PDF editor for field techs. View, annotate, merge, split, edit text, draw, sign, print, flatten, and open password-protected PDFs without an Adobe subscription or a phone-home. Install or run portable. Single Windows EXE, ~6 MB zipped, no runtime install required.
Landing page is hosted at pdf.killertools.net
I hate Adobe. Acrobat is bloated, tries to hijack file associations, wants a subscription to do basic things, and phones home constantly. Most of the "free" alternatives are either ad-riddled, cloud-based, or rebrands of the same PDF engine sold under three different names.
KillerPDF is what I wanted: local-only, portable, no account, no telemetry. The PDF equivalent of Notepad.
- High-quality rendering via PDFium
- Merge multiple PDFs and split out selected pages, drag-and-drop page reordering
- Inline text editing with font matching against the original document
- Text boxes, freehand drawing, and highlight overlays with adjustable color, size, and opacity
- Draw and save reusable signatures or import a PNG/JPG/BMP image as a signature, click to place anywhere on a page
- Insert images onto any page as resizable annotations - drag the corner handle to scale, burned into the PDF on save
- Crop tool with corner drag handles; Enter to apply, Escape to cancel, remove crop from one page or all pages
- Right-click sidebar: insert blank page, rotate CW/CCW, move up/down, extract, or delete - works on multi-page selections
- PDF form filling: text inputs, checkboxes, and radio buttons render as live controls - fill and save back to PDF
- PDF outline (bookmark) navigation: OUTLINES tab in the sidebar displays the bookmark tree; click any entry to jump to that page
- Clickable PDF links and internal cross-references, including TOC back-links
- Four view modes selectable in Settings: Single Page, Continuous scroll (all pages in one vertical strip), Two-Page (side-by-side), and Grid. Choice persists across sessions.
- Localized UI: English, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese included. Contribute a translation via
Strings/TRANSLATING.md. - Six color themes: Dark, Light, High Contrast, Blood, Greed, and Cyanotic. Switch live in Settings.
- Zoom preset dropdown with scroll-wheel sync; Fit to Width and Fit Page re-apply on window resize
- Page number jump box in the toolbar; type a page number and press Enter to navigate directly
- Keyboard-driven navigation with arrow keys and middle-mouse panning, plus a full shortcut overlay (Ctrl+?)
- Full-text search across the entire document with result highlighting, drag-select to copy text
- Print with annotations flattened into the output, print preview is rendered in print dialog.
- Save Flattened PDF: rasterizes every page at 150 DPI into a fully uneditable document
- Password-protected PDF support: prompts for password instead of erroring
- Self-installing EXE: installs per-user to %LOCALAPPDATA% (no UAC), registers as PDF file handler, adds Start Menu and optional Desktop shortcuts, uninstalls cleanly via Add/Remove Programs
Six themes to choose from:
Dark
Blood
Greed
Cyanotic
High Contrast
Light
- 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).
winget install killerpdf- Prebuilt binary: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF/releases/latest/download/KillerPDF.exe
- Source (GPL3 corresponding source for this release): https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF/releases/download/v1.5.1/KillerPDF-1.5.1-src.zip
git clone https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF.git
cd KillerPDF
dotnet publish -c ReleaseOutput lands in bin/Release/net48/publish/. The publish step produces a single Costura-bundled KillerPDF.exe plus a versioned KillerPDF-<version>-src.zip for GPL3 source distribution.
Requires the .NET 8 SDK or later to build (even though the output targets .NET Framework 4.8).
See CHANGELOG.md.
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.