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LibreOffice Draw

Free office drawing app that opens PDFs for light editing and re-export.

Jobs Edit Convert Protect Sign Compress

Since 2011

Where your files are processed

No server involved

Installed desktop application. It opens and saves files on local storage with no vendor service involved.

Architectural rather than a vendor claim: Draw is a desktop application installed on your own computer. It opens and saves files on local storage with no vendor service involved. The Document Foundation markets the suite as free and private with no forced cloud or AI step, but the local processing is inherent to the architecture rather than a promise.

What it does

Draw is the vector-drawing component of the LibreOffice suite. LibreOffice routes PDFs into Draw and opens them as drawing objects, so you can select, move, delete or retype individual text snippets and images and then re-export. The shared PDF export dialog adds image compression and resolution changes, password and permission security, and X.509 digital signing. Because imported pages become shaped objects rather than flowing text, it patches documents rather than editing them.

Best for: People who need occasional small PDF repairs — fixing a word, moving or removing an element, or producing a password-protected or signed PDF — with software they may already have installed.

Worth knowing: A PDF imports as separate shape text frames rather than continuous text, so long or complex documents are tedious to edit and layout can shift. There is no reflow and no reliable way to preserve the original structure. Note also that compression, protection and signing all act on export to a new file rather than editing the original in place. The suite has a command-line route: soffice converts and exports documents headlessly, and the PDF export filter accepts the options documented on the export-parameters page. That is export automation rather than an embeddable Draw SDK, and it does not make Draw a faithful PDF editor for every imported file.

Details, and where each comes from

Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.

Versions covered
Windows · macOS · Linux
Website
libreoffice.org
Requires an account
No
Watermark on the free tier
No
Maximum file size
Not verified
Batch processing
Not verified
Data residency
Self-hosted
Open source
Yes
Self-hostable
Yes
Licence
MPL-2.0, dual-licensed MPL-2.0/LGPLv3+ in practice — official pages contradict each other
Redaction
Removes the content
Programmatic access
Command line
Last availability check
Responded in 981 ms 16 October 2026

Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.

What the redaction verdict rests on

From the vendor's own documentation, read 22 September 2026. Not tested by us.

“The redacted text or contents is removed from the drawing document and replaced by the redaction block of pixels, preventing any attempt to restore or copy the original contents.”

What that does not establish: The content removal is attached to one specific export, not to the editor and not to PDF export in general. LibreOffice draws the distinction itself: marks made while reviewing are still part of the document, and the finalized output is produced by File > Export As > Black/White Redacted Export, which replaces the redacted content with pixel blocks in the exported copy. The same page says plainly that "the source document (text, spreadsheet or presentation) is not affected by redaction and can continue to be edited", so sharing the original format shares everything, and an ordinary black rectangle over text removes nothing. The vendor’s own help rather than a test we ran, and it stays that way: exported files have not been checked for recovery, metadata or attachments.

https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/guide/redaction.html

What the vendor says

Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded — not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.

  • “LibreOffice is an open source office suite created by you, for you.”

    Checked by us — the source says this Read 22 September 2026

    Confirmed verbatim: the sentence is the site's own strapline, unaltered. It is a slogan rather than a factual claim — "created by you, for you" describes a community rather than a licence — so the part a reader can act on is "open source office suite", which the page supports throughout and which the project's own documentation establishes independently. There is no licence named on this page, and this entry was not extended to cover one, because the claim does not make a licence claim. Recorded as the project's wording; no control was run.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://www.libreoffice.org/
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    217566fc625f884c1c2186e9f19f0a51896d412c49139ecab330cb572aee04ce

    How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://www.libreoffice.org/ re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-www-libreoffice-org-3702642e.txt.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

  • “Design everything from simple diagrams to complex 3D illustrations.”

    Checked by us — the source says this Read 22 September 2026

    Confirmed verbatim: the sentence appears unaltered in the feature list. It is one of the few claims in this tier that describes a capability with a countable shape — "simple diagrams to complex 3D illustrations" — though it still does not say which of the two Draw does well, and the page's own product descriptions are promotional throughout. Recorded as the project's wording. Two claims were read from this one page and share one hash.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://www.libreoffice.org/
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    217566fc625f884c1c2186e9f19f0a51896d412c49139ecab330cb572aee04ce

    How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://www.libreoffice.org/ re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-www-libreoffice-org-3702642e.txt.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked — it is not a judgement about anyone.

Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.

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Related reading

How this record was put together

Editorial review.
No editor has signed this record off. That is not the same as nothing having been checked, and the lines below say what has.
Source reading.
2 claims taken from the vendor's own pages, read between 22 September 2026 and 22 September 2026.
Website availability.
The vendor's site was last checked on 16 October 2026.
Behaviour testing.
We ran this ourselves. The file handling was watched directly.

Sources: libreoffice.org (home, Draw page, release timeline); help.libreoffice.org (Draw overview, PDF export general, security and digital signature pages); Document Foundation wiki FAQ on Draw and PDF.