Squeezes: A Free Bulk Image Compressor That Runs Entirely in Your Browser (27 June 2026)

Squeezes: A Free Bulk Image Compressor That Runs Entirely in Your Browser (27 June 2026)

If you have ever needed to shrink a batch of images before uploading them to a website, email, or cloud drive, you know the pain. Most free tools either cap you at five files, watermark your output, or upload your images to a server you do not control. Squeezes is a new hobby project that takes a different approach: it compresses and converts up to 10 images at a time, entirely inside your browser, with no server calls at all. [Hacker News discussion]

What Squeezes actually does

The app presents a dark-themed, minimalist interface. You drag images onto the drop zone (or click to browse), choose an output format if you want, and hit “Start Squeezing.” The tool supports JPEG, PNG, and WebP as both input and output formats, so you can convert WebP to JPEG or PNG to WebP in the same batch. [squeezes.vercel.app]

Key specs from the UI:

The project is hosted on Vercel and was submitted to Hacker News on 27 June 2026 by user marpe, who confirmed they built it. [Hacker News]

Why client-side image compression matters

Processing images locally has two big advantages over cloud-based alternatives:

  1. Privacy. Your raw files never leave your device. For anyone handling sensitive product shots, medical imagery, or unpublished content, this is not a nice-to-have, it is a requirement. Multiple industry sources confirm that client-side compression via the browser Canvas API and WebAssembly is the safest path for private image data. [zeroutil.com] [usetoolsuite.com]
  2. Speed for small batches. When you skip the upload and download round-trip, a 10-image job finishes in seconds on a modern machine. No queue, no progress bar watching bytes travel to a data centre and back. [betterpng.com]

The trade-off is that browser-based tools are limited by your device’s RAM and CPU. A 10-image cap is realistic for most laptops before the tab starts to struggle. [melotools.com]

What this means

Squeezes is not trying to replace enterprise DAM pipelines or Photoshop batch scripts. It is a free, no-login, no-watermark utility for the 90% use case: “I have 8 product photos and they need to be under 500 KB each before I upload them to Shopify.” The 10-image cap and lack of resize dimensions will frustrate anyone doing true bulk work (hundreds of files), but for freelancers, small e-commerce operators, and bloggers who value privacy over volume, it fills a genuine gap in the free-tool landscape. The fact that it runs on a free Vercel hobby tier also means it could disappear tomorrow, so do not rely on it as a permanent part of any automated workflow. [Vercel hobby plan docs]

How to use Squeezes (and work around its limits)

Step-by-step:

  1. Open squeezes.vercel.app in Chrome, Firefox, or Edge.
  2. Click Start Squeezing to dismiss the welcome modal.
  3. Drag up to 10 images into the drop zone, or click to browse your file system.
  4. Pick your output format from the dropdown (Original, JPEG, PNG, WebP). Leave it on “Original” if you only want compression without conversion.
  5. Wait for processing to complete, then click Download All.
  6. Use the Clear button to reset and start a new batch.

Pain points and workarounds:

  • “I need to compress more than 10 images.” Run the tool in multiple batches. If you need true bulk (50+ images), look at BulkPicTools on GitHub, which uses WebAssembly for offline batch processing with higher limits. [github.com/kbmjj123/BulkPicTools]
  • “I need to resize to specific dimensions, not just compress.” Squeezes does not offer pixel-dimension resizing. For that, PixelBatch handles bulk resize, crop, and compress with zero uploads. [pixelbatch.io]
  • “I want to compress PNGs with transparency.” Squeezes supports PNG output, but converting from PNG to JPEG will flatten transparency. Keep the format set to PNG or WebP if you need alpha channels.
  • “The site is slow or down.” Free Vercel hobby deployments share infrastructure and can throttle under load. Try again in a minute, or fall back to TinyPNG, which handles up to 20 images at 5 MB each for free. [tinypng.com]

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