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240 changes: 118 additions & 122 deletions readme.md
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<div align="center">

<img src="screenshots/banner_gh.png" alt="ClearPDF — free offline PDF editor, Office viewer and image editor for Android" width="100%">

# ClearPDF

<p align="center">
<img src="screenshots/banner_gh.png" alt="ClearPDF Banner">
</p>
### The free, offline PDF & Office suite for Android — in liquid glass.

<p align="center">
<img src="https://img.shields.io/github/stars/Chethan616/ClearPDF?style=for-the-badge" />
<img src="https://img.shields.io/github/license/Chethan616/ClearPDF?style=for-the-badge" />
<img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Kotlin-Android-blue?style=for-the-badge&logo=kotlin" />
<img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Jetpack-Compose-purple?style=for-the-badge&logo=jetpackcompose" />
</p>
Read, edit, sign and convert **PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and images** entirely on your phone.<br>
No ads · No subscription · No file-size limits · No uploads · Open source.

<p align="center">
Modern open-source PDF toolkit for Android with a beautiful liquid glass inspired UI.
</p>
<a href="https://github.com/Chethan616/ClearPDF/releases/latest"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Download-Latest_APK-0A84FF?style=for-the-badge&logo=android&logoColor=white" alt="Download the latest ClearPDF APK"></a>
<a href="https://github.com/Chethan616/ClearPDF/releases"><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/Chethan616/ClearPDF/total?style=for-the-badge&color=30D158&logo=github" alt="Total downloads"></a>
<a href="https://github.com/Chethan616/ClearPDF/releases/latest"><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/v/release/Chethan616/ClearPDF?style=for-the-badge&color=BF5AF2&label=version" alt="Latest version"></a>
<a href="https://github.com/Chethan616/ClearPDF/stargazers"><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/stars/Chethan616/ClearPDF?style=for-the-badge&color=FF9F0A" alt="GitHub stars"></a>

---
<img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Android-6.0%2B-3DDC84?style=flat-square&logo=android&logoColor=white" alt="Android 6.0+">
<img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Kotlin-Jetpack_Compose-7F52FF?style=flat-square&logo=kotlin&logoColor=white" alt="Kotlin + Jetpack Compose">
<img src="https://img.shields.io/github/license/Chethan616/ClearPDF?style=flat-square&color=64D2FF" alt="MIT license">
<img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/100%25-offline-5E5CE6?style=flat-square" alt="100% offline">

# ✨ Features

- 📖 Fast PDF reader with smooth, Adobe-style pinch-zoom & pan
- ✍️ Annotate: pen, highlighter, shapes, arrows + on-device text selection (OCR)
- 🗂️ Organize pages: reorder, rotate & delete — losslessly
- 🔀 Merge multiple PDFs (lossless — text & vectors preserved)
- ✂️ Split and extract PDF pages (lossless)
- 🗜️ Compress PDFs with quality controls
- 🔐 Encrypt and decrypt PDFs
- 🖼️ Images → PDF and 📄 Create PDFs from scans or blank pages
- 🔎 Extract text from PDFs (copy / share)
- 📷 Document scanner with edge detection (Google ML Kit)
- 🌗 Beautiful liquid glass UI for light & dark mode
- ⚡ Smooth performance built with Jetpack Compose
- 🔒 Offline-first & privacy friendly — no cloud PDF processing, accounts, ads, or analytics
- 🛡️ No hidden uploads — PDF work stays on-device; scanner/text-selection ML components are disclosed in `NOTICE`
</div>

---

# 📱 Screenshots
## Why ClearPDF?

<p align="center">
<img src="screenshots/dark home screen.jpg" width="210"/>
<img src="screenshots/dark create pdf.jpg" width="210"/>
<img src="screenshots/dark pdf tools.jpg" width="210"/>
</p>
Most "free" PDF apps and websites upload your files, cap file sizes, watermark output or lock basic tools behind a subscription. ClearPDF does all of it **on-device**, for free, forever.

<p align="center">
<img src="screenshots/light home screen.jpg" width="210"/>
<img src="screenshots/light create pdf.jpg" width="210"/>
<img src="screenshots/light pdf tools.jpg" width="210"/>
</p>
| | ClearPDF | Typical freemium PDF apps / sites |
|---|:---:|:---:|
| Works fully offline, files never uploaded | ✅ | ❌ |
| No ads, no account, no subscription | ✅ | ❌ |
| No file-size or page limits, no watermarks | ✅ | ❌ |
| PDF **and** Word / Excel / PowerPoint | ✅ | ⚠️ often paid |
| Real spreadsheet & image editors | ✅ | ❌ |
| Open source (MIT) | ✅ | ❌ |

---

# 🎬 Demo
## ✨ Features

Explore the included ClearPDF walkthroughs and editing-tool previews:
### 📖 PDF viewer & editor
- Smooth continuous scrolling, pinch-zoom and a fast page scrubber
- **Native-feeling text selection** — long-press any word, drag handles with a magnifier across lines and pages; copy, share, search or translate
- Annotate: highlight, underline, strikethrough, pen, shapes, arrows, text boxes and sticky notes
- Sign documents, fill forms, add page numbers and watermarks, flatten
- Search inside documents, OCR for scanned pages (on-device)

- [▶️ Onboarding walkthrough](demo/1.mp4)
- [▶️ PDF viewer walkthrough](demo/2.mp4)
### 🧰 PDF tools
Merge · Split · Extract pages · Organize (reorder, rotate, delete) · Compress · Encrypt / decrypt · Images → PDF · PDF → images · HTML → PDF · Extract text · Create PDF — all **lossless** where possible.

<p align="center">
<img src="demo/3.jpg" width="260" alt="ClearPDF editing tools preview 1"/>
<img src="demo/4.jpg" width="260" alt="ClearPDF editing tools preview 2"/>
<img src="demo/5.jpg" width="260" alt="ClearPDF editing tools preview 3"/>
</p>
### 📊 Spreadsheet editor (xlsx)
- Faithful Excel rendering: fills, fonts, borders, merged cells, frozen panes, column widths, theme colours
- Edit cells with a formula bar, format with a colour picker, use dropdown (data-validation) cells
- Insert / delete rows and columns, undo / redo, save back to **.xlsx** without breaking the rest of the file

---
### 🖼️ Image editor
Crop, straighten, perspective, shape masks · 13 adjustments · 22 filters · brushes, shapes, arrows, blur & pixelate · text · **background removal** · watermark · resize & format · EXIF viewer / stripper. Non-destructive with full undo / redo.

# 🧊 Liquid Glass UI
### 📄 Word, PowerPoint & more
Open **docx, doc, odt, rtf, pptx, ppt, xlsx, xls** and more. Optionally download the **Office engine (powered by LibreOffice)** in Settings for pixel-faithful Office rendering — it runs in its own sandboxed process and never leaves your device.

ClearPDF uses a custom Android liquid glass inspired design system with:
### 📷 Document scanner
Edge-detecting scanner that turns paper into clean, searchable PDFs.

- Blur & transparency effects
- Floating glass cards
- Dynamic gradients
- Smooth rounded layouts
- Adaptive light & dark themes
### 💎 Liquid glass design
A custom liquid-glass design system for Android — real refraction, blur and light, adaptive light & dark themes, and fluid spring animations throughout.

Designed specifically for modern Android devices using Jetpack Compose.
### 🔒 Private by design
No ads, no analytics, no accounts. Your documents are processed on your phone. See [PRIVACY.md](PRIVACY.md).

---

# 🛠 Tech Stack
## 📱 Screenshots

- Kotlin
- Jetpack Compose
- Material 3
- Android PDF rendering libraries
- Android Liquid Glass effects
<div align="center">
<img src="screenshots/light%20home%20screen.jpg" width="24%" alt="ClearPDF home screen (light)">
<img src="screenshots/light%20pdf%20tools.jpg" width="24%" alt="ClearPDF PDF tools (light)">
<img src="screenshots/light%20settings%20screen.jpg" width="24%" alt="ClearPDF settings (light)">
<img src="demo/3.jpg" width="24%" alt="ClearPDF PDF editing tools">
</div>
<div align="center">
<img src="screenshots/dark%20home%20screen.jpg" width="24%" alt="ClearPDF home screen (dark)">
<img src="screenshots/dark%20pdf%20tools.jpg" width="24%" alt="ClearPDF PDF tools (dark)">
<img src="screenshots/dark%20settings%20screen.jpg" width="24%" alt="ClearPDF settings (dark)">
<img src="demo/4.jpg" width="24%" alt="ClearPDF annotation tools">
</div>

---
🎬 Video walkthroughs: [onboarding](demo/1.mp4) · [PDF viewer](demo/2.mp4)

# 🚀 Getting Started
---

Clone the repository:
## ⬇️ Download

```bash
git clone https://github.com/Chethan616/ClearPDF.git
```
Grab the APK from the **[latest release](https://github.com/Chethan616/ClearPDF/releases/latest)**:

Open the project in Android Studio and run:
| APK | For |
|---|---|
| `ClearPDF-vX-arm64-v8a.apk` | Almost every modern phone (recommended) |
| `ClearPDF-vX-armeabi-v7a.apk` | Older 32-bit phones |
| `ClearPDF-vX-universal.apk` | Not sure? This one works everywhere (larger) |

1. Sync Gradle
2. Build the project
3. Run on a real device or emulator
Get automatic updates with **[Obtainium](https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium)** — add `https://github.com/Chethan616/ClearPDF`.

The project uses JDK 17 or newer and Android SDK 36. Build the release variant locally with:

```bash
./gradlew assembleFossRelease # GitHub/sideload APKs (per-ABI + universal)
./gradlew bundlePlayRelease # Google Play bundle
```
---

There are two product flavors (dimension `distribution`, same `applicationId`):
## ❓ FAQ

- `play` — Google Play. ClearPDF adds no `INTERNET` permission of its own; the optional Office engine (powered by
LibreOffice) is the on-demand dynamic feature `:office_engine`. Its ~46 MB binaries are not in git:
`bundlePlay*` downloads the pinned archives, verifies their SHA-256 and unpacks them
(`:office_engine:prepareOfficeEngineBinaries`). Other tasks never need the network.
- `foss` — the engine is downloaded on request in Settings, SHA-256 verified.
<details>
<summary><b>Is ClearPDF really free? What's the catch?</b></summary>

Debug equivalents: `assemblePlayDebug`, `assembleFossDebug`, `installFossDebug`.
It's free and open source under the MIT license. There are no ads, no in-app purchases and no data collection.
</details>

The release build is intentionally unsigned for contributors unless local signing credentials are configured. Never commit `key.properties`, keystores, APKs, or private documents.
<details>
<summary><b>Does it upload my documents?</b></summary>

---
No. Every PDF, Office and image operation runs on your device. The only optional network use is downloading the Office engine when you ask for it (sideload builds), verified by SHA-256.
</details>

# ❤️ Open Source
<details>
<summary><b>Can it edit Excel / Word / PowerPoint files?</b></summary>

ClearPDF is fully open source and built for the Android community.
Spreadsheets (.xlsx) can be edited and saved. Word and PowerPoint files open in the viewer and can be annotated, exported and shared as PDF. A PowerPoint editor is on the roadmap.
</details>

If you like the project:
<details>
<summary><b>Is it an alternative to Adobe Acrobat, iLovePDF or Smallpdf?</b></summary>

- ⭐ Star the repository
- 🍴 Fork the project
- 🛠 Contribute improvements
- 📢 Share it with others

See [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for the offline-first contribution principles and release workflow. See [PRIVACY.md](PRIVACY.md) for the app's privacy and offline behavior. Please use the issue templates for bugs and feature requests.
For everyday tasks — reading, annotating, signing, merging, splitting, compressing, converting — yes, and without uploads, limits or subscriptions.
</details>

---

# 🙌 Credits

Liquid glass and backdrop effects are inspired by and partially adapted from:
## 🛠️ Build from source

AndroidLiquidGlass by kyant0
https://github.com/Kyant0/AndroidLiquidGlass
Requires JDK 17+ and Android SDK 36.

Lossless PDF page operations and text extraction are powered by:
```bash
git clone https://github.com/Chethan616/ClearPDF.git
cd ClearPDF
./gradlew assembleFossRelease # sideload APKs (per-ABI + universal)
./gradlew bundlePlayRelease # Google Play bundle
```

PdfBox-Android by Tom Roush (a port of Apache PDFBox)
https://github.com/TomRoush/PdfBox-Android
Two product flavors share one `applicationId`:

Both are licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
- **`foss`** — GitHub / sideload builds. The optional Office engine downloads in-app on request, pinned and SHA-256 verified.
- **`play`** — Google Play. The Office engine ships as the on-demand dynamic feature `:office_engine`; its binaries are fetched and verified only by `bundlePlay*` tasks.

---
Debug: `assembleFossDebug`, `installFossDebug`, `assemblePlayDebug`. Release builds fall back to debug signing unless local signing credentials are configured — never commit `key.properties` or keystores.

# 🤝 Contributing
**Stack:** Kotlin · Jetpack Compose · PdfBox-Android · Android PdfRenderer · ML Kit · LibreOfficeKit (optional) · GPUImage · custom liquid-glass backdrop engine.

Contributions are welcome.
---

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Commit your changes
4. Open a pull request
## 🤝 Contributing

---
Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome — see [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) and use the issue templates.

# 📄 License
If ClearPDF saves you from a subscription, **⭐ star the repo** and share it — it genuinely helps others find it.

MIT License — see [LICENSE](LICENSE).
[![Sponsor on GitHub](https://img.shields.io/badge/Sponsor-GitHub%20Sponsors-ea4aaa?logo=githubsponsors&style=for-the-badge)](https://github.com/sponsors/Chethan616)

---

# 💖 Support
## 🙌 Credits

If you find ClearPDF useful, consider supporting development:
- [AndroidLiquidGlass](https://github.com/Kyant0/AndroidLiquidGlass) by Kyant0 — backdrop / liquid-glass effects (Apache-2.0)
- [AndroidLiquidGlassView](https://github.com/QmDeve/AndroidLiquidGlassView) by QmDeve — motion techniques (MIT)
- [PdfBox-Android](https://github.com/TomRoush/PdfBox-Android) by Tom Roush — lossless PDF operations (Apache-2.0)
- [ImageToolbox](https://github.com/T8RIN/ImageToolbox) by T8RIN — image-editor cropper and draw engine (Apache-2.0)
- [GPUImage for Android](https://github.com/cats-oss/android-gpuimage) — image filters (Apache-2.0)
- [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org/) — optional Office engine (MPL-2.0), downloaded on request, not bundled

[![Sponsor on GitHub](https://img.shields.io/badge/Sponsor-GitHub%20Sponsors-ea4aaa?logo=githubsponsors&style=for-the-badge)](https://github.com/sponsors/Chethan616)
Full notices: [THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md](THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md).

## 📄 License

Repository funding metadata lives in:
[MIT](LICENSE) © 2026 Chethan616

`.github/FUNDING.yml`
<sub>Keywords: offline PDF editor Android, free PDF reader, PDF annotator, PDF signer, merge PDF, split PDF, compress PDF, docx viewer, xlsx editor, spreadsheet editor, pptx viewer, image editor, background remover, document scanner, open source Adobe Acrobat alternative, iLovePDF alternative, Smallpdf alternative, liquid glass UI, Jetpack Compose.</sub>
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