PDF Toolbox

More than 100 PDF tools that run entirely on your Googlebook.
Merge, split, edit, sign, fill forms, convert Word, Excel and PowerPoint, OCR and more:
offline, in a desktop window, and your files never leave your device.

⬇ Download PDFToolbox.apk  ·  How to install  ·  All versions  ·  What's new

_{A personal passion project by Fika Labs, developed on a Googlebook. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any employer (more).}

PDF Toolbox is BentoPDF, the open-source, privacy-first PDF toolkit, made into a desktop app for Googlebooks: every tool is one click away in a sidebar, and opens in the full-height pane next to it. Every tool runs on your Googlebook itself: there is no server, and the app doesn't even have permission to use the internet. One APK works on every Googlebook, with an Intel (x86_64) or an Arm (Snapdragon, MediaTek) chip.

PDF Toolbox was called BentoBook until version 0.5.

Contents

• What it does
• Requirements
• Install · Update · Uninstall
• Using it
• Privacy
• Limits
• Questions
• Building it yourself
• About this project
• License and credits

What it does

• Organize: merge, split, reorder, rotate, delete and extract pages. The PDF Multi Tool does all of it on one page grid.
• Edit: Edit PDF Text (click a paragraph and type), annotate, highlight, redact, sign, fill and create forms, add watermarks, page numbers, stamps and bookmarks, crop.
• Convert: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OpenDocument to PDF (with LibreOffice, running in the app), PDF to Word, Excel, text, Markdown and images, images to PDF, PDF/A, EPUB, email and Markdown to PDF, and more.
• Clean up: OCR (make scanned PDFs searchable), compress, remove blank pages, deskew, encrypt and decrypt, change permissions, remove metadata.
• Workflow Builder: chain tools into your own pipeline.

_{Edit PDF Text: click a paragraph and type. Font, colour, alignment and spacing are on the right.}

Requirements

• A Googlebook: the Acer Googlebook 14, ASUS Googlebook 14 and Lenovo Googlebook 15 (Intel), the Dell XPS Googlebook and HP Googlebook 14 (Snapdragon), and the ones that follow. PDF Toolbox also runs on other devices with Android 14 or later, but it is made for a laptop screen and keyboard.
• Android System WebView, up to date (it updates through Google Play, like other apps). Converting Office files to PDF needs a recent WebView; PDF Toolbox is tested with WebView 153. With an older one, every other tool still works.
• About 200 MB of storage. It is a big app because the engines come with it: LibreOffice, Python with PyMuPDF, Ghostscript and Tesseract OCR.

Install

PDF Toolbox isn't in the Play Store: you install it from this page, which takes a minute. It asks for no permissions.

1. Download. On your Googlebook, open this page in Chrome and click Download PDF Toolbox. Chrome shows a warning for every app downloaded from outside the Play Store ("File might be harmful"): choose Download anyway.
2. Open it. Click the download in Chrome's downloads, or open the Files app, go to Downloads and click PDFToolbox.apk.
3. Allow installing apps from Chrome (only the first time). Android says it isn't allowed to install unknown apps from this source. Click Settings, turn on Allow from this source, and go back. (Newer versions of Android ask in the same window instead: choose to allow it.)
4. Install. Click Install. Google Play Protect may offer to scan the app first; that's fine. When it's done, click Open. PDF Toolbox is in your apps from now on.

Coming from BentoBook? PDF Toolbox is its new name, and it installs as a new app next to it: once PDF Toolbox works, uninstall BentoBook. (Files you made stay in your Download folder.)

Check the download (optional): each release lists the APK's SHA-256 checksum. Releases after 0.6.1 are signed with the certificate whose SHA-256 fingerprint is 01:ED:3C:81:45:A8:CB:8B:F8:99:59:79:4F:53:BD:74:01:E5:07:CF:6D:80:C0:C3:D2:D9:B6:EB:EF:AF:62:3E (0.6.1 and earlier, and BentoBook 0.5, used an earlier key: 98:70:15:C8:…:DB:C3:D0) (apksigner verify --print-certs PDFToolbox.apk shows it).

With adb instead: adb install PDFToolbox.apk.

Update

PDF Toolbox can't check for updates itself, as it has no internet permission. About & licenses in the app links to this page. Download the new PDFToolbox.apk and install it the same way; it installs over the old version and keeps your settings. What's new lists the changes.

Coming from 0.6.1 or earlier? Those versions had a placeholder package name, so the versions after them install as a new app next to the old PDF Toolbox instead of updating it. Once the new one works, uninstall the old one (files you made stay in your Download folder).

Uninstall

Like any app: press and hold (or right-click) PDF Toolbox in your apps and choose Uninstall. Files you saved stay in your Download folder.

Using it

• The sidebar lists every tool by category, with your Recent tools at the top. Click a tool and it opens in the pane on the right; the sidebar stays, so you can go straight from one tool to the next. All tools shows them all on one page.
• Search with Ctrl+K: type part of a tool's name or what it does ("split", "word", "sign"), use the arrow keys and press Enter.

_{Search finds tools as you type; Sign PDF shows the page to sign with its own toolbar.}

• More room: Ctrl+B or the button at the top of the sidebar folds it into a slim row of icons; each category's icon opens its tools. In a narrow window the sidebar folds by itself and opens over the tool when you need it.

_{Folded: your recent tools and the categories as icons. Each category opens as a menu.}

- **Pick a tool, then a file:** click the drop area and choose files, or drag them in from the Files app. - **From the Files app:** open a PDF with PDF Toolbox, or share any supported file (PDF, images, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument, EPUB, email) to it. A bar says the file is waiting; open a tool and the file goes straight in. If a tool is already open, **Use here** on the bar puts the file into that one. - **Once your file is in,** the tool's page folds its title and drop area into a slim header: the tool, your file, **Change file** (or **Add files**) and **Details**, which shows the folded part again. Editors (Sign, PDF Editor, Crop, Form Filler, Stamps and others) and the PDF Multi Tool fill the pane, with their toolbar and buttons in view. - **Results** are saved to your **Download** folder. A bar at the bottom shows the name, with **Open** (in your PDF viewer) and **Show** (in Files). - **Back** (the back key or gesture) goes back to the previous tool. - **About & licenses**, at the bottom of the sidebar, shows the version, the licenses and where the source code is.

Live window resizing

Android normally hides a window behind a plain veil with the app's icon while you resize it, and redraws it when you let go. Google switches that off for its own apps, and you can switch it off for PDF Toolbox too, so the page follows the window edge as you drag. It takes one command from a computer with adb, with Wireless debugging paired:

adb shell am compat enable ENABLE_FLUID_RESIZING io.github.kuscher.pdftoolbox

Then close and reopen PDF Toolbox. am compat reset ENABLE_FLUID_RESIZING io.github.kuscher.pdftoolbox undoes it. The setting stays when you update PDF Toolbox.

Privacy

PDF Toolbox has no internet permission, so Android doesn't let it connect to anything. Your files are processed in the app, on your Googlebook, and saved where you choose. There are no accounts, ads, analytics or crash reports. Links to websites (such as this page) open in your browser.

Limits

• OCR reads English. More languages mean a bigger app; you can build one with others (OCR_LANGS=eng,deu).
• Nothing that needs the internet: trusted timestamps and certificate checks for digital signatures don't work.
• Very large files can run out of memory. PDF Toolbox then reloads the tool list and says so.
• A few long option forms (Posterize, Edit Metadata) still scroll a little.

Questions

Why isn't it in the Play Store? It may be one day. For now the APK comes from this page, with its source next to it.

Is it safe to install an app from outside the Play Store? Install PDF Toolbox only from this page, whose releases are signed with the key shown under Install. PDF Toolbox asks for no permissions and can't use the internet. Its complete source code is here.

Why is it so big? BentoPDF's engines run in the app: LibreOffice (78 MB), Python with PyMuPDF (41 MB), Tesseract OCR (20 MB) and Ghostscript (11 MB).

Intel or Arm? Both, with the same APK. The engines are WebAssembly, which runs the same on either, and the app has no native code.

Will installing get harder? Google has announced that from 2027 Android will ask for apps installed from outside the Play Store to come from verified developers. Until then nothing changes; this page will say what to do if you need to.

Something doesn't work? Open an issue with the tool, what you did and your Googlebook model.

Building it yourself

PDF Toolbox builds on Linux, on x86_64 or arm64, without Android Studio or Gradle:

sudo apt install aapt zipalign apksigner default-jdk-headless git python3 curl
./build.sh fetch    # once: Android build bits and Node.js
./build.sh          # BentoPDF's web app (the first time) and build/PDFToolbox.apk

tools/webapp.sh builds BentoPDF offline (every engine served from the app); docs/DESIGN.md explains how the app works, and docs/TESTING.md what is tested and how. ./ptb has the developer commands for a Googlebook over adb (./ptb app builds, installs and opens it; ./ptb smoke runs the main engines end to end).

Signing. Releases are signed with the release key, which is never in this repository. GitHub signs them: the key is a secret of the repository's release environment, which only main and version tags can use, and the maintainer keeps a backup of it; lose it and existing installs can't be updated. On your machine build.sh looks for keystore.jks and its password in keystore.pass in ~/.config/pdf-toolbox (or $PDFTOOLBOX_KEYS). Without them it signs with a test key of its own, which is fine for trying a build, but such an APK can't update a PDF Toolbox installed from a release.

Releases. Pushing a tag (git tag v0.8 && git push origin v0.8) makes the release: the Release workflow builds and signs the APK and the Android App Bundle Google Play takes instead of it, publishes the APK, the source archives and checksums on GitHub, and puts the bundle on Google Play's closed-testing track as a draft, which someone then sends for review in the Play Console. docs/RELEASING.md has the steps. On a machine that has the key, ./ptb release --publish and tools/aab.sh still do the same by hand; the app's package name is io.github.kuscher.pdftoolbox.

Testing on x86_64. The x86_64 workflow builds PDF Toolbox on an x86_64 machine and runs tools/smoke.py in Google's x86_64 Android emulator (Android 16: the SDK's Android 17 images crash under the emulator's software rendering).

About this project

PDF Toolbox is my personal passion project, made on my own: it is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by my employer, and nothing here speaks for them. It isn't made or endorsed by the BentoPDF authors or by Google either.

It is developed on a Googlebook, an HP Googlebook 14, in the Googlebook's built-in Linux Terminal. Some of the fun parts:

• The Terminal's Debian builds everything: BentoPDF's web app with Node.js and Vite, and the APK with Debian's aapt2, javac, zipalign and apksigner and Google's D8. No Android Studio, no Gradle.
• The Googlebook tests itself: adb over Wireless debugging reaches from the Terminal to the Android side of the same laptop, and a small Chrome DevTools Protocol client drives the app's WebView: the smoke test runs real conversions, and the layout survey opens all 79 PDF tools and measures them.
• Big engines in a WebView: LibreOffice, Ghostscript, Tesseract and Python with PyMuPDF run as WebAssembly, served from inside the APK, with SharedArrayBuffer switched on by androidx.webkit's cross-origin isolation allowlist.
• x86_64 without an x86 laptop: GitHub Actions builds the APK on x86_64 and runs it in Android's x86_64 emulator.
• The icon is drawn in code (tools/icon.py): Material 3 Expressive vector layers, themed icon included.

_{With a little help from Claude.}

License and credits

PDF Toolbox's own code (everything in this repository apart from the third-party license texts in licenses/) is under the MIT License: use it for anything, keep the notice.

The app contains BentoPDF, which is © the BentoPDF authors and licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL-3.0), and engines under their own licenses: AGPL-3.0 (PyMuPDF and MuPDF, Ghostscript, CoherentPDF), GPL, LGPL, MPL, Apache, BSD, MIT and OFL (fonts). So the app as a whole is distributed under the AGPL-3.0: you may use, study, share and change it, and whoever gives you the app must give you its source too. Each release comes with its complete source, and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md lists every component with its version, license, copyright holders and source. The app shows the same under About & licenses. PDFs made with PDF Toolbox keep BentoPDF's producer line.

Thanks to the people behind BentoPDF and the projects it builds on: LibreOffice, PyMuPDF and MuPDF and Ghostscript by Artifex, CoherentPDF, Tesseract and tesseract.js, PDF.js, PDFium and EmbedPDF, pdf-lib, qpdf, libvips, Pyodide and many more.

Trademarks. BentoPDF is the name of the BentoPDF authors' project. Googlebook and Android are trademarks of Google LLC. LibreOffice is a registered trademark of The Document Foundation. Ghostscript and MuPDF are trademarks of Artifex Software, Inc. Other names are trademarks of their owners, used here only to say what PDF Toolbox contains and where it runs.