Paste from any source
Word, PDF, web pages, e-mail: pasted text is cleaned up and converted to the font and style chosen when you started the thesis. Italics, bold and footnotes stay where they are.
Version 0.10 · Free · macOS · Windows · Linux · 8 languages
Your path,
your thesis.
Gradus is a writing assistant designed for people writing a thesis: paste from any source and the text takes on your style, chapters renumber themselves, citations and bibliography follow your department’s style, and when you are done you export to PDF, Word or a website.
- No account
- Works offline
- Your files stay yours
Features
Everything you need to reach your defence
A wide, distraction-free editor in the middle, a sidebar with everything else.
Chapters that renumber themselves
Drag a chapter up or down: numbering, table of contents and cross-references update automatically. Next to each chapter you see its pages and words.
Images with verified licences
Search millions of free images: the licence is verified at the source and the attribution is already in the caption. Images without a clear licence are flagged. Built-in crop, rotation, brightness and contrast.
Links, videos and cross-references
Insert external links, videos and images. Link any point of the thesis to any other: “see section 3.2” stays correct even after you move chapters around.
Voice: listen, dictate, rehearse
Have your thesis read to you by a male or female voice, dictate instead of typing, answer random questions about your text and rehearse your defence: Gradus analyses pace, pauses, tone and level of uncertainty.
PDF: import and archive
Integrate a PDF’s text or attach it as locked original pages, and export the thesis to PDF/A for submission.
Notes and resources at hand
Jot down notes and drag them into the text when the time comes. Save links to the sources you use most, always visible in the sidebar.
Free headers and footers
Thesis title, page number, name, academic year: choose what to show and where, page by page, with different rules for the title page and the chapters.
Dedication and acknowledgements
Dedicated fields in the options, laid out automatically in the right place, without wrestling with page breaks.
Export to every format
Paginated PDF with a table of contents and real page numbers, Word with working footnotes and cross-references, a single-file website, Markdown and plain text. In one language or all of them together.
Proofreader in every language
Spelling, grammar, punctuation and style while you write, in more than 30 languages, free with LanguageTool: click the underlined word and pick the correction. Personal dictionary for names and technical terms.
Writing assistant
Synonyms, antonyms and idioms, rephrased sentences, advice to strengthen an idea and real-time suggestions on the sentence you have just written. Works with Claude or with free AI services, even on your own computer.
Custom dictionaries in every language
Load spelling, synonym and antonym dictionaries from a file or a link: LibreOffice Hunspell, thesauri, CSV tables, your course’s term lists. The spell checker also works offline and synonyms come in any language.
No repeated words
As you write, words used too often and repeated or very similar sentences turn orange: a click opens at least five alternatives, and the one you pick does not come back.
Thesis protected with a password
Encrypt the thesis file — text, images and attachments — with a password you choose. A recovery code reopens it if you forget; no one else can read it.
Automatic cloud backup
Choose your cloud folder (OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive) and on every save the thesis is copied and synced online, safe.
Review with your supervisor
Send chapters to your supervisor, get approval and lock them with an “Approved” watermark. A content fingerprint guarantees nothing changes, and a log tracks everything.
One thesis, many languages
Write in your own language: up to nine other languages are translated automatically in the background, with DeepL, Microsoft, Google or MyMemory and revision by artificial intelligence. If one service stops, the next one takes over, and a notice explains how to fix it. Every translation can be corrected by hand without touching the original.
Typesetting: the final version
Double confirmation, saving and freezing with an unlock code: the thesis for the print shop can no longer change by mistake. Draft exports stay free and do not affect your statistics.
Direct printing
The whole thesis, the open chapter or the chapters you pick, with headers and footnotes, without going through export.
Gradus speaks 8 languages
Menus and manual in Italian, English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic, with a right-to-left interface in Arabic.
Automatic bibliography
Paste a DOI, an ISBN or a web address and the source fills itself in; import from Zotero and BibTeX. Five styles: Italian humanities, Chicago, APA, MLA, ISO 690.
Footnotes
Footnotes numbered by chapter, with Ivi, Ibidem and short form applied automatically. In the PDF they really sit at the foot of the page; in Word they become Word footnotes.
Paper colour
Any colour or temperature, from ivory paper to cool white, with a picker like the ones in graphics software. On screen only, or also in the PDF, in Word and on the web.
Never lose work again
Automatic saving to the thesis file, a backup always ready and, when you close, the question “Save your changes?” if anything is unsaved.
Statistics and charts
The time you really spend writing, the days and hours when you work best, how your word count grows, the readability of the text, language by language too. From creation to binding, with a PDF report.
QR codes for print
Every link and video in the thesis becomes a QR code in the footnotes or in an appendix, in the style of the thesis: readers of the printed copy open the content with their phone.
Try it now
A small demo in your browser
Drag the chapters (or use the arrows), add one, type or paste formatted text: it is converted to the chosen font and the statistics update.
The slow cityCh. 1
Jane Smith · Academic year 2025/261
What’s new in version 0.10
What’s new
New
No repeated words
As you write, words used too often and repeated or very similar sentences turn orange: a click opens at least five alternatives, and the one you pick does not come back.
New
Thesis protected with a password
Encrypt the thesis file — text, images and attachments — with a password you choose. A recovery code reopens it if you forget; no one else can read it.
New
Automatic cloud backup
Choose your cloud folder (OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive) and on every save the thesis is copied and synced online, safe.
New
Review with your supervisor
Send chapters to your supervisor, get approval and lock them with an “Approved” watermark. A content fingerprint guarantees nothing changes, and a log tracks everything.
0.9
Custom dictionaries
Load Hunspell dictionaries (.dic and .aff), LibreOffice and Firefox extensions or term lists, from a file or a web link: those words are no longer flagged and checking also works offline.
0.9
Synonyms and antonyms in every language
LibreOffice thesauri, CSV tables or synonym lists: results appear in the Assistant, even for inflected and plural words. A collection of free dictionaries can be added in one click.
0.9
Write to the author
A new Contact page with a form: choose the reason, write your message and attach a screenshot or a PDF up to 3 MB. Your email is used only to reply to you.
0.8
PDF/A export
Your thesis as PDF/A-2b, the archival format for submission, in one click from the preview or Typography; compliance checked with veraPDF.
0.8
PDFs in your thesis: text or attachment
Import a PDF as editable text or as locked original pages, with the notice “Original document attached, unmodified” at the bottom of each page.
Coming soon
In the works
ODT and EPUB
Direct export for LibreOffice and e-readers.
Lists of figures and tables
List of figures, list of tables, glossary and acronyms, always up to date.
University templates
Title page, margins and line spacing according to your university’s rules, in one click.
Versions
Snapshots of the thesis, comparison between versions and restore.
Review with your supervisor
Comments and tracked changes.
Formulas and tables
Equations in LaTeX syntax, tables with numbered captions and cross-references.
Export
From the registrar to the print shop, all the way to the web
One document, many formats and many languages. Title page, table of contents, footnotes, bibliography and headers stay consistent from the bound print to the online version, in every language of the thesis.
- PDFSubmission and print
- DOCXWord, Pages, LibreOffice
- HTMLWebsite
- MarkdownPandoc, Obsidian
- TXTPlagiarism checks, counts
- PDF/ASubmission, archive
- ODTLibreOffice
- EPUBe-readers and Kindle
Download
Free, forever, on every system
Version 0.10.0 · October 2026 · interface in Italiano, English, Deutsch, Español, 中文, 日本語, Русский, العربية
macOS
Universal: Apple Silicon and Intel
macOS 11 or later
Windows
Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit
installs without administrator rights
Linux
x86-64 · Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora
and any other distribution
User manual (PDF)About 72 illustrated pages, with screenshots in the manual’s language: installation, settings, languages, spell checker, custom dictionaries and assistant, chapters, images, bibliography, footnotes, voice, PDF and PDF/A, statistics, printing, export, Typesetting, shortcuts.
On first launch macOS and Windows may show a warning because the app is not yet signed with a paid certificate: instructions for opening it are in the manual, chapter “Installation”.
Free guides
Guides to writing your thesis
Practical examples of structure, formatting, citations, PDF/A and the defence, useful with any software.
- How to write a thesis: a step-by-step guide with examplesFrom choosing a topic to submission: the stages of a thesis, a sample 16-week schedule, a typical table of contents and mistakes to avoid.
- Thesis formatting: margins, fonts, line spacing and page numbersTypical settings for formatting a thesis (A4 or Letter, margins, 12 pt, 1.5 or double spacing), a sample title page and tips for double-sided printing.
- Thesis citations and bibliography: APA, Chicago, MLA and ISO 690 examplesThe same source cited in APA 7, Chicago, MLA 9 and ISO 690, with in-text and footnote examples, Ibid. and a method for never losing page numbers.
- Thesis in PDF/A: what it is, why universities ask for it and how to create itWhat the PDF/A format required for thesis submission is, the difference between PDF/A-1b, 2b and 3b, how to check it with veraPDF and the most common errors.
- Thesis defence: a 10-minute outline and common committee questionsHow to prepare your thesis defence or viva: a sample 10-minute outline, the questions committees ask most and how to practise out loud.
- Spell checker and custom dictionaries for your thesis, in any languageHow to check spelling, grammar and style in your thesis, add the technical terms of your field and use Hunspell dictionaries, thesauri and your own word lists.
Frequently asked questions
FAQ
Is Gradus really free?
Yes. Gradus is free on macOS, Windows and Linux, with no subscriptions, no advertising and no limits on the number of pages or theses.
Do I need an internet connection?
No. Gradus works completely offline. The connection is only needed to search for images, check their licence, fetch a source’s details from a DOI or ISBN, and for automatic translation if you write the thesis in several languages.
Do the proofreader and the assistant work in every language?
The spell checker (LanguageTool) is free and covers more than 30 languages, Arabic included; for other languages, or offline, you can load custom dictionaries (LibreOffice Hunspell, word lists) in any language. Synonyms, antonyms and idioms come free from Wiktionary in Italian, English, German, Spanish, French and Russian, and from thesauri you add yourself; by connecting an AI service (even a free one such as Google Gemini or Groq, or Ollama on your computer) the assistant works in every language, with rephrased sentences and real-time suggestions.
Can I write the thesis in several languages?
Yes. Choose the language you write in and add up to nine languages: Gradus translates them in the background as you write. It works straight away and for free with MyMemory, which however has a daily limit of about 5,000 characters: entering your e-mail raises it to 50,000, and with a free DeepL key (500,000 characters a month) or Microsoft key (2 million) it is enough for the whole thesis. If a service stops, Gradus moves on to the next one or to the connected artificial intelligence, and a notice explains how to fix it. Keys stay on your computer.
Which languages is Gradus available in?
Menus and manual are in Italian, English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic. You choose the language on the start screen or in the settings.
Where are my files saved?
On your computer, in a single project file that you can copy, move or put in the cloud folder you already use. No account, no third-party servers.
Can I import a thesis I already started in Word?
Yes. Gradus imports DOCX, PDF, Markdown, HTML and plain text, recognises headings and turns them into chapters, and applies the font chosen for the thesis. A PDF can also be attached as it is, with locked pages.
How does the image licence check work?
When you import an image from an online source, Gradus reads its licence metadata (for example from Wikimedia Commons, Openverse or Unsplash), tells you whether it can be reused and under what conditions, and prepares the caption with the correct attribution. For images without licence information it warns you before inserting them.
Will the registrar accept the PDF?
Yes: besides the PDF for reading and printing, Gradus saves the thesis as PDF/A-2b, the archival format many universities require for submission, checked with the veraPDF validator.
Which citation styles are available?
Italian humanities and Chicago (with footnotes and automatic Ivi and Ibidem), APA 7, MLA 9 and ISO 690. You can change style at any time: citations, footnotes and bibliography update themselves.
Why do macOS or Windows show a warning on first launch?
Gradus is not yet signed with a paid developer certificate. On a Mac open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway; on Windows, on the SmartScreen screen, choose More info → Run anyway.
Can I protect the thesis with a password?
Yes. Gradus encrypts the .gradus file with a password you choose: text, images and attachments. When you protect it you get a recovery code to keep, which reopens the thesis if you forget the password. No one, not even the author of Gradus, can open it without the password or the code: there is no back door, so keep both safe.
How do I get chapters approved by my supervisor?
With the Review feature: pick the chapters, Gradus exports them to a file for the supervisor and opens a ready email (with a link to the cloud folder or the files to attach). When the supervisor approves, enter the code they give you: Gradus checks the chapter has not changed, locks it and stamps an “Approved” watermark. Everything stays in a log you can export to PDF. It is optional: turn it on only if your thesis needs it.
Under which licence is Gradus distributed?
Under the PolyForm Strict License 1.0.0: you may use Gradus free of charge for any noncommercial purpose — study, research, personal use — and in schools, universities and nonprofit organisations. Commercial use, redistribution, modifications and derivative works are not permitted. The full text is in the Licence section of the legal notice.
How can I contact the author or report a problem?
From the Contact page, linked at the bottom of every page: choose the reason, write your message and, if needed, attach a screenshot, a PDF or your thesis file up to 3 MB. Your email is used only to reply to you and is not stored on the site.