PeachPDF

Command-Line Tool (peachpdf)

peachpdf is a standalone command-line tool that renders HTML to PDF using the PeachPDF engine — no .NET runtime, browser, or other external dependency required. It is compiled ahead of time (Native AOT) into a single self-contained native executable per platform.

It uses a conventional HTML-to-PDF command-line grammar. It recognizes only the options documented below; any other flag is reported as an unknown option and the tool exits with a non-zero status.

Installing

Download the archive for your platform from the project’s GitHub Releases and extract the peachpdf executable (peachpdf.exe on Windows). Prebuilt binaries are published for:

Platform Architecture Asset
Windows x64 peachpdf-<version>-win-x64.zip
Windows ARM64 peachpdf-<version>-win-arm64.zip
Linux x64 peachpdf-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz
Linux ARM64 peachpdf-<version>-linux-arm64.tar.gz
macOS Apple Silicon (ARM64) peachpdf-<version>-osx-arm64.tar.gz

Usage

peachpdf [OPTIONS] FILES... [-o OUTPUT.pdf]

FILES are one or more inputs — local HTML files, HTTP(S) URLs, MHTML (.mht/.mhtml) archives, or - to read HTML from standard input. Multiple inputs are combined into a single PDF, in order. If -o is omitted, the output is written next to the first input with a .pdf extension; -o - writes the PDF to standard output. An explicit -o is required when the first input is a URL or standard input.

Examples

# Convert a file (writes report.pdf)
peachpdf report.html

# Convert to a named output
peachpdf doc.html -o out.pdf

# Fetch and render a web page (output is required for URL input)
peachpdf https://example.com -o example.pdf

# Read HTML from stdin, write the PDF to stdout
cat page.html | peachpdf - -o - > page.pdf

# Combine several documents into one PDF
peachpdf cover.html chapter1.html chapter2.html -o book.pdf

# Apply user style sheets, set a page size and margins, and set document metadata
peachpdf doc.html -s print.css --page-size "A4" --page-margin 20mm \
  --pdf-title "Quarterly Report" --pdf-author "Jane Doe" -o report.pdf

Supported options

The default page size is US Letter (a document’s own @page { size: … } still overrides it), and the default media type is print.

General

Option Description
-h, --help Show usage and exit.
--version Show version information and exit.
--show-license Print the license and exit.
--credits Print the license and third-party acknowledgements and exit.
-v, --verbose Log informative messages to standard error.
--debug Log debug messages to standard error.
--log=FILE Append log messages to FILE.

Input

Option Description
-l, --input-list=FILE Read a newline-separated list of inputs from FILE.
--baseurl=URL Base URL for resolving relative resource references.
--no-network Disable network (HTTP) resource access.
--no-local-files Disable local-file resource access, for every input kind — HTML, MHTML and URL alike. A file: reference in the document (image, stylesheet, @font-face, SVG <image>) resolves to nothing, and a relative reference no longer falls back to the working directory. The input document you name on the command line is still read.

CSS

Option Description
-s, --style=FILE Apply a user style sheet. Repeatable; later sheets win.
--media=MEDIA CSS media type to render as (default print).
--no-default-style Ignore the default (user-agent) style sheet.
--no-author-style Ignore the document’s own <style>/<link> style sheets.
--page-size=SIZE Page size: a keyword (A4, letter, …), one or two lengths ("210mm 297mm"), optionally with portrait/landscape.
--page-margin=MARGIN Page margin as 1–4 CSS lengths, in CSS shorthand order (e.g. 20mm, 1cm 2cm).

PDF output

Option Description
-o, --output=FILE Output PDF file (- for standard output).
--pdf-title=TITLE Set the PDF title (overrides the HTML <title>).
--pdf-author=AUTHOR Set the PDF author.
--pdf-subject=SUBJECT Set the PDF subject.
--pdf-keywords=KEYWORDS Set the PDF keywords.
--pdf-creator=CREATOR Set the PDF creator.
--pdf-lang=LANG Set the PDF document language (the catalog /Lang entry), used when the document declares no language of its own (a document’s own <html lang> takes priority).
--tagged-pdf Emit a tagged (PDF/UA) structure tree.
--interactive-pdf-forms Emit fillable AcroForm fields for <input>/<select> elements.
--no-compress Do not compress PDF content streams.

Length units accepted by --page-size and --page-margin are mm, cm, in, pt, pc, and px (1px = 1/96in); a bare number is treated as points.

Network (HTTP inputs and resources)

Option Description
--http-timeout=SEC HTTP request timeout in seconds.
--http-header="Name: value" Add a request header. Repeatable.
--user-agent=UA Set the User-Agent header.
--auth-user=USER HTTP basic-auth user name.
--auth-password=PASS HTTP basic-auth password.
--http-proxy=PROXY HTTP proxy server.
--insecure Disable TLS certificate verification.

Notes