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dessert
Asked: 2010-12-23 05:06:00 +0800 CST

What PDF viewers are available for Ubuntu?

  • 772

Every second e-mail I get suggests to download Adobe Acrobat reader, but adobe.com doesn’t provide a Linux version.

Which PDF Viewer are there available for Ubuntu?
I’m fine with partial solutions, a perfect match however would not only display PDF files, but also be able to:

  • stageless zoom (not just predefined steps)
  • open files in tabs
  • display comments added with other PDF software
  • add and save comments
  • display forms filled in with other PDF software
  • fill in and save PDF forms
  • create and save bookmarks
  • have a presentation mode
software-recommendation software-center pdf

12 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Lightweight

    • evince - the default document viewer on Gnome/Ubuntu, with support for PDF, PostScript, and a few other formats. Can fill forms, highlight text, and annotate. Normal text selection. Remembers window size and document zoom. Dark mode. [install]

    • qpdfview (see answer) - tabbed interface, can fill forms, remembers window size and document zoom. Block selection by holding Shift. [install]

    • MuPDF - extremely fast and minimalistic. Block selection by dragging with the right mouse button, search with /. Can't annotate, fill forms, sign, or anything else. Doesn't remember the zoom factor, or the window size/position. [install]

    • Zathura - extremely fast and minimalistic (uses the MuPDF ending via a plugin system). Keyboard-navigation, bookmarks, auto-reload on changes. Block selection by dragging with the left mouse button. No form filling or other features. Doesn't remember the zoom factor, or the window size/position. [install]

    • xpdf - "Xpdf is a small and efficient program which uses standard X fonts". Lightweight, but with outdated interface. [install]

    • gv - an old lightweight pdf viewer with an old interface. Size of the package is only 580k. gv is an X front-end for the Ghostscript PostScript(TM) interpreter. [install]

    Full-featured

    • okular - Multi-format document viewer (PDF, CHM, ePub, others). Requires many KDE prerequisites unless installed as Flatpak. Can easily copy text and images. May be slow and have issues with printing. [install]

    • Browsers like Firefox and Chromium derivatives also have great support for PDF viewing and form filling, but no support for annotations or signatures.

    Non-FOSS

    • Foxit Reader - View, create, convert, annotate, print, collaborate, share, fill forms and sign.

    • PDF Studio Viewer - free version can annotate, fill&save forms. Paid versions can sign, OCR, split/merge/insert/remove/rotate pages, add watermarks/header/footer/bookmarks, edit, redact, compare, optimize, batch process etc.

    • Master PDF Editor - View, create, modify, fill forms, sign, scan, OCR, annotate, split/insert/remove/rotate pages, add bookmarks. Free version allows editing text and objects, annotating, and filling forms.

    Unsupported/outdated

    • kpdf - Extremely outdated (2008) PDF viewer based on xpdf, for KDE 3. [install]
    • acroread - Adobe Acrobat Reader, no longer supported for Linux by Adobe, seems to be no longer supported by Ubuntu.
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  2. In my opinion, qpdfview is the best PDF viewer for Ubuntu. Some of its attractive features are:

    • Fast opening of PDF files.
    • Great rendering of graphics.
    • Low memory consumption.
    • Tab browsing.
    • Annotations.
    • Support RTL (Right-to-Left) language with dual page view.

    qpdfview can be installed from the official repositories with the command

    sudo apt install qpdfview

    It is also available via a Launchpad ppa.

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  3. I'm going to mention some lesser-known options: MuPDF and Zathura.

    These are not feature rich, but they are super-fast, lightweight, and keyboard-driven. It's hard to believe how fast MuPDF is.

    • 63

  4. Try okular. It's a KDE/Qt application, and it has some of the most awesome features of any reader.

    • 34

  5. Google Chrome can render PDFs, has a zoom feature, and you might already have it installed.

    I have seen some PDFs that give evince trouble (large sections of the document will be blacked out), but Chrome displays them just fine.

    • 23

  6. Foxit is a free PDF document viewer for the Linux platform, with a new streamlined interface, user-customized toolbar, incredibly small size, breezing-fast launch speed and rich features. This empowers PDF document users with Zoom function, Navigation function, Bookmarks, Thumbnails, Text Selection Tool, Snapshot, and Full Screen capabilities.

    • 16

  7. Firefox

    As of Ubuntu 18.04, Firefox 62 is, in my opinion, the best PDF viewer available on Linux.

    It's PDF support is based on the PDF.js project which is maintained by Mozilla itself and integrated in to Firefox out-of-the-box.

    Firefox comes pre-installed on Ubuntu 18.04, which makes it specially convenient.

    You can open a PDF simply as:

    firefox ~/path/to/my.pdf

    and it opens the PDF on a tab in the browser.

    Or it will open by default if you click a PDF web link with Firefox.

    Opening new documents on tabs is great, as it makes it easier to switch between multiple documents, given Ubuntu's clunky tab switching.

    Furthermore, as in most browsers, you can start writing the document name on the address bar to find it easily with auto-complete.

    As a test case, test it out with the humongous 5k page Intel x86 manual:

    enter image description here

    I consider Firefox the best due to the unacceptable downsides of other viewers I've tried so far for reading technical documents:

    Other more acceptable viewers with less important downsides:

    • Okular:
      • Ubuntu 20.10/Okular 20.8: they broke the back button... Document Viewer (Evince) history navigation
      • on 16.04 clicking on internal PDF links did not work. Fixed on 18.04, but my trust was lost.
      • requires downloading a lot of KDE stuff, but that's OK
      • jump to previous page default shortcut is Alt-Shift-Left instead of the saner Alt-Left :-) Haha, I'm OK, this is just a pet peeve.
    • 8

  8. Nobody mentioned wine + PDF-XChange Viewer? This is a great solution if you want to annotate pdf files under Linux. Detailed discussion can be found here on gnurou.org or here on blogspot.com.

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  9. Unfortunately, all of the PDF readers I've tested on Linux lack fundamental functionalities, which is rather frustrating if you are a feature-dependent user.

    Hence, instead of giving you several alternatives that you will end up finding a limitation, I will point out the drawbacks of each PDF reader I've tested so far to keep you from wasting time.

    1. MasterPDF - This is, by far, the best PDF viewer I've tested. It has a lot of features that I can have imagined, from highlights, bookmarks to tabs view. However, if you use premium features, you will get a disgusting watermark when you save if you don't have a paid version. Nevertheless, the the free-watermark tools are enough to get by (for me, at least). You can comment, highlight, and open multiple pdf's in tab view without any problem. Moreover, if you are up to pay, it is worth it because you probably won't find a better solution. However, it is a contraction to use GNU/Linux and rely on paid programs... I have notice that masterPDF doesn't have the replace text function as adobePDF has.
    2. Foxit Reader - It would be a great solution if this program weren't ridiculously buggy. This application will freeze and even break a lot of times until you get sick of it. You can find some bug references here, here, and here
    3. evince - It doesn't have the feature of adding a bookmark. Furthermore, it doesn't have tabs function as well as other basic functionalities, such as setting the default highlight color.
    4. qupdf - The highlight function is rather limiting. You cannot select the text. Instead, you must "highlight an area", which can bother you, depending on your pdf type.
    5. MuPDF - You can't make annotations. I think this argument is enough.
    6. Okular - It doesn't have the tabs feature. If you need to handle a dozen of pdf, like me, it will be a nuisance.

    PS1: I do not take through each program. Maybe some of these functionalities are present, and I didn't set them up correctly.

    PS2: I will edit this post as I test more PDF readers.

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  10. PDF Studio Viewer is a free PDF reader for Linux. It's easy to install as it is packaged as a single file with no dependencies, etc.... It has advanced viewing options (pan and zoom, screenshot, rulers & grids, thumbnail tab, digital signature tabs, bookmark tab, layer tab), printing options (preview, booklet) and search options (search within fields, annotations, recursively into folders, etc..). It can annotate PDF documents with graphical, text and markup annotations. It can fill & save interactive forms.

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