Necessary
Required for website operation, security, the selected theme and storing your privacy choice.
_davPDF
Local PDF tools for managing documents without uploading them online.
_davPDF is a cross-platform desktop toolbox for managing PDFs directly on the computer: merge, split, a PDFium-powered Page Manager, structural compression, metadata, protection and PDF ↔ image conversion. Stable release 26.10.5 preserves the PDF engine and PDFium runtime while focusing changes on the _davstudios motion system, real transitions between sections, theme reveal, reduced-motion support, no release number in the ordinary UI and a Windows Release build without a separate CMD console.
The idea
Many PDF tools send potentially sensitive documents to web services even for simple operations. _davPDF takes the opposite approach: files stay on the device and the main workflows run inside one desktop application, with no account, ads, cloud processing or built-in telemetry.
File safety is part of the workflow. Operations create new copies, write through temporary files first and, when the requested destination already exists, automatically generate an alternative filename instead of overwriting the source. Release 26.10.5 preserves this behavior and changes only repository and release infrastructure, not the functional behavior of the PDF tools.
Development
Merge combines multiple PDFs in the order selected by the user; Split can create one file per page, groups of N pages or custom page ranges. The Page Manager uses PDFium to generate real thumbnails and lets users reorder, rotate by 90° and remove pages before saving a new copy.
Compression is deliberately presented as structural optimization: Lossless, High quality, Balanced and Maximum compression presets control processing without promising invented reduction percentages before the result exists. The Metadata section reads and edits Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator and Producer, or removes document information entirely.
Protect PDF creates a new copy with an open password and optional owner password, while Unlock only works when the correct current password is supplied. The app includes no tool for bypassing unknown protection and does not store the passwords entered by the user.
PDF → image conversion uses PDFium locally and can export selected pages as PNG, JPG or WebP at 72, 150, 300 or 600 DPI; JPG quality is adjustable from 40% to 100%. The reverse workflow accepts JPEG, PNG, WebP, BMP and TIFF and builds PDFs using A4, A3, Letter or image-sized pages, portrait or landscape orientation, configurable margins and Fit or Fill placement. The app also provides local activity history, Italian/English interfaces and System/Light/Dark themes.
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Outcome
_davPDF 26.10.5 is a stable local-first release for Windows, macOS and Linux. The PDF engine, PDFium rendering, merge, split, Page Manager, compression, metadata, protection and conversion workflows remain functionally unchanged and continue to process documents locally.
The release keeps the multiplatform PDFium contract introduced in earlier versions: runtime binaries are not tracked in source and are prepared automatically as pdfium.dll on Windows, libpdfium.dylib on macOS and libpdfium.so on Linux. Version 26.10.5 preserves studio.dav.pdf, uses the Windows GUI subsystem and aligns motion, theme reveal and UI with the _davstudios reference without exposing the release number in the ordinary interface.
I ran the supplied package test suite directly: 29/29 tests passed, including the Cargo.lock CRLF simulation. Coverage includes the PDF engine, repository path safety, the motion contract, Windows GUI subsystem, UI/README contracts, complete version synchronization and multiplatform PDFium preparation/bundling.
Third-party licences
Original _davPDF code is published under the MIT License, but the desktop package includes a separate PDFium runtime. PDFium is subject to the BSD-3-Clause licence and itself incorporates third-party components under their own licences.
The current runtime is prepared from bblanchon/pdfium-binaries assets for Chromium/PDFium 7881. Redistribution is governed by the licences and notices supplied with the specific release and its third-party materials; the project’s MIT label does not replace those terms.