Palang, sharing documents without over-sharing
Live at: palang-web site
How it started
In Malaysia, when you have to share a document that carries something private (your IC number, a payslip, a bank letter), the safe habit is a palang: draw a red band across the part that should stay hidden and write what it is needed for, like "untuk permohonan pinjaman". That way the reader sees enough to help you, but not everything about you.
Doing it by hand is fiddly. You photograph the page, hunt for a marker, then risk covering too little or revealing too much, and the result is often a blurry screenshot. I kept wishing for one small tool that does this properly on a phone or a computer, and that never uploads the document anywhere. That is Palang.
What it does
Palang is a small document helper that:
- turns photos of documents into a clean PDF,
- lets you draw a palang band over anything you want to keep private and stamp its purpose,
- merges a few PDFs into one.
It runs fully offline. Your document never leaves your device: no upload, no account, nothing stored on a server.
Where it runs
- Windows (installed app) and Android (app) [1]
- The site with install and privacy details is at the link above, and the tools also work in a web browser.
The core idea: privacy by construction
Every step happens on your device. The engine that converts images and stamps the bands is bundled into the app, so there is no server to send anything to and no one to trust with your documents. No accounts means there is nothing about you to store or to leak.
Why I built it this way
- Offline first. A document tool that physically cannot upload is the safest kind.
- No accounts. It removes the weakest link, a database of your email and details.
- One engine, two apps. The same logic becomes both the phone app and the desktop app, so they never drift apart.
- Small on purpose. It does image to PDF, palang, and merge. It deliberately avoids pretending to be a full PDF editor.
It stays honest about limits
A few safety knobs (for example a cap on how many pages one job can process) are plain data the app reads, so they can be adjusted without touching the code. The site itself is ordinary static files, which is why hosting it is free and it loads quickly.
A few simple words
- Palang: the red band, and its purpose label, drawn over private parts of a document.
- Offline: everything runs on your own device, with no connection needed.
- Engine: the part of the code that actually creates the PDFs and stamps the bands.
Sources
- palang-web repository, https://github.com/farithadnan/palang-web