PDF Shard
An open-source, cross-platform, fully offline PDF editor. No AI, no cloud, no subscriptions — written in Rust.
Why it exists
Editing a PDF — merging, splitting, rotating, compressing — has become something most people do by uploading a file to an unfamiliar website. Contracts, medical certificates, payslips, ID documents: files handed to someone else’s server in exchange for an operation the computer could do on its own.
PDF Shard performs those operations without the file ever leaving the machine. No upload, no account, no connection required.
Decisions
Rust, for two reasons. PDF parsing is classic territory for memory-safety vulnerabilities — a complex format, processing files that arrive from third parties — and compiler guarantees matter more there than almost anywhere else. The second reason is the single binary: it ships with no runtime to install.
No AI, deliberately. It is the feature everyone is adding right now. This program performs deterministic operations on a file; a function that is sometimes right would be a regression.
Windows, macOS, Linux and Android. An editor that only exists on your desktop is useless when the document arrives on your phone.