No Bloat PDF

A free PDF viewer for Windows that just opens. 4.6 MB installer, instant launch, tabs, full text search, dark mode, annotations, form filling, and signatures. Zero network calls: no telemetry, no ads, no accounts, no cloud.

Website & download: https://www.nobloatpdf.com

Why

The most common file on your computer somehow ended up behind slow launchers, ads, cloud upsells, and sign-in prompts. This is the viewer I wanted instead: small, instant, quiet, and free forever. The longer version is on the blog.

What it does

• Opens PDFs instantly, including large, scanned, CJK, and password-protected files
• Tabs for multiple documents in one window (Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+W)
• Full text search, thumbnails, bookmarks, outline, zoom, rotate
• Highlighting, text notes, freehand drawing, stamps, and signatures
• Fills standard PDF forms and saves locally
• High-resolution printing, dark mode, remembers your place in every file
• Makes zero network calls. Works identically with the internet unplugged

What it deliberately does not do: heavy PDF editing. Staying a viewer is how it stays 4.6 MB and instant.

How it's built

• Mozilla pdf.js: the prebuilt viewer (the same renderer inside Firefox), vendored under src/
• Tauri v2: a small native shell instead of a bundled browser, in src-tauri/
• The only custom frontend glue is src/web/nobloat.js (tabs, file opening, drag and drop, branding) plus the About window in src/about.html
• The website lives in website/ and is plain HTML/CSS with SSI partials

Building from source

Prerequisites: Node.js 22+, Rust stable, and the Tauri v2 system prerequisites for your platform.

npm install
npm run tauri dev     # run in development
npm run tauri build   # produce the installer

Release builds are configured to code-sign on the maintainer's machine (src-tauri/signing/, Microsoft Artifact Signing) and will fall back with an error if that setup is absent; remove or adjust bundle.windows.signCommand in src-tauri/tauri.conf.json to build unsigned locally. macOS builds run through .github/workflows/macos-build.yml with Developer ID signing and notarization via repository secrets.

License

No Bloat PDF is MIT licensed.

Bundled third-party components: pdf.js is Apache License 2.0 (c) Mozilla; the app shell is built with Tauri (MIT / Apache 2.0). Adobe and Acrobat are trademarks of Adobe Inc., referenced only for comparison.

Support

The project is free forever, with no monetization beyond an optional Buy Me a Coffee.

Built by Brian Galvan.