Why it exists

PDF management is a mess scattered across cloud drives, e-readers and annotation apps — none of which sync your reading position or respect your ownership. PdfDing's answer is a single self-hosted app that treats PDFs the way a good reading app treats books: remember where you stopped and continue on any device, keep the collection organized, allow annotations and signatures, and share individual PDFs or whole collections without exposing your entire library. 360k+ Docker pulls, 50+ releases and two years of steady development make it one of the most-loved newer self-hosted apps.

Main features

• Seamless multi-device support — remembers your last reading position; continue where you left off on any device.
• Organization — workspaces, collections, multi-level tagging, starring and archiving keep even large collections manageable.
• Editing & annotations — add text, highlights and drawings directly in the browser.
• Signatures — sign PDFs and access your signatures on all devices.
• Sharing — share PDFs and collections with an external audience via link or QR code, with optional access control.
• SSO & 2FA — Single Sign-On via OIDC with your favorite identity provider; Two-Factor Authentication with TOTP + WebAuthn.
• Customizable UI — clean, intuitive interface with dark mode, inverted color mode (great for PDFs at night), and multiple layouts.
• Lightweight — minimal, fast, easy to set up with Docker.

Who it's for

• Self-hosters who want their document library under their own roof, with complete data ownership and no vendor lock-in.
• Readers who use PDFs as their book/e-paper format and want position sync between laptop, tablet and phone.
• Small teams and families sharing annotated PDFs via links instead of email attachments.
• Privacy-conscious users who need SSO/2FA integration with an existing identity provider.

How it compares

Paperless-ngx is the archive (OCR + search over scanned documents); PdfDing is the reading and annotation layer — they complement each other nicely.

Getting started

• One-click deploy on PikaPods (~2 minutes; PikaPods donates 20% of the hosting fees back to PdfDing), or run the Docker image on your own server.

Useful links

• Website: https://www.pdfding.com/
• Source (Codeberg): https://codeberg.org/mrmn2/PdfDing
• Live demo on pdfding.com
• Docs & blog on the site

Notes

• Funded through the NGI0 Commons Fund (NLnet, with support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme) — a strong signal of sustainability for a hobby project.
• Developed openly on Codeberg rather than GitHub (1,800+ stars equivalent).
• Community quotes sum it up: "One of my favorite self-hosted apps launched in 2024" and "I have used PdfDing to read many books and it's a total game changer for self-hosted software."