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Required Dependencies
Most of PaperOtter works with nothing extra to install. Two tools are bundled or optional, listed below.
Twenty-one of the twenty-two tools. Only Convert Document ever reaches for another program, and even then only for some formats.
Converting to Markdown, HTML, JSON, plain text or DOCX runs entirely inside PaperOtter and needs neither of the programs below. This page previously said DOCX required LibreOffice, which sent people to install 300 MB they did not need.
Not bundled. Needed for converting to or from DOC, ODT and RTF, and for
producing a PDF from a document on Windows and Linux. Install from
libreoffice.org, and make sure
soffice is on your PATH. Without it, PaperOtter names the missing program
rather than failing quietly, and the formats that do not need it stay
available.
Not bundled. Needed only for ebook formats (EPUB, MOBI). Install from
calibre-ebook.com, and make sure
ebook-convert is on your PATH. Same fallback behavior as LibreOffice above.
Not dependencies you can install: they are what the platform does or does not provide, so PaperOtter hides them where they cannot work rather than offering something that will fail.
| Feature | macOS | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| Make Searchable (reading text from scans) | Yes | Not yet | Not yet |
| HEIC / HEIF photos as input | Yes | Only with the HEIF extension installed | Only where the distribution ships libheif |
HEIC is limited by patent licensing rather than effort: PaperOtter never ships its own decoder and uses the operating system's where one is licensed.
See also: Troubleshooting · FAQ
Home 🏠 | Common Tasks 🎯 | Required Dependencies | Using PaperOtter | Troubleshooting | FAQ ❓
Feature guides: see the sidebar for a page-by-page walkthrough of every tool.