Announcing indiPDF 2.0: True Redaction, Digital Signatures, and a Form Designer

Today we’re releasing indiPDF 2.0 — the biggest update since we launched. It’s a release we’re genuinely proud of: nine major new features that close the gap with the expensive, subscription-based PDF tools, while keeping everything that makes indiPDF what it is. No cloud, no subscription, no telemetry. Every one of these features runs entirely on your own computer.

Here’s what’s new.

True Redaction

Most affordable PDF tools “redact” by drawing a black rectangle over text — and leave the words underneath fully intact, recoverable with a simple copy and paste. That’s not redaction; it’s a false sense of security.

indiPDF 2.0 does it properly. When you apply a redaction, the covered text and images are permanently removed from the file itself. Nothing can be selected, copied, searched, or extracted afterward. And because a mark that hasn’t been applied is still just a visual cover, indiPDF warns you at save time if any redaction marks are still unapplied — so you never accidentally ship a document that only looks redacted.

Certificate-Based Digital Signatures

You can now sign documents cryptographically with a standard PKCS#12 certificate (.p12 / .pfx), with an optional visible signature stamp, a signing reason, and a location. Signed documents open with the signature intact in any PDF reader, including Acrobat.

The same dialog also verifies signatures on documents you receive: it shows who signed, when, and why — and cryptographically detects whether the document has been altered since it was signed, flagging tampered files immediately.

Build Your Own Forms

indiPDF 2.0 turns into a form-creation tool. Drag text fields, checkboxes, and dropdowns onto any page, give them labels, and on save they become real fillable form fields that work in every PDF reader. Fields stay editable afterward — reopen a form to move, rename, or retype anything, with existing entries preserved.

Paired with this, a new Blank Document option lets you start from an empty page — Letter, Legal, A4, A5, or Tabloid — and build a form or document from scratch using the text, shape, image, and form tools.

Export to Word and Excel

Need to get content back out of a PDF? indiPDF can now export to editable Word (.docx) and Excel (.xlsx) files. Excel export reconstructs rows and columns from each page’s layout — a fast way to pull tables out of a PDF and into a spreadsheet.

Document Compare

Reviewing revisions no longer means eyeballing two windows side by side. Compare Documents shows two PDFs page by page, automatically outlining every changed region, with an optional line-by-line list of added and removed text — ideal for contract redlines and version checks.

Bookmarks, Bates Numbering, and Searchable Scans

Three more staples round out the release:

Bookmarks & Outline panel — view, navigate, and edit a document’s bookmarks; they’re written into the PDF so they work in any reader.
Bates numbering — stamp sequential, configurable numbers across every page, a must-have for legal document production.
Searchable scanned PDFs — OCR now defaults to adding an invisible text layer, so a scan looks exactly the same but its text becomes searchable, selectable, and copyable everywhere.

Now in Nine Languages

The entire interface is now available in English, Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Greek, and Japanese (Italian, Dutch, Greek, and Japanese in 2.0.2). indiPDF follows your system language automatically, or you can pick one under View → Language.

How to Update

If you’re on Flathub, the update will arrive automatically. AppImage, DEB, and RPM packages are available on our downloads page.

flatpak update com.indomitusgroup.indipdf

As always, indiPDF is a one-time purchase of $35 with free updates for life. No subscriptions, no cloud dependencies, no data collection. Your documents never leave your computer — and with 2.0, that promise now covers redaction, signing, and everything else, all done locally.

Thank you to everyone who sent feedback and bug reports along the way. This release is better because of you.