About Paperwing.

Paperwing at a glance

Paperwing is a free, open-source desktop PDF editor for Windows and macOS that works offline, with no account and no subscription.

What it is

A desktop app for editing, signing, converting, organizing, compressing and protecting PDF files, with a workspace and keyboard shortcuts modelled on Adobe Acrobat.

Price

Free. Every feature, with no trial, no paid tier, no watermark and no account.

Platforms

Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit; installer or portable) and macOS 12 or later (Apple Silicon and Intel). No Linux package yet; it builds from source.

Latest version

1.2.3, released October 28, 2026.

Tools

117 tools, including text and image editing, e-signatures and digital signatures, form filling, OCR, redaction, compression, merging, splitting, comparing, and conversion to and from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images and 30+ other formats.

Privacy

All PDF processing happens on the user’s computer. No accounts, analytics or telemetry. Files are never uploaded.

Offline

Works offline. Exceptions are one-time downloads: the Office conversion engine (about 75 MB) and OCR languages other than English.

License

Open source under the GNU AGPL-3.0. Source code: github.com/rohanvijaykumar/paperwing.

Built on

BentoPDF, an open-source PDF toolkit; Paperwing adds the desktop workspace and the Windows and Mac apps (Electron).

Made by

Rohan Vijaykumar, an independent developer (rohanvijaykumar.cv). First released October 12, 2026.

Official sources

paperwingapp.com and the GitHub releases page of rohanvijaykumar/paperwing.

Not to be confused with

PaperWingPDF (paperwingpdf.com), a separate set of browser-based PDF tools by a different developer, or Adobe. Paperwing is not affiliated with either.

Why it exists

Editing, signing and converting PDFs is something almost everyone has to do, and the usual choices are a monthly subscription or a website that wants your file. Paperwing is the third option: a desktop app with the familiar Acrobat-style workspace, every tool free, and your documents kept on your computer.

Who makes it

Paperwing is made by Rohan Vijaykumar, an independent developer. It isn’t a company product, has no investors and shows no ads.

How it works

Paperwing is built on BentoPDF, an open-source project whose tools process PDFs in the browser with open-source libraries compiled to WebAssembly. Paperwing keeps that engine and adds the desktop workspace: tabs, the All tools sidebar, the viewer, Acrobat shortcuts, native file dialogs, updates and the Windows and Mac apps. The full source is on GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 licence.

Not to be confused with

Paperwing isn’t connected to PaperWingPDF (paperwingpdf.com), a separate set of browser-based PDF tools by a different developer, or to Adobe. The only official places to get Paperwing are this site and the project’s GitHub releases.

Get in touch

• General questions and feedback: hello@paperwingapp.com
• Help with the app: support@paperwingapp.com
• Security reports: security@paperwingapp.com
• Bugs and feature requests: GitHub issues

Press and reviews

You’re welcome to write about Paperwing and use its screenshots and icon. For anything else, write to hello@paperwingapp.com.