pdfcraft

Project Overview

PdfCraft is an open-source PDF workbench from the ArtCraft community: a clean-room rebuild of the Acrobat workflow in pure Rust, reading, organizing, combining, splitting and securing PDFs in one fast native app.

It runs natively on macOS, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, and in the browser via WebAssembly; no account and no telemetry, with comments shown as threads beside the document.

Item	Value
Platforms	macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Web
Stack	Rust (clean-room rewrite)
Type	PDF reading and editing
License	MIT or Apache-2.0
Status	early development (v0.8.0)

A PDF workbench rewritten in pure Rust, with no account and no telemetry.

Key Features

• PDF reading: fast rendering with an all-tools panel beside the page
• Organizing: reorder, delete and arrange pages
• Merge and split: combine documents or break long ones apart
• Securing: add encryption protection to PDFs
• Threaded comments: annotations grouped into reply-ready threads
• Native everywhere: four desktop platforms natively, browsers via WebAssembly

Target Audience

• Office users handling PDFs daily
• Users who avoid uploading PDFs to online services
• Users merging and splitting documents
• Geeks interested in native Rust apps

Quick Start

1. Download the package for your platform from Releases
2. Open a PDF to read and annotate
3. Reorder or delete pages from the tools panel
4. Merge several documents or split a long one
5. Add encryption when a document needs protection

Core Advantages

• Fully local: no account, no telemetry, documents stay on your machine
• One-stop: reading, organizing, merging, splitting and securing in one app
• Purely native: Rust-built with fast launches and low footprint
• Permissive licensing: dual MIT and Apache-2.0

System Requirements

Item	Requirement
Desktop	macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD
Browser	any modern browser with WebAssembly
Building	Rust toolchain (for self-builds)

Notes

• Early development: the project is young, features and stability are still evolving quickly