PageTurn
A free PDF viewer, signature editor and highlighter that reads like an actual book.
PageTurn opens your PDFs as a two page spread, the way a book sits open on a desk. It also does the things you normally have to pay Adobe for: sign documents, fill them in, highlight and take notes, then save a real PDF copy with all of it baked in.
It is free. It has always been free and it always will be free. No account, no trial, no watermark on your exports, no page limits, no "upgrade to Pro" wall, no subscription, no ads. Everything below is in the download.
What it does
Reads like a book
- Two page spread with a page turn animation and a spine shadow
- One page view when you want a single big page
- Zoom from 50% to 400%, and drag the page around with the hand tool instead of fighting scrollbars
- Arrow keys, Page Up and Page Down, Home and End
- Picks up exactly where you left off in every document, automatically
- Optional page turn sound with its own volume
Tabs
- Keep as many PDFs open as you want and switch between them
- Every tab keeps its own page, its own highlights, its own notes
- Ctrl+Tab to cycle, Ctrl+W to close, middle click a tab to close it
- Your open tabs come back next time you launch
Sign and fill, DocuSign style
- Draw your signature with the mouse, or type your name and pick from four handwriting styles
- Separate signature and initials, both remembered for every document you ever open
- Drop it anywhere on the page, drag it, resize it
- Optional signed by block underneath with your name, the date and time, and a unique ID
- Text boxes you can drop and type into for filling out forms
- Save a filled copy writes a brand new PDF with everything burned in, so you can email it straight back
Highlighter and notes
- Four highlight colours, clean single pass highlighting that stays readable on every page colour
- Attach a note to any highlight
- Standalone notes you can write and drag into any order you like
- Notes panel with tabs for highlights, notes and bookmarks
- Everything is dated
- Hover the Notes button for a jump list, click any note to go straight to it on the page
Bookmarks
- One click to bookmark the spread you are on
- Hover the button for the full list with dates, click to jump, X to remove
Themes
- Six window themes: Dark, Light, Yotsuba, Yotsuba B, Photon, Tomorrow
- Five page colours: Night, Paper, Dim, Sepia, Dark page
- Live preview tiles, so you see the real thing before you pick it
- Night mode is genuinely readable at 2am, which is the whole reason it exists
Your stuff stays yours
- Everything is stored on your own machine
- No account, no cloud, no telemetry, no tracking
- The only time it touches the internet is when you press Check for updates
Install on Windows
Option 1: PowerShell, copy the whole block and paste it in
$dst = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\PageTurn"
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path $dst | Out-Null
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://github.com/xCompassionate/PageTurn/releases/latest/download/PageTurn-win.zip" -OutFile "$env:TEMP\PageTurn.zip"
Expand-Archive -LiteralPath "$env:TEMP\PageTurn.zip" -DestinationPath $dst -Force
$s = (New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell).CreateShortcut("$env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\PageTurn.lnk")
$s.TargetPath = "$dst\PageTurn.exe"; $s.Save()
Start-Process "$dst\PageTurn.exe"
That installs it to your user folder, puts a shortcut on the desktop and opens it. No admin rights needed.
Option 2: winget
winget install --id xCompassionate.PageTurn
The winget package is not published yet. Use the PowerShell block above or the manual steps until it is.
Option 3: by hand
- Download
PageTurn-win.zip from the latest release
- Right click the zip, Extract All, put it wherever you like
- Run
PageTurn.exe
It is portable, so you can also drop the folder on a USB stick and run it from there.
Windows SmartScreen may warn you the first time because the build is not code signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.
Uninstall
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\PageTurn"
Remove-Item -Force "$env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\PageTurn.lnk" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$env:APPDATA\PageTurn"
The last line also deletes your highlights, notes and saved signature, so leave it out if you want to keep them.
Install on macOS
curl -L -o ~/Downloads/PageTurn-mac.zip https://github.com/xCompassionate/PageTurn/releases/latest/download/PageTurn-mac.zip
unzip -o ~/Downloads/PageTurn-mac.zip -d /Applications
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/PageTurn.app
open /Applications/PageTurn.app
The build is not notarised by Apple, so that third line is what stops macOS from refusing to open it. If you would rather not run it, you can instead right click the app in Finder, choose Open, and confirm once.
Intel and Apple Silicon both work, Apple Silicon runs it through Rosetta.
Uninstall
rm -rf /Applications/PageTurn.app
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/PageTurn
Install on Linux
The AppImage runs on anything reasonably current. No install, no package manager, no dependencies to chase.
mkdir -p ~/Applications
curl -L -o ~/Applications/PageTurn.AppImage https://github.com/xCompassionate/PageTurn/releases/latest/download/PageTurn-linux.AppImage
chmod +x ~/Applications/PageTurn.AppImage
~/Applications/PageTurn.AppImage
Add it to your application menu
cat > ~/.local/share/applications/pageturn.desktop </dev/null
If your distro does not have FUSE and the AppImage refuses to start:
# Arch, CachyOS, Manjaro
sudo pacman -S fuse2
# Debian, Ubuntu, Mint
sudo apt install libfuse2
# Fedora
sudo dnf install fuse fuse-libs
Or skip FUSE entirely:
~/Applications/PageTurn.AppImage --appimage-extract-and-run
Uninstall
rm -f ~/Applications/PageTurn.AppImage ~/.local/share/applications/pageturn.desktop
rm -rf ~/.config/PageTurn
Updates
There is an update button in the top right of the app. It checks this repository, tells you what changed, downloads the right build for your system and swaps it in. On Windows and Linux it restarts itself when it is done. On macOS it hands you the file to drop in.
It also checks quietly once a day and puts a dot on the button if something is waiting. Nothing downloads until you say so.
Keyboard
| Key | What it does |
|---|
| Left, Right, Page Up, Page Down | Turn pages |
| Home, End | First and last page |
| Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+Shift+Tab | Next and previous document |
| Ctrl+W | Close the current document |
| Ctrl+Plus, Ctrl+Minus | Zoom in and out |
| Ctrl+0 | Back to fit |
| Ctrl+Scroll | Zoom |
| Escape | Close a popup or cancel placing a signature |
Questions
Is it really free?
Yes. Free to download, free to use, free forever, for personal and for work. There is no paid tier and there is not going to be one.
Do my documents get uploaded anywhere?
No. PageTurn opens files from your disk and saves your notes to your own machine. It never sends a document anywhere. The only network request in the whole program is the update check, which asks GitHub what the latest version number is.
Where does it keep my highlights and signature?
Windows: %APPDATA%\PageTurn
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/PageTurn
Linux: ~/.config/PageTurn
Highlights and notes are tied to the contents of the document, so they follow it even if you rename or move the file.
Can it edit the text of a PDF?
No. It adds things on top: highlights, notes, signatures, text boxes. The Save a filled copy option writes those into a new PDF and leaves your original untouched.
Something is broken.
Open an issue on this repository with what you were doing and what happened.
License
PageTurn is closed source. The program is free to download and use for any purpose, personal or commercial, on as many machines as you like. You may not resell it, repackage it or take it apart. It comes with no warranty of any kind. See LICENSE.