Online PDF Viewer

pdf

Read a PDF page by page and zoom in, right in this tab. Your browser opens the file itself, so it is never uploaded.

WorkspaceNothing is uploaded
Drop a PDF here to open it

About this PDF viewer

The viewer opens one PDF at a time and draws the page you are on with PDF.js, the open-source engine behind the PDF viewer built into Firefox. Your browser reads the file into this tab's memory. It is not uploaded, and closing the tab clears it.

How to use it

01

Open a PDF

Drop the file on the box above, or choose it with Select PDF file.

02

Move between pages

Use Previous and Next, or type a page number in the page box and press Enter.

03

Zoom in or out

The + and − buttons go from 25% to 400%. Fit width sizes the page to the screen again.

04

Close the tab when you're done

The viewer saves nothing. Closing or reloading the tab removes the file from memory.

What it does

  • Your browser opens the PDF and never sends it to a server.
  • Previous and Next move one page at a time, and the page box jumps straight to any page.
  • Zoom goes from 25% to 400%. On a phone, the page starts at the width of the screen.
  • Pages are drawn at your screen's pixel density, so text stays sharp on high-resolution displays.
  • Only the page on screen is drawn, so a long document opens without waiting for every page.
  • You don't need an account, and there is no daily limit.

Specifications

Specification Details
Tool PDF viewer
Opens PDF files (.pdf), one at a time
Output Pages on screen only. Nothing is exported or saved.
Renderer PDF.js 3.11 (Mozilla), loaded from the cdnjs CDN
Where your file goes Nowhere. It stays in this tab's memory.
File size No fixed limit. Very large files depend on your device's memory.
Browsers Current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, on desktop and mobile
Good to know

What the viewer does not do

It only displays PDFs. To change a file or get something out of it, use one of the other PDF tools.

No text selection or search

Pages are drawn as images, so you can't select, copy or search the text. PDF and image OCR can get the text out. It reads the text layer of digital PDFs directly and runs OCR on scans.

No password-protected PDFs

A file that needs a password shows an error instead of the document.

No editing, forms or links

You can't fill in forms, add notes or follow links inside the document.

No printing or saving

There is no print or export button. To keep pages as image files, use PDF to images.

One file at a time

Opening another PDF replaces the one on screen. To combine files first, use PDF merger.

Related PDF tools

PDF to images Render each page as a png or jpg image. PDF and image OCR Tesseract in a worker, for scans and photos of text. PDF to DOCX Editable Word document from a text-based PDF. PDF merger Combine files into one PDF in the order you set.
All document tools → Why files never leave your browser →

Frequently asked questions

No. Your browser reads the file and PDF.js draws it inside this tab. The only download is the PDF.js library itself, from the cdnjs CDN, and no request carries your document.

Not in the viewer, because pages are drawn as images. PDF and image OCR extracts the text. It copies the text layer of digital PDFs and runs OCR on scanned pages.

The usual causes are a password on the file, a damaged or incomplete download, or a file that isn't really a PDF. The viewer can't open password-protected PDFs, so remove the password in the app that created the file and try again.

There's no fixed limit. Only the page on screen is drawn, so long documents open quickly. The whole file does have to fit in your device's memory, which matters only for very large PDFs on phones.

Your file stays on your device

Your browser opens the PDF, and PDF.js draws it inside this tab. The file is not uploaded or stored, and closing the tab clears it from memory.