PaperLike

The Ultimate PDF Reading Experience for Chrome

Turn any PDF into a realistic paper book — with handcrafted textures, sepia & night modes, a 3D flipbook reader, and the soft rustle of real paper.

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✨ Why PaperLike?

Reading PDFs all day on a harsh white background is brutal on your eyes.

PaperLike wraps your PDFs in beautiful, procedurally-generated paper textures — and transforms them into an interactive flipbook you can actually feel. Every animation, every sound, every texture is generated locally. No assets. No network calls. No tracking.

Just you, and a better-looking PDF.

🎯 Features

🎨 Realistic Paper Textures Three handcrafted styles — Classic, Warm, Gray — rendered with SVG diffuse lighting for authentic 3D paper fiber grain. Adjustable opacity (0–100%) and optional vignette edges.	📖 Interactive Flipbook Mode Two-page book spread with realistic 3D page-turn animations. Drag pages with your mouse — they follow your cursor in real-time. Keyboard, touch, and trackpad friendly.
🌅 Sepia & Night Modes Switch to sepia for warm, eye-friendly reading, or night mode for low-light sessions. Works across both PDF view and flipbook mode.	🔊 Procedural Page-Turn Sound A soft paper rustle every flip — generated entirely with the Web Audio API. Zero asset weight, zero latency. Fully optional.
📊 Live Reading Progress Real-time progress bar + time-remaining estimate right in the flipbook toolbar. Know exactly how far you've read.	🔍 Vintage Search Highlights Replaces harsh neon-yellow highlights with a warm amber tone that complements your paper aesthetic.
🧠 Smart Dark PDF Detection Histogram-based algorithm samples multiple DOM layers with area-weighting and hysteresis — no flicker on scroll, accurate on complex PDFs.	✏️ Annotation Pen Tool Draw directly on pages in flipbook mode with a customizable color picker. Annotations persist per-PDF across sessions.

🚀 Installation

Option 1 — Chrome Web Store (Recommended)

Install PaperLike from the Chrome Web Store →

Option 2 — Load Unpacked (For Developers)

git clone https://github.com/sametgurtuna/PaperLikePDF.git
cd PaperLikePDF

1. Open chrome://extensions in Chrome
2. Enable Developer mode (top-right toggle)
3. Click Load unpacked and select the paperlike folder
4. Open any PDF — PaperLike will activate automatically

⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Alt + P	Toggle PaperLike on/off
→ / Space	Next page (Flipbook mode)
←	Previous page (Flipbook mode)
Esc	Close Flipbook

📸 Screenshots

Paper Texture	Flipbook Mode	Popup Settings

🏗️ Architecture

PaperLike is a Manifest V3 Chrome extension built with zero runtime dependencies and zero build step.

paperlike/
├── manifest.json           # MV3 manifest
├── background.js           # Service worker (command handling)
├── shared.js               # Shared state, settings schema, utilities
├── content.js              # Injected into PDF tabs
├── content.css             # Paper overlay + vignette + vintage highlights
├── popup.html/js/css       # Extension popup UI
├── flipbook.html/js/css    # 3D flipbook reader (runs in iframe)
└── lib/pdf.min.js          # PDF.js (bundled locally, not remote)

Key Technical Decisions

• Procedural everything — textures via SVG feDiffuseLighting, page-turn sound via Web Audio oscillators + filters, page-turn animation via CSS 3D transforms
• Sandboxed flipbook — runs inside an iframe, receives PDF data via postMessage + transferable ArrayBuffer (no copy)
• Histogram dark detection — area-weighted luminance binning across multiple DOM candidates with hysteresis to prevent flicker
• Settings sync — chrome.storage.sync with a normalized settings schema validated in shared.js
• No remote code — PDF.js is bundled; nothing is loaded from a CDN

🔒 Privacy

PaperLike is radically private by design:

• ✅ No tracking, no analytics, no telemetry
• ✅ No data collection of any kind
• ✅ No network requests to external servers
• ✅ Your PDFs never leave your device
• ✅ Settings sync only through Chrome's built-in storage
• ✅ Open source — audit it yourself

The only permissions PaperLike requests are:

• storage — to persist your preferences
• activeTab — to apply textures to the PDF you're currently viewing

🛣️ Roadmap

• EPUB support in flipbook mode
• Bookmark system with page corner folding
• PDF outline / table of contents sidebar
• Pinch-to-zoom on active page
• Custom user-uploaded paper textures
• Multi-language support (_locales/)
• Firefox port (WebExtension API)

Have an idea? Open an issue — I read every one.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's a bug report, a feature idea, or a pull request.

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-idea)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing idea')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-idea)
5. Open a Pull Request

Please keep PRs focused and include a clear description of what changed and why.

📝 Changelog

1.4.0 — The Reading Upgrade

• ✨ Sepia and Night color modes for warmer, eye-friendly reading
• ✨ Procedural page-turn sound (optional) — the soft rustle of real paper
• ✨ Live reading progress with time-remaining estimate in Book Mode
• ✨ Vintage amber search highlights
• 🧠 Smarter histogram-based dark PDF detection with anti-flicker hysteresis

1.3.0

• ✏️ Annotation pen tool with per-PDF persistence
• 📖 Flipbook reading position remembered per document

1.2.0

• 📖 Interactive flipbook mode with 3D page-turn animations
• 🖱️ Mouse drag page turning

1.0.0

• 🎨 Initial release with three paper textures, vignette, and auto-dark detection

📄 License

MIT © 2026 — Feel free to fork, learn from, and build on this.

🌟 Support

If PaperLike made your reading a little more pleasant:

• ⭐ Star this repo
• 📝 Leave a review on the Chrome Web Store
• 🐛 Report bugs or suggest features
• 💬 Share it with a fellow PDF-reader

Made with ☕ and a frustration with white backgrounds.

_{PaperLike is not affiliated with Adobe, Google, or any PDF standards body. PDF is a registered trademark of Adobe Inc.}