We’ve always been fans of the free Foxit PDF reader here, but when I came across an open-source PDF viewer that was even more lightweight and simple, I immediately switched.

The Sumatra PDF viewer comes as one single .exe file, and is about as minimal as you can get… it launches in less than a second for me, and the clean interface is great. 

But that’s not the best part… it’s got shortcut keys that are very similar to Gmail and Google Reader. (Except j and k are swapped for some unknown reason)

Here’s the list of shortcut keys: 

• space – scroll by screen
• backspace – scroll back by screen
• k – scroll by one line
• j – scroll back by one line
• Down – scroll by one line
• Up – scroll back by one line
• n – goto next page
• p – goto previous page
• Page Down – go to next page
• Page Up – go to previous page
• g – goto page
• q – quit
• + – zoom in
• - – zoom out
• r – reload PDF document
• <Shift> <Ctrl> + – rotate clockwise
• <Shift> <Ctrl> – - rotate counter-clockwise
• Home – go to first page
• End – go to last page

Just being able to navigate a PDF with the same keys I use all the time was enough for me.

Download Sumatra PDF Viewer for Windows