Briefpfleger
Google Drive drive.file
To create the documents, PDFs and voice notes you capture in your own Drive folders and open them again later. The app only ever sees the files it created itself – the rest of your Drive stays invisible to it.
Briefpfleger
You're already
on Google.
Your paperwork isn't.
Mail, invoices, receipts, contracts, records, warranties – one photo is enough. Briefpfleger files every document in the Drive you already have, puts deadlines in your Calendar and matches senders to your Contacts. No second account, no second cloud, no extra subscription.
Sign in with the Google account you already use · nothing to migrate · open beta, all features free
- 1 Take a photo With your normal camera, up to ten at a time.
- 2 The text is read Every document becomes searchable – still in five years.
- 3 It lands in the right drawer Into your Google Drive – the same folders you see on your laptop.
- 4 Deadline in your calendar Straight into your Google Calendar. Apple and Outlook work too.
Application purpose
What Briefpfleger is for – and what it needs from Google to do it
Briefpfleger is a web app for digital document management. You photograph letters, invoices, receipts and contracts, the app reads them with OCR, names and files them – and stores everything in your own Google account instead of on someone else's servers. To do that, Briefpfleger requests exactly these three permissions, each one separately and only once you use the matching feature:
Google Calendar calendar.events
So a deadline you note on a document becomes a calendar event with a reminder – and moves along or disappears when you change or delete that deadline.
Google Contacts contacts
To match the sender of a letter against your existing contacts and, if you ask for it, create a new one so the address is ready next time.
Google policy compliance: Briefpfleger's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Details in the privacy policy.
No second account. No second cloud.
Nothing new to sign up for
No extra account, no extra password, no extra storage plan to pay for. You sign in with Google – the account that already holds your mail, your photos and your calendar.
Nothing to migrate
Your documents live as plain folders and files in Drive – on your laptop, on your phone, in the Drive app. Stop using Briefpfleger and everything stays exactly where it is. Remember Google Stack shutting down? Its users had to rush-export everything. Briefpfleger users would simply… keep their files.
It works with the rest of it
Deadlines go into Google Calendar, senders into Google Contacts, files into Drive. No importing, no syncing, no second search box to check.
Moments when Briefpfleger saves you
Paperwork is never a problem – until it suddenly is. Six situations almost everyone knows.
Official mail with an ADHD brain
“The letter from the IRS has been sitting unopened on the kitchen table for three weeks.”
One photo instead of avoidance: add the deadline right on the document and save it to your Google Calendar, so reminder emails find you. The difference between “oh right” and a late fee.
The family folder that thinks along
“When was that vaccination – and where is the record?”
Checkups, vaccination records, daycare contracts, report cards: one cabinet per family member. At the pediatrician you just type it into search instead of emptying drawers at home.
Secure work agreements
“My boss did approve that vacation by email …”
Vacation approvals, target agreements, promised raises: secure the commitments that concern you the moment you get them – your work inbox is gone on your last day. Today you file the attachment or a printout into the right drawer via the scan button.
Tax season without the shoebox
“That contractor invoice must be around here somewhere.”
Invoices, donation receipts, work equipment: photograph them casually all year. In spring, share the “Taxes” drawer with your accountant – and revoke access afterwards with one tap.
Renting, deposit & utilities
“At move-out, what you can prove is what counts.”
Lease, move-in protocol, photos of the apartment's condition, every utility statement – safe in one drawer. Years later, searching “deposit” is all it takes.
Warranties that don't fade
“After 8 months the receipt is just blank paper.”
Thermal paper fades – your OCR-scanned photo doesn't. When the washing machine breaks, search “washing machine” and the proof of purchase is there in seconds.
“Why not just …?”
… plain Google Drive?
Drive is the basement: everything fits, but “IMG_4711.jpg” never reminds you of a deadline. Briefpfleger puts shelves in it – categories, deadlines, full-text search, an interface built for your phone. And it all remains plain, ordinary Drive.
… another scanner app?
Most scanning apps upload your documents to their own servers and charge several times more per month for it. Briefpfleger has no cloud of its own – that's why Plus costs just €2.99, and your files continue to belong to you alone.
… Google Stack?
Google's own paperwork app was shut down in September 2024, and users had to export everything in a hurry. Briefpfleger picks up where Stack left off – but stores everything in your Drive from day one, so no shutdown can ever lock you out.
What Briefpfleger takes off your plate
The most valuable features first – the way they save you time in everyday life. And no: it's not just about letters.
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01
Snap photos – ten at a time
No need to photograph from inside the app: just get into the habit of snapping receipts and letters with your normal camera app. Later, upload up to 10 documents to Briefpfleger at once. OCR reads them in the background so they become searchable. If you set up a sorting rule for it ("Allianz ➔ Insurance"), the app suggests the matching drawer right away – otherwise you file it yourself and can convert documents to PDFs.
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02
Category: letter, invoice, receipt
After the upload you give each document its category yourself: letter, invoice, receipt, photo – or one you create. The badge then shows right in the list and you can filter by it, so you see at a glance what needs attention and what is just filing. Change it whenever you like.
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03
The contract alarm: deadlines that email you
Add a deadline right on the document – your Google Calendar does the rest: emails 24 hours before, 1 hour before, and at the due time. Miss it anyway? The app follows up the next day: “Done yet?”. For contracts, pick the cancellation notice period (1, 3 or 6 months, or your own) – the reminder reaches you well before the cutoff date, with a link to the original document. Not a Google Calendar user? Export the deadline as a calendar file (.ics) for Apple Calendar, Outlook, Samsung Calendar or whatever your phone uses.
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04
Find everything – full-text search
Because every scan is stored with OCR, you find documents by their content: search “deposit” and the lease shows up, even if the file is named something else.
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05
Save emails – and get reminded to reply
Invoices and commitments that arrive by email belong in your archive just like paper. Upload the attachment or a printout into a drawer via the scan button and add a deadline – you'll be reminded before a payment or a reply is due.
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06
Letters know their sender
Assign documents to a contact – the landlord, the insurance company, the agency. From then on, every document shows “all mail from …” at a glance, including email and phone number. Optionally, the app matches senders with your Google contacts.
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07
Sorting rules you write yourself
Tell the app once what belongs where: type a term, pick a drawer – done. Whenever “Allianz” turns up in the recognised text, Briefpfleger suggests the “Insurance” drawer on upload. Nothing is learned behind your back: every rule sits in one list you can change or delete anytime.
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08
Sharing with a take-back
Share single documents or entire cabinets with your partner or your accountant – and revoke access anytime with one tap. You always see who can currently see what.
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09
Take the address off the letter
Drag a frame around the sender block in the photo – only that area is read. Company, contact person, street, postal code, city, phone and email land in your cabinet as a finished contact. You see everything before saving and can correct any field. If there is a date in the same area, you can save it as a deadline right away.
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10
Fill out and sign forms
Fill in text fields, sign with your finger, save as a finished PDF back to Drive or print directly – without the printer-scanner loop.
Built for brains that hate paperwork
Briefpfleger is ADHD-friendly by design. The barrier is deliberately tiny: taking a photo is enough – everything else can happen later.
- Calm, warm colors instead of blaring alarms
- One clear task per screen
- The Lexend typeface, shown to support more fluent reading
What does it cost? Right now: nothing.
- Now until mid-November Open beta. Every feature free, no cap on the number of documents, no payment details needed.
- After that Everything you filed by then stays fully usable – view, search, share, add to it. The free plan adds room for 30 documents in total. Plus lifts the cap and takes over the deadlines.
If you go for Plus later, it should be because you spent months noticing it takes the paperwork off your hands – not because a deadline pushed you or a charge surprised you.
What you keep – forever, subscription or not
Briefpfleger has no storage of its own. From the very first second, your documents sit in your Google Drive, not with us. Which is why we could not take them away from you even if we wanted to:
- Every file, every PDF, every voice note – in your folders, under the names you gave them
- The entire structure of cabinets, drawers and sections you built up
- Every event already in your Google Calendar – those stay right where they are
- All of it readable without Briefpfleger: no export needed, no proprietary format, no dependency on us
Stopping doesn't mean losing your data here. It means the assistant leaves and the files stay.
Free · permanently
€0
From the end of the beta onwards
- Room for 30 documents in total (batch-uploading 10 photos at once stays)
- Photographing, OCR, categories and sorting rules
- Sections, full-text search, notes and voice notes
- Sharing with the right to revoke, converting to a Google Doc
- Noting deadlines on a document
- Storage: your Google Drive
- No reminder before a deadline runs out
- No overview of all your deadlines
Plus
€2.99/month · ≈ $3.50
€2.49 each on the two-person plan · €29.90 per year- Unlimited documents – the cap of 30 is gone
- Reminders before a deadline runs out
- Deadlines in the calendar of your choice – Google, Apple, Outlook
- All deadlines at a glance instead of document by document
- Partner plan: two people in the same filing cabinet
- Cancel anytime – and not a single file disappears
So what falls away without Plus?
Not your documents. What falls away is the thing that holds them together – the work comes back to you:
- Nobody reminds you anymore. The cancellation deadline keeps running, including on the day it slips your mind.
- No deadline overview: you're back to opening one document after another to see what's due next.
- Three apps again instead of one: Drive for the file, calendar for the date, inbox for the reply – and you do the switching.
- Your voice note stays in your Drive – but only the file name still hints at which letter it belongs to.
- From document number 31 onwards, nothing new comes into the app.
Less than a coffee per month – possible because we don't run a cloud. There is nothing we could monetize about your data: we don't have it. The price is the business model. Billed in euros; your bank converts automatically.
Briefpfleger compared
Many apps promise digital order – but almost all of them want their own account, their own cloud storage and their own subscription. Briefpfleger uses the account you already have. See the difference.
| Criterion | Briefpfleger your filing cabinet | Stack by Google discontinued 2024 | Adobe Scan by Adobe | Genius Scan scanner app | Evernote note tool |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | ✓ Free / €2.99 mo | ✗ Gone | ⚠ OCR & cloud = subscription | ⚠ Cloud = subscription | ✗ ~$100–250/yr |
| Where is your data? | ✓ Your Google Drive | ✗ Was Google's cloud – users had to export | ✗ Adobe cloud | ✓ Local / your choice | ✗ Evernote servers |
| Still maintained? | ✓ Actively developed | ✗ Shut down Sept 2024 | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Built for household paperwork | ✓ Purpose-built | ✓ Was good | ✗ Scanner only | ✗ Scanner only | ✗ Generalist |
| Deadline reminders | ✓ Yes – any calendar | ⚠ Basic | ✗ No | ✗ No | ⚠ Manual setup |
| Sharing & revoking | ✓ Whole drawers, single files – revocable | ⚠ Per document only | ⚠ Revoke only in browser | ✗ Just send the file | ✓ Notes, revocable |
| No extra account needed | ✓ Just your Google account | ✓ Google account | ✗ Adobe account required | ⚠ Basics without account | ✗ Evernote account required |
To the best of our knowledge, as of July 2026. All brand names are the property of their respective owners. Worth knowing: Google Stack and Microsoft Lens were both discontinued – with Briefpfleger you are independent of such product decisions, because your data always stays in your own Google Drive.
Frequently asked questions
Can Briefpfleger see my documents?
No. The app runs in your browser and uploads documents straight to your Google Drive. There is no Briefpfleger server your files pass through or are stored on.
I already have Google Drive – why Briefpfleger?
Drive stores, Briefpfleger organizes: automatic OCR, categories, filing suggestions from your own rules, deadlines in your Calendar, contact assignment and an interface built for your phone. The result still lives as plain folders and files in your Drive.
Is “Briefpfleger” a German app?
Yes – the name is German for “letter caretaker”, and the app was born in Germany, land of legendary paperwork. The app itself is fully bilingual (English/German), and being German-engineered for bureaucracy is, frankly, a feature.
Is this only for letters?
No. Invoices, receipts, contracts, report cards, vaccination records, important emails, even simple photos of documents – anything you'll want to find or prove later.
Can I keep emails too?
Yes – as a file. Save the attachment or print the email to PDF and upload it into a drawer via the scan button. From then on it behaves like any other letter: full-text search, deadlines, contacts, sharing.
How does the contract alarm work?
Enter the cancellation notice period of a contract (e.g. 3 months). Briefpfleger calculates the date and creates a reminder event in your Google Calendar, which emails you 24 hours ahead and on the exact day – you don't even need a calendar app on your phone. If you don't use Google Calendar, export the deadline as a calendar file (.ics) instead and open it in Apple Calendar, Outlook or your phone's calendar.
What happens to my documents after the beta?
They stay exactly where they are – in your Google Drive. Nothing gets deleted, locked or frozen. Everything you filed by then stays fully usable: view, search, rename, share, add notes. The free plan's limit only applies to adding new documents – it then has room for 30 documents in total, with everything that happens on a document: photographing, OCR, categories, sections, full-text search, notes, voice notes, sharing and noting deadlines.
Plus (€2.99/month, or €2.49 each for two people) lifts the document cap and takes over the deadlines: reminders before something runs out, and all deadlines at a glance. We announce the switch in the app beforehand – no surprise charge.
What happens if I stop using the app?
Nothing dramatic – and above all, nothing is lost. Your folders, files, PDFs and voice notes simply remain in your Google Drive, under the names you gave them. Events already in your Google Calendar stay there. You can keep using all of it with any other program, without an export and without us.
What's missing is the connective tissue: without Briefpfleger nobody reminds you of deadlines, and you go back to navigating between Drive, calendar and inbox yourself. The files stay – the assistant leaves.
Do I need extra cloud storage?
Usually not. Briefpfleger compresses photos before upload, and the 15 GB of a free Google account are enough for many thousands of letter scans.
Does it work on my phone?
Yes – it's built for smartphones and installs to your home screen like an app (PWA), no app store needed.
How do I share a folder with my accountant?
In the app, pick a single drawer or a whole cabinet – say, “Taxes 2025” – and create a share link for it. Because these are ordinary Google Drive folders, your accountant needs neither an account with us nor the app: the link opens in any browser. If they have a Google account, invite them personally instead, and the folder shows up right in their own Drive under “Shared with me.” Briefpfleger only ever grants read access, and you can end any share with one tap, any time. Whatever you file into the drawer afterward is automatically included. More on this in the sharing section.
Can I use it together with my partner?
Yes! In the sharing settings you can invite your partner and connect your cabinets. You then work in the same Google Drive folder in real time – and both get the discounted partner price (€2.49 instead of €2.99/month).
Are finger-drawn signatures legally valid in the US?
For most everyday agreements, yes: under the federal ESIGN Act and UETA, electronic signatures are binding almost everywhere in the US. A few document types (e.g. wills) still require paper – when in doubt, check the specific requirement.
The pile on the kitchen table won't shrink. Your effort will.
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