A modern, open-source PDF workbench for Windows. Tauri v2 + React, with an embedded Python engine and vendored upstream Ghostscript (AGPL-3.0). No ads, no telemetry, no upsells. WebView2 prerequisite (ships with Windows 10/11).
Version 2.0 is a full-featured PDF workbench with a familiar user interface: a menu bar, main toolbar, and tabs over a continuous reading view, a navigation pane, and twelve task-oriented tools — with a keymap verified against the industry-standard editor's published shortcut table, so your muscle memory just works. Every whole-file operation also ships as a CLI subcommand with identical results.
- Reading view — continuous, virtualized scroll; smooth with 1,000-page documents. Real text selection and copy, zoom presets (
Ctrl+0/1/2), go-to-page (Ctrl+Shift+N), Rotate View (Ctrl+Shift+Plus/Minus— the page turns, the file doesn't), Hand/Select with Space as a temporary hand - Organize view — every open file as a strip of live page thumbnails; drag pages within and across documents, multi-select, whole-document merge, drop files to import their pages at that spot. All of it staged in memory, committed atomically, undoable
- Navigation pane (
F4) — Pages (thumbnails with drag-reorder), Bookmarks (with editing), Search, Signatures - Find & Search — floating find (
Ctrl+F,F3/Ctrl+Gstepping) and a workspace-wide Search panel (Ctrl+Shift+F); scanned pages become searchable (and selectable) via OCR
Organize Pages · Comment (highlights, text boxes, ink, stamps — notes and recoloring on each, plus a comments sidebar; existing PDF annotations import as editable) · Fill & Sign (AcroForm fill on the page, digital signatures: verify, sign with PFX/PEM, visible stamps, sign-into-field) · Prepare Form (draw new fields on the page) · Redact (true content removal) · Scan & OCR · Compare (text + visual diff) · Protect (AES-256 encrypt/decrypt) · Optimize (compress, grayscale, linearize, PDF/A, PDF version) · Repair (three tiers up to per-page salvage) · Watermark · Export (text extraction)
- Print (
Ctrl+P) — printer picker, page range, copies, fit/actual, through the bundled Ghostscript to any Windows printer - Document Properties (
Ctrl+D), categorized Preferences (Ctrl+K) - Insert pages from a file (
Ctrl+Shift+I) or blank (Ctrl+Shift+T), delete (Ctrl+Shift+D), rotate (Ctrl+Shift+R), split, extract .pdfxsupport — Alexandros Gounis's open format: several documents saved as one ordinary, fully-compatible PDF that reopens as separate strips- Multi-level undo/redo across staged page edits and applied operations; one file is one document no matter how its path is spelled
NSIS installer with silent modes and enterprise policy, file associations, Explorer context menu, system tray, start-with-Windows, auto-update, light/dark/system themes with Windows accent + Mica, WCAG 2.1 AA, full keyboard navigation (single-key tool accelerators available, off by default).
When invoked with a subcommand, Open PDF Studio runs headless — no window, same engine. openpdfstudio.exe /? shows the full list.
# Compress
openpdfstudio compress input.pdf -o compressed.pdf --quality ebook
# Merge / split / rotate / delete
openpdfstudio merge a.pdf b.pdf c.pdf -o merged.pdf
openpdfstudio split input.pdf -o output_dir/ --ranges "1-3,5-7"
openpdfstudio rotate input.pdf -o rotated.pdf --angle 90 --pages 1,3,5
openpdfstudio delete input.pdf -o trimmed.pdf --pages 3,7
# Print — to any installed Windows printer, via the bundled Ghostscript
openpdfstudio printers # list printers (JSON, with the default)
openpdfstudio print input.pdf --printer "Brother HL-L2400D" --pages 1-3 --copies 2 --fit fit
# Encrypt / decrypt
openpdfstudio encrypt input.pdf -o encrypted.pdf --password secret
openpdfstudio decrypt encrypted.pdf -o decrypted.pdf --password secret
# PDF/A, optimize, grayscale, version
openpdfstudio pdfa input.pdf -o archive.pdf --level 2b
openpdfstudio optimize input.pdf -o optimized.pdf --linearize --strip-metadata --compress-streams
openpdfstudio grayscale input.pdf -o grayscale.pdf
openpdfstudio pdf-version input.pdf -o out.pdf --version 1.7
# Text, metadata
openpdfstudio extract-text input.pdf --pages 1,2,3
openpdfstudio metadata input.pdf --title "New Title" -o updated.pdf
openpdfstudio metadata input.pdf --strip -o stripped.pdf
# Forms — list fields (JSON), or fill (± flatten)
openpdfstudio forms input.pdf
openpdfstudio forms input.pdf -o filled.pdf --set name=Ada --set subscribe=true --flatten
# Bookmarks — read (JSON) or replace
openpdfstudio outline input.pdf
openpdfstudio outline input.pdf -o out.pdf --from-json bookmarks.json
# Signatures
openpdfstudio verify-signatures signed.pdf
openpdfstudio sign input.pdf -o signed.pdf --pfx signer.pfx --password pass
openpdfstudio generate-signer -o me.pfx --cn "My Name" --password pass
# Compare, redact, watermark, repair tiers
openpdfstudio compare a.pdf b.pdf
openpdfstudio redact input.pdf -o redacted.pdf --page 1 --rect 100,100,300,150
openpdfstudio watermark input.pdf -o marked.pdf --text "CONFIDENTIAL"
openpdfstudio repair broken.pdf -o repaired.pdf
openpdfstudio rebuild broken.pdf -o rebuilt.pdf
openpdfstudio recover broken.pdf -o recovered.pdf
openpdfstudio check input.pdf
# Batch — process every PDF in a directory
openpdfstudio batch C:\pdfs\ -o C:\out\ compress --quality ebookResults are JSON on stdout. Progress and errors go to stderr. Exit codes: 0 = success, 1 = operation error, 2 = bad args.
# Silent install (per-machine, auto-update disabled)
"Open PDF Studio_2.0.0_x64-setup.exe" /S
# Silent uninstall (keeps user data for redeployment)
"C:\Program Files\Open PDF Studio\uninstall.exe" /S
# Silent uninstall (removes all user data)
"C:\Program Files\Open PDF Studio\uninstall.exe" /S /removeuserdataAuto-update can be disabled machine-wide via HKLM\SOFTWARE\Open PDF Studio\DisableAutoUpdate = 1 (set automatically by the silent installer). Ghostscript and the Python runtime are bundled — nothing else to deploy. The installer's own /? dialog documents all switches:
End users: WebView2 (included with Windows 10/11 via Edge). The interactive installer downloads the bootstrapper if missing.
Note on unsigned releases: Open PDF Studio is distributed unsigned (no Authenticode code-signing certificate). On first run, Windows SmartScreen may show a blue "Windows protected your PC — Unknown publisher" prompt. This is expected for unsigned open-source software, not a sign of tampering. To proceed, click More info → Run anyway. Builds are published on the releases page.
Developers:
| Requirement | Version |
|---|---|
| Node.js | 22 LTS (or 20.19+) |
| Rust | Stable toolchain |
| Ghostscript | None — vendored automatically by bundle-ghostscript.ps1 |
Python 3.14 is embedded automatically — no system install needed.
# Install Node.js dependencies
npm install
# Set up embedded Python (first time only)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\setup-python-embed.ps1
# Start development (Tauri dev server — launches Vite + Rust backend)
npm run dev# Full build — bundles Python, GS, builds Rust backend, produces NSIS installer
npm run packageThis runs scripts/setup-python-embed.ps1 (downloads embedded Python 3.14 + pip-installs the hash-pinned engine deps), scripts/bundle-ghostscript.ps1 (downloads the official upstream Ghostscript release, verifies its checksum, and vendors it into resources/), then cargo tauri build (compiles Rust, bundles the WebView2 frontend, produces the NSIS installer).
Output: src-tauri/target/release/bundle/nsis/Open PDF Studio_X.Y.Z_x64-setup.exe
Individual steps (if needed):
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
npm run prepackage |
Downloads embedded Python + bundles GS (no compile) |
npm run build:renderer |
Vite production build of the React frontend |
npm run build |
cargo tauri build — Rust compile + NSIS installer (assumes prepackage already ran) |
npm run package |
All of the above in sequence |
+-------------------+ invoke() +------------------+ JSON-RPC +-------------------+
| React UI | <----------------> | Rust Backend | <--(stdin/stdout)--> | Python Engine |
| (WebView2) | | (Tauri v2) | | (pikepdf + GS) |
+-------------------+ +------------------+ +-------------------+
| | |
v v v
WebView2 (Edge) Tauri commands Embedded Python 3.14
- Menu bar / toolbar / tabs - File dialogs + path canon - 30+ operation handlers
- Reading view (virtualized) - Printer enumeration - pikepdf (structural)
- Organize board (page strips) - Sidecar management - pdfminer.six (text)
- Navigation pane - System tray - pyHanko (signatures)
- Twelve task panes - Single instance - Ghostscript (upstream:
- Command registry + keymap - Auto-updater compress, PDF/A, print)
- pdf.js render + text layer - Registry policy check
Frontend: Tauri v2 (WebView2), React 19, TailwindCSS, pdf.js, pdf-lib, tesseract.js
Backend: Rust (Tauri commands) + Python 3.14 (embedded), pikepdf, pdfminer.six, pyHanko, Ghostscript (upstream, AGPL-3.0)
IPC: Tauri invoke() (JS→Rust), JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdin/stdout (Rust→Python)
openpdfstudio/
├── src-tauri/ # Tauri v2 Rust backend
│ ├── src/
│ │ ├── lib.rs # App setup, tray, single-instance, events
│ │ ├── cli.rs # CLI arg parsing, headless engine, batch mode
│ │ ├── commands.rs # IPC command handlers (dialogs, paths, printers…)
│ │ ├── printers.rs # winspool printer enumeration
│ │ └── engine.rs # Python sidecar lifecycle
│ ├── tauri.conf.json # Tauri config, NSIS, resources, plugins
│ └── nsis-hooks.nsh # Context menu, registry, enterprise policy
├── src/
│ ├── renderer/ # React frontend (rendered by WebView2)
│ │ ├── App.tsx # Root — dialogs, funnels, state wiring
│ │ ├── commands/ # Command registry, menus, keymap, tools model
│ │ ├── state/ # AppState reducer, selectors, types
│ │ ├── components/ # Chrome (MenuBar/MainToolbar/TabStrip…),
│ │ │ ├── canvas/ # the reading view + organize board
│ │ │ └── navpane/ # the navigation pane panels
│ │ ├── panels/ # One task pane per operation
│ │ ├── search/, ocr/ # Find/Search engine, tesseract.js OCR
│ │ ├── hooks/, lib/ # Engine bridge, commit gate, pdf builders
│ │ └── testHarness.ts # e2e hooks (compiled in only with VITE_E2E)
│ └── engine/ # Python PDF engine (one file per operation)
├── e2e-tests/ # WDIO specs against the built binary
├── tests/ # vitest (renderer) + pytest (engine)
├── resources/ # Embedded Python + vendored GS (built by scripts)
└── scripts/ # setup-python-embed.ps1, bundle-ghostscript.ps1
MIT (application code). Bundled Ghostscript is unmodified upstream, licensed AGPL-3.0 — see THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md.