PDF Viewer - Annotation Expert Reviews

by Rambo8649

I use PDFViewer to read pdf textbooks, that’s it 1) My biggest gripe is the subscription. I won’t pay a subscription for viewing PDFs, that’s ridiculus. There should be something in the middle, a fuller featured low cost one time pay version. Some of us don’t need most of the pro features. Some of us don’t need any editing features whatsoever..we just need a few of the basic UI features you have unfairly used as a lure to get us into a subscription. A few simple features is all I want, like turning off the annoying horizontal thumbnail bar at the bottom of the page, are only available with a subscription. What? 2) the performance of PDFViewer with large pdf files is not as buttery smooth as I would like. FYI, I’m using a 2018 iPad Pro, a very powerful device. Is the limitation hardware or software? I don’t know. Other than that, there are a few features that are unique to PDFViewer. One lets you easily jump back and forth between two pages you visited no matter how far apart, for free.

by Dr.Costard

The reason I gave PDFViewer one star is because how it handles app switching on iPad Pro.

When annotating a PDF file in PDFViewer, I cannot safely switch to a different app. If I ever try to use the screen bottom app switcher, inevitably, I will touch the page slider bar at the bottom of PDFViewer. Then the page I'm viewing will inevitably jump to other pages.

This design flaw is so annoying. I have to stop using PDFViewer and go back to PDF expert for better user experience.

I will update this review to 3 stars if the developers fix the design flaw I mentioned above. (Update: It's fixed now. So the review is updatedto 3 stars as I promised.)

And BTW, the line drawing function in PDF expert is far more superior than PDFViewer: Lines in PDF expert will automatically align to horizontal or vertical direction. And the lines will even align to themselves. These whole bunch of features are missing in PDFViewer. Yet PDFViewer charges us yearly? Broken deal.

I will update the score to 4 if PDFViewer charge once, and offers the same experience and functionality as PDF expert. And update it to 5 if PDFViewer has the same wonderful Mac OS version as PDF expert.

Till then, PDFViewer is overpriced and sub-functional.

by PhelineCat

Pretty straight forward, even for the sleep deprived. Always remember this: movers are morons and will act as though they're the decision makers and entitled to decide it's appropriate to hold expensive lamps by the finial and not pack the bathroom… hence, too little sleep but I found this easier to manage than some I'd approached refreshed.

I feel sad for Rachel, the student since she lost double. Taking notes on a computer makes a student have to work a lot harder to learn the material than students who put pen to paper... Losing hand written notes would put a student on level with one who uses a device so that's a big loss. Pity.

by IIIIIIllIllIIIllI

First of all, I really like the design of PDFViewer vs Adobe or other PDF viewers out there. I like it’s simplicity and what the free option is offering.

However, there’s some minor but rather inconvenient details.
1. I use pencils with multiple colors for taking note, and I really want to have multiple pens in the tools windows of different colors. Right now, I have to open the color windows, find that new color down there, and then click again to close it, which takes more time than I used that color (to write the pronunciation of a foreign word). Can you enable customizing tool bar? I just want to pin multiple pens to the toolbar.
2. Word selection boundary is strange. When I long press to select a phrase (in Japanese), it often select 5-10 words on that line, and the boundary is somewhat unclear, and I had to adjust both sides. Other apps seem to do better in this regard, so I guess you can call the same API provided by iOS? I’m not sure if this is some unintended behavior of some Smart Selection guess algorithm that falls apart in Japanese language, but sticking to the basic one or two character seems a much better solution to me.

Thanks for reading through it, and I hope this will make it to the developers.

by B Aly

Wow! First your response time to any issue is reliable and fast. I had some questions on an older version and you helped resolve them. BTW— the problem was me. Sincere thanks for not making me feel “non-savvy.” I am totally impressed with your product and every update make a useful product better! My husband watches me use it and now he wants to use it for his work as a physicist. It is convenient for research documents as well as I gotta run and don’t have time to read this article. There a tons of reasons to use PDFViewer that maybe I wouldn’t use, but could. Totally happy and impressed.

by Hema D

I love using PDFViewer for note taking in my classes. It’s got an easy to use interface, different note taking options like pens, highlighters, text etc. It is very responsive with my Apple Pencil as well. I have very little trouble importing any documents to PDFViewer .
I had problems with not viewing the annotation icon at one point and emailed them, and I got a response within hours, and the issue was fixed the next day. Super happy with PDFViewer and its creators!

by NewiPadUser2

Great flexibility in terms of viewing PDF documents. I love the ability to scroll vertically as well as horizontally, and to shift how the pages flow into one another as you scroll. Has a ton of options and customization with regards to highlighting that other apps don’t have.

Works awesome with Apple Pencil. I don’t have to hold down on the word before the highlighting starts, so it’s much quicker that way. An improvement over adobe for sure.

by I Like To Calculate

I love the decision to base PDFViewer on Apple's standard file browser. While it might seem a tiny bit awkward a first, the power of this approach becomes apparent the more one uses PDFViewer .

As for PDF reading, it's got most everything I could wish for and is now my go to PDF reader.

My only complaint is that I wish there was some way to contribute financially to PDFViewer's development. I don't use the subscription as it's overkill for my needs, but if there was a tip jar, or some other way to send a few dollars to the developers I would gladly do that.

by Notjoelel

As a student I am in need of an app that allows me to navigate a files’ native table of contents. I have textbooks in PDF format and being able to navigate table of contents is vital,and PDF Viewed allows for that - for some reason this feature isn’t available to the other apps I’ve tried. PDFViewer also allows you to access files directly from whatever cloud storage you may use (iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive) and saves any changes or annotations that you make in PDF Viewer. Functionality with Apple Pencil is seamless. I recommend it to all students.

by Leowill3

The two main features that are a boon to my productivity are: [1] PDFViewer opens right to the iCloud drive selection screen, and [2] highlighting, shape drawing, and pen drawing tools are all accessible 1 tap away from each other. Both of these are the most important features to me and allow me to be more productive than using PDF Expert (that is not to say that isn't an amazing app as well, only that PDF Viewer suits my use case much better which is scientific/academic where I just want to read, highlight, and annotate papers and PDF images quickly).

by DCmusic 615

By far, this is the best free PDF viewer I’ve used when it comes to annotating pages with handwritten (or especially Apple Pencil-written) notes. I like it better even than the official Adobe Acrobat iPad app with professional annotation tools enabled via Creative Cloud subscription. In this free PDF Viewer app, for which I paid zero dollars, I can get to annotating tools faster, there are more tools like a separate highlighter and shape maker, and there is a variable-weight/width pen tool which looks much more natural on the page than the simplistic pen tool in Adobe’s app.

by Jonb-42

I have tried myriad PDF editors annotators and viewersFor iOS and this is the best one hands-down. There are many reviews online that say PDF expert is the best but I beg to differ. PDF expert cannot handle all the types of annotations you may encounter when dealing with a document that comes from a more fully fledged PDF annotator on a PC or Mac. PDF viewer on the other hand can.

Also PDF viewer can access the file system of the iPad and so I can open the files that are already being synchronized via dropbox or one drive etc. many other apps seem to use their own version of a file system which hides the native system from view which is very frustrating. In addition to this it renders PDFs fast.

Five stars for sure.

by Blumenkaft

As a student with a limited budget, I use this for reviewing and annotating multiple articles at once. It’s crazy that anyone has anything negative to say about PDFViewer; the free version is bare bones, but if you only need to read, highlight and get a summary of your annotations, it’s perfect. Smooth integration with iCloud.

I’d like to support the developers and would not hesitate to make a one-time purchase to upgrade PDFViewer with few more features. If I ever get to the point where I use this daily, will definitely upgrade to a Pro subscription.

by Jeffnate

Update: They fixed the bug and got back to me quickly. Thanks!

I appreciate how many features are included in the free version of PDFViewer, and I like seeing the developers respond to these reviews to continually improve PDFViewer .

My biggest complaint is that every time I use PDFViewer —even if the same PDF is still open from last time—I have to reset the viewing and scrolling preferences. It defaults to two pages per view and horizontal scrolling, so I have to manually set it to one page at a time and vertical scrolling. It doesn’t remember my changes.
Is this feature available in the pro version, or is it just a bug? Would love to see it fixed, but otherwise PDFViewer is doing what I need it to.

Like other users, I would love to see a middle-quality version that’s a one-time payment instead of monthly. If I end up needing pro features, I’m probably going to find a different app that doesn’t charge me every month. I’m a grad student, and I can’t afford that!

by K.Cart3r27

Let me say this, I have to use PDFs daily for my job. We were recently using Adobe to edit and upload PDF documents for our customers, but Adobe has a major glitch which would delete all information inputted into the forms which were gone and lost for ever; yes 4 hours of inputting data on 13 pages, gone just like that. Adobe took a long time to update and fix this issue which our company decided to delete from all our iPads and use a different program.

I found this program and it is amazing. The flow of the documents the uploading information just perfect. If i ran into a issue customer support would respond right away with a fix or a resolution.

GREAT PROGRAM!!

by Jthm78363

Update (4/12): Prompt response from the developer, working on resolving my concerns (which are likely setup-specific).

I have been enjoying PDFViewer very much! I particularly benefit from the ease of synchronization of reading many research articles across multiple devices. However, it seems that the "sync reading position" feature does not work between iOS/iPadOS and macOS (i.e. all mobile devices sync with one another, but neither syncs with the Mac version in either direction). Perhaps this is a problem with my setup. But if it is not - I would love to see this remedied, it would save me a lot of time! Otherwise, everything is fantastic.

by Pcernek

PDF Viewer is a very high quality app that I would recommend for anyone taking notes in college/school.

I use PDF Viewer for taking notes on my iPad Pro in graduate school, and I am thoroughly impressed with PDFViewer . Compared to other note taking apps I have used, PDF Viewer has been superior in almost every way. My favorite features are that I can search the PDF text for quick reference, all of my notes sync quite easily with external cloud storage, and backing up my files on an external hard drive is quite easy as all documents remain in PDF format. Additionally, when I have questions, the PSPDFkit team is quick to respond. All interactions I have had with PDFViewer and PSPDFkit have garnered 5 stars.

by SwnB

This is the best PDF app ever, despite its occasional random crashes that annoy the crap out of me. I’ve used countless PDF apps both on iOS and MacOS, some of them really expensive, but this is really beyond what I expected for a free app. The sync between the iPad app and the Mac app is seamless most of the time and the responsiveness is fast and reliable (again, most of the time). Also love that most of the necessary features are available on free, no ads, no constant nagging for paid subscriptions like some other “free” apps out there, honestly how do you guys make money? I’ve recommended PDFViewer to so many of my friends in academia and hope to enjoy PDFViewer for years to come! Thanks for the great work!

by MeeMee 77

I love PDFViewer . It is my main application for graduate school. I upload my reading lists, articles, presentations, and books and just start annotating. It allows me to add pages anywhere within a document to either import an images of a diagram or just for additional note taking. Creating hyperlinks is another great feature.
However, i have 2 requests. 1) a customisable toolbar for both full screen and split-screen modes. A customisable toolbar would help streamline my experience and save me a lot of time. 2) remove the page view from the bottom. It is annoying, it keeps taking me to a different page whenever i accidentally touch it while annotating texts.

by Zhaohui Zhao

I can’t believe PDFViewer!!!!!!!

When my friend first recommended it to me, I almost dismissed it, as PDFViewer is free and because I’ve never came across any reader app that is even reasonably good and free at the same time.

But when I, doubtably, installed and started using it, PDFViewer BLOWS MY MIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First and foremost, and I’ve been searched for an app with this feature on iPad FOREVER — direct access to my PDFs from the iCloud Drive without copying them into PDFViewer and the synchronization of my annotation to the original files, AND I’VE FINALLY FOUND IT HERE!!!!! ON A FREE APP!!!!! WHAAAAAAT???????!!!!!!!!

Although its paid competitor also have this feature but it’s hidden deep and clearly you are not encouraged to open PDF directly from iCloud Drive, but in PDFViewer, the first I see is a browser interface for iCloud files, AMAZING!!!!!

And the annotating experience is just so natural and intuitive: the animation for applying highlight is just sublime, and adding a note or comment is just buttery smooth.

I am simply not gonna use another app for my PDFs on iPad henceforth.

And honestly I’ve never expected to find the perfect PDF reader to be a FREE APP!!!!!!!!

Thank you developers for such an amazing experience!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!!!!!!!

by Hogvung

this is the only app I’ve found that can scroll continuously HORIZONTALLY! This make reading large PDF book with lots of graphics (e.g. textbook, coffee-table book) so much more natural; and this will make the pages fill the screen all the time, no more of that annoying huge dead spaces that make an already small screen even smaller. there is a version of PDFViewer for Mac also, but not for Windows; so I’m still on the look out for such one for Windows. PDFViewer has (or had) a bug though, regularly, when you zoom in a page it would jump to another (pretty far) page, which makes reading impossible. but it seems that they have fixed this bug in the latest update.

by Jeremy Tchao

I can’t believe PDFViewer!!!!!!!

When my friend first recommended it to me, I almost dismissed it, as PDFViewer is free and because I’ve never came across any reader app that is even reasonably good and free at the same time.

But when I, doubtably, installed and started using it, PDFViewer BLOWS MY MIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First and foremost, and I’ve been searched for an app with this feature on iPad FOREVER — direct access to my PDFs from the iCloud Drive without copying them into PDFViewer and the synchronization of my annotation to the original files, AND I’VE FINALLY FOUND IT HERE!!!!! ON A FREE APP!!!!! WHAAAAAAT???????!!!!!!!!

Although its paid competitor also have this feature but it’s hidden deep and clearly you are not encouraged to open PDF directly from iCloud Drive, but in PDFViewer, the first I see is a browser interface for iCloud files, AMAZING!!!!!

And the annotating experience is just so natural and intuitive: the animation for applying highlight is just sublime, and adding a note or comment is just buttery smooth.

I am simply not gonna use another app for my PDFs on iPad henceforth.

And honestly I’ve never expected to find the perfect PDF reader to be a FREE APP!!!!!!!!

Thank you developers for such an amazing experience!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!!!!!!!

by Jdonroberts

This is one of the best apps I’ve used and it’s free. I’ve been using it for about 6 months. We use Dropbox to share our files. I annotate PDF construction drawings and my co-workers can open and read the sticky notes. I’ve had to contact support a couple of times and without fail they have always replied and been very helpful with solving my problems. I’ll have to admit most of the problems were operator error. I can’t believe it’s free, I felt guilty using PDFViewer for all my editing, annotations, adding sheets, and creating PDF’s so I upgraded to the PRO version. Actually the free version is all I needed.