Paperless Mobile is a Flutter-based mobile client for paperless-ngx that lets you view, scan, edit, upload and organise documents from an Android or iOS phone, built for people who already run a paperless-ngx server and want to manage their paperwork away from a desktop browser.

What it is

Paperless Mobile is an "(almost) fully fledged mobile paperless client" written in Dart with Flutter, published under the GPL-3.0 licence and tagged across the android, ios, flutter, dms, paperless and paperless-ngx topics. It sits in the paperless-ngx ecosystem as the phone-side front end to a document management server: the app itself is the client, and the documents, labels and users it works with live in the paperless-ngx instance it connects to.

The concrete problem it addresses is the one the README names directly. paperless-ngx can be reached from a mobile browser, but managing documents that way is "often a tedious and slow process." Paperless Mobile replaces that browser workaround with a native-style workflow: a custom scanner, biometric authentication, file sharing from other apps straight into the client, and a dedicated inbox for processing newly captured documents. It also carries the access controls a self-hosted document server may expect, including mTLS client certificates and 2FA.

Key capabilities

• View documents at a glance, and add, delete or edit them from the phone.
• Share, download and preview stored files.
• Scan documents and upload them to paperless through the integrated scanner.
• Upload existing documents by sharing files with Paperless Mobile from other apps.
• Process incoming material in a dedicated inbox rather than editing records one at a time.
• Search documents using a wide range of filter criteria, and manage and assign labels.
• Switch between multiple users, and secure access with biometric authentication, mTLS client certificates and 2FA.

Who uses it and how

• Individuals running a self-hosted paperless-ngx instance who want to capture a paper document with a phone camera and push it into their archive immediately.
• Households or small teams where one phone needs to move between several paperless-ngx user accounts.
• Environments that restrict access to an internal document server, where mTLS client certificates and 2FA are prerequisites rather than extras.
• Multilingual users: the app is available in English, German, Polish, French, Catalan, Czech and Turkish, with translations coordinated through the project's Crowdin page.

Getting started

The README excerpt provided does not name an install command, package identifier, Docker image, compose file or hosted option; it identifies the project only as a Flutter application targeting Android and iOS. Publishing to the App Store is still listed as an unfinished roadmap item, so availability through official app stores is not established by the documentation supplied here.

How it compares

The only related tool the facts name is paperless-ngx itself, and Paperless Mobile is a companion to it rather than a substitute: the server still stores, indexes and serves the documents, and the app is one of the ways to reach them. The alternative it explicitly sets out to replace is the paperless-ngx web interface used from a mobile browser, which the README describes as tedious and slow for document management.

When to use it — and when not to

Choose Paperless Mobile if a paperless-ngx server is already running and the gap is mobile capture and day-to-day document handling, particularly where client certificates or 2FA are required. Do not choose it as a standalone document manager, since it has no storage or indexing of its own and is useless without a reachable paperless-ngx backend. Prospective users should also note the project's rough edges: 135 open issues, an App Store release still outstanding, a fully custom A4-optimised scanner still on the roadmap, no installation instructions in the README excerpt, and conflicting licence signals, with the repository metadata and README text stating GPL-3.0 while the README badges point to MIT.