Hello everyone!
I am thrilled to announce the release of Simple Text Extractor v1.4, a major update that transitions the app from a powerful OCR tool into a fully secured, 100% offline local document workstation.
Built on the modern core24 base with strict confinement, this snap is specifically designed for users who handle sensitive documents (legal, medical, or corporate) and need industrial-grade text extraction or smart PDF merging without relying on the cloud and with absolute system safety.
What’s New in v1.4: “Secure Viewer & Enhanced Privacy Edition”
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Integrated Secure Viewer: A natively isolated (sandboxed) viewer to inspect your PDFs and images (PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP) without relying on unsecure third-party apps. It loads documents 100% in RAM (zero disk persistence upon closing) and features pre/post processing inspection, instant keyword search, secure direct printing, and a one-click “Copy All Text” button. -
Customizable Visual Themes: You can now switch effortlessly between five tailored moods to suit your workflow: System Default, Dark, Neon, Arcade, or Cyber-electric.
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Log Injection Mitigation (CWE-117): Strict filtering of third-party process streams (stdout/stderr) prevents any malicious metadata or control characters from falsifying system logs.
Core Features Reminder
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100% Offline, Private & Anonymized: Your files never leave your computer. All temporary operations happen in isolated bunkers with atomic deletion (CWE-377), and all system logs are automatically scrubbed to mask usernames and personal file paths (CWE-209) ensuring zero information leakage.
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Industrial OCR: Powered by an integrated Tesseract engine with Multi-Core acceleration (supports 17+ languages).
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Smart PDF Merger: Combine files, automatically remove blank pages based on ink-coverage, or use “Intelligent Duplex” for physical printing parity.
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Professional Archiving: Generate PDF/A-1b files for long-term preservation using the bundled Ghostscript engine.
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Heavy-Duty Processing: A memory-optimized architecture designed to handle massive files (2300+ pages) without freezing your OS.
How to install
You can grab it directly from the Snap Store:
Bash
sudo snap install simple-text-extractor
Note: Because the app uses strict security confinement (core24), it cannot read USB drives or external disks by default. To grant this permission, simply run:
Bash
sudo snap connect simple-text-extractor:removable-media
I need your feedback!
I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on this new release. Please feel free to test the new Secure Viewer, try out the visual themes, or throw massive PDFs at the merger to see how it performs on your specific Linux distribution.
Any feedback, feature requests, or bug reports are highly appreciated and will help me shape future updates.
Thank you, and happy extracting!
