Hey everyone!
I just released Beta 1.0 of Past Paper Studio, a free and open-source desktop app I’ve been building for students who practice with Cambridge past papers.
I’m looking for people willing to try the first public beta and give me feedback on bugs, usability, performance, or anything that feels confusing/broken.
What can you do with it?
- Search and browse Cambridge past papers
- View papers and mark schemes directly in the app
- Practice papers with built-in answering and drawing tools
- Use Exam Mode for a more realistic timed attempt
- Optionally use AI-assisted grading
- Save and resume attempts
- View your previous activity and attempts
- Flag papers/questions for later
- Customize the app with themes, fonts, profiles, and more
What I especially need tested
Since this is the first public beta, I’d love feedback on things like Exam Mode, PDF rendering, drawing/annotation tools, saving and resuming attempts, AI grading, general UX, crashes, and installation.
Even small things like “this button was confusing” or “I expected this to work differently” are useful!
Current requirements
macOS 26+
Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)
Unfortunately, there’s no Windows/Linux build yet. The current macOS build is also not Apple-notarized, since this is an early free beta, so the GitHub release explains that limitation.
A note on development
I’m a student myself, and PPS originally started as something I wanted for my own studying.
I built it with significant help from AI coding tools, mainly for implementation, debugging, testing, and packaging. I’ve been actively designing and developing the project over time — including the features, UX, testing, iteration, and overall direction. I’m still learning programming, and AI has helped me turn those ideas into something I can actually ship.
The entire project is open source under GPLv3, so you can also inspect the source if you’re interested.
GitHub / Download
Past Paper Studio on GitHub
If anyone tries it, I’d genuinely appreciate hearing what worked, what broke, and what you think should change.
Thanks! :)