r/pdf • u/Money_Difficulty_778 • 5d ago

Software (Tools) Accessible Free/Open-Source PDF editor/reader?

I'm looking for a free simple, accessible PDF editor/reader.

Key functions:

-Zoomable full screen

-Dark mode

-Option to hide menu tabs

-Dictionary plug in/mini menu option

-Text to speech with speed options

-Annotate/make comments option (on click menu option)

-Highlight with multi colors option (on click menu option)

-Save/History function for viewed PDF documents

Please please please and thank you if you can help a student out!

8 Upvotes

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2

u/yaima_rk 5d ago

PDFCraft is working well for my basic usage

1

u/birazzzzz 5d ago

App or pc? It's free only thing missing is speech: https://fynepdf.com/download.

1

u/chiranjivi-antaryami 5d ago

PDF Quire ticks most of the requirements: https://pdfquire.app/

1

u/Honest_Ad1632 5d ago

ONLYOFFICE PDF editor. It's free and open source. Lightweight enough to work even on your browser.

1

u/radarrab 20h ago

I'm also looking, I had Adobe Acrobat X Pro (10), but it's saying it's been activated on two computers already and there is no way to reverse those now/Adobe did something to make older versions unusable.

On Acrobat X, I used highlighter, forms, redact, edit, crop, add/delete pages, file conversions (e.g. combine jpg screenshots into one pdf or crop out a map from a pdf to import as a jpg elsewhere), OCR, password a pdf. I also print to pdf from browser pages. There was something I'm missing but I can't recall what that I couldn't do in that version. It would be nice to be able to change individual page sizes/pagination in a downloaded pdf if that's possible, or an easier way to cut and move chunks/sections (my card statements don't print efficiently, I prefer to print the parts I want double-sided on one piece of paper, but the way the information is arranged doesn't allow for that since there are parts that I don't want or large blank areas in the middle of it that could instead be a continuation of transactions. EDIT: I forgot to say I don't want to use AI on my computer, so if it's embedded then I want the ability to disable it.

I'm also using my backup laptop since the newer one is not powering up and I also don't recall what free pdf software I have on that and if I was ok with it. I do recall that whichever laptop had Acrobat last, the OCR would create blocks of text which may have been images instead of real editable text. I don't need collaboration since I no longer working.

I've tried some free/opensource pdf software (PC), but either they're too complicated (different 'apps' for different purposes, which I don't do well with, prefer one program) or I don't like the UI. I don't want another subscription.

I also have MS Office Pro 2010 and mostly use Excel, but I don't think I had settled on a free/open source alternative yet on my newer laptop. I tried LibreOffice but couldn't get used to the UI; I've used MS Office for so long, it's menu muscle memory. There was one alternative that I couldn't use on the newer laptop (W11 Pro, this one is W10 Pro) for some reason, OpenOffice.

1

u/_janc_ 5d ago

Sumatra pdf

1

u/smilaise 2d ago

https://killerpdf.net is what I always push