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The original was posted on /r/opensource by /u/buryingsecrets on 2026-02-14 21:17:20+00:00.
Something I’ve noticed quite often is that many people upload extremely sensitive documents (IDs, certificates, government/financial records, etc.) to online PDF tools.
While services like iLovePDF are widely used and likely built by well-intentioned teams, the broader reality is that we live in an era of constant data mining, breaches, and supply-chain attacks.
Even trustworthy platforms can become risk surfaces. That thought alone was enough to make me uncomfortable about uploading private files to closed-source web services.
So as a small personal project, I built pdfer, a minimal fully open-source local PDF utility written in Rust. Currently supports merging and splitting PDFs via a simple terminal interface, with a GUI and more PDF operations planned.
Not meant to replace anything (yet), just a privacy-first alternative for those who prefer keeping documents fully offline. I am open to feedback and advise :)