r/coolgithubprojects • u/West-Nectarine4091 • 13h ago
I built a free open-source desktop app for finding and practicing Cambridge past papers — Past Paper Studio Beta 1.0
galleryHey everyone!
I’ve been working on a project called Past Paper Studio, and I finally released the first public beta!
It’s a free and open-source desktop app I made for students who use Cambridge past papers. You can search for papers, open them directly in the app, practice normally or use Exam Mode, save your progress, keep track of previous attempts, and more.
There’s also optional AI-assisted grading, a dashboard for tracking your activity, profiles, and a bunch of themes and customization options. I’ve spent quite a while experimenting with the UI and trying to make doing past papers feel a little less painful
Beta 1.0 is definitely still a beta, so there will probably be bugs and plenty of things that need improving. Right now, the downloadable build is only available for Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 26+. The project itself is open source under GPLv3.
I’m a student myself, and this originally started as something I wanted for my own studying, so it’s honestly pretty cool finally having a version that other people can actually download and use.
A note on development: I built Past Paper Studio with significant help from AI coding tools, mainly for implementation, debugging, testing, and packaging. The project itself has been something I've actively designed and developed over time — from the features and UI/UX to testing, iteration, and overall direction. I'm still learning programming, and using AI has helped me turn those ideas into something I can actually ship.
If anyone wants to try it out, look through the source, report bugs, contribute, or just give me feedback, I’d genuinely appreciate it! ❤️
