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
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