for quite some time I have been working on the open-source project PdfDing - a Django based selfhosted PDF manager, viewer and editor offering a seamless user experience on multiple devices. You can find the repository here: https://github.com/mrmn2/PdfDing. As always I would be quite happy about a star and you trying out the application.
Two weeks ago PdfDing was selected to receive a grant from the NGI Zero Commons Fund: https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20251016-selection-NGI0CommonsFun.... This fund is dedicated to helping deliver, mature and scale new internet commons across the whole technology spectrum and is amongst others funded by the European Commission. The exact sum of the grant still needs to be discussed, but obviously I am very stocked to have been selected. The funding is the next highlight after PdfDing's popularity grow over the last year to over 1,3k stars on github and around 125k docker pulls. I plan to use this momentum to further increase the project's reach.
PdfDing's features include:
- Seamless browser based PDF viewing on multiple devices. Remembers current position - continue where you stopped reading
- Stay on top of your PDF collection with multi-level tagging, starring and archiving functionalities
- Edit PDFs by adding comments, highlighting and drawings
- Manage and export PDF highlights and comments in dedicated sections
- Clean, intuitive UI with dark mode, inverted color mode, custom theme colors and multiple layouts
- SSO support via OIDC
- Share PDFs with an external audience via a link or a QR Code with optional access control
- Markdown Notes
- Progress bars show the reading progress of each PDF at a quick glance
- Avid readers (e.g. me) that want to seamlessly read PDFs on multiple devices
- Hobbyist, that want to make their content available to other users. For example one user wants to share his automotive literature (manuals, brochures etc) with fellow enthusiasts.
- Researchers and students trying to stay on top of there big PDF collection
- Small businesses that want to share PDFs with their customers or employees. Think of a small office where PDF based instructions to different appliances can be opened by scanning a QR on the appliance.
- Complete control over my data.
- Easy to self-host via docker. PdfDing can be used with a SQLite database -> No other containers necessary
- Lightweight and minimal, should run on cheap hardware
- Continue reading where you left off on all devices
- Browser based
- Support single sign on via OIDC in order to leverage an existing identity provider
- PDFs should be shareable with an external audience with optional access control
- Open source
- Content should not be curated by an admin instead every user should be able to upload PDFs via the UI