Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. Formerly a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard in 2008. In this post, we will take a look at some free PDF Reader software for Windows 11/10 PC.
Free PDF Readers for Windows 11/10
While the Adobe PDF Reader is widely used, there are other freeware alternatives to Adobe Reader, too, that you may like to consider for your Windows operating system. Most browsers, like Edge, Firefox, Chrome, etc, do a good job at opening PDFs. But if you are looking for more features, then here is a list of some of the best free PDF readers for Windows 11/10:
- Sumatra
- Primo PDf
- CutePDF Writer
- PDF Redirect
- Evince
- MuPDF
- Okular
- Universal Viewer
- YAP
- Foxit.
1] Sumatra is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows. Portable out of the box. Sumatra has a minimalistic design. Simplicity has a higher priority than a lot of features. It’s small and starts up very fast. It’s designed for portable use: only one file, so you can run it from an external USB drive. It doesn’t write to the registry.
2] Primo PDF lets you create PDF files faster with the only free PDF creator to support one-click, drag-and-drop PDF creation. Also lets you convert to PDF from any file you can print, including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint formats.
3] CutePDF Writer is the free version of commercial PDF creation software. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a “printer subsystem”. This enables virtually any Windows applications to create professional-quality PDF documents – with just a push of a button! FREE for commercial and non-commercial use! No watermarks! No Popup Web Ads!
4] PDF ReDirect is a fast, free, easy-to-use PDF Creator. Features include encryption, full merging, and PDF preview. It is available in English, German, Portuguese, Czech, Espanol, French, Norwegian, Nederlands, and Italian.
5] Evince is a document viewer for multiple document formats. Supports PDF too.
6] MuPDF is a lightweight PDF viewer and toolkit written in portable C. MuPDF has a small footprint. A binary that includes the standard Roman fonts is only one megabyte.
7] Okular is a universal document viewer based on KPDF for KDE 4.
8] Universal Viewer is an advanced file viewer with a wide range of formats supported, including PDF.
9] Yap, formerly GPSText, is a PostScript/PDF previewer and front end to the a2ps text formatting tool. Harness the full power of a2ps to beautifully format source code (C, Objective-C, Scheme, Perl, etc.) and many other kinds of text files. PostScript/PDF rendering is done using GPL GhostScript.
10] Foxit is a small download with fast, accurate rendering. It too has become bloatware now. Make sure you uncheck options to install third-party offers.
Do you know of any more freeware PDF readers? Please do share the freeware & its link.
