Offline PDF Editor for Android

Short answer

PDFMason works with no network connection at all. Editing, OCR and PDF-to-Word conversion run on the phone itself, so documents never leave the device — which also means it works on Android phones without Google Play services.

PDFMason does not have an offline mode. It is offline — by manifest, not by setting. This page explains what that means for your documents, what runs on the phone, and how to verify it yourself.

Why offline matters for documents

The files people edit on a phone are the ones they least want copied: contracts, ID scans, medical results, invoices, HR paperwork. Every cloud-based editor requires an upload, and an upload is a second copy of the document on someone else’s server — subject to retention policies, breach exposure, and terms that can change. An on-device editor has no server to breach, leak, or hand over.

Offline also changes the engineering incentives. A build that can reach the network cannot be told apart from one that uploads, so an offline promise would rest on trust alone. PDFMason removes the capability instead of promising restraint: the manifest declares no INTERNET permission, and a build check fails the build if any dependency adds it back. The claim is checkable rather than promised.

The practical consequences are plain. The app works in airplane mode, on metered connections, in areas without coverage, and on tablets that never see a SIM card. Nothing queues for a later sync, because there is no sync to queue for.

What runs on the device

Everything. The list below is the whole app — no feature phones home. Tiers as everywhere on this site: reading, annotation and page tools are free; text editing, OCR and PDF-to-Office are paid.

  • Reading, search and the document diagnosis — free.
  • Annotation: highlight, underline, strikethrough, ink, notes — free.
  • Page tools: delete, reorder, rotate, duplicate, insert, crop — free.
  • Text editing of existing content, with text shaping and font subsetting on the phone — paid.
  • OCR, with the recognition model bundled in the APK and on-device printed-or-handwritten line classification — paid.
  • PDF to Word, Excel and PowerPoint through a self-contained OOXML writer — paid.
  • Merge, split and compress; verified saving with a change report; undo and crash-safe drafts.

The conversion writer is worth a note: DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files are produced by a PDFMason-built OOXML writer running on the phone. No conversion service, no server-side office suite, no queue. Heavy jobs show progress, run in the background, and can be cancelled — the trade for offline is compute, not capability.

The app’s boundaries are stated in full on the PDF editor for Android page. The short version: form checkboxes and radio buttons are unsupported, line-and-arrow shapes were cut after real-document testing, and filling non-Latin form fields warns per field. None of those limits exist because of the offline design — they are honesty about a first version, not network workarounds.

Works without Google Play services

The OCR engine is ML Kit in bundled form: the recognition model ships inside the APK instead of being downloaded from Google Play services. A phone with no Google Mobile Services — Huawei and HarmonyOS devices, de-Googled ROMs, locked-down enterprise handsets — gets the same OCR as a Pixel.

Bundling forced removals, too. The bundled recognizer normally carries a telemetry backend behind it, plus permissions for the advertising ID and network state. Those declarations are stripped from the manifest, because an offline document tool has no business holding an advertising ID. The recognizer works without any of them.

Nothing else in the app touches Google infrastructure: no push messaging, no Drive backup hooks, no silent sign-in. Install it, open a PDF, work.

What we collect (nothing)

No account exists, so there are no sign-up details to store. The app contains no analytics SDK and emits no telemetry — and it cannot report anything even by accident, because it holds no network permission. It never asks for the advertising ID.

Files stay where you put them. The app reads what you pick in the system picker and writes where you tell it to save; it does not request all-files access.

This website is static and loads zero third-party requests — no font CDN, no analytics, no trackers. The single piece of data PDFMason ever holds is a waitlist email: you give it on the download page, and it is used to send one email when the app ships. Nothing else, ever.

Both claims are verifiable without trusting us. Inspect the APK: the merged manifest contains no INTERNET permission, and any manifest viewer shows this. Or use the app with the network off — airplane mode changes nothing, OCR and conversion included. The browser tools on this site follow the same rule in the browser: files are processed locally, and there is no upload path.

FAQ

Does PDFMason ever upload my documents?
No. The manifest declares no INTERNET permission, so the app has no way to open a connection. Editing, OCR and PDF-to-Word conversion all run on the phone.
How can I verify the offline claim myself?
Two ways. Inspect the APK: the merged manifest contains no INTERNET permission, which any manifest viewer shows. Or use the app in airplane mode — every feature, OCR and conversion included, still works.
Does offline mode limit what the app can do?
No feature depends on a server. The trade is compute, not capability: OCR and conversion use the phone CPU, so long jobs show progress, run in the background, and can be cancelled.
Does it work on phones without Google Play services?
Yes. The OCR model is bundled in the APK, so devices without Google Mobile Services get identical features with no extra setup.
Is the browser version on this site offline too?
Yes. The 12 browser tools process files inside your browser with no upload path — there is no server to send a file to. The tools page lists all of them.
What data does the waitlist collect?
An email address, used to send one message when the app ships. No name, no other fields, no marketing sequence.

PDFMason for Android is coming

The browser tools handle whole pages. The app edits the text inside them — on your device, with nothing uploaded.

Join the waitlist