SumatraPDF - lightweight PDF viewer

[Midas]

I'm pretty much a dark mode user myself, but thanks for the input, as I'm sure other users will appreciate it.

I don't use SumatraPDF anymore due to its stagnation...

May I ask what have you replaced it with?

[Midas]

Topic update: SumatraPDF v3.5 released 2023-10-23 (changelog at https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/docs/Version-history).

Spoiler!   

FTR, full changelog:

Code: Select all

Version history

- 3.5 (2023-10-23)

  º Arm 64-bit builds
  º dark mode (menu Settings / Theme or Ctrl + K command Select next theme)
     you can use i (invert colors) to match the background / text color of
     rendered PDF document. Due to technical limitations, it doesn’t work
     well with images
  º i (invert colors) is remembered in settings
  º CmdEditAnnotation select annotation under cursor and open annotation
    edit window
  º rename CmdShowCursorPosition => CmdToggleCursorPosition
  º add Annotations [ FreeTextColor, FreeTextSize, FreeTextBorderWidth ]
    settings
  º ability to move annotations. Ctrl+click to select annotation and them
    move via drag & drop
  º add CmdCommandPaletteOnlyTabs command with Alt+K shortcut
  º exit full screen/presentation modes via double click with left mouse
    button
  º ability to drag out a tab to open it in new window
  º support opening .avif images (including inside .cbz/,cbr files)
  º respect image orientation exif metadata in .jpeg and .png images
  º support Adobe Reader syntax for opening files 
    /A "page=<pageno>#nameddest=<dest>search=<string>
  º add Next Tab/Prev Tab commands with Ctrl+PageUp / Ctrl+PageDown
    shortcuts
  º keep Home tab open; add NoHomeTab advanced option to disable that
  º add context menu to tabs
  º bugfix: handle files we can’t open in next file in folder/prev file in
    folder commands
  º command palette: when search starts with >, only show commands, not
    files (like in Visual Studio Code)
  º add reopen last closed command (Ctrl + Shift + T, like in web browsers)
  º add clear history command
  º can send commands via DDE
  º added CmdOpenWithExplorer, CmdOpenWithDirectoryOpus,
    CmdOpenWithTotalCommander, CmdOpenWithDoubleCommander
    commands
  º enable CmdCloseOtherTabs, CmdCloseTabsToTheRight commands from
    command palette
  º recognize PgUp/PgDown and a few more in keyboard shortcuts
  º add -disable-auto-rotation cmd-line print option

- 3.4.6 (2022-06-08)

  º fix crashes
  º fix hang in Fit Content mode and Bookmark links

- 3.4.5 (2022-06-05)

  º fix crashes

- 3.4.4 (2022-06-02)

  º restore HOME and END in find edit field
  º fix crashes

- 3.4.3 (2022-05-29)

  º re-enable Backspace in edit field
  º fix installation for all users when using custom installation directory
  º re-enable Copy Image context menu for comic book files
  º fix display of some PDF images
  º fix slow loading of some ePub files

- 3.4.2 (2022-05-27)

  º make keyboard accelerators work when tree view has focus
  º fix -set-color-range and -bg-color replacing MainWindowBackground
  º fix crash with incorrectly defined selection handlers

- 3.4.1 (2022-05-25)

  º fix downloading of symbols for better crash reports

- 3.4 (2022-05-24)

  º Command Palette
  º customizable keyboard shortcuts
  º better support for epub files using mupdf’s epub engine. Adds text
    selection and search in ebook files. Better rendering fidelity. On the
    downside, might be slower.
  º search / translate selected text with web services
        we have few built-in and you can add your own
  º installer: -all-users cmd-line arg for system-wide install
  º added Annotations.TextIconColor and TextIconType advanced settings
  º added Annotations.UnderlineColor advanced setting
  º added Annotations.DefaultAuthor advanced setting
  º i keyboard shortcuts inverts document colors Shift+i does what iT used
    to do i.e. show page number
  º u and Shift + u keyboard shortcuts adds underline annotation for
    currently selected text
  º Delete/Backspace keyboard shortcuts delete an annotation under
    mouse cursor
  º support .svg files
  º faster scrolling with mouse wheel when cursor over scrollbar
  º add -search cmd-line option and [Search("<file>", "<search-term>")]
    DDE command
  º a way to get list of used fonts in properties window
  º support opening .heic image files (if Windows heic codec is installed)
  º add experimental smooth scrolling (enabled with SmoothScroll
    advanced setting)

- 3.3.3 (2021-07-20)

  º fix a crash in PdfFilter.dll

- 3.3.2 (2021-07-19)

  º restore showing Table Of Contents for .chm files
  º fix crashes

- 3.3.1 (2021-07-14)

  º fix rotation in DjVu documents

- 3.3 (2021-07-06)

  º added support for adding/removing/editing annotations in PDF files.
    Read the tutorial
  º new toolbar
        changed toolbar to scale with DPI by using new, vector icons
        added rotate left / right to the toolbar
        new toolbar: [{Toolbar image}]
  º added ability to hide scrollbar (more screen space for the document).
    Use right-click context menu.
  º add -paperkind=${num} printing option (checkin)

  Minor improvements and bug-fixes::

  º advanced setting to change font size in bookmarks/favorites tree view
    e.g. TreeFontSize = 12
  º support newer versions of ghostscript (≥ 9.54) for opening .ps files
  º support jpeg-xr images in .xps files
  º restore tooltips (regression in 3.2)
  º update mupdf to latest version
  º make silent installation always silent
  º don’t crash when attempting to zoom in on home page
  º don’t show “manga” view menu item for documents that are not comic
    books
  º allow opening fb2.zip files (#1657)
  º restore ability to save embedded files (fixes #1557)
  º Alt + Space opens a sys menu

- 3.2 (2020-03-15)

  This release upgrades the core PDF parsing and rendering library mupdf to
  the latest version. This fixes PDF rendering bugs and improves performance

  Added support multiple windows with tabs:
  
    - added File / New Window (Ctrl-n) which opens a new window
      to compare the same file side-by-side, Ctrl-Shift-n shortcut opens
      current file a new window. The same file is now opened in 2 windows
      that you can re-arrange as needed
     -new-window cmd-line option will open the document in new window
      if you hold SHIFT when drag&dropping files from Explorer (and other
      apps), the file will be opened in a new window
  
  Improved management of favorites:
  
    - context menu (right mouse click) on the document area adds menu
      items for:
          showing/hiding favorites view
          adding current page to favorites
          (or removing if it already is in favorites)
    - context menu in bookmarks view adds menu item for adding selected
      page to favorites
  
  This release no longer supports Windows XP. Latest version that support XP
  is 3.1.2 that you can download from:
  https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/download-prev.html
  
- 3.1.2 (2016-08-14)

  º fixed issue with icons being purple in latest Windows 10 update
  º tell Windows 10 that SumatraPDF can open supported file types

- 3.1.1 (2015-11-02)

  º (re)add support for old processors that don’t have SSE2
  º support newer versions of unrar.dll
  º allow keeping browser plugin if it’s already installed
  º crash fixes

- 3.1 (2015-10-24)

  º 64bit builds
  º all documents are restored at startup if a window with multiple tabs is
    closed (or if closing happened through File -> Exit); this can be
    disabled through the RestoreSession advanced setting
  º printing happens (again) always as image which leads to more reliable
    results at the cost of requiring more printer memory; the “Print as
    Image” advanced printing option has been removed
  º scrolling with touchpad (e.g. on Surface Pro) now works
  º many crash and other bug fixes

- 3.0 (2014-10-18)

  º Tabs! Enabled by default. Use Settings/Options… menu to go back
    to the old UI
  º support table of contents and links in ebook UI
  º add support for PalmDoc ebooks
  º add support for displaying CB7 and CBT comic books (in addition
    to CBZ and CBR)
  º add support for LZMA and PPMd compression in CBZ comic books
  º allow saving Comic Book files as PDF
  º swapped keybindings:
  º     F11 : Fullscreen mode (still also Ctrl+Shift+L)
  º     F5 : Presentation mode (also Shift+F11, still also Ctrl+L)
  º added a document measurement UI. Press ’m’ to start. Keep
    pressing ’m’ to change measurement units
  º new advanced settings: FullPathInTitle, UseSysColors
    (no longer exposed through the Options dialog), UseTabs
  º replaced non-free UnRAR with a free RAR extraction library.
    If some CBR files fail to open for you, download unrar.dll from
    https://www.rarlab.com/rar_add.htm and place it alongside
    SumatraPDF.exe
  º deprecated browser plugin. We keep it if was installed in earlier
    version

- 2.5.2 (2014-05-13)

  º use less memory for comic book files
  º PDF rendering fixes

- 2.5.1 (2014-05-07)

  º hopefully fix frequent ebook crashes

- 2.5 (2014-05-05)

  º 2 page view for ebooks
  º new keybindings:
  º     Ctrl+PgDn, Ctrl+Right : go to next page
  º     Ctrl+PgUp, Ctrl+Left : go to previous page
  º 10x faster ebook layout
  º support JP2 images
  º new advanced settings: ShowMenuBar, ReloadModifiedDocuments,
    CustomScreenDPI
  º left/right clicking no longer changes pages in fullscreen mode
    (use Presentation mode if you rely on this feature)
  º fixed multiple crashes and made multiple minor improvements

- 2.4 (2013-10-01)

  º full-screen mode for ebooks (Ctrl-L)
  º new key bindings:
  º     F9 - show/hide menu (not remembered after quitting)
  º     F8 - show/hide toolbar
  º support WebP images (standalone and in comic books)
  º support for RAR5 compressed comic books
  º fixed multiple crashes

- 2.3.2 (2013-05-25)

  º fix changing a language via Settings/Change Language

- 2.3.1 (2013-05-23)

  º don’t require SSE2 (to support old computers without SSE2 support)

- 2.3 (2013-05-22)

  º greater configurability via advanced settings
  º “Go To Page” in ebook ui
  º add View/Manga Mode menu item for Comic Book (CBZ/CBR) files
  º new key bindings:
  º     Ctrl-Up : page up
  º     Ctrl-Down : page down
  º add support for OpenXPS documents
  º support Deflate64 in Comic Book (CBZ/CBR) files
  º fixed missing paragraph indentation in EPUB documents
  º printing with “Use original page sizes” no longer centers pages on paper
  º reduced size. Installer is ~1MB smaller
  º downside: this release no longer supports very old processors without
    SSE2 instructions. Using SSE2 makes Sumatra faster. If you have an old
    computer without SSE2, you need to use 2.2.1.

- 2.2.1 (2013-01-12)

  º fixed ebooks sometimes not remembering the viewing position
  º fixed Sumatra not exiting when opening files from a network drive
  º fixes for most frequent crashes and PDF parsing robustness fixes

- 2.2 (2012-12-24)

  º add support for FictionBook ebook format
  º add support for PDF documents encrypted with Acrobat X
  º “Print as image” compatibility option in print dialog for documents that
    fail to print properly
  º new command-line option: -manga-mode [1|true|0|false] for proper
    display of manga comic books
  º many robustness fixes and small improvements

- 2.1.1 (2012-05-07)

  º fixes for a few crashes

- 2.1 (2012-05-03)

  º support for EPUB ebook format
  º added File/Rename menu item to rename currently viewed file
    (contributed by Vasily Fomin)
  º support multi-page TIFF files
  º support TGA images
  º support for some comic book (CBZ) metadata
  º support JPEG XR images (available on Windows Vista or later, for
    Windows XP the Windows Imaging Component has to be installed)
  º the installer is now signed

- 2.0.1 (2012-04-08)

  º fix loading .mobi files from command line
  º fix a crash loading multiple .mobi files at once
  º fix a crash showing tooltips for table of contents tree entries

- 2.0 (2012-04-02)

  º support for MOBI eBook format
  º support opening CHM documents from network drives
  º a selection can be copied to a clipboard as an image by using
    right-click context menu
  º using ucrt to reduce program size

- 1.9 (2011-11-23)

  º support for CHM documents
  º support touch gestures, available on Windows 7 or later.
    Contributed by Robert Prouse
  º open linked audio and video files in an external media player
  º improved support for PDF transparency groups

- 1.8 (2011-09-18)

  º improved support for PDF form text fields
  º various minor improvements and bug fixes
  º speedup handling some types of djvu files

- 1.7 (2011-07-18)

  º favorites
  º improved support for right-to-left languages e.g. Arabic
  º logical page numbers are displayed and used, if a document
    provides them (such as i, ii, iii, etc.)
  º allow to restrict SumatraPDF’s features with more granularity;
    see sumatrapdfrestric.init for documentation
  º -named-dest also matches strings in table of contents
  º improved support for EPS files (requires Ghostscript)
  º more robust installer
  º many minor improvements and bugfixes

- 1.6 (2011-05-30)

  º add support for displaying DjVu documents
  º display Frequently Read list when no document is open
  º add support for displaying Postscript documents (requires recent
    Ghostscript version to be already installed)
  º add support for displaying a folder containing images: drag the folder
    to SumatraPDF window
  º support clickable links and a Table of Content for XPS documents
  º display printing progress and allow to cancel it
  º add Print toolbar button
  º experimental: previewing of PDF documents in Windows Vista and 7.
    Creates thumbnails and displays documents in Explorer’s Preview pane.
    Needs to be explicitly selected during install process. We’ve had
    reports that it doesn’t work on Windows 7 x64.

- 1.5.1 (2011-04-26)

  º fixes for rare crashes

- 1.5 (2011-04-23)

  º add support for viewing XPS documents
  º add support for viewing CBZ and CBR comic books
  º add File/Save Shortcut menu item to create shortcuts to a specific
    place in a document
  º add context menu for copying text, link addresses and comments.
    In browser plugin it also adds saving and printing commands
  º add folder browsing (Ctrl+Shift+Right opens next PDF document in
    the current folder, Ctrl+Shift+Left opens previous document)

- 1.4 (2011-03-12)

  º browser plugin for Firefox/Chrome/Opera (Internet Explorer is not
    supported). It’s not installed by default so you have to check the
    apropriate checkbox in the installer
  º IFilter that enables full-text search of PDF files in Windows Desktop
    Search (i.e. search from Windows Vista/7’s Start Menu). Also not
    installed by default
  º scrolling with right mouse button
  º you can choose a custom installation directory in the installer
  º menu items for re-opening current document in Foxit and PDF-XChange
    (if they’re installed)
  º we no longer compress the installer executable with mpress. It caused
    some anti-virus programs to falsely report Sumatra as a virus. The
    downside is that the binaries on disk are now bigger.
    Note: we still compress the portable .zip version
  º -title cmd-line option was removed
  º support for AES-256 encrypted PDF documents
  º fixed an integer overflow reported by Jeroen van der Gun and and
    other small fixes and improvements to PDF handling

- 1.3 (2011-02-04)

  º improved text selection and copying. We now mimic the way a browser
    or Adobe Reader works: just select text with mouse and use Ctrl-C to
    copy it to a clipboard
  º Shift+Left Mouse now scrolls the document, Ctrl+Left mouse still creates
    a rectangular selection (for copying images)
  º ‘c’ shortcut toggles continuous mode
  º ’+’ / ‘*’ on the numeric keyboard now do zoom and rotation
  º added toolbar icons for Fit Page and Fit Width and updated the look of
    toolbar icons
  º add support for back/forward mouse buttons for back/forward navigation
  º 1.2 introduces a new full screen mode and made it the default full
    screen mode. Old mode was still available but not easily discoverable.
    We’ve added View/Presentation menu item for new full screen mode and
    View/Fullscreen menu item for the old full screen mode, to make it more
    discoverable
  º new, improved installer
  º improved zoom performance (zooming to 6400% no longer crashes)
  º text find uses less memory
  º further printing improvements
  º translation updates
  º updated to latest mupdf for misc bugfixes and improvements
  º use libjpeg-turbo library instead of libjpeg, for faster decoding of
    some PDFs
  º updated openjpeg library to version 1.4 and freetype to version 2.4.4
  º fixed 2 integer overflows reported by Stefan Cornelius from Secunia
    Research

- 1.2 (2010-11-26)

  º improved printing: faster and uses less resources
  º add Ctrl-Y as a shortcut for Custom Zoom
  º add Ctrl-A as a shortcut for Select All Text
  º improved full screen mode
  º open embedded PDF documents
  º allow saving PDF document attachements to disk
  º latest fixes and improvements to PDF rendering from mupdf project

- 1.1 (2010-05-20)

  º added book view (“View/Book View” menu item) option. It’s known as
    “Show Cover Page During Two-Up” in Adobe Reader
  º added “File/Properties” menu item, showing basic information about
    PDF file
  º added “File/Send by email” menu
  º added export as text. When doing “File/Save As”, change “Save As types”
    from “ PDF documents” to “Text documents”. Don’t expect miracles though.
    Conversion to text is not very good in most cases.
  º auto-detect commonly used TeX editors for inverse-search command
  º bug fixes to PDF handling (more PDFs are shown correctly)
  º misc bug fixes and small improvements in UI
  º add Ctrl + and Ctrl – as shortcuts for zooming (matches Adobe Reader)

- 1.0.1 (2009-11-27)

  º many memory leaks fixed (Simon Bünzli)
  º potential crash due to stack corruption (pointed out by Christophe
    Devine)
  º making Sumatra default PDF reader no longer asks for admin priviledges
    on Vista/Windows 7
  º translation updates

- 1.0 (2009-11-17)

  º lots of small bug fixes and improvements

- 0.9.4 (2009-07-19)

  º improved PDF compatibility (more types of documents can be rendered)
  º added settings dialog (contributed by Simon Bünzli)
  º improvements in handling unicode
  º changed default view from single page to continuous
  º SyncTex improvements (contributed by William Blum)
  º add option to not remember opened files
  º a new icon for documents association (contributed by George Georgiou)
  º lots of bugfixes and UI polish

- 0.9.3 (2008-10-07)

  º fix an issue with opening non-ascii files
  º updated Japanese and Brazillian translation

- 0.9.2 (2008-10-06)

  º ability to disable auto-update check
  º improved text rendering - should fix problems with overlapping text
  º improved font substition for fonts not present in PDF file
  º can now open PDF files with non-ascii names
  º improvements to DDE (contributed by Danilo Roascio)
  º SyncTex improvements
  º improve persistance of state (contributed by Robert Liu)
  º fix crash when pressing ‘Cancel’ when entering a password
  º updated translations

- 0.9.1 (2008-08-22)

  º improved rendering of some PDFs
  º support for links inside PDF file
  º added -restrict and -title cmd-line options (contributed by Matthew
    Wilcoxson)
  º enabled SyncTex support which mistakenly disabled in 0.9
  º misc fixes and translation updates

- 0.9 (2008-08-10)

  º add Ctrl-P as print shortcut
  º add F11 as full-screen shortcut
  º password dialog no longer shows the password
  º support for AES-encrypted PDF files
  º updates to SyncTeX/PdfSync integration (contributed by William Blum)
  º add -nameddest command-line option and DDE commands for jumping to
    named destination(contributed by Alexander Klenin)
  º add -reuse-instance command-line option (contributed by William Blum)
  º add DDE command to open PDF file (contributed by William Blum)
  º removed poppler rendering engine resulting in smaller program and
    updated to latest mupdf sources
  º misc bugfixes and translation updates

- 0.8.1 (2008-05-27)

  º automatic reloading of changed PDFs (contributed by William Blum)
  º tex integration (contributed by William Blum)
  º updated icon for case-sensitivity selection in find (contributed by
    Sonke Tesch)
  º language change is now a separate dialog instead of a menu
  º remember more settings (like default view)
  º automatic checks for new versions
  º add command-line option -lang $lang
  º add command-line option -print-dialog (contributed by Peter Astrand)
  º ESC or single mouse click hides selection
  º fix showing boxes in table of contents tree
  º translation updates

- 0.8 (2008-01-01)

  º added search (contributed by MrChuoi)
  º added table of contents (contributed by MrChuoi)
  º added many translation
  º new program icon
  º fixed printing
  º fixed some crashes
  º rendering speedups
  º fixed loading of some PDFs
  º add command-line option -esc-to-exit
  º add command-line option -bgcolor $color

- 0.7 (2007-07-28)

  º added ability to select the text and copy to clipboard -- contributed by
    Tomek Weksej
  º made it multi-lingual (13 translations)
  º added Save As option
  º list of recently opened files is updated immediately
  º fixed .pdf extension registration on Vista
  º added ability to compile as DLL and C# sample application -- contributed
    by Valery Possoz
  º mingw compilation fixes and project files for CodeBlocks - contributed
    by MrChuoi
  º fixed a few crashes
  º moved the sources to Google Code project hosting

- 0.6 (2007-04-29)

  º enable opening password-protected PDFs
  º don’t allow printing in PDFs that have printing forbidden
  º don’t automatically reopen files at startup
  º fix opening PDFs from network shares
  º new, better icon
  º reload the document when changing rendering engine
  º improve cursor shown when dragging
  º fix toolbar appearance on XP and Vista with classic theme
  º when MuPDF engine cannot load a file or render a page, we fallback
    to poppler engine to make rendering more robust
  º fixed a few crashes

- 0.5 (2007-03-04)

  º fixed rendering problems with some PDF files
  º speedups - the application should feel be snappy and there should
    be less waiting for rendering
  º added ‘r’ keybinding for reloading currently open PDF file
  º added --+ and -– keybindings to rotate clockwise and counter-clockwise
    (just like Acrobat Reader)
  º fixed a crash or two

- 0.4 (2007-02-18)

  º printing
  º ask before registering as a default handler for PDF files
  º faster rendering thanks to alternative PDF rendering engine.
    Previous engine is available as well.
  º scrolling with mouse wheel
  º fix toolbar issues on win2k
  º improve the way fonts directory is found
  º improvements to portable mode
  º uninstaller completely removes the program
  º changed name of preferences files from prefs.txt to
    sumatrapdfprefs.txt

- 0.3 (2006-11-25)

  º added toolbar for most frequently used operations
  º should be more snappy because rendering is done in background
    and it caches one page ahead
  º some things are faster

- 0.2 (2006-08-06)

  º added facing, continuous and continuous facing viewing modes
  º remember history of opened files
  º session saving i.e. on exit remember which files are opened and
    restore the session when the program is started without any
    command-line parameters
  º ability to open encrypted files
  º “Go to page dialog”
  º less invasive (less yellow) icon that doesn’t jump at you on desktop
  º fixed problem where sometimes text wouldn’t show (better mapping
    for fonts; use a default font if can’t find the font specified in PDF
    file)
  º handle URI links inside PDF documents
  º show “About” screen
  º provide a download in a .zip file for those who can’t run installation
    program
  º switched to poppler code instead of xpdf

- 0.1 (2006-06-01)

  º first version released