I Hate PDFs

I Hate PDFs is an open-source macOS PDF reader for anyone who hates adobe. I think adobe is worth of any sentient being's disdain.

Status

This app is entirely vibe coded, but will somehow still be better than adobe acrobat soon.

Minimum supported macOS version: macOS 13 Ventura.

Supported Mac architectures: Apple Silicon and Intel, subject to the local Swift/Xcode toolchain used to build.

Latest Release

Download the v0.2 macOS DMG from the GitHub release page:

https://github.com/akkolli/ihatepdfs/releases/tag/v0.2

Use IHatePDFs-v0.2-macos.dmg for normal app installation. Open the DMG, then drag I Hate PDFs.app into /Applications.

Signing status for v0.2: the DMG is ad-hoc signed, but it is not Developer ID signed or Apple-notarized yet. macOS Gatekeeper may require opening the app from Finder with Control-click, then Open, on first launch.

Features

Open local .pdf files from disk.
Read with smooth PDFKit scrolling, Retina rendering, zoom, fit-to-width, fit-to-page, and page navigation.
Search selectable text PDFs from a compact toolbar control.
Start in a focused single-pane reading layout, with thumbnail and comments sidebars hidden until requested.
Remember thumbnail and comments sidebar visibility per PDF and coarse window size.
Toggle a compact page thumbnail/sidebar inspector.
Create selection-bound comments from highlighted PDF text.
Create highlight annotations with anchored optional comments.
Create underline annotations with optional comments.
Create free-text annotations directly on the page.
Click annotations in the PDF to reopen and edit the comment in place.
Save annotations directly into the original PDF after an overwrite warning.
Save As a new annotated copy.
Share the annotated PDF through the native macOS share picker.
Review annotations in a compact list with page number, type, author, date, and first comment line.
Use an Acrobat-style comments sidebar with total count, page grouping, collapsible groups, an add-comment affordance, comment search, collapsed type/author/status filters, full text, replies, edit/delete, and click-to-navigate.

Download Releases

https://github.com/akkolli/ihatepdfs/releases/tag/v0.2

Build From Source

Requirements:

macOS 13 or newer
Xcode 15 or newer with command line tools
Swift Package Manager

Build and run the debug executable:

swift run IHatePDFs

Run tests:

swift test

Build a release .app bundle:

scripts/build-app.sh

Release app builds default to a universal arm64 + x86_64 executable. To build only the current architecture during development, run:

ARCHS="" scripts/build-app.sh

Create a downloadable .dmg:

scripts/make-dmg.sh

The packaged app is written to dist/I Hate PDFs.app; the disk image is written to dist/IHatePDFs-v0.2-macos.dmg.

Installation

Download IHatePDFs-v0.2-macos.dmg from the latest GitHub release, open it, and move I Hate PDFs.app into /Applications.

For v0.2 and local development builds, the app is not Developer ID signed or notarized. If macOS blocks first launch, open Finder, Control-click I Hate PDFs.app, choose Open, then confirm.

Development

The project is a Swift Package with two targets:

IHatePDFsCore: PDF annotation models and factory helpers.
IHatePDFs: SwiftUI macOS app, PDFKit bridge, toolbar, menus, sidebars, anchored comment popovers, opening, saving, sharing, and search.

Useful checks:

swift test
swift build -c release
swift scripts/verify-sample-pdf.swift
swift scripts/verify-pdf-annotations.swift

The PDF verification scripts generate and inspect standard highlight, underline, selected-text comment, reply, free-text, and popup annotation dictionaries.

Manual release QA for Preview, Acrobat Reader, and browser PDF viewers is documented in docs/QA.md. The macOS design review is documented in docs/DESIGN_REVIEW.md.