LocalRAG

LocalRAG is what happens when you combine AI with your own files and say "actually, I don't want Google reading my tax returns." This app lets you chat with PDFs, Word docs, EPUBs, Excel files, PowerPoints, and images—basically anything you can throw at it. Upload a contract and ask "what are the red flags here?" Upload a research paper and ask "explain this to me like I'm five." Upload your unread book collection and finally get around to knowing what they're about without doing any reading. That's the dream, honestly.

The killer feature here is the on-device AI. They're using Qwen 3.5 4B, which runs entirely on your phone after you download the model once (~3 GB). No internet required, no API calls, your data stays on your device. They support 15 formats now and they've added cross-language search—so you can ask in English and find answers buried in Japanese documents. For the image stuff, they've built in OCR so you can snap a photo of a whiteboard or receipt and interrogate it like any other document.

Now here's the thing: some folks on Hacker News flagged that LocalRAG isn't totally private—you can toggle between the local model and Claude for higher accuracy, which means sending data to Anthropon. So it's "local" when you want it to be, cloud when you need better results. That's either a feature or a flaw depending on your threat model. Either way, they've got a 1-week free trial going and it's available on both iOS and Android. If you've got a stack of documents you never read because opening them is already a chore, this is your cheat code.