Remove background
Cut the subject out with a small U²-Net in this tab.
Runs in this tab. The file stays here.
This runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
About Remove background
Cuts the subject out of a photo with a small U²-Net model that runs in this tab via ONNX Runtime. The picture is never uploaded.
Background removal on the internet is usually someone else's GPU and someone else's copy of the photo. This page loads a compact U²-Net-lite ONNX from this origin, runs it in WebAssembly, and writes a PNG with alpha. The model is a few megabytes. The file you dropped is not in that download.
It is not a studio knockout. Hair, smoke, glass, and a subject the same colour as the wall will leak. A phone snapshot on a busy street will leave crumbs. Check the edges. If you need a perfect path, a real editor still wins. If you need a product shot off a desk without mailing the JPEG to a SaaS, this is the trade.
The first click fetches onnxruntime-web's wasm and the model from this site, then the service worker can cache them. After that, wifi can go off. There is no @imgly CDN, no Hugging Face at runtime, no 'free 5 credits'. If the network panel shows a host that is not this origin, something is wrong and you should stop.
How to use Remove background
- 1Drop a photo. Portraits and products on a plain-ish background work best.
- 2Click Remove background. The first run downloads the local model; later runs reuse the cache.
- 3Download the PNG. Transparency is the point — JPEG would flatten it.
What it won't do
- Small U²-Net, not a foundation model. Hair and glass are weak.
- Output is PNG so alpha survives.
- First run waits on a same-origin model download, then CPU/WASM inference.
Common questions
Does remove-background upload the photo?
No. ONNX Runtime and the U²-Net weights load from this origin. The pixels stay in the tab. Open the network panel if you do not believe a badge.
Why is the cutout rough around hair?
The model is small on purpose so it can live on this origin without a CDN. Fine hair is the first thing a tiny net misses. I will not advertise 'studio quality' for a 4 MB file.
Can I run this with the wifi off?
After the model and wasm have loaded once, yes. Same as FFmpeg on the video tools. The homepage does not prefetch this; only this page does.
Is this the same as the commercial browser libraries?
No. Those often pull models from their CDN, which is an upload-adjacent network call I will not make. Self-hosted weights or the tool is not on this site.
Related tools
Why this one doesn't upload your file
There is no server to upload to. This page is a static file, and the work happens in your browser using the same graphics and WebAssembly code that renders every other site you visit. Your file is read from disk into memory, processed, and handed back as a download. Once the page has loaded you can disconnect from the network entirely and it keeps working. The longer explanation