Features
Your exhibits don't need the courthouse Wi-Fi
Courthouse networks are their own genre of problem. A guest SSID with a captive portal that logs you out every twenty minutes. A basement courtroom with one bar of cellular. A security policy that blocks the domain your document store happens to live on. None of it is your fault and all of it is your problem at 9:02am.
Exhibit Room is a desktop application and it is local-first. Your case documents stay on your computer. The PDFs, the annotations and the trial data are all on the machine in front of you, so an exhibit opens at the same speed whether the building has internet or not.
What lives on your machine
Everything you put into the app: the imported PDFs, every mark you draw on them, the exhibit numbers, names, descriptions and statuses, and the trial details themselves. None of it is uploaded. There is no cloud account behind the product, no sync service, and no copy of your documents held by us to be subpoenaed, breached or shut off.
Settings shows the data location on disk, which matters for two practical reasons: it tells your IT team what to include in the firm's backup policy, and it tells you what to encrypt. Full-disk encryption on a trial laptop is worth the ten minutes it takes to switch on.
When the app does touch the internet
Three times, and none of them are while you are presenting. Once when you activate your license. Occasionally afterward, to re-check that the license is still valid. And when you choose to install an update, which is never forced on you and never happens mid-trial because you did not ask for it.
The re-check is deliberately forgiving. If the app cannot reach us because you are in a courtroom with no signal, it keeps working. Exhibit Room does not lock in the middle of your work because it is offline, which is the whole reason the check is designed the way it is.
Preparing for a day with no signal
- Activate the license at the office, on the actual machine you will carry
- Open the trial once on that machine and page through a long exhibit
- Install any pending update the day before, not the morning of
- Export a backup file to a drive you carry separately
- Turn off notifications and system updates on the trial laptop
What local-first costs you
It is a trade, and it is worth being plain about the other side of it. There is no cloud sync, so a trial does not appear on your other machine by itself. There is no shared workspace, so two people cannot edit one set at the same time. There is no web access from a hotel iPad.
Moving a trial between computers is a deliberate act: export a single file, carry it, import it. That is covered on trial backup and transfer, and how teams divide work around it is on Exhibit Room for litigation teams. If you want a machine checklist for the courtroom itself, courtroom laptop setup is the practical version.
Offline and privacy questions
Are my case documents uploaded anywhere?
No. PDFs, annotations and trial data are written to your computer and stay there. Nothing about the contents of a document leaves the machine.
Can I install on a laptop that never goes online?
The license needs a connection once to activate, and occasionally afterward to re-check. Between those moments the app is fully usable offline.
What if a license re-check falls during my trial?
Nothing visible happens. The app does not stop working because it could not reach the internet, and it will re-check later.
Where exactly is my data stored?
Settings shows the data location. Point your backup tooling at it and include it in whatever encryption your firm requires.
Does it run on Windows, macOS and Linux?
Yes: Windows 10 or later 64-bit, macOS 12 Monterey or later on Apple Silicon and Intel, and Linux as an AppImage or .deb.
Install it and pull the network cable
No credit card required · Works offline · No subscription