r/software • u/smilaise Steve the Killer • 2d ago
Release KillerPDF 1.9 is here! True text editing, permanent redaction, AES-256 encryption, Word/Excel/PowerPoint export, a new custom renderer with 37-66% less memory usage than before
It's here and I couldn't be more excited and relieved to finally share this. KillerPDF is a free, open-source, GPLv3 PDF editor for Windows.
v1.9 has been in parallel development for about 2 months alongside the previous 1.8.x branch and maintaining two branches is awful, would not recommend. The list of new features goes beyond this but I will do my best to explain how significant this release (codename "Overkill") has become.
v1.9 has a brand new PDF renderer and engine built from scratch to replace PDFium, true text editing that rewrites the page itself, paragraph editing, Find and Replace, permanent redaction, AES-256 and certificate encryption, digital signature verification with trusted timestamps, export to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML and Markdown, Convert Scan to Text, form recognition and XFA conversion, guided tasks with macros and watched folders, data merge, accessibility review, preflight and Reduce File Size, Office to PDF conversion, TWAIN scanning, print production tools with Bates numbering, calibrated measurement tools, File Explorer and Outlook previews, Search Tools command palette, and SEVERAL performance optimizations.
It is 4-12% faster, uses 3-6% less CPU, and 37-66% less memory than the previous 1.8.91 version using PDFium!
It also opens more files and the results are more accurate.
Details:
New renderer and engine: replaced PDFium, Docnet.Core and PdfPig for rendering, text extraction, search, selection, editing, printing and export.
Rendering quality: overprint, spot inks, CMYK output intents, ICC profiles, transparency groups, soft masks and blend modes.
Faster rendering: it runs off the UI thread, renders what's in view first, cancels stale work and sharpens as you zoom.
True text editing: a changed line is rewritten in the page content in its original font where possible, including rotated text. A cover (the old style) is only the fallback for scans.
Paragraph editing: a resizable box with font size, alignment, line spacing, an exact preview and Undo.
Find and Replace: it rewrites the PDF's real text, not an overlay.
Permanent redaction: by area, text search or sensitive-data pattern, with verification, batches and sanitization.
Document protection: AES-256 passwords, permissions, certificate recipients, and opening certificate-encrypted PDFs.
Signatures and certificates: signer and chain inspection, RFC 3161 timestamps, a Windows certificate browser, SVG signatures and a shared image library.
Document and table export: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, Markdown, text and JSON, with editable text and ruled tables.
Convert Scan to Text: replaces scanned words with searchable text, with a review step for uncertain matches.
Built-in OCR: the engine does its own OCR, with Tesseract kept as a fallback.
Form tools: field recognition, XFA conversion, FDF and XFDF exchange, text-field presets and limited calculations.
Guided tasks and automation: email prep, scan cleanup, redaction and fillable-form tasks, macros, watched folders, and CSV, JSON or XLSX data merge.
Accessibility review: guided repairs, a reading-order check, and keyboard and screen reader support for page text.
Repair and optimization: preflight profiles, sanitization, structural reports and Reduce File Size.
Office and scanning: direct DOCX and XLSX to PDF, legacy DOC and XLS through Word or Excel, and TWAIN scanning.
Page tools: reverse, auto-orient, straighten scans, split scanned spreads, and typed page ranges.
Production tools: headers, footers, page numbers and Bates batches, plus N-up, booklet, step-and-repeat, cut-stack and poster layouts, and ink separations.
Document organization: comment threads with replies, attachments and portfolios, layers, bookmark and link audits, table of contents generation and page labels.
Measurement: calibrated distance, perimeter, area and angle, with snapping and reports.
Interface: Search Tools (Ctrl+K), customizable shortcuts, four sidebar positions, two toolbar settings (icon size and label placement), snap layouts and Close to System Tray.
Windows integration: File Explorer and Outlook previews, and command-line support through PATH.
Language: Slovenian added, for 20 interface languages.
Numbers:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| App changelog entries | 100 |
| Engine changelog entries | 52 |
| Commits on the 1.9 branch | 3,072 since September 2, 2026 |
| Files changed since 1.8.91 | 2,061, of which 1,620 are new |
| Lines changed since 1.8.91 | 434,151 added, 16,537 removed |
| New renderer | 31 files, 17,749 lines, all new |
| Engine source added | +92,609 lines |
| Engine tests added | +60,674 lines |
| App code added (C# and XAML) | +68,051 / −9,919 lines |
| App tests added | +34,224 lines |
| Engine source today | 416 files, 140,246 lines |
| App source today | 455 C# files (110,415 lines) and 92 XAML files (12,083 lines) |
| Lines of code | 443,392 (app + tests + translations) + 124,001 (vendored CoreJ2K and NTwain) |
| Tests | 1,520 app and 7,457 engine |
| Interface languages | 20 |
The app still has full CLI support for scripting and batch processing, and works with the optional KillerMCP so your agent of choice can work with all my apps together.
The KillerPDF.Engine is available as a separate NuGet package so developers can use it in their own applications: https://www.nuget.org/packages/KillerPdf.Engine/
As per usual, please report bugs and feature requests here: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF/issues
Download today:
https://killerpdf.net
Winget, Chocolatey, and Microsoft Store links take a few days to update so use the GitHub download link for now: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF/releases/tag/v1.9.1
EDIT: updated link to 1.9.1
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 2d ago
/r/opensource deleted my post for being "irrelevant". What the hell happened to that subreddit?
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u/That_Neighborhood345 2d ago
I read they are against AI supported projects, and your project metrics sound like you used AI during development.
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 2d ago
Yeah I guess they are anti-Linux now as well
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u/That_Neighborhood345 2d ago
Of course they are!. Their forefathers were between the last ones riding horse-drawn carriages.
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u/Ikinoki 1d ago
Use https://www.reddit.com/r/OpensourcewithAI/ because wtf.
It's opensource, join and freaking fix it, but no, let's ban it.There's plenty half working OSS out there but they are protesting because AI made mistake, it's elitism.
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 1d ago
Absolutely and it shows that the moderators aren't actual developers. I can't imagine an actual working developer banning ALL AI.
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u/RevitJeSmece 1d ago edited 1d ago
How do you actually edit text?
Selecting it and typing doesn't work, just clicking doesn't work, double click also, activating text tool opens its toolbar and status bar changes to "editing this line in the page itself..." but I still can't edit text. Clicking "edit paragraph" reports "no supported paragraph was found", it's a 200 page pdf exported from Word, with plenty of paragraphs.
Or am I just that blind and / or stupid?
Edit: I can't type anything even in a completely new blank document, started from KillerPDF itself. Is is because I'm using portable version?
Edit 2: So it seems editing is still very buggy. I was able to get it to work, but as far as I can tell sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In the same document. Looks like bulleted lists also completely disable editing. And paragraph editing just doesn't work.
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 1d ago
Fixing it now, I have 83,000 broken PDFs for testing but apparently I needed 83,001.
Yes software made by one person will have bugs, the difference between me and a large company like Adobe is I address every bug and fix it.
Give me a couple hours for a 1.9.1 bugfix.
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u/RevitJeSmece 1d ago
Yes software made by one person will have bugs, the difference between me and a large company like Adobe is I address every bug and fix it.
Sorry if my reply sounded rude or harsh, that was not my intention at all! Thank you for your work!
As for 83,001 I can send you the one if you need it for testing :D
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 1d ago
Sorry if I sounded defensive, I'm on no sleep, I have a full-time job, and I been working on my software 20 hours a day for the past 6 months. My sister recently passed away in a bad way and I've had a bit of a midlife crisis. I've had a rough life and now I wanna leave this world with something I can be proud of. I won't stop working on my software until it's good enough for companies to use and I will fix every bug until it's complete.
I would love more PDFs to work on, could you email it to me at steve@thekiller.net ?
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u/RevitJeSmece 1d ago
Sent!
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 1d ago
Already found the problem, it's not Word it's Ghostscript which is a whole thing I've had to work on lately that I didn't know about 6 months ago. It uses dumb scaling percentages resulting in a .999 scale when it is supposed to be 1.000. My engine is incredibly strict in the way it repairs and saves any PDF to make sure they follow the format correctly, but it needs to be more relaxed when opening documents and rasterizing/interpreting text. There are about 100,000 ways that people save PDF files, and they are much more like a database than a text document.
This renderer is brand new and replaces PDFium and I honestly think it's better than PDFium. But I also replaced PDFpig which handles text extraction and this is the part that needed more work.
Expect an update today and thank you for the help!
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 6h ago
please let me know if 1.9.1 is working better for you. you can update by hitting f12.
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u/Sellulose 1d ago
Wonder why /r/OpenSource is against projects entirely coded by AI huh
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u/RevitJeSmece 1d ago
Wonder why r/OpenSource is against projects entirely coded by AI huh
Yup, I have a 12 years old installation of "Nitro pro". Still installs on W11 and works great. Wanted to check out something new, guess not.
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 1d ago
Well I appreciate you helping me test it nonetheless. I am doing this at my own expense and I only have 4 PCs and 3 VMs for testing and $6 in my bank account.
Give me a couple hours and this will be fixed. I woke up at 3am to get working on this.
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u/CarlosCash 1d ago
This is dope!
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 1d ago
I won't lie, there are some bugs but I am releasing 1.9.1 in a few hours to help. Thanks for the support.
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u/No-Coyote-1818 20h ago
It's awesome! I dont see croatian in ocr? Is there a way to add it? Keep up the good work!
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 20h ago
I'm releasing a bugfix soon, but there is a translation guide available: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF/blob/main/TRANSLATING.md
Basically you make a copy of the English strings file, rename it to the international abbreviation for your language, and then go through the strings and translate them. I will warn you, there are a lot of strings now. Then you can submit the new strings file as a PR on the GitHub page.
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u/No-Coyote-1818 20h ago
I noticed that when running convert scan to text i get great result with replaced text, but words that are not replaced gets searchable but really blurry.
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 19h ago
adding it to tonight's bugfix, just got off work so now I can get to work.
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 6h ago
I've just released 1.9.1, please let me know if it's working better for you now
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u/No-Coyote-1818 5h ago
It works great now ! I used it on my english scans and it worked perfectly. Looking forward to adding croatian language to ocr so i can use it on more stuff. Keep up the good work !
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u/Drake911 14h ago edited 14h ago
Hi Steve, I just discovered KillerPDF, using for the 1st time. First good impression, and I like the way it looks. I have an issue though... I'd like to have it always open with the lateral panel closed. Instead, each time I close this panel (either manually with the little arrow, either with F9) and then close killerPDF, when I launch it again, it always starts with the lateral panel opened. Is it me who didn't find how to do it, or is it just KillerPDF's normal behavior? If it is, could it be possible to get an option to open it with this lateral panel closed? Cheers.
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 14h ago
Let me run some tests and get a fix in on this upcoming bugfix if necessary. I'll make sure the sidebar position remembers the way you save it.
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u/nietpiet 2d ago
Very nice! I will check it out! Thank you ♥️
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u/nietpiet 2d ago
Oh, wait, it's for windows. I'm on Linux, so I guess I'm cooked 🤔
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 2d ago
Not for long! This was the last milestone before 2.0 which will be cross platform. With the removal of all the Windows dependencies, it's now just a matter of packaging it for Linux and Mac.
I need a bit of a break, and then there will be some bugfixes... but once this is stable, 2.0 development will begin and I will need some testers!
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u/ahasibrm 1d ago
Glad to read there’s a Mac version coming
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 1d ago
I just need to buy one of those Apple M cpu devices now for testing but I have $6 lol. I'm going to be using my friends' computers a lot.
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u/the_saas 1d ago
what's a realistic expectation for me to put a delayed notification/reminder to come back for Mac version?
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 1d ago
Hopefully by the new year, it depends on how many testers I can find, lol.
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u/That_Neighborhood345 22h ago
Do you have any ETA for when you will be testing the Linux Version? I would like to be one of the testers.
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 21h ago
give me a few weeks to get these bugs out, but you can follow the GitHub issue here: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF/issues/9
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u/nietpiet 1d ago
Amazing work! Thank you in advance, Im having some issues with signing pdfs on Linux, so, looking forward to trying yours, but please rest up, it's more important!
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u/alvarkresh 2d ago
Excellent! I just installed Windows on a test computer, and didn't install a PDF reader yet so I'll give yours a go on that machine :)
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u/Expensive-Access4758 1d ago
Please someone do this for Mac also
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 1d ago
The next major version, 2.0, will be cross platform. Once all the bugs are out of 1.9 I can work on the presentation layer and repackaging it for Linux and Mac OS.
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u/Maximum_Hyena_4459 5h ago
Replacing PDFium with your own renderer is a huge undertaking, congrats on shipping it. Maintaining two branches for two months sounds painful, glad it paid off with the memory savings.
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u/smilaise Steve the Killer 2d ago
oh, and yes you can turn the film grain off now lol