About OBSCURA OS
OBSCURA OS is a set of working tools that run entirely inside your browser. Documents, spreadsheets, slides, forms, invoices, and a suite of privacy tools: none of them send your data to a server, because there is no server holding your data to send it to.
The idea
Most software that touches sensitive work asks you to upload it first. You hand over the contract, the case file, the client list, and trust that it is handled properly on the other end. That trust is usually well placed and occasionally is not, and either way you cannot verify it from where you are sitting.
OBSCURA OS is built the other way around. The tools are JavaScript that runs in your tab. Your file is opened by your own browser, worked on in your own memory, and saved back to your own disk. There is no upload step to trust, because there is no upload.
That design has real costs, and we would rather name them than hide them. There is no sync service of ours: nothing you make is kept on a server for you. Keep can sync through a folder of your own, which your own sync service or a USB stick carries between devices, and the Workspace can work in a folder of yours too; anything else you want on another device, you export yourself. There is no account to recover if you clear your browser data. If those trade-offs do not suit the job, this is the wrong tool for it, and we would rather you knew that on the way in.
What you get for free
The Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Notes, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, Plan, Drive and the PDF editor) is free for everyone, with no account and no trial clock. Every other tool is free to open and to check a file with, so you always see what it finds before anything is asked of you. There is no advertising.
What is paid
OBSCURA Pro is saving or exporting the result in the tools outside the Workspace (the cleaned photo, the redacted PDF, the report), and every one of the seventeen paid applications: Keep, documents, passwords and two-step codes, encrypted on the device; the Sovereign Suite, SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST and your own frameworks, vendors, risk and incidents (fifty-four services); the Engineering Suite, parametric 3D parts and 2D drawings, for printing and machining; the Photo Editor, layers, masks, camera raw and Photoshop PSD; PDF Studio, PDFs edited, redacted, signed and checked; Case, e-discovery: a matter’s email and documents reviewed and produced; Umbra, a code editor that runs JavaScript, TypeScript, Python and SQL; Books, bookkeeping, VAT returns and the year end; Roots, family trees, charts and books; Research, statistics and interview coding in one project; Practice, practice management for a small firm; Write, novels and scripts, planned, written and compiled; Authorship, a record of how a piece of writing was made, checked free; Sound, podcasts and recordings, edited, cleaned up and mixed; Vector, illustration, logos and icons drawn with paths; Erase, subject access, erasure and opt-out requests, with the legal deadline tracked; the Converter, pictures, documents, spreadsheets, audio and video converted from one format to another. Each application’s own page says what it does and what it does not do before you pay; Apps has them all. The single tools in the Sovereign Suite stay free to check a file with. Pro is US$9 a month or US$79 a year, with 7 days free. Any one application on its own is US$4 a month or US$35 a year, and saving from one tool for a day is US$2, paid once.
Pro is a key, not an account. It is checked on your device, and the only thing that ever leaves it is the key, so the server can see Pro is paid for. Your files never do. On another device you paste the key, which the Pro page shows you to copy or download; there is no password.
Payments are handled by Stripe, and a receipt is emailed to you.
How we talk about what these tools do
Security software attracts confident language, and confident language is cheap. Every tool here states what it does, and states its limits on its own page: where a technique stops working, what it does not defend against, and what it cannot promise. If a tool cannot do something, it says so rather than implying otherwise. That is a deliberate policy, and if you find somewhere it has slipped, we want to hear about it.
For the full picture across every tool at once, tool by tool, see the threat model: what each one protects against, and what it does not. Trust sets out what the server itself sees, route by route, and how to check that nothing you open is uploaded; the accessibility statement says what is checked and where the site still falls short.
Who it is for
People whose work involves other people's confidential material and who would rather it did not leave the machine: independent professionals, small firms, researchers, journalists, and anyone handling records that are not theirs to leak.
Contact
Questions, bug reports, and anything that looks wrong: Hello@ObscuraOS.com, or the support page, which writes the email with your plan, the site's version and your browser filled in. Billing questions belong there too. Whether the site is answering is on status.
OBSCURA OS is operated from Canada.
Writing about it, or listing it somewhere? The press kit has descriptions at three lengths, the logos and current pictures.