Get started with PDFApps

Install

PDFApps is available on every major platform. Pick the one that matches your system:

• Windows 10/11: download the installer from the Download page
• macOS 10.14+: download the macOS zip and drag to Applications
• Ubuntu / Snap: sudo snap install pdfapps
• Fedora: sudo dnf copr enable nelsonduarte2809/pdfapps && sudo dnf install pdfapps
• Arch / Manjaro: yay -S pdfapps
• Any Linux: download the AppImage and run it

For OCR and advanced compression you also need Tesseract and Ghostscript installed on your system. The Windows installer offers to install both automatically.

First steps

When you open PDFApps for the first time you see the workspace with a sidebar of 15 tools on the left. Click Open PDF in the toolbar (or drag a file onto the window) to start working.

The app remembers your last theme, language, and recently opened files between sessions. Configuration is stored in ~/.pdfapps_config.json.

Open a PDF

There are five ways to open a PDF:

1. Click the folder icon in the toolbar (or press Ctrl+O)
2. Drag a PDF file (or several) onto the window
3. Click Recent files in the toolbar to reopen a previous file
4. Pass the file path as a command-line argument: pdfapps myfile.pdf
5. Set PDFApps as the default PDF reader and double-click any PDF in your file manager

Multiple PDFs open in tabs, so you can switch between them like in a browser.

Navigation

The viewer uses continuous scroll — all pages are rendered as you scroll, so there's no "next page" button to click. Use the toolbar controls for jump-to-page, prev/next, and zoom.

• Page input: type a page number and press Enter to jump there
• Arrows ‹ ›: previous and next page
• Zoom: Ctrl+scroll, or the − % + buttons in the toolbar
• Fit: reset zoom to fit the window width

Search (Ctrl+F)

Press Ctrl+F to open the search bar. Results are highlighted in real-time as you type. Use the up/down arrows to jump between matches, or press Escape to close.

Bookmarks / TOC

PDFs that have a table of contents (also called bookmarks or outline) show a clickable side panel on the left of the viewer. Click any heading to jump to that page. The bookmark icon in the toolbar toggles the panel — it's hidden for PDFs without an outline.

Night reading mode

Click the moon icon in the toolbar to invert the colors of the rendered pages — white backgrounds become dark and black text becomes light. Useful for reading at night without strain. Night mode is independent from the app theme, so you can have a light app with night-mode PDFs or vice versa.

Presentation mode (F5)

Press F5 or click the TV icon to enter fullscreen presentation mode. The page fills the screen with a black background. Use arrow keys, Space, PgUp/PgDn, Home/End to navigate. Press Escape to exit.

Split & Merge

Split: click Split in the sidebar, choose your PDF, then add rows defining page ranges and output names. Click Run to generate one PDF per range.

Merge: click Merge, drag PDFs into the list (or use the file picker), reorder them with the up/down buttons, and click Run.

Compress

The Compress tool uses a 3-pass pipeline (Ghostscript → PyMuPDF → pikepdf) and keeps the smallest result. Three quality levels are available:

• Extreme — 72 DPI, 40% quality, grayscale. Best for archival or email.
• Recommended — 150 DPI, 65% quality. Good balance.
• Low — 300 DPI, 80% quality. Minimal visible loss.

Ghostscript is optional but recommended for the "Extreme" level.

Encrypt & Decrypt

Set both an owner password (for editing rights) and a user password (for opening). To remove encryption from a file, switch to "Decrypt" mode and enter the existing password.

OCR (Text Recognition)

Use OCR to extract text from scanned PDFs. Requires Tesseract installed. Supports Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, and German. The output is a new PDF with an invisible text layer over the original images, so the file looks identical but you can search and select text.

Convert

Convert PDF pages to:

• PNG / JPG — choose the DPI (72, 150, or 300). One image per page.
• DOCX — Word document with headings, images, and formatting preserved.
• TXT — plain text extraction.
• PPTX — PowerPoint presentation with one slide per page (page rendered as image).
• XLSX — Excel workbook with one sheet per page, text blocks as rows.
• HTML — HTML file with semantic headings and styled text.
• EPUB — E-book with one chapter per page for readers and Kindle.

Import to PDF

Convert other document types to PDF. Supports batch import and drag-and-drop reordering:

• TXT — plain text with automatic word wrapping.
• Images — PNG, JPG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, WebP, GIF. One image per page.
• Markdown — headings, lists, bold, and italic formatting.
• DOCX — Word documents with paragraphs and tables.
• PPTX — PowerPoint slides rendered to PDF pages.
• XLSX — Excel sheets laid out as PDF tables.
• HTML — web pages with headings, paragraphs, and lists.
• EPUB — E-books converted to searchable PDF.

N-up (page layout)

Combine multiple PDF pages onto a single sheet — useful for printing or saving paper.

• Layouts: 2, 4, 6, 9, or 16 pages per sheet.
• Paper size: A4, A3, or Letter.
• Orientation: portrait, landscape, or auto (picks the best fit).

Page numbers

Add page numbers to any PDF with full control over format and placement.

• Positions: top-left, top-center, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-center, bottom-right.
• Formats: 1, Page 1, 1/10, 1 of 10.
• Options: starting number, font size, skip pages, remove existing numbers first.

Visual Editor

The editor has 9 modes selectable from the right panel:

• Redact / Censor — draw a black rectangle to permanently hide content
• Add Text — click anywhere to insert text with custom size and color
• Add Image — drag a rectangle to insert an image (PNG, JPG)
• Highlight — color overlay on selected text
• Note / Comment — sticky note with a popup balloon
• Fill Forms — auto-detects PDF form fields and lets you fill them
• Edit Text — click existing text to modify it
• Signature — draw, type, or import a signature; drag to place
• Select — text selection and copy mode

Use Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y to undo/redo. Click Apply and Save to write all pending edits to a new PDF.

Keyboard shortcuts

FAQ

Troubleshooting