Nightglass at a glance
The facts, plainly.
What Nightglass is, what it costs, what it needs and what it can do, in short statements you can quote.
Basics
- What it is
- A private PDF and document editor for Mac, Windows and Linux that runs on your computer.
- Made for
- Professionals who work with large PDFs: construction, engineering, architecture, legal and healthcare.
- Platforms
- Mac, Windows and Linux. Available on Mac first; Windows and Linux are in beta.
- Where documents are processed
- On your computer. Documents never leave it.
- Account
- Not needed.
- Tracking and analytics
- None.
- Network use
- Pro checks its license key about once a day; the check never includes your files. Google Drive or Dropbox storage sync is optional and off unless you turn it on. Air-Gap mode blocks every network connection.
- Availability
- Downloads and checkout open at launch.
Pricing
- Free
- $0. A generous free tier; no card and no account.
- Pro
- $12 a month or $99 a year.
- Founders lifetime
- $299 once, a temporary founders price that includes the founder badge.
- Trial
- 14 days of Pro, no card required.
- Refunds
- Details at launch.
System requirements
- Operating system
- macOS, Windows and Linux. Windows and Linux are in beta.
- Pixel (optional AI, Pro)
- 16 GB of memory, and macOS 14 or later on a Mac.
- Full requirements
- Published at launch.
Measured with real drawing sets
- Open at once
- Four real drawing sets, 511 sheets, with Nightglass using under 3 GB of memory.
- Sharp after zoom
- About 1 to 2 seconds on a heavy 165-sheet set.
- Batch sheet linking
- 969 sheet references linked across four sets; reading the pages took about 14 seconds.
Free includes
- A very fast viewer, even for huge drawing sets
- Full annotation and markup studio
- Branching History tree: rewind and branch off
- Fill and sign forms, with field detection
- Merge, split, and reorganize pages
- Searchable scans with automatic OCR
- Find all instances, with whole-sentence highlights
- Links, contents pages, and cross-document links
- Compress and password-protect (AES)
- Bookmarks and thumbnail navigation
- Tabs, split view, and command palette
- Nine beautiful themes
- Air-Gap mode for total offline privacy
Pro adds
- Pixel, a private AI assistant, and Pixel spreadsheets
- Inline editing of real PDF text
- Measurement and takeoff, with quantities to Excel
- Compare drawing and text revisions, with reports
- Convert to and from Office, images, and more
- Extract tables and text to Excel, Word, and CSV
- Permanent redaction that truly removes content
- Bates numbering and exhibit stickers
- Headers, footers, watermarks, and PDF/A
- Batch sheet linking for drawing sets
- Export Find results to Excel, CSV, and PDF
- Pro image editor: magic wand, smart lasso, recolor
- Batch form fill, watched folders, and templates
- Toolkit: styled tools and shareable tool sets
- XFDF markup exchange and Google Drive or Dropbox sync
Pixel, the private AI assistant
- What it is
- An optional AI assistant that runs a 4B model privately on your computer.
- Tier
- Pro.
- Setup
- One step. It downloads the engine and model once, then works offline.
- Accuracy
- Pixel can make mistakes. Check important numbers against the source.
Honest limits
- Windows and Linux versions are in beta.
- Pixel needs 16 GB of memory, and macOS 14 or later on a Mac, and it can make mistakes.
- Bluebeam Revu's takeoff toolset is the industry standard, and Bluebeam is more established with AEC teams.
- Adobe Acrobat's text editing is mature and widely used.