PDF Viewer - Annotation Expert 4+

Great app. Feature request

First of all, really great app! I’m in med school and one of the few that learns from textbooks, rather than course material. I use this to read and organize all my textbooks - and I have a lot of them that I’ve collected over the last decade through undergrad, working, PhD, and now professional school. It’s great how I can pick up reading and annotations on my iPad, Mac, and iPhone when efficiency is key.

I try to avoid using Apple’s Books, or e-readers in general bc having files in pdf form is more universal. Some medical books I have are 1500+, and so I need to break them up into chapters. Books has cool features, but PDFs and PDF viewer is my optimal workflow. Sometimes, however, I cannot avoid Books because some things are only offered in epubs or I cannot find a pdf version.

So I do have one feature request from Books: auto-night mode. Night mode is great in PDF-viewer, and across the board for apple products, but I really do prefer to read in the true color for textbooks, especially for colored figures. At night, I noticed Books auto-switches to night mode if you have that feature turned on. It is really helpful when I am reading in bed before falling asleep and reading. I do not know if this is the place to let what features users want, but thought I’d give it a try. Thanks!

Developer Response ,

Thank you very much for your feedback. We really appreciate it.

We do have an option to sync the page appearance with system appearance. This is a Pro feature.
And if this is enabled, the color of the page is changed when in dark mode. If you combine this with automatically switching to Dark mode on your iPad at night, this could be achieved.

We're happy to further discuss this if you would like to. You can contact us in the app via Settings > Support.

Thank you.

Upgrade Significantly Slows Down My Workflow

I use PDF Viewer on my iPadPro with the pencil. I extensively use highlighting with different colors being used to represent different concepts. In previous versions, I could simply change the color of an existing highlight by taping on the highlight and choosing the new color. With the latest upgrade, I need to: 1) Tap on the highlight 2) Choose “Style” from the menu 3) Choose “Color” from the next menu 4) Finally select the new color for the highlight This is a hugely negative in my productivity in using of PDF Viewer, so much so that I am looking for a replacement. Perhaps there is a configuration option that allows me to revert back to the previous style. If so, please make it more obvious. I would previously have rated PDF Viewer 4 or 5, but I am now rating it 1 since this is a huge issue for me.

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Updated - I am raising my previous rating of 1 star to 5. Per the above, I complained about the change and the developer responded in version 6.2.2 to provide for easier color changes. Perhaps a small issue for mist, but big for me. More importantly, it gives me confidence that the developer is listening and open to accommodating customer feedback.

Comparable to PDF Expert, but no true editing ability

Having used PDF Expert for a long time I’m ready to find something else due to the ridiculous subscription model and lack of integration with the Mac OS program that PDF Expert has. I tried about a dozen Apps and PDF Viewer was the most pleasant surprise!

All the free features here compare with Expert. In fact I prefer some Viewer tools better: the Magic Ink pen, the highlighter behind the text, the full screen viewing with the tool bar to the side, and the ease of opening files (you can go back to the open tabs without opening another file), the Lighter “blend” mode for the pen and the very good color options too; great job!

Only a few things I don’t like: 1) the lack of a favorites toolbar (or ability to customize it). Too many clicks to switch between tools. 2) The text highlight tool does not look as nice as PDF Expert. Lose the rounded edges and have a variable text height. 3) The lack of a lasso or snapshot tool (Goodnotes has one and it almost makes that App a better PDF editor than anything else!). 4) the ability to add/create pages from a scan with OCR.

If the developers WANT to make something really worth paying for they should offer full ability to edit text and objects within a PDF (original text, not just user added text). Until then I’ll keep searching for the ideal PDF App.