Frequently asked questions


Why max. 1.00 MB per file?

There are multiple reasons for the 1 MB per file upload limit.

  1. This service is free and hosted on private servers, that don't have unlimited resources. There's already a bigger server used, to handle the multiple upload and image optimization features.
  2. I got a lot of support requests asking why encoded images couldn't be displayed on user's browsers. Sometimes the used hardware couldn't handle the base64 string size and sometimes the size was larger than browsers allowed it to be.
  3. 1 MB is enough for any "normal" use case, like encoding icons, image sprites, etc.
    99.9 % of all uploads on this page have a filesize less than 100 kb.

But, there's always a solution, if you really need to encode larger images.
Contact us and we'll try to help you with finding the right one.


Are my files stored permanently?

No. I'm taking privacy very serious and there's really no need to store images for more than a second.
Here's a short explanation what is done with your images:

  1. The image is uploaded to a temporary folder.
  2. The image data is read and encoded to a base64 string.
  3. The image metadata, like size and mimetype, is read.
  4. The image is deleted.

I'm not storing the name of your files, metadata (like geo location) or anything else that belongs to your privacy. The metadata is only read to be displayed in the results and is not stored.

The only information stored (for statistical reasons) is not privacy-related and helps improving the tool:


IE 8 doesn't show the image?

In most cases you've uploaded images that are too large and the encoded string exceeds the limit of 32 KB, which is set by Microsoft. Internet Explorer 9 has a greater limit of 4 GB.

If you need to support IE 8 users you really have to look at the size of the base64 strings.


No Drag & Drop in IE 8 & 9

There's only a very small percentage (~ 0.5%) of users with these outdated browsers, using this tool. The easiest way to get Drag & Drop up and running was to use Dropzone.js, which doesn't support IE < 10.

For older browsers there's a single file upload form you can still use.