Why our AI features will run offline on your desktop

4 Nov 2026 · Umme Salma

AI summaries and "ask your document" features are genuinely useful. But most of them work by sending the full text of your file to a remote service. For a novel draft that may be fine; for a tenancy agreement, a medical report or a company spreadsheet, many people would rather not.

Our approach

LimePDF, LimeWord and LimeSheet (coming on 15 Nov) and LimeIDE (coming on 20 Nov) are desktop apps so they can run compact AI models directly on your computer. Summarize a PDF, ask it a question or rewrite a paragraph, and the work happens on your own processor — even with no internet connection.

Why not do it in the browser?

Browser tools are perfect for quick jobs like merging or compressing, and our non-AI PDF tools are available on the web today. Language models, though, need more memory and storage than a web page should demand, and a desktop app can keep the model installed once instead of downloading it every visit.

Honest limits

Small local models are fast and private but less broad than the largest cloud models.
Older computers will be slower; we will publish minimum requirements before launch.
Answers should be checked — Ask the PDF points to the page it used so you can verify.

Want to know when they launch? Visit the Download page.

What you will be able to do

LimePDF: AI Summarize turns a long PDF into a short overview. Ask the PDF answers questions in plain English from the document itself.
LimeWord: writing help on your PC. Draft a first version, rewrite a paragraph, or adjust the tone of a letter.
LimeSheet: formula help. Describe what you need ("total of column C where column B says Paid") and get a suggested formula to check and use.
LimeIDE (coming on 20 Nov): an offline AI coding environment for people who want help with code without sending their source to a remote service.

How to get the most from local AI

Be specific. "Summarise the termination clauses" works better than "summarise this".
Work in sections for very long documents. Small models do best with focused input.
Verify the important parts. Use the page reference from Ask the PDF to read the original wording before relying on an answer, especially for legal, medical or financial documents.
Keep the app updated. Improved models and fixes will come through updates.

Who this is for

Offline AI makes the most sense when the document is confidential, when your organisation doesn't allow cloud AI tools, or when your connection is unreliable, such as on a train or plane or in a rural area. If you only need to merge or compress a file, the free web tools are quicker and need no install.

What you can use today

The non-AI Lime PDF tools work in your browser now: merge, split, compress, crop, redact, watermark, protect and convert. Lime Images handles photos the same private way. The desktop apps with AI arrive on 15 Nov (LimePDF, LimeWord, LimeSheet) and 20 Nov (LimeIDE). Pricing is on the Pricing page, where an ads-supported free tier is planned.