Paperweight — local-first, open-source desktop app to cleanup email and manage your digital footprint

General Project Showcase
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Hi Privacy Guides community,

I’m excited to introduce Paperweight, a local-first open-source desktop app I’ve been building to help people understand and reduce their digital footprint.

The core idea: your inbox is a paper trail of every company that has ever had your data. Every account you created, every service you tried, every online purchase. It’s all connected to your email. Most people have 100+ accounts they’ve forgotten about, each a potential security, or privacy risk. For me the final push was the Odido data breach in the Netherlands. I hadn’t been a customer for more than 8 years, but all my data was still in their systems.

What it does:

  • Account inventory — Maps every company that has ever emailed you, with risks classifications and recommendations for action.

  • Bulk unsubscribe — Find and unsubscribe from any marketing and mailing lists (auto RFC 8058 where supported).

  • Breach alerts — Alerts when any company you’ve been in contact with has been breached (via HaveIBeenPwned).

  • GDPR requests — Generates pre-filled GDPR requests in multiple languages.

Supports Gmail (OAuth), Outlook, IMAP, and Proton Mail via Bridge.

Privacy approach:

Everything runs on your machine. Email content, credentials, and connection details never leave your device. No telemetry, no cloud sync, no analytics. The code is fully open source and auditable on GitHub.

Most alternatives in this space all require your to share your data through their services. Some of them have actually been caught selling your data. Paperweight is the only tool I’m aware of that does this entirely local and is open-source.

Licensing & pricing:

Free to use with a 30-day scan window. If you want to support ongoing development and get unlimited history, multi-account support, there’s a one-time perpetual license. No subscriptions. I think recurring fees don’t fit how people actually use a tool like this, which tends to be more periodic cleanups rather than daily, or even monthly active use. Hope to make it sustainable this way rather than locking people into subscriptions.

Current status:

In active development with a solid working version. Few caveats, is that Google OAuth verification (CASA) is in progress, so Gmail users currently see browser warnings. All other providers work fine. Available on Windows, Mac, and Linux (AppImage, or deb).

The V1 roadmap is available on Github if you want to see what’s coming. Main priorities is further refining the risk & classification engine, and automating GDPR tracking.

Links:

Would love to hear your feedback or answer any questions. Curious if the local-first approach for these kind of tools make sense. Which use-case resonates more, the clean up functionalities, GDPR requests, or both? Or are there any features that you’d like to see?

Thanks!

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Excellent name!

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Thanks!

Love your work! I sent you an email actually :slight_smile:

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Yes.

The local-first approach is not only a viable architecture but, from an architectural and ethical standpoint, arguably the most robust choice for modern productivity and data-centric tools. It prioritizes the user as the primary owner of their information, creating a clear boundary against institutionalized monitoring.

When systems are designed to function without external validation or centralized authentication checks, they respect the user’s ability to act independently of institutional systems.

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Thank you! And agree. Curious if you think desktop is the way to go, or would a mobile App be feasible for you as well? Reason for going the desktop route is that you truly do not need to share data, except with your email provider. Mobile Apps will likely steal leak some data, but might be a better trade-off in terms of UX.

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Paperweight v0.3 is now live :moai:

This updates focused mostly on improving onboarding and connecting more mailboxes reliably:

  • No more security warnings. The macOS app is notarized by Apple, and completed Google’s OAuth (CASA) verification on the first pass. No more warnings, unverified-app screens, or other workarounds.

  • Broader IMAP/SMTP support, incl. Apple iCloud, Proton Mail (using Bridge) and IMAP presets for other major email providers.

  • Improved breach and risk classification, so affected accounts are flagged with clearer next steps.

Github: Release v0.3.0 · wslyvh/paperweight · GitHub

Also shipped a new tools, guides and resources section on the site. All free to use, without any downloads or installation. It includes a data breach tracker, GDPR request generator and best practices to exercise your rights.

Website: Resources & Tools

Feedback welcome! Thanks

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I just wanted to say I’ve really been enjoying testing this. Good stuff.

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I think this depends on your target audience. I haven’t checked e-mails on a desktop for at least 8 years.

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Thank you! Appreciate that. Curious which of the use-cases are more useful to you, newsletter clean up, the GDPR requests, or both? Anything still missing?

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While you wouldn’t really check your emails with this, I do get your point. So you’d be in favor of a mobile over desktop?

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This sounds like an interesting project. I’ll certainly give it a spin. The first thing that comes to mind is a Thunderbird / Firefox addon to cover both desktop and (non mobile) browser mailboxes.

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This tool is amazing, I’m inclined to buy the Perpetual License to support the development but would really prefer to pay with crypto. Is this possible or planned?

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Thank you! Long time I used Thunderbird myself, but will look into it.

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Thanks! Nothing planned, but happy to do this manually! Will DM

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I just downloaded it and did a few things and so far I love this idea. I love how it works with Proton Bridge–and I will definitely recommend as a desktop tool for my clients who mostly use Proton because of their EasySwitch feature. I believe they will all like this. It introduces a Gmail like feature to the secure mail I recommend people switch to from Gmail. Anything that can make things like this visual and simple to clients is A+ for me. Thank you!

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Thank you! Appreciate the message. Curious what kind of clients you work with?

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I work with individuals, families and small business to help them secure and privatize their digital life. Many of them ask about email subscriptions and best ways to handle those. Having a tool like this where we can actual see what their picture looks like is excellent for them and so I can guide them.

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Looks great! I wanted to donate right away, but I found a license option instead. The price is a bit high for me, though I understand. Does the license only guarantee updates through V1, not beyond? I know a few potentially interested people.

I just tested the app on Linux, and it seems to work fine. Do the whitelisting and block rules sync to the account, or are they handled only by Paperweight? Thanks for sharing this tool!

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Love that! Keep me posted if you do introduce it to anyone. Would love to learn more! Anything awkward when you walk a client through it, or anything you find yourself wishing it did. And maybe also if you see any need for team/family features? Always happy to chat :slight_smile:

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Thank you! I’m still experiment with pricing while its in development. Current feedback so far is that most people only use it once or as a yearly clean up. Hence the lifetime/perpetual license, which seems like better value compared to e.g. monthly subscriptions. The downside is indeed a somewhat a higher up-front cost, but you can continue to use this forever permanently, including at least all V1 updates as documented the roadmap.

As we’re also still actively developing, it should be worth it :slight_smile:

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