6 ms·

Ask HN: What PDF viewer do you use?

14 points by iNic 4y ago

I am a mathematician currently doing my PhD. I am working on a mac and have become a bit frustrated with preview as a PDF viewer. What good (and preferably free) viewer do you recommend?

Tomte 4y ago
I've found Okular to be the best, even on Windows. You don't need the whole KDE-on-Windows, they offer standalone installers on their web site.
dredmorbius 4y ago
It depends on context, platform, and needs. I'm virtually always reading, and occasionally processing / mining text. I'm not working with forms or editing PDFs. For Linux, xpdf in all its Athena Xt marvelousness is still a good basic reader with a small footprint and good keybindings. Where it's not sufficient, I'm turning to Zathura (from Suckless) by preference, otherwise Okular (KDE). On OSX, Preview seems tolerably good. I frequently read (or process) PDFs in the terminal. Popplar libraries / tools are excellent for this, including pdfinfo and pdftotext. The latter's been extended to provide a PDF viewer as a Bash function: pdfless () { pdftotext -layout "$1" - | sed 's/\f/\n\n ----------------- ----------------- <page> ----------------- ----------------- \n\n\n/g' | ${PAGER:-less} -S } That swaps a pagebreak marker for the '^L' characters otherwise displayed. On tablets, I've found the Onyx BOOX Neorader (a multi-format e-book reader_ quite good, though I've also used FBReader, PocketBook, and KOreader (the latter is praised by heavy users, I've found it confusing and unintuitive in occasional encounters). I've used the FoxIt PDF reader, though not in years, probably a decade. Haven't touched Adobe in something close to 20 years, possibly longer.
snowstormsun 4y ago
okular
sloaken 4y ago
I use Foxit reader, on windows not mac. I switched to them a number of years ago. Only problem is when they have an upgrade, they try and get you to do the '30 day trial' of their PDF editor.
97-109-107 4y ago
I'm not too happy with any PDF viewer on Linux. Zathura was good, but with pdfs other than A4 papers it got unwildly. I've since switched to qpdfview, but zooming and panning feels sluggish. I noticed that a lot of PDF viewers have distinct "modes" and switching between them seems never obvious. Zoom mode, text-selection mode.
- dhruvkar 4y ago
  Have you tried Okular?
jessriedel 4y ago
On Mac: PDF Guru is basically unknown, but I find it great. Great annotation tools, clean UI, tabbed viewing. For academic papers, I keep them in Zotero and use the new built-in PDF reader to read and annotate them.
nimar 4y ago
As a PhD student, if you are using Linux I'd highly recommend you to check out Sioyek (https://sioyek.info/ https://sioyek.info/) - works great for annotation/academic research. It's made for reading technical books/papers and has quite a quiver of functionality supporting exactly that. Was discussed on HN twice already, last thread can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395649
notRobot 4y ago
Windows: Firefox and SumatraPDF. SumatraPDF supports lots of formats, super convenient and lightweight: https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/ https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/
yakubin 4y ago
What issues do you have with Preview? Answering this question might make it easier to help you find an alternative.
- pwgentleman 4y ago
  I’m also curious to know. Preview is pretty much the only tool I really miss whenever a switch from Mac to Linux for a while, and it works really well for annotating and basic editing (moving pages around)…
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- iNic 4y ago
  The main annoyance is that some of the settings are global. I usually have many PDFs open at the same time and you can't hide the sidebar / show chapters for just one PDF, it always changes for all of them. Also there are not tabs. There is no easy way to jump back and forth between two pages that might be far apart. And I wish I could peek links to other places in the same PDF.
- angry-tempest 4y ago
  It randomly deletes all of the comments in the file. I had this happen at least four times. Preview overwrote the file, deleted all of my comments, which were at least a couple of hours of work.
alophawen 4y ago
macOS: Skim (free lean macos pdf reader) Windows: Foxit PDF reader (free non bloated stuff) Linux: Okular or gnome Preview
iNic 4y ago
Because some people asked I will make this its own comment. The main annoyance I have with Preview is that some of the settings are global. I usually have many PDFs open at the same time and you can't hide the sidebar / show chapters for just one PDF, it always changes for all of them. Also there are not tabs. There is no easy way to jump back and forth between two pages that might be far apart. And I wish I could peek links to other places in the same PDF.
- leobg 4y ago
  Well, there are tabs. Just click on Windows > Merge All.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ss108 4y ago
Microsoft Edge
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
freemint 4y ago
Firefox, QPDF, Edge
nip 4y ago
I’m developing https://simplePDF.eu https://simplePDF.eu on my free time. It’s more of a PDF editor / annotator than viewer but it may suit your needs nonetheless: You can open multiple multiple tabs in your browser to view the same PDF at different chapters for example Some additional details: - entirely free - everything happens locally in your browser: the documents you load are never sent to the server
siproprio 4y ago
PDF-XChange Editor, on Windows. They’re really good, and the free version works very well for annotations and reading. I only discovered this software because the company I work for adopted it as the pdf solution company wide. Link: https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor
ajstarks 4y ago
Linux: mupdf, Windows: Sumatra PDF

14 points by iNic 4y ago

I am a mathematician currently doing my PhD. I am working on a mac and have become a bit frustrated with preview as a PDF viewer. What good (and preferably free) viewer do you recommend?

Tomte 4y ago

I've found Okular to be the best, even on Windows. You don't need the whole KDE-on-Windows, they offer standalone installers on their web site.

dredmorbius 4y ago

It depends on context, platform, and needs. I'm virtually always reading, and occasionally processing / mining text. I'm not working with forms or editing PDFs. For Linux, xpdf in all its Athena Xt marvelousness is still a good basic reader with a small footprint and good keybindings. Where it's not sufficient, I'm turning to Zathura (from Suckless) by preference, otherwise Okular (KDE). On OSX, Preview seems tolerably good. I frequently read (or process) PDFs in the terminal. Popplar libraries / tools are excellent for this, including pdfinfo and pdftotext. The latter's been extended to provide a PDF viewer as a Bash function: pdfless () { pdftotext -layout "$1" - | sed 's/\f/\n\n ----------------- ----------------- <page> ----------------- ----------------- \n\n\n/g' | ${PAGER:-less} -S } That swaps a pagebreak marker for the '^L' characters otherwise displayed. On tablets, I've found the Onyx BOOX Neorader (a multi-format e-book reader_ quite good, though I've also used FBReader, PocketBook, and KOreader (the latter is praised by heavy users, I've found it confusing and unintuitive in occasional encounters). I've used the FoxIt PDF reader, though not in years, probably a decade. Haven't touched Adobe in something close to 20 years, possibly longer.

snowstormsun 4y ago

okular

sloaken 4y ago

I use Foxit reader, on windows not mac. I switched to them a number of years ago. Only problem is when they have an upgrade, they try and get you to do the '30 day trial' of their PDF editor.

97-109-107 4y ago

I'm not too happy with any PDF viewer on Linux. Zathura was good, but with pdfs other than A4 papers it got unwildly. I've since switched to qpdfview, but zooming and panning feels sluggish. I noticed that a lot of PDF viewers have distinct "modes" and switching between them seems never obvious. Zoom mode, text-selection mode.

dhruvkar 4y ago
Have you tried Okular?

jessriedel 4y ago

On Mac: PDF Guru is basically unknown, but I find it great. Great annotation tools, clean UI, tabbed viewing. For academic papers, I keep them in Zotero and use the new built-in PDF reader to read and annotate them.

nimar 4y ago

As a PhD student, if you are using Linux I'd highly recommend you to check out Sioyek (https://sioyek.info/ https://sioyek.info/) - works great for annotation/academic research. It's made for reading technical books/papers and has quite a quiver of functionality supporting exactly that. Was discussed on HN twice already, last thread can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395649

notRobot 4y ago

Windows: Firefox and SumatraPDF. SumatraPDF supports lots of formats, super convenient and lightweight: https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/ https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/

yakubin 4y ago

What issues do you have with Preview? Answering this question might make it easier to help you find an alternative.

pwgentleman 4y ago
I’m also curious to know. Preview is pretty much the only tool I really miss whenever a switch from Mac to Linux for a while, and it works really well for annotating and basic editing (moving pages around)…
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
iNic 4y ago
The main annoyance is that some of the settings are global. I usually have many PDFs open at the same time and you can't hide the sidebar / show chapters for just one PDF, it always changes for all of them. Also there are not tabs. There is no easy way to jump back and forth between two pages that might be far apart. And I wish I could peek links to other places in the same PDF.
angry-tempest 4y ago
It randomly deletes all of the comments in the file. I had this happen at least four times. Preview overwrote the file, deleted all of my comments, which were at least a couple of hours of work.

alophawen 4y ago

macOS: Skim (free lean macos pdf reader) Windows: Foxit PDF reader (free non bloated stuff) Linux: Okular or gnome Preview

iNic 4y ago

Because some people asked I will make this its own comment. The main annoyance I have with Preview is that some of the settings are global. I usually have many PDFs open at the same time and you can't hide the sidebar / show chapters for just one PDF, it always changes for all of them. Also there are not tabs. There is no easy way to jump back and forth between two pages that might be far apart. And I wish I could peek links to other places in the same PDF.

leobg 4y ago
Well, there are tabs. Just click on Windows > Merge All.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ss108 4y ago

Microsoft Edge

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

freemint 4y ago

Firefox, QPDF, Edge

nip 4y ago

I’m developing https://simplePDF.eu https://simplePDF.eu on my free time. It’s more of a PDF editor / annotator than viewer but it may suit your needs nonetheless: You can open multiple multiple tabs in your browser to view the same PDF at different chapters for example Some additional details: - entirely free - everything happens locally in your browser: the documents you load are never sent to the server

siproprio 4y ago

PDF-XChange Editor, on Windows. They’re really good, and the free version works very well for annotations and reading. I only discovered this software because the company I work for adopted it as the pdf solution company wide. Link: https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor

ajstarks 4y ago

Linux: mupdf, Windows: Sumatra PDF