Today's Deep-Dive: Papra
Ep. 228

Today's Deep-Dive: Papra

Episode description

This episode discusses Papra, a minimalist document archiving platform designed to help users manage digital clutter. Papra centralizes documents, making them easily searchable and accessible, and allows users to “store, forget, and retrieve” their files with confidence. Key features include email ingestion, content extraction using OCR, tagging for organization, and self-hosting options for enhanced privacy and control. The platform is open-source, fostering community involvement and transparency, and offers developer-friendly tools like APIs and webhooks for integration and automation. Papra is suitable for a wide range of users, from home users to small teams and freelancers, and has plans for future features like dedicated mobile apps and AI-assisted document management.

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Download transcript (.srt)
0:00

Welcome back to the deep dive.

0:01

We're here to dig into the details and bring you the key insights from our

0:04

sources. And, uh, before we jump in today, just a quick word from our fantastic

0:07

supporter, safe server, safe server is all about hosting the kind of software

0:12

we're actually discussing today and they're really a partner in your digital

0:15

transformation. You can find out more at www.safeserver.de honestly, they make

0:21

these deep dives possible. So big thank you to safe server. Okay, so let's get

0:27

into it. Have you ever like felt you're just drowning in digital stuff? You know,

0:31

receipts from that holiday ages ago, warranties for gadgets you barely use,

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important notes just everywhere, cloud drives, local folder. Absolutely, we've all

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been there. It's that digital clutter, right? It sometimes feels worse than

0:43

physical clutter. Exactly. So today we're diving deep into a potential solution

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for that exact chaos. Yeah. It's called Popra. It bills itself as a minimalistic

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document archiving platform. We've got the GitHub repo, the main website, all the

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key sources, and we're gonna pull out what you really need to know, our mission.

1:01

Give you a clear sort of easy entry point into what Popra is, how it works,

1:05

and well why it might be the digital sanctuary you've been looking for.

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Hopefully some aha moments incoming. Yeah, and what's really interesting here I

1:13

think is how Popra tackles that universal problem, the document sprawl, but

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with this real focus on keeping it simple and accessible, that's actually

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quite rare in this space. You know a lot of solutions get very complex very

1:25

quickly. This minimalist approach is frankly refreshing. That minimalism

1:29

definitely stood out to me too. So let's start right at the core. What is Popra

1:33

exactly for someone just hearing the name? Well at its heart Popra is a very

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focused minimalistic platform for managing and archiving your digital

1:42

documents. The idea is they've intentionally stripped back the

1:45

complexity to make it super simple to use, accessible to pretty much everyone.

1:49

Think of it as your own personal really organized digital archive. That one

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single place where all your important digital papers live. It's built on the

1:57

idea that you know managing documents shouldn't feel like a chore. I like that

2:01

and they use this phrase in the sources store forget and retrieve. I found that

2:07

quite compelling. Can you unpack that a bit? What does it mean practically? Yeah

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that store forget retrieve line. It's more than just catchy. It's kind of a

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promise really. It's about shifting the mental load instead of constantly

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thinking where's that receipt or did I keep the warranty for the phone. Popra

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aims to let you offload that worry. You put the document in maybe tag it and

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then you can genuinely forget about the where. The confidence comes from knowing

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it's safe and crucially searchable whenever you do need it. It turns that

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sort of background anxiety about lost documents into well peace of mind. Okay

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so peace of mind not just storage that's key and something else really important

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for many listening it's open source available on github agpl 3.0 license

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what does that mean for someone maybe not super familiar with open source

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stuff right that's a huge plus being open source especially under a license like

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agpl means a few key things for you one like you said it's free to use no

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subscription fees for the core software itself to the code is out there in the

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open anyone can look at it that means transparency you can see how it works

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even check the security if you have the know-how builds trust and three it means

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a community can get involved people can report bugs suggest features even

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contribute code it becomes a living project often more responsive to users

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than closed source software plus you avoid vendor lock-in you have more

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freedom and control over your data and the software itself that's a really

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clear explanation thanks so we get the concept of philosophy now let's talk

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about the practical side how does popper actually help you day-to-day cut through

3:37

that document chaos we talked about how does it solve the problem okay yeah

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it tackles that sprawl with some really practical features first up and maybe

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the most basic but essential is just document management and centralization it

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gives you one place to upload store and manage all your documents no more

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hunting between your desktop Dropbox Google Drive email it all comes together

4:01

bringing it all home basically exactly then there's a feature called

4:04

organizations this is pretty clever if you need to share documents say with

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family members for household bills or maybe a small club or even colleagues

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for a project you can create these separate groups or organizations it acts

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like a shared filing cabinet just for that group keeps things tidy and

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accessible but only to the people who need access like a mini team space okay

4:26

that makes sense for collaboration and the big one for me always is search what

4:30

good is archiving if finding stuff is still a nightmare how's the search

4:34

power ah crucial point and yeah popper seems to take search seriously it's not

4:39

just basic file name search it boasts powerful full-text search which means

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you don't even need to remember the file name you can search for a word a name a

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date maybe a phrase inside the document whether it's a PDF a word doc even

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importantly a scanned image the goal is finding any document in seconds no more

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endless scrolling that sounds genuinely useful okay I love this next one they

5:02

mentioned email ingestion my email inbox is where receipts go to die what does

5:07

this feature actually do for you huh yeah it's designed for exactly that

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problem email ingestion is super handy basically your popper setup can generate

5:15

a unique email address just for you when you get an important email with an

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attachment like that online order PDF or an e-ticket you just forward the whole

5:22

email to your special popper address popper automatically grabs the

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attachments from the email and imports them straight into your archive oh wow

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so no downloading uploading needed no seamless it bridges that gap between

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your inbox and your organized archive and sort of related to that is content

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extraction this is a bit of a game-changer especially if you deal with

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older paper files popper can automatically pull out the text from

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images or scanned documents using OCR optical character recognition okay so if

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I scan an old invoice exactly scan that invoice or even just take a photo of it

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popper reads the text on it that means the content of that scanned paper invoice

6:00

becomes fully searchable just like a digital file it really helps bridge the

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physical digital divide that's huge for anyone still dealing with paper okay so

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everything's in it's searchable how do you keep it organized especially if you

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follow the forget part of the philosophy good question that's where tags and

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tagging rules come into play tags are just like well labels you can stick on

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your documents you customize them however you like receipts warranty tax

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client a whatever works for you this makes filtering and finding groups of

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documents really easy like show me all receipts tagged 2023 for electronics

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right manual tagging yes but what's smarter is the tagging roles you can set

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up rules to automatically tag documents based on certain criteria for example

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any document coming from say Amazon at example comm could automatically get

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tagged receipt and online order or anything with the word invoice in the

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file name gets the invoice tag it really cuts down on the manual work and keeps

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things consistent okay that automation sounds powerful and they haven't

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forgotten the user experience details either there's a dark mode which is

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always nice for a late-night admin easier on the eyes and importantly it has

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a responsive design this means the interface adjusts itself automatically to

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fit whatever screen you're using desktop tablet phone so your documents are

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accessible anywhere even without needing a separate mobile app just yet it sounds

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very well thought out for everyday use yeah but what about listeners who may be

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like a bit more control the tinkerers the tech savvy folks who want to manage

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their own stuff yes for those users popper offers quite a bit the big one is

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self-hosting this basically means you can run your own copy of popper on your

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own hardware could be a server you own a computer at home even something small

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like a Raspberry Pi the source has mentioned it's really lightweight the

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Docker image is under 200 milliby which is tiny in the grand scheme of things

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and it supports common architectures like by 86 ARM 64 ARMv7 so it's flexible

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it's designed to be pretty straightforward to set up if you're

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comfortable with say Docker this gives you complete ownership and privacy over

8:01

your data that self-hosting option is definitely appealing for control and

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privacy you also mentioned developer friendliness things like API web books

8:09

CLI SDK that can sound a bit technical what's the actual benefit there maybe

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even for non coders that's a fair point it can sound intimidating but even if

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you're not a developer yourself these tools unlock a lot of potential for

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automation and integration think of the API as a way for other software to talk

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to pop bra this means you could potentially connect it to other tools

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you use web hooks are like automatic alerts popper could notify another app

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when say a new document is added maybe trigger a backup process the CLI

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command-line interface lets you control pop bra with text commands great for

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scripting automated tasks and the SDK gives developers tools to build new

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things on top of pop bra so for you the listener this translates to flexibility

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maybe someone builds an integration you find useful or you hire someone to

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create a custom workflow it means popper isn't just a closed box it can become

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part of a larger digital ecosystem tailored to your needs okay so it's

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adaptable not dysfunctional it can grow with you speaking of growth where does

9:07

popper seem to be heading what's the future look like well it's definitely an

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active project the core stuff is stable usable right now which is important but

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looking at their roadmap they have plans features like document sharing and

9:18

document requests seem to be coming soon that would boost the collaboration side

9:23

significantly imagine easily sharing a specific doc with your accountant for

9:29

example yeah that sounds useful and then looking a bit further out the vision

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includes dedicated mobile apps and desktop apps that would make access even

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smoother on different devices a browser extension is also mentioned which could

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be great for grabbing web pages or online documents directly and the really

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interesting one is they're exploring AI using artificial intelligence to help

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with managing and tagging documents AI how would that work

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imagine popper and not just reading the text but maybe suggesting relevant tags

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automatically or summarizing long documents for you or even answering

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questions like when does the warranty for my washing machine expire that could

10:07

really take the retrieve part to the next level Wow okay that does sound

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powerful so if we pull all this together the simplicity the features the future

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plans who is Papa really for you know connecting the docs it seems designed

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for a surprisingly broad audience the simplicity makes it great for just

10:24

regular home users wanting to get organized the collaboration and self

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hosting makes it very viable for small teams startups maybe even freelancers

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who need something private and cost-effective and because it's

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developer-friendly and seemingly scalable it's not impossible to imagine

10:39

it being used in larger organizations too it really seems versatile so we've

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really taken a deep dive into popper today it sounds like a genuinely

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minimalistic yet quite powerful approach to taming digital document chaos that

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promise of transforming clutter into an organized searchable archive letting you

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store forget and retrieve with confidence it's compelling that reduction

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in mental load alone feels valuable it really does and maybe that raises a

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question for you listening how much time or just mental energy do you currently

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spend hunting for old documents or even just worrying you might not find them

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popper offers a potential way to reclaim that time and you know that headspace

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knowing things are actually in order yeah so maybe as you go about your day

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think about it what's one forgotten document that receipt that note that

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warranty card you really wish you could just pull up instantly right now popper

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is aiming to make exactly that a reality and before we wrap up a huge thank you

11:36

once again to our supporter safe server remember they help with hosting this

11:40

kind of software and support your digital transformation journey you can

11:43

until next time keep learning and stay curious

11:43

until next time keep learning and stay curious