🧩 Extract Text from PDFs — Instantly, Offline, and Open Source

What if converting PDFs to text was as simple as dragging a file?

📌 The Problem We All Know

You’ve been there: you need text from a PDF, but copy-paste gives you gibberish. Or the file is locked. Or it’s a scanned image masquerading as a document.

Developers reach for command-line tools like pdftotext or pdfminer, powerful but clunky for batch jobs.

Non-technical users? They upload confidential files to random websites, hoping for the best.

Neither option is ideal when you’re handling sensitive data or just want something that works without the ceremony.

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💡 The Solution: Privacy-First, Zero Friction

Meet **PDF-to-Text UI, a cross-platform desktop app that does one thing exceptionally well: converts PDFs to plain text**, right on your machine.

What makes it different:

• ✅ Truly offline — your files never leave your computer
• ✅ Batch processing — handle folders, not just single files
• ✅ OCR support — extract text from scanned documents
• ✅ Zero installation drama — runs anywhere with Java
• ✅ 100% open source — inspect, verify, extend

Built with Java 21 + Swing and powered by Apache PDFBox, with Tesseract OCR for image-based PDFs.

🚀 How It Works

No complicated setup. No account.

1. Launch the app (just a JAR file)
2. Select your PDFs (single file or entire folder)
3. Choose output location
4. Click Convert

Text files appear alongside your originals in seconds. For scanned PDFs, toggle OCR mode and let Tesseract handle the rest.

Everything happens locally. No internet required.

🔧 Technical Foundation

• Runtime: Java 21 (Adoptium Temurin recommended)
• UI Framework: Swing (lightweight, fast, native feel)
• PDF Engine: Apache PDFBox
• OCR: Tesseract + Poppler (pdftoppm)
• Build System: Gradle with shadowJar packaging
• License: MIT

📥 Quick Start

Option 1: Download & Run

Grab the latest release from GitHub:

java -jar pdf-to-text-ui-<version>-all.jar

Option 2: Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/astrapi69/pdf-to-text-ui.git
cd pdf-to-text-ui
./gradlew run

Create a distributable JAR:

./gradlew shadowJar

Or generate native packages:

./gradlew jpackage

🌍 Why Offline Matters

In a cloud-first world, privacy is often the price of convenience.

This tool proves you don’t have to choose. Extract text from contracts, medical records, financial statements (whatever you need) without uploading anything to servers you don’t control.

Runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Even works from a USB stick. Leaves no trace when closed.

🛣️ Roadmap

Planned improvements:

• Headless CLI mode for automation
• Enhanced OCR integration (Tess4J)
• Multi-language UI (English/German)
• Native installers (.deb, .msi, .dmg)
• Dark mode support

Contributions welcome, from code to translations to UI refinements.

🔓 Open Source Philosophy

Trust is earned through transparency.

Every line of code, every build script, every dependency is public and auditable. Fork it, extend it, embed the extraction core in your own projects.

If you can’t inspect it, you can’t trust it.

Repository: github.com/astrapi69/pdf-to-text-ui

🤝 Support the Project

If this tool saves you time:

• ⭐ Star the repo (helps others discover it)
• 🐛 Report issues or suggest features
• 💬 Share with colleagues who need it
• ☕ **Buy me a coffee** to fuel development

Every contribution keeps the project alive and independent.

🎯 Bottom Line

PDF-to-Text UI isn’t revolutionary. It’s foundational.

It takes a tedious, privacy-compromising task and makes it simple, safe, and transparent.

No subscriptions. No telemetry. No compromises.

If you value simplicity and control over convenience at any cost, give it a try.

You might never use an online PDF converter again.

🔗 Project: github.com/astrapi69/pdf-to-text-ui License: MIT Author: Asterios Raptis