Use this command to install KillerPDF with WinGet:
winget install --id=SteveTheKiller.KillerPDF -e
KillerPDF is a lightweight PDF viewer and toolkit designed to simplify PDF management and editing on Windows. It offers high-quality rendering, merge/split functionality, inline text editing, and annotation tools for seamless document manipulation.
Key Features:
High-Quality Rendering: Utilizes the PDFium library for crisp and accurate PDF display.
Merge/Split Functionality: Drag-and-drop to combine files or extract specific pages.
Inline Text Editing: Edit text with font matching for a polished, professional look.
Annotation Tools: Add text boxes, draw freehand, highlight, and insert signatures.
Page Management: Crop, rotate, rearrange, or delete pages with intuitive controls.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for professionals, students, and anyone needing reliable PDF tools without bloat. KillerPDF provides a portable, open-source solution that requires no subscription, runtime installation, or admin rights. Install via winget or run in portable mode, ensuring flexibility and ease of use.
README
KillerPDF is a free, open-source PDF editor for Windows. View, annotate, OCR, merge, split, edit text, draw, sign, fill forms, print, flatten, and open password-protected PDFs without an Adobe subscription. Install it or run it portable from the same Windows download. No runtime installation is required, and the app never phones home.
High-quality PDFium rendering with four view modes (Single, Continuous, Two-Page with a book layout option, Grid), tabbed documents, and a split pane for two documents side by side
Annotate with inline text editing and font matching, word-wrapping text boxes, drawing, lines, highlights, images, and page-number or watermark stamps. Highlights use the Multiply blend so the text underneath stays readable, and every tab has its own undo and redo history.
Built-in OCR (Tesseract bundled, no cloud): make searchable PDFs, OCR a page or region to the clipboard, extract all text; extra languages download on demand
Organize pages: merge, split, insert, rotate, crop, extract, delete, drag-and-drop reordering; drop a folder or .zip onto the window to merge its contents
Export one page or a multi-page selection as PNG or JPEG directly from the Pages panel
Transform: rotate, scale, flip, deskew by drawing a level line, perspective correction for photographed pages, and a LEVELS section (black point, white point, midtones) for pale scans
Forms: fill text, checkbox, radio, and comb fields as live controls and save back; digital signatures with a cloud certificate (Certum SimplySign), plus drawn or imported signatures and initials
Print with a real in-app preview, paper size and source selection, scale / position / margins / pages-per-sheet options at 300 DPI; Save Flattened rasterizes to a fully uneditable PDF
Full-text search with highlighting, and column-aware text selection that copies multi-column pages in reading order
Night-mode inversion works independently in each split pane. Thirteen themes, live accent colors, and toolbar styles provide 33 looks, while the resizable sidebar can dock on either side.
Localized UI in 12 languages (contribute via TRANSLATING.md); full keyboard shortcut overlay on F1 with list and visual keyboard views
Opens password-protected PDFs (prompts instead of erroring) and repairs damaged ones
Runs portable, or self-installs per-user (no UAC) or machine-wide ( for scripted deployment); registers as a PDF handler and uninstalls cleanly
Standards-safe saves: every release is tested against a 2,900-file veraPDF conformance corpus with a zero-regressions requirement. See validation/RESULTS.md.
Local-only: no account, no telemetry, no phone-home
Command line
Every core operation also runs headless from a terminal, with meaningful exit codes, even while the app is open:
Grid view and twelve languages - Survey a whole document at once, with the menu bar hidden and the interface switchable between twelve languages.
Split panes and Transform - Work in two independent panes while previewing rotation, scale, flip, skew, perspective, and Levels before applying.
Annotation colors and forms - Draw with exact colors while viewing fillable fields, comb boxes, and the brochure's live form examples.
Image picker and previews - Browse images, inspect a large preview, and return directly to the open document.
Requirements
Windows 10 or 11 (x64)
No runtime install. Everything needed is inside the EXE (targets .NET Framework 4.8, which ships with every supported Windows release).
Download
WinGet:
winget install killerpdf
Chocolately:
choco install killerpdf
Prebuilt binary:
Source (GPL3 corresponding source for this release):
Build from source
git clone https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF.git
cd KillerPDF
dotnet publish -c Release
Output lands in bin/Release/net48/publish/. Normal publishing produces the development single-file build plus a versioned KillerPDF--src.zip. The release pipeline builds a verified multi-file payload and packs it into one portable KillerPDF.exe; installed shortcuts launch the inner app directly for faster startup.
Requires the .NET 8 SDK or later to build (even though the output targets .NET Framework 4.8).
The PDF write engine (PdfSharpCore, MIT) is vendored under third_party/PdfSharpCore/ and builds as part of the solution; it carries six standards-conformance patches, each marked KillerPDF patch in the source. Origin commit and details are recorded in third_party/PdfSharpCore/VENDORED.txt.
Translations
UI strings live in Strings/ (one XAML ResourceDictionary per locale). To add or improve a language, see TRANSLATING.md. Missing keys fall back to English, so a partial translation is fine.
GPLv3. See LICENSE. If you fork, modify, or redistribute KillerPDF, your version must also be released under GPLv3 with source available. No exceptions for commercial rebrands.