A lightning-fast, ultra-lightweight PDF reader and annotator built as a Chrome Extension. Designed for privacy, speed, and memory efficiency, it allows you to intercept local PDFs, draw freehand, and insert custom text without ever sending your data to a server.
- 🔒 100% Offline & Private: Built natively with the official Mozilla
pdf.jsdistribution. Your documents never leave your browser. - 🛡️ Secure Processing: Includes a strict Content Security Policy (CSP) to isolate processes and intercept validation logic to mitigate malicious injections.
- 🔀 Dedicated Workspace: Open the extension and drag any
.pdfdirectly into the dedicated workspace. - 🖊️ Rich Annotation Tools: Use built-in PDF.js tools for freehand ink drawing, erasing, adding signatures, and injecting text natively.
- ⚡ Blazing Fast: Designed to be memory-efficient and open PDFs instantly.
- 💾 Easy Saving: Save your annotated PDFs (with annotations flattened) back to your computer with a single click via the Save button, or download the raw file via the Download button.
- 📄 Default PDF Viewer: Automatically intercepts PDF links (http/https), local file opens, and PDFs dragged and dropped into Chrome — opening them all in the Freedom viewer instead of Chrome's built-in renderer.
- Download the Freedom_PDF_Viewer_v3.1.7.zip from the Releases page.
- Unzip the file into a folder on your computer.
- Open Google Chrome and navigate to
chrome://extensions/. - Enable Developer mode in the top right corner.
- Click Load unpacked and select the folder where you unzipped the extension.
- The extension is now installed! You can now drag and drop PDFs into the browser to view them.
To package the extension for upload to the Chrome Web Store, run the included build.sh script on Linux:
chmod +x build.sh && ./build.shIt will compress the necessary files into Freedom_PDF_Viewer_v3.1.7.zip, deliberately excluding development files like .git.
This extension requests only the minimum permissions necessary:
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
file:/// (host permission) |
Access local .pdf files opened or dragged into the browser |
http://*/*, https://*/* (host permissions) |
Intercept PDF links on any website |
webNavigation |
Detect navigations to PDF URLs before Chrome's built-in viewer takes over |
tabs |
Redirect the current tab to the Freedom PDF viewer |
Note: All permissions are the minimum required. No browsing history, page content, or personal data is collected or transmitted.
Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome! Feel free to check the issues page if you want to contribute.
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
This project utilizes PDF.js by Mozilla, which is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.