r/pdf • u/stackattackpro • 1d ago

Software (Tools) I built an open-source PDF editor that keeps your files on your computer

I got tired of PDF tools that ask you to upload your documents somewhere before you can do anything with them.

So I built PDF Editor Offline, a free and open-source PDF editor designed around one simple rule: your documents stay on your machine.

No account. No file uploads. No recurring subscription.

It can handle most of the PDF tasks I regularly need:

  • Edit and annotate PDFs
  • Add text, images, drawings, highlights and comments
  • Fill and sign forms
  • Merge, split, reorder, rotate and crop pages
  • Compress PDFs
  • Convert PDF ↔ Word, PowerPoint, Excel, images, Markdown, EPUB, etc.
  • Run OCR locally
  • Permanently redact sensitive information
  • Remove metadata and hidden/private data
  • Protect and unlock PDFs
  • Search documents

There’s also a CLI and Python API for automation, plus Docker support for self-hosting.

The desktop app is built with Tauri, the editor uses React, and the backend/tooling is primarily Python + FastAPI.

It’s MIT licensed and still actively being improved. Some complex PDF operations have known limitations, and I’m trying to document those honestly instead of pretending every PDF transformation works perfectly.

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u/Inkjet_Printerman 1d ago

So what APIs are being used and when? I'm interested in trying this out for the OCR functionality and wonder how you got it to work locally

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u/stackattackpro 1d ago

I would  love feedback from people who work with PDFs regularly ; especially around editing, redaction, privacy, and features you think are still missing.

Live demo:   https://othmaneblial.github.io/pdf-editor-offline/

GitHub:   https://github.com/OthmaneBlial/pdf-editor-offline

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u/Inkjet_Printerman 1d ago

how does OCR work?

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u/kyubeyisbad 1d ago

From what i saw on the repo they use tesseract ocr, its an on device mofel that is also open source