Tools 19 Need nothing installed 18 of 19 Your files uploaded never Sign-up none
Everything happens
on your machine.
Compressing a PDF, converting a scan, signing a form: the jobs you would normally hand to a website. PaperOtter’s nineteen tools do them on your own computer instead.
Every build is listed below.
Every build
Pick the one for your machine.
Registration · none of any kind
Privacy was never optional.
No sign-up? Correct. No internet? Also correct.
Nothing to sign up for.
No email, no licence key, no trial that runs out, no free tier with the good parts missing. Download it, open it, and the first thing you see is the tool you came for.
There is no server to have an account on.
Works with the network off.
All nineteen tools run on your own machine. On a plane, on a train, on a laptop that has never been online: it behaves exactly the same.
Turn off wi-fi and the only thing you lose is the update check.
Your documents never leave your computer.
There is no upload step to skip and no account to trust with them: compressing a contract or signing a form happens on your own machine, the same way it would if you unplugged the internet first.
The app asks the outside world exactly two questions, both of them about itself rather than about you. Here they are in full:
| When | What it asks | What it tells them about you |
|---|---|---|
| When you open the app | “Is there a newer version?” api.github.com/repos/…/releases/latest |
Nothing. It reads a version number and shows you a banner if one is newer. |
| When you open About | “Where should feedback go?” raw.githubusercontent.com/…/feedback-config.json |
Nothing of yours. It reads which Discussions board the Feedback button opens. Reports arrive pre-filled; nothing is posted until you press the button yourself. |
| Everything else you do | Nothing is asked. | Nothing at all. Your files are opened, changed and saved on this machine. |
Yours, to go.
Nineteen tools
Eighteen of them need nothing installed. Hover or tap a card to see how it works.
Showing all 19 tools.
What it is for
The jobs people actually open it for
Pick one and the loop beside it shows that job being done, start to finish, on a real document. No narration, no cuts to a marketing shot.
Get a scan or a report under an attachment limit without turning the text to mush. The setting says what it will cost before you commit to it.
73.80 MB → 46.13 MB · 37% smaller · 438 pages
Measured, not promised: a scanned page went from 127 KB to 40 KB, 68% smaller. A photo PDF already at screen resolution came back unchanged. There was nothing left to downsample, and the app said so instead of pretending otherwise.
EPUB and MOBI out of the document you already wrote. Calibre does that pair; everything else converts with nothing installed.
Measured, not promised: the file got bigger, not smaller. An EPUB is a zip archive of HTML, fonts and navigation metadata, and that container has a fixed cost a short document cannot spread out. Convert something book-length and the ratio flips; convert six pages and the honest answer is that it grows.
Export to Markdown, HTML, JSON or plain text. What reaches the model is structure rather than a picture of a page, which reads better and costs a fraction of the tokens.
Draw, type or upload it once, place it, save the file. Nobody else holds the document, and there is no account in between.
Text is removed, not covered with a black rectangle somebody can lift off in another reader.
One file
No data is tracked
One file. Open it and everything it needs is already there. Nothing more to track down afterward.
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Download the .dmg
Apple silicon or Intel, whichever this Mac is. The download page picks for you.
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Drag PaperOtter into Applications
The usual dmg window. Nothing installs in the background.
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Open it once and let macOS refuse
PaperOtter has no Apple developer certificate yet, so the first open is blocked: “Apple could not verify PaperOtter is free of malware.” Click Done. This step matters, because the button that lets you past it does not exist until macOS has actually stopped you.
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Now go to Privacy & Security
System Settings, then Privacy & Security, and scroll to the Security section at the bottom. Open Anyway is waiting there, naming PaperOtter. Do this within an hour of being blocked or the button expires and you start again.
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Open it a second time
The same warning appears, now with an Open Anyway button in it. Click that, and macOS remembers the decision. You never do any of this again.
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If it says “damaged” instead
Some Macs show “PaperOtter is damaged and can’t be opened” and offer only the Trash, with no Open Anyway anywhere. It is not damaged: macOS is refusing the download tag on an app it cannot trace to a paid developer account. Remove that one tag and open it normally:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/PaperOtter.appDrag the app into Applications first, or that path points at nothing.
What that command does, exactly. xattr edits extended attributes — small labels macOS attaches to files. -d com.apple.quarantine deletes one named label: the “this came from the internet” tag. -r applies it through the bundle, because an app is a folder. The last argument is the only thing it touches.
What it does not do. There is no sudo, so it needs no admin rights and cannot change anything outside your own files. It does not turn Gatekeeper off, and it does not touch any other app — every other download on your Mac stays checked exactly as before. If you ever see advice to run spctl --master-disable, that one does disable the check for everything you install afterwards. Do not run it, for us or for anyone.
You can see the label before and after, if you would rather check than trust:
xattr /Applications/PaperOtter.app -
That is the whole setup
No account, no key, nothing to configure. It opens on the tool grid.
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Download the .exe
One installer, everything already inside it.
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Run it, and let SmartScreen stop you
Windows shows “Windows protected your PC” for installers it has not seen signed before, and offers only Don’t run. Click More info, and a Run anyway button appears beside it. Like the Mac, the button that lets you past does not exist until Windows has actually stopped you.
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Next three times
A welcome screen, then where to install it, then the install itself. The defaults are right, so there is nothing to decide.
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Finish, and it opens
The last screen has Run PaperOtter and Create desktop shortcut already ticked. Click Finish and the app starts.
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That is the whole setup
No account, no key, nothing to configure. It opens on the tool grid.
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Download the .deb or the .AppImage
Debian and Ubuntu take the .deb. Anything else, use the AppImage. Both are 64-bit x86, which Debian calls amd64 — that is the right file for an Intel processor as well as an AMD one, and the name is only historical. There is no ARM build for Linux yet, so a Raspberry Pi or an ARM virtual machine has nothing to install.
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Point the terminal at the file first
The commands below name the file rather than a full path, so the terminal has to be in the folder you downloaded into — usually Downloads:
cd ~/DownloadsSkip this and apt says E: Unsupported file … given on command line. That wording is misleading: it means apt could not find the file, not that anything is wrong with it. Giving the whole path works from anywhere and avoids the question:
sudo apt install ~/Downloads/PaperOtter_1.0.0_amd64.deb -
Install the .deb
sudo apt install ./PaperOtter_1.0.0_amd64.debThe ./ is doing real work. Without it apt looks for a package of that name in the archives, finds none, and reports the same unsupported-file error.
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Or just run the AppImage
Nothing is installed and nothing is added to your system. Make it executable, then run it:
chmod +x PaperOtter_1.0.0_amd64.AppImage./PaperOtter_1.0.0_amd64.AppImage -
Open it. No warning to click through
Linux has no equivalent of Gatekeeper or SmartScreen, so it simply starts.
Worth knowing
Before you download
The things a download page usually leaves out.
One tool needs help
EPUB and MOBI use Calibre; some document formats use LibreOffice. The other eighteen tools need nothing.
Two features are macOS-only
Reading scans and HEIC photos depend on what the operating system provides. PaperOtter hides what it cannot run.
Nine languages, all AI-assisted
Every one of them, English included, was written with AI help. Warnings about losing files are translated everywhere or nowhere, never half.
Built by one person
The issue tracker is read by whoever wrote the code. Most of what is here came from bugs reported there.
Not signed. Not yet.
This is still a hobby project. One person, no revenue yet. A developer certificate is a real cost every year, and it’s next once downloads show there’s enough interest to justify it.
Last but not least
If it saved you an afternoon
PaperOtter is free, MIT licensed, and collects nothing: no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reports. That is the point of it, and it has one consequence worth admitting: there is no way for me to know whether anyone is using this. Downloads are a number; they do not say whether the thing worked.
Star it on GitHub
Free, takes a second, and it is the only signal that reaches me. It also puts PaperOtter in front of people searching for a tool that does not want their data.
github.com/shyhunter/PaperOtter →Read the roadmap
PaperOtter is still being built, and it happens in the open: what is coming next, what was decided against, and the reasoning either way. If the tool you need is not on it yet, that is worth telling me.
the roadmap →Buy me a coffee
Entirely optional and it changes nothing: there is no paid tier to unlock, and there never will be. It pays for the certificates that stop your operating system calling this app damaged.
buymeacoffee.com/shyhunter →Reporting something that broke is worth more than both, and it happens in Discussions rather than an inbox — ask a question, suggest a tool, or say what went wrong. Most of what is in this release came from someone taking the time to do exactly that.