I edit PDFs more often than I'd like to admit — mostly invoices, sometimes forms, sometimes a scanned document someone sent me that really should've been a text file. Every time, I'd end up on one of those free online PDF editors, tweak a couple of fields, hit export... and get told I'd used up my free edits for the day. Come back tomorrow, or pay up.
That's a strange thing to run into for editing your own documents on your own computer. So one weekend, instead of waiting out the daily limit again, I sat down and built this instead.
A quick example: say you send out a handful of invoices every month and just need to swap the client name, the date, and a line item or two each time. On a hosted editor, that's a few uploads, a few waits, and eventually a paywall. Here, you drag the PDF in, the fields show up on the right, you edit them, and it saves — right there on your machine, as many times as you want, whenever you want. No daily cap, no account, no upload to somewhere else.
That's really the whole idea: something that works exactly like the paid tools, minus the meter running in the background. No cloud, no limits, total privacy.
- 🌗 Premium Dark Mode: A sleek, slate-gray interface designed to reduce eye strain.
- 📑 Split-Pane Data Entry: The PDF renders on the left, while editable text fields are automatically organized in a scrolling panel on the right.
- 🧠 Smart Y-Axis Grouping: An advanced backend algorithm groups disconnected PDF text elements into logical, easy-to-read rows and sections.
- 🔍 Tesseract OCR Fallback: Upload a flat, scanned document? The app automatically triggers local Tesseract OCR to extract and map the text.
- 🎨 Font & Color Preservation: Edits are written back into the PDF using the original font styles and colors to blend in seamlessly.
- 🔒 100% Offline Support: All frontend dependencies (Tailwind, Fabric.js) are locally vendored.
| Homepage | Edit Sections | Edit PDF Page |
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- OS: Windows 11
- Python: v3.10+ (Added to system PATH)
- Clone this repository:
git clone https://github.com/anshusangita08/local-pdf-editor.git cd local-pdf-editor - Run the automated setup (installs Python dependencies & Tesseract OCR):
setup.bat
Simply double-click start.bat.
The FastAPI backend will boot up and automatically open your default browser to http://localhost:8000.
| Component | Technology | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Backend | FastAPI (Python) | High-performance local server and API routing. |
| PDF Engine | PyMuPDF (fitz) | Vector text extraction, coordinate mapping, and redaction. |
| OCR Engine | Tesseract | Local optical character recognition for scanned images. |
| Frontend UI | Tailwind CSS | Rapid, modern dark-mode styling. |
| Canvas | Fabric.js | Pixel-perfect bounding box alignment and cross-highlighting. |
This application stands on the shoulders of giants. Huge thanks to: