19 offline document tools in one desktop app: compress, merge, sign, redact, OCR and convert PDFs — all local, no account, no tracking.
PaperOtter is a local document toolkit: 19 tools across PDF, image, and document work, all running on your own machine. Compress, merge, split, rotate, watermark, redact, and sign PDFs; convert between JPG, PNG, and WebP; turn PDFs and Word docs into clean Markdown, HTML, JSON, plain text, or DOCX. Eighteen of the nineteen tools need nothing installed — only ebook-format conversion reaches for an external app. It ships for Mac, Windows, and Linux in nine languages, with a consistent four-step flow for every tool: Pick, Configure, Compare, Save.
The privacy posture is the point. PaperOtter has no AI features, no chatbot, and no assistant; your files never leave your computer. It makes exactly two network calls — an update check on launch and a feedback-address fetch inside the About dialog. The README even carries a written note on why the EU AI Act's transparency duties don't attach to it, reasoning included and open to challenge. That's an unusual level of honesty for a free tool.
The build story: the author's showcase post reads "Built with Claude: PaperOtter now has 19 offline document tools in one desktop app (open source)." The repo is active — 775 commits since September 2026 with two releases, most recently adding structure-preserving conversion and batch processing. The declared stack is Tauri with Rust and TypeScript. It's MIT licensed, free, and offline by design.