About Kimbaro

Small tools that make printable things, and that run entirely on your own computer.

What this site is

Kimbaro is a collection of narrow, single-purpose tools for making things you print: word searches, crossword puzzles, bingo cards, flashcards, maths worksheets, classroom seating charts, Secret Santa draws, paper fortune tellers, and a few others in German and French. Each one does a single job and tries to do it without a sign-up, a paywall in front of the basic feature, or a tour of the interface before you can start.

The tools exist because the alternatives were mostly worse in the same three ways: they wanted an account before showing you anything, they printed badly, or they were a thin wrapper around an ad page. A word search generator does not need a login. It needs to lay out a grid that survives contact with a printer.

Why nothing you type is uploaded

Every tool here runs as JavaScript inside your browser. When you type a word list, a guest list, or your children's names, that text stays in the page. It is not sent to a server, because there is no server to send it to — the site is static files, and the puzzle or worksheet is assembled on your machine and handed straight to your printer.

You do not have to take that on faith. Open your browser's developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and use any tool on the site. You will see the page and its scripts load, and then nothing further leaving your machine as you type. That is the whole design, and it is the one promise here worth checking rather than believing.

The practical consequence people notice most: the tools keep working with the network switched off, and a school or office network that blocks uploads does not break them.

How the site is paid for

Kimbaro is free to use and intended to stay that way for the core of every tool — no usage caps, no watermark on the thing you print, no account. It is funded in two ways. Some pages carry advertising. And some tools have an optional paid tier that adds features useful mainly to people doing the job repeatedly or professionally; the free version is not crippled to sell it.

There are also ready-made printable packs — collections of finished puzzles with answer keys — for people who would rather buy a hundred word searches than generate them one at a time. Those are sold through Etsy.

Who runs it

Kimbaro is run by Stefan Manfred Obenauer, based in Tai Po, Hong Kong. It is a one-person project, not a company with a support department, which is worth knowing before you write in: replies come from a person and may take a few days.

The full postal details required under German law are on the legal notice page. What the site does and does not collect is set out in the privacy policy.

Getting in touch

Corrections, bug reports and requests for tools are all welcome, and bug reports about printing are especially useful — printers vary more than anything else the tools touch. The contact page has the address.