opened, and large scans crashed — and has since grown into a complete, private document tool. OPENS THE FILES YOU ACTUALLY RECEIVE Multi-page documents open completely. Every page of a fax or scan is decoded and shown: a thumbnail sidebar gives you the whole document at a glance, and you can flip pages with the arrow buttons, the arrow keys, the thumbnail strip, or by typing a page number directly into the toolbar. A long fax opens quickly because pages are decoded lazily, one at a time, only when you look at them. Broad format coverage. Uncompressed images, CCITT Group 3 and Group 4 fax encoding, LZW, PackBits and Deflate all decode — and so do the files that used to defeat the viewer: JPEG-compressed TIFFs (both modern "new-style" JPEG and old-style OJPEG), BigTIFF files that use 64-bit offsets, and pages larger than the browser's image limit, which are scaled to fit instead of failing. Large files no longer crash. Decoding runs in a background worker sized to the file you open; if a particularly heavy scan still runs out of room, the viewer automatically restarts the decoder with a larger allocation and carries on. When a file genuinely cannot be read, the viewer reads its header, names the cause in plain language, and offers to open another file — and in documents where only some pages use an unsupported scheme, the readable pages still display while the problem pages are clearly flagged. Fax files look right. Many faxes are stored with non-square pixels (typically 204×98 dots per inch). The viewer reads the resolution tags and corrects the aspect ratio on screen, in print, and in PDF export, so pages no longer appear vertically squashed. MAKE SCANS SEARCHABLE — OCR, ON YOUR COMPUTER TIFFs are overwhelmingly scanned text, so the viewer can now read them. Built-in OCR (optical character recognition) recognizes the text on the current page — or across the whole document — entirely on your machine, with nothing uploaded. Once a page is recognized you can: • Copy the text straight out of the scan. • Search within the document, with every match highlighted directly on the page as well as in a side panel. • Export a searchable PDF — the scanned image with an invisible, selectable text layer, so the PDF can be searched and copied in any reader. OCR ships with English and runs fully offline; additional languages are planned. ON-DEVICE AI (ON SUPPORTED DEVICES) On recent versions of Chrome with capable hardware, the viewer adds AI tools that work on the recognized text — all running locally through Chrome's built-in models, with no key, no server, and nothing uploaded: • Summarize a scanned contract, letter, or report in a sentence or two. • Ask a question about the document — "what's the invoice total?", "what's the date?" — and get an answer drawn from its text. • Translate the recognized text into another language. Where these on-device models aren't available, the AI tools simply stay hidden and every other feature keeps working. CONVERT, PRINT, AND BATCH — ENTIRELY ON YOUR COMPUTER Export the current page as PNG or JPEG, every page at once as a single ZIP archive of PNGs, or the whole document as one PDF whose pages keep their true physical size taken from the scan's resolution data. Have a stack of files to process? Batch conversion turns many TIFFs into PDFs or images in one step, bundled into a single ZIP — undecodable files are skipped rather than aborting the run. Long jobs show a progress bar with a working Cancel button, and every successful export confirms itself with the saved file's name. Printing works the way fax recipients need it to: one click prepares every page, fitted and aspect-corrected, and hands it to Chrome's print dialog. All of this happens locally. The conversion code ships inside the extension; there is no upload step, no external converter site, and no account. The extension requests zero browser permissions, and the viewer page makes no network requests while opening or converting your documents — a property we verify with an automated test on every build. OCR and the AI features run on-device too. If you handle faxes, patient records, case files, or anything else you would rather not paste into a website, that distinction is the point. PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF A Recent files list on the start screen reopens a recently viewed document in one click. Like everything else, it is stored only on your own computer, and it can be cleared at any time. A VIEWER THAT BEHAVES LIKE A MODERN DOCUMENT APP The interface is built around the reading experience: zoom in and out smoothly (buttons, plus/minus keys, or Ctrl + mouse wheel), fit the page to the window width or height, jump to 100% with a click or the 1 key, rotate in 90° steps, drag to pan around a magnified scan, and go fullscreen for long documents. The active fit mode is always highlighted, pages fade in as they decode instead of flashing, and thumbnails shimmer while loading so you always know the viewer is working. Open files from the toolbar button, the file picker, or by dropping a .tif, .tiff, or .fax file anywhere onto the window. A built-in guide — opened from the "How to use" link on the start screen or the "?" button in the toolbar, never forced on you — walks through