If you searched for PDF Shuffler, you are in the right place — and the short version is good news. PDF Arranger is the direct continuation of PDF-Shuffler: it began as a fork of the older program, kept its familiar thumbnail-grid way of working, and has grown well past it. This page explains the family history, what the fork added, and how to move over if you still have the old tool installed.
The lineage is stated in PDF Arranger’s own README: it is “a fork of Konstantinos Poulios’s PDF-Shuffler”, described there as “a humble attempt to make the project a bit more active.” The copyright headers in the code still credit Poulios for the original work from 2008 onwards.
At a glance
| PDF-Shuffler (original) | PDF Arranger 1.14.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Created by Konstantinos Poulios | A fork of PDF-Shuffler, maintained as its own project on GitHub |
| Project status | The original Savannah and SourceForge repositories have not seen updates in a long time | Actively released; version 1.14.0 was published on May 23, 2026 |
| Interface | Thumbnail grid for rearranging pages | The same thumbnail-grid idea, extended with zoom, search and modern dialogs |
| Core arranging | Merge, split and rearrange pages | Merge, split, reorder, rotate, crop, delete and duplicate pages |
| Booklet | Not part of the original tool | Yes — generate and split booklet layouts |
| Metadata editing | No | Yes — title, subject, keywords, producer, creator and dates |
| Password-protected output | No | Yes — open password-protected PDFs and encrypt the exported file |
| Import images as pages | No | Yes, via img2pdf integration |
| Current downloads | Old project pages only | Official Windows installer and portable ZIP, Flathub and Linux distribution packages |
What happened to PDF-Shuffler?
The original project was hosted on Savannah and SourceForge, and those repositories have been quiet for a long time — the project is best described as no longer actively maintained. Rather than letting a well-liked little tool fade away, the fork picked up the codebase and continued development under the PDF Arranger name. That is why searches for “pdf shuffler” so often end at PDF Arranger today: it is not a clone or a lookalike, it is the same line of software, continued.
What the fork added
The current release does considerably more than shuffling. You can generate and split booklet layouts for folded printing, edit document metadata, open password-protected files and save your export with a password, import images as new pages, crop white borders or custom margins, resize pages, insert blank pages in sizes up to A0, A1 and A2, overlay one page on another, and export pages as PNG or JPEG images. Version 1.14.0 also rebuilds document outlines (bookmarks) on export and can swap odd and even pages — handy for two-sided scans. Underneath, it is a Python and GTK front end for pikepdf, and it remains free and open source under GPL-3.0-or-later.
What stayed familiar
If you used PDF-Shuffler years ago, the working style will feel like home. Documents open as a grid of page thumbnails; you select, drag, rotate and delete pages visually, then export the result as a new PDF. Your original files are never modified in place, exactly as before. There is no new file format to learn and no conversion step for your documents — they were always plain PDFs, and they still are.
Moving over: a two-minute migration
- Install PDF Arranger from the download page (Windows installer or portable ZIP), from Flathub, or from your Linux distribution’s repository — most distributions now package PDF Arranger rather than the old Shuffler.
- Open any PDF you used to handle in PDF-Shuffler. The workflow is the same, so there is nothing to relearn beyond spotting the extra menu entries.
- Retire the old install once you are comfortable. Keeping both is harmless, but only PDF Arranger receives fixes and new releases.
Verdict
There is no real contest here, and that is the point of this page: PDF-Shuffler walked so PDF Arranger could keep going. If the old tool still runs on your machine and all you ever do is shuffle a few pages, it will keep doing that — but for a maintained program with booklet, metadata, encryption and image-import features on top of the same familiar interface, PDF Arranger is the natural upgrade. One honest boundary, true of both programs: neither edits the text inside a page or runs OCR. If that is your job, a full editor such as Wondershare PDFelement (sponsored) is the step up. Disclosure: the editor links in this section are sponsored affiliate links — if you buy through them, this site may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. See our Affiliate Disclosure.