The best free PDF and DjVu readers and annotation apps
Scanned books and papers often come as DjVu or PDF files, and a good reader makes long documents far more pleasant to work with. The free, open-source tools below cover fast DjVu viewing on Windows, a full DjVu toolkit for creating and converting files, a PDF reader made for academics on the Mac and two notebooks for writing and drawing on top of PDFs with a stylus.
5 apps from our catalog
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A fast, tabbed DjVu viewer for Windows with continuous scrolling, search, bookmarks and export to images.
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Open Source
The reference DjVu library and tools, with the DjView viewer and command-line utilities for creating and converting DjVu files.
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A macOS PDF reader and note-taker built for scientific papers, with highlights, notes, snapshots and presentation mode.
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Free
Xournal++: handwrite notes, sketch and annotate PDFs with a stylus, with layers, LaTeX and audio recording.
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Open Source
The original, lightweight Xournal for pen-based notes and PDF annotation, no longer developed.
DjVu or PDF?
DjVu was designed for scanned documents and often produces much smaller files than a PDF of the same scan, which is why many digitised books use it. PDF is universal. On Windows, WinDjView opens DjVu files quickly; on Linux and macOS, the DjView viewer from DjVuLibre does the same, and DjVuLibre’s tools such as ddjvu can convert pages to other formats.
Annotating PDFs
For typed notes and highlights on a Mac, Skim is hard to beat. For handwriting on any desktop system, Xournal++ lets you write directly on a PDF and export the result as a new PDF. See Xournal vs Xournal++ if you are choosing between the two notebooks.
Tips for reading scanned books
- Use continuous scrolling and fit-to-width for long documents; both WinDjView and DjView support it.
- Search only works if the file contains a text layer from OCR; many DjVu books do, but some scans are images only.
- Keep your annotations separate from the original: Skim stores notes inside the PDF in a way other readers can show, while Xournal++ keeps them in its own file until you export.
- Large scans load faster from a local disk than from a network share or USB stick.
Frequently asked questions
How do I open a DjVu file on Windows?
Install WinDjView and open the file, or associate .djvu files with it during installation.
Can I convert DjVu to PDF for free?
Yes. DjVuLibre includes ddjvu, which can export DjVu documents to PDF, for example ddjvu -format=pdf book.djvu book.pdf.
Is Skim available for Windows?
No, Skim is a macOS app. On Windows, use Xournal++ for annotation.
Can I write on a PDF with a pen tablet?
Yes. Xournal++ is designed for styluses and supports pressure sensitivity.
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