prev: a fast PDF and image viewer for Linux

A fast, open source document and image viewer, modelled on macOS Preview. Read, mark up, fill in, sign, rearrange and redact PDFs, and view and edit photos, in one light app.

Download prev 1.0.0 Source on GitHub

Free and open source under the AGPL-3.0. For Linux, on Wayland desktops such as Hyprland and Omarchy.

A form filled in, marked up with a highlight, shapes, a text box and a note, and signed

What prev does

PDFs, fast

Pages render in tiles as you scroll, with thumbnails, the table of contents, bookmarks, search that highlights every match, text selection, links, full screen, slideshow and printing.

Markup and forms

Highlight, underline, draw, add shapes, arrows, text boxes and notes, fill in forms, and sign with a drawn, typed or scanned signature. All saved as standard PDF annotations.

Page editing

Reorder, rotate, delete, crop and insert pages, drag them between documents or out as a PDF, and export pages as images or a smaller, encrypted or flattened PDF.

Redaction

Mark text or areas and apply: what was underneath is removed from the file for good, not just covered, and no earlier revision keeps it.

Photos

PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF, HEIC, TIFF, camera RAW and more. Crop, rotate, resize and adjust color with undo, mark up, and export to nine formats. Edits keep EXIF and color profiles.

SVG and Markdown

SVG drawings stay sharp at any zoom. Markdown shows with tables, task lists and highlighted code, reloads as you edit, and exports as a picture.

A PDF with its table of contents in the sidebar — Table of contents and bookmarks

A photo marked up with an oval, an arrow and a text box — Markup on photos too

Dragging a page to a new place in the page thumbnails — Drag pages to reorder

An account number and a routing number marked for redaction — Redaction that removes the content

Download

prev 1.0.0 for 64-bit Linux. Every file is on the release page, with checksums.

System	Download	Install
Debian, Ubuntu	.deb	`sudo apt install ./prev_1.0.0-1_amd64.deb`
Fedora	.rpm	`sudo dnf install ./prev-1.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm`
Arch, Omarchy	PKGBUILD and prev.install	`makepkg -si` in a folder with both
Flatpak	prev.flatpak	`flatpak install --user prev.flatpak`
Any distribution	AppImage	Make it executable, then run it
Any distribution	.tar.gz	Unpack under `/usr` or `~/.local`
With mise		`mise use -g github:scrambletools/prev`

A Windows version is on the way. See the install notes for what differs between packages.

Code signing policy

Windows releases of prev are to be signed. Free code signing provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation.

What is signed: only programs built from this project's own source code by its GitHub Actions release workflow: prev.exe and the prev installer. Open source components prev bundles unchanged, such as libheif, libde265 and aom, are not signed with this certificate.
Committers and reviewers: the members of the scrambletools GitHub account, who review every outside contribution before it is merged.
Approvers: the owner of the scrambletools GitHub account, who approves each signing request.
Everyone on the team signs in to GitHub and SignPath with two-factor authentication.

Privacy

This program will not transfer any information to other networked systems unless specifically requested by the user or the person installing or operating it. prev goes online only to fetch a picture you drop onto it as a web address, and to open links you click. This website sets no cookies and loads nothing from other sites.