How to convert TXT to PDF on iPhone
A text file is content with no appearance. A PDF is appearance, fixed forever. This conversion takes the words and lays them out on a page — which means every decision about how it looks is being made for you.
Why anyone converts text to PDF
A .txt file is the most portable thing in computing and the least presentable. It opens everywhere, but it looks like whatever the opening app feels like — a different font, a different width, lines rewrapped, tabs collapsed. Nobody wants a receipt, a form or a submission that renders differently on every machine that sees it.
A PDF pins it down. The layout you produce is the layout everyone sees, on any device, forever. That is the entire reason the format exists, and it is why upload forms, courts, schools and printers ask for one. Converting text to PDF is not about making the content better; it is about making its appearance non-negotiable.
What the PDF will actually look like
Convexy does not invent a design. It sets your text in a plain 12-point system font, on the page size you choose, with a one-inch margin all round, wrapped at word boundaries. That is it.
- Page size: Letter, A4 or Legal. Pick the one your recipient uses — Letter in the US and Canada, A4 nearly everywhere else. Getting this wrong is the most common cause of a printer adding unexpected margins or scaling the page.
- No formatting, because there is none to keep. A text file has no bold, no headings, no italics, no font. There is nothing for the converter to preserve, so it does not pretend otherwise. If you want structure, you have to write it in a format that carries structure.
- Your line breaks are respected. The text is wrapped where it needs to be, and the breaks you put in stay put — so ASCII tables and indented code will roughly hold their shape, provided the lines are not too long for the margin.
- The text stays real text. The PDF holds characters, not a picture of characters, so it can be selected, copied and searched by whoever opens it.
The output is a single page. Convexy renders one page at the size you chose; text that runs past the bottom of that page is not carried onto a second one. For a note, a snippet, a licence key, an address or a short letter this is a non-issue. For a long document it is a real limit, and we would rather you know it here than discover it after converting.
The workaround, if you need a long text file as a multi-page PDF: split the text into page-sized chunks, convert each, and stitch the results together with the PDF Merge tool — which is free forever, no purchase and no trial needed.
If your text has structure, do not use TXT
People often want headings, bullet lists and bold in the finished PDF, and are disappointed that a text file did not produce them. It could not have — the information was never in the file.
The fix is upstream: write the document in Markdown instead. Markdown is still a plain text file you can edit anywhere, but # Heading, - bullet and **bold** carry meaning, and Convexy renders that meaning when it converts. See Markdown to PDF. If your text already lives in something rich — a TextEdit or Word file saved as RTF — convert RTF to PDF and the formatting comes with it.
Encoding: read the file correctly or get mojibake
A text file is bytes. Which characters those bytes represent depends on the encoding, and the file does not reliably say which one it used. Convexy reads text files as UTF-8, which is what essentially everything written this century uses. If a file produced by some ancient Windows tool comes out with strange symbols where the accents and quotes should be, the file is not UTF-8 and you are looking at the classic encoding mismatch — re-save it as UTF-8 in a text editor first.
The conversion runs on your iPhone. There is no upload, no account and no server — which matters more than usual here, because the text files people convert to PDF tend to be the ones with recovery codes, account numbers and draft letters in them. Airplane Mode changes nothing about how the app behaves.
How to do it
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Bring the text file in
Open Convexy, tap Browse files and pick the .txt, or share it into Convexy from Files or any other app.
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Choose PDF
Convexy shows only what a text file can become: PDF, RTF, HTML and Markdown. Tap PDF.
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Pick the page size
Open Options and choose Letter, A4 or Legal. Match whatever your recipient or printer expects; A4 outside North America, Letter inside it.
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Convert
Tap Convert. Open the preview and check the text fits the page, since anything past the bottom of the first page is not carried over.
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Save or share
Save the PDF to Files, or send it straight on from the share sheet. If you are assembling a longer document, run PDF Merge afterwards to combine several pages.
Common questions
Will a long text file become a multi-page PDF?
No. Convexy produces a single page at the size you chose, and text that would fall past the bottom of it is not carried onto a second page. Convert page-sized chunks and combine them with the free PDF Merge tool if you need a long document. Short text — notes, snippets, letters, forms — converts in one shot.
Does the PDF keep my bold text and headings?
A plain text file does not contain bold text or headings. It contains characters. There is nothing to keep, and any converter that appears to produce headings from a .txt file is guessing at your intent. If you want real structure in the PDF, write the source as Markdown and convert that instead.
Letter or A4?
A4 (210 x 297 mm) is standard everywhere except the United States and Canada, which use Letter (8.5 x 11 in). They are close enough to look interchangeable on screen and different enough that printing a Letter PDF on A4 paper gives you unwanted margins or a scaled page. Match the recipient, not your own habit.
Can I select and copy the text in the finished PDF?
Yes. The PDF contains the actual characters, not a picture of them, so it is selectable and searchable in any PDF reader. This is the opposite of what you get when you screenshot a document and export the image.
Can Convexy make a Word document instead?
No. Convexy does not support DOC or DOCX in either direction. A text file can become PDF, RTF, HTML or Markdown. RTF is the closest thing on that list to a word processor document — Word, Pages and TextEdit all open it.
Is my text file uploaded anywhere?
No, and there is nowhere for it to go: the app has no backend. The PDF is rendered on your device by the operating system's own graphics stack. You can verify this by putting the phone in Airplane Mode and converting anyway.