Paper.
For the books other word processors can't carry. A thousand pages. Thousands of pictures. Not a flinch.
Big books break
word processors.
Add enough pictures and the usual tools start to wheeze: files balloon past a gigabyte, every save drags, and opening becomes a coffee break.
Many pictures.
One move.
Pick a row. Paper finds the one height that makes it fill the page exactly. Resize a dozen at once. Crop in place, and change your mind later.
Locked tight.
Quietly.
A journal, a manuscript, a family's history. Give it a password and the file is unreadable to anyone without it. Paper doesn't phone home. There's no account to breach.
For the curious: passwords are hardened with Argon2id, the memory-hard method built to make guessing slow and expensive.
Fix a typo.
Not the whole file.
Change one word in a 1.5 GB book and save. Paper writes only what changed. Your disk, your backups and your patience all notice.
Write in the dark.
Print on white.
Easy on your eyes at midnight. Crisp white pages in every PDF and printout, without a second thought.
Quietly thorough.
A plain window with a lot behind it. Here are a few. The rest, you'll discover.
Back where you left off
Paper opens to your recent books, the last one a click away, and puts you on the very line you left. Several on the go? Keep them side by side in tabs.
Every page, at a glance
Page previews that keep up as you type, and a print layout that shows exactly what the PDF will be.
Fit it on one page
An entry one line too long? Paper shrinks just its pictures, just enough.
Nothing lost
If your Mac stops mid-sentence, Paper offers your words back the next time it opens.
Bring your books
Opens Word and Pages documents, pictures, links and page breaks included.
Twice the same photo?
Paper can find every picture used more than once, and take you to each place.
Crop, rotate, flip
Right in the text. The original stays whole, so you can always change your mind.
And then some
We'd rather you find the rest yourself.
Every row.
Paper next to word processors in general, one box at a time.
| The field | Paper | |
|---|---|---|
| Stays quick with a 1,000-page, 1.5 GB book | Rarely | |
| Saves a small change without rewriting the whole file | Rarely | |
| Pictures take about half the spacewith every pixel kept exactly | Rarely | |
| Resizes many pictures at once | Some | |
| Fits a row of pictures to the page width, exactly | Rarely | |
| Shrinks pictures until an entry fits one page | — | |
| Crops pictures in place, original kept whole | Some | |
| Password protection hardened with Argon2id | Rarely | |
| Makes no network connections of its own | Rarely | |
| No account, no subscription, no sign-in | Some | |
| Opens both Word and Pages documents | Rarely | |
| Reopens at the line you left | Some | |
| Dark while you write, white when you print | Some | |
| Free, for good | Some |
Compared with word processors in general, not any one app. "Some" and "Rarely" describe how common each is across the field. Features vary by app, version and plan. The 1.5 GB figures are from one real 1,000-page book with 2,300 pictures; results depend on the pictures.
Bring what you have.
Coming from Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, Google Docs or LibreOffice Writer? Here's how your work gets in, and out.
Opens
- Microsoft Word documents
.docx - Apple Pages documents
.pages - Plain text
.txt - Paper documents
.paper
Gives back
- PDF, on white pages
.pdf - Print, as laid out
⌘P - Pictures, copied out at full quality
.png
From anywhere else
- LibreOffice / OpenOffice Writer
.odt - Google Docs
Docs - Rich text, older Word
.rtf .doc - Save as Word first, then open in Paper
→ .docx
Fair questions.
Is it really free?
Yes. No subscription, no account, no trial that runs out, no updates you have to keep switching on for it to keep working.
Will my pictures look worse?
No. Paper never trades quality for size. Pictures take less space with every pixel exactly as it was, and each one is checked before it's stored. Any picture that can't be checked stays just as it arrived.
Can I open my Word and Pages documents?
Yes: Word (.docx) and Pages (.pages) documents, with their pictures, links, page breaks and paper size, and plain text (.txt). From LibreOffice, Google Docs or anything else, save as Word first.
Is my writing private?
Paper makes no network connections of its own and has no account. Lock a document with a password and it can't be read without it, by anyone, including us.
Who is it for?
Anyone with a long document full of pictures: a photo book, a family history, a scrapbook, a field journal, a manuscript. And anyone who just wants to write without a subscription, an account, or a wait.
What do I need?
A Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
Open the big one.
The book you gave up on. The journal you keep to yourself. Go on.