And I'm making https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/prerelease daily builds with seamless auto-updates so that people interested in latest features can get them as soon as they are implemented (I've already added .avif support, and commands to re-open last closed file and clear history)
I have now been on Linux for quite some time but I remember how happy I was when I found as a teenager your fast no bs pdf reader for my not at all powerful old windows machine.
The sheer joy of kicking Adobe Acrobat reader out of the system tray...
I'll add to the list of thank yous, I've been a SumatraPDF user for years and never looked back. It's everything I love in a program: light, fast, does one job perfectly. Kudos from Belgium ! :)
I don't know whether this would be you or mupdf -- I suspect the latter -- but I'd really like to be able change the line spacing (i.e. the "leading") in the epub reading mode.
I find line spacing to be one of the larger factors contributing to readability (or lack thereof).
Thank you for such an amazing product, I have been using Sumatra everywhere I can for years. In an era of bloated software you showed there is another way.
Thank you very much for adding font recognition in a second properties window. I've been able to rid myself of Acrobat for months now. My only critique would be that the font list would be better kept in the first properties window. One Ctrl+D is more elegant than two.
Excellent lightweight and pure Win32 software, always finds its way into the system whenever I need to visit MS-land. Never change, and please never do a "modern" electron.js hell rewrite, Sumatra PDF is an exemplar of something that does its job and asks only for what it needs.
This reader along with 7Zip, IrfanViewer, FreeCommander, Gvim (and some others) comprise the old faithfuls.
Along with Sumatra, agreed that IrfanView is an incredible gem. It will take pretty much anything you throw at it, and is incredibly lightweight. When doing animations, I can load up a folder with several thousand images and just hold down the right arrow key to get a preview of the animation via IrfanView.
Also almost the only app I could find to just open ebook files the traditional document file way - without adding them to a library (I hate the fact every ebook file viewer insists to maintain a library). Calibre's viewer executable is an alternative - it can open files without adding them to the Calibre library.
> better support for epub files using mupdf's epub engine. Adds text selection and search in ebook files. Better rendering fidelity. On the downside, might be slower.
Finally. SumatraPDF was my main driver for epub files even before this, but it's so good to finally get search.
Best PDF reader. For me biggest feature is not locking file while reading. I can't image developing some PDF with Jasper with any other PDF reader. 10 years ago people looked at me as some god when I show them how to test jasper rendering PDF with JUnit and SumatraPDF and not deployng whole app to Websphere and clicking through it. Decresed time to see changes from 4-5 minutes to 2-3 seconds.
Along with VLC and Firefox one of the first programs I install on a fresh windows installation. I've been using this instead of Adobe for years. And as has been mentioned it reads a lot of other formats. Its fast and clean and easily the best reader software out there.
If you want support, publicity, bug reports, etc. just change the name to SumatraEPUB or SumatraEbook + "which can read most formats including pdfs" + Android app. It will skyrocket the downloads.
I had to revert back to 3.3, the EbookUI settings were removed in 3.4 and you cannot use custom fonts when reading EPUB files. It's unusable for me like this.
That's good to know, but it is way too much, besides I hate all kind of virtualization (Docker, Wine, VMWare), hate it. The only one I tolerate ins QEMU 'cause I can play with my toy OSes there. From time to I design a plan to make some sort of Sumatra version for Linux, but it is probably more bite that I could chew.
Even worse, at least in a emulator you are making native calls, with wine you need to pray the "compatibility layer" + the OS + the program play nice. I have never had a pleasant experience with it, every program sooner or later crashes with some obscure message about a missing DLL or something. I use Linux, but if a software is Windows only I simply discard it from my choices.
I don't use Windows software either, but you've been told that it runs with an error, and how to fix that error. Your past experience with other software is irrelevant.
Last time I tried Sumatrapdf I couldn't find a good way to quickly turn dark mode on/off, or keep a sidebar that showed me all of my annotations inline, or make 'popup note' annotations. Has any of it changed now?
this is simply the best thing to happen to a windows pc. seriously, adobe reader is ABSOLUTE trash as compared to sumatra. every time i see someone's pc, i involuntarily install sumatra, remove adobe reader
So you remove a full-featured product, albeit a bloated one, for one that has very limited functionality. So next time they go to sign a PDF or whatever they are going to say... hmmm, this person uninstalled something I actually use.
At what point will Adobe designers realise that most of us would rather experience knife wounds than use Adobe Reader?
It is an objectively worse experience to almost every single PDF reader including Chrome. I'd rather get stabbed every time I use SumatraPDF than use Adobe Reader.
I agree with you on Adobe Reader but I think Adobe doesn't care one bit. Somehow they have managed to entrench themselves in the enterprise document workflow.
It’s been over a decade since I used adobe reader (currently a Linux user, and sumatra user when I had windows). And I honestly don’t remember what made adobe reader bad (I just remember that it was bad). Do you care to explain what it is specifically about adobe reader that is so bad compared to Sumatra?
Adobe Reader XI reached end-of-life of on 15 October 2017. [0] It has not received security updates for nearly five years.
Security updates are very important for a PDF reader, particularly Adobe's. [1] I would advise you not to use it, unless it is to open trusted PDF files you created yourself.
What does it add to plain mupdf (on which it seems to be based)? I love the clean, elegant interface of mupdf, and I can't imagine how could you ever improve on that.
More formats supported, more view options, remembers the history of files, command palette to quickly access all functionality, way more keyboard shortucts, customizable keyboard shortucts, more customizability of the UI.
Maybe I shouldn't comment on the competition but mupdf on windows is very bare bones.
For Windows XP 32-bit, the last supported version is 3.1.2. There is a guy[1] who hacks on later releases to make them work on XP. His latest is version 3.3.3.[2]
This app's still going?!? Man, this was my official PDF/eBook/CBZ reader when my life revolved around cheap PC laptops, Win2K/Classic theme, and lots of low-footprint apps like Foobar2000, uTorrent (pre-monetization), etc
We've been using Sumatra at my work in New Zealand for the past year.
I moved back to Windows after years of Linux use. I was shocked at how slow PDFS opened. So, I started looking for a replacement. Sumatra was by far the best.
As a cross-platform solution for simple PDF files, I just use Firefox. But SumatraPDF reads much more than just PDF files, and for everything else, I haven't found a good, cross-platform alternative for the platforms I usually use (Linux, Windows and macOS).
According to your recent experience, how does LibreOffice Draw compare to Foxit PDF editor?
I remember the days when I needed a collection of PDF-editing apps because some PDFs only rendered correctly in some specific editor and other PDFs in another editor. Today 100% of PDFs seam to be editable in LibreOffice Draw without any problems.
it is not rendered as good as in Foxit, but LOD will do the job for free, I use them for different purposes - Foxit for viewing (the basic version I use can't edit PDF directly), writing comments and maybe stamping with my transparent signature, LOD for editing content of PDF which I really had to use for COVID nonsense, there are still differences in rendering depending on PDF
> edit illegally required COVID PCR test certificates to satisfy morons blindly following illegal requirements as later confirmed by Czech supreme court (all mandates were illegal))
Edgy! And complete nonsense, of course. Legal requirements, for one, but more HN-related: Do you really think that you and your PDF editor can fake the authorities' signature in that QR code?
There was no QR code. You could have proof of recovery issued by any EU doctor just with his stamp/signature or you could have also PCR test result without QR code.
Nothing edgy about talking facts - discrimination of unvaxxed was ILLEGAL, mask mandate was ILLEGAL, all fines are INVALID, both findings of Czech supreme court, some of us seen it through and din't bend our backs for convenience.
Still no released support for screen readers [1]. The developer seems confused about whether muPDF should have the support [2] (accessibility is the responsibility of the GUI - it needs to provide an accessibility tree for any manually rendered text).
"SumatraPeter" is just a user with "Sumatra" in the name not the developer. The actual developer's comment is:
> For standard windows controls (like buttons or menus) Windows provides the necessary code to support accessibility features used by screen readers etc. Everything else (like PDF text rendered on screen) needs custom code. This code is not easy to write and there is a lot of other code that needs to be written.
Based on your first link it seems they started working on support as described and could use some help finishing it.
And you can now customize keyboard shortcuts.
And created https://sumatrapdf.canny.io/feature-requests so that you can vote on features I should implement next (people really want the dark theme).
And I'm making https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/prerelease daily builds with seamless auto-updates so that people interested in latest features can get them as soon as they are implemented (I've already added .avif support, and commands to re-open last closed file and clear history)