I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer
I built EmbedPDF: an MIT-licensed, open-source PDF viewer that aims to match all of Adobe Acrobat’s paid features… for free. Already working: - Annotations (highlight, sticky notes, free text, ink) - True redaction (content actually removed) - Search, text selection, zoom, rotation - Runs fully in the browser, no server needed - Drop-in SDK for React, Vue, Preact, vanilla JS Why? Acrobat is heavy, closed, and pricey. I wanted something lightweight, hackable, and embeddable anywhere. Demo: https://app.embedpdf.com/ Website: https://www.embedpdf.com/ GitHub:…
In plain words
EmbedPDF is an open-source, MIT-licensed PDF viewer that runs entirely in the browser without requiring a server. It offers annotations including highlights, sticky notes, and freehand ink, plus true redaction that permanently removes content. Features include search, text selection, zoom, and rotation. Developers can integrate it as a drop-in SDK for React, Vue, Preact, or vanilla JavaScript. Designed for those seeking a lightweight, customizable alternative to Adobe Acrobat.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
I built EmbedPDF: an MIT-licensed, open-source PDF viewer that aims to match all of Adobe Acrobat’s paid features… for free. Already working: - Annotations (highlight, sticky notes, free text, ink) - True redaction (content actually removed) - Search, text selection, zoom, rotation - Runs fully in the browser, no server needed - Drop-in SDK for React, Vue, Preact, vanilla JS Why? Acrobat is heavy, closed, and pricey. I wanted something lightweight, hackable, and embeddable anywhere. Demo: https://app.embedpdf.com/ Website: https://www.embedpdf.com/ GitHub: https://github.com/embedpdf/embed-pdf-viewer Feedback, bug reports, and feature requests welcome!
More dev tools this month
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Dev tools · 29d ago · gtmcofounder.com
OpenTrailPaper is open-source bike computer firmware for the LilyGO T5S3 4.7" E-Paper PRO. It supports offline maps, GPX routes, FIT recording and Bluetooth sensors.
Dev tools · 2d ago · opentrailpaper.com
Launched alongside, August 2025
the whole month →
- IS
I built the world's most impractical 1000-pixel display and anyone in the world can draw on it. It draws a single pixel at a time and takes 30-60 minutes to complete a single image. Anyone can participate in the project by voting for the next image to be drawn, and submitting images. https://kilopx.com/
Work · 2025 · benholmen.com
- KT
Kitten TTS is an open-source series of tiny and expressive text-to-speech models for on-device applications. We are excited to launch a preview of our smallest model, which is less than 25 MB. This model has 15M parameters. This release supports English text-to-speech applications in eight voices: four male and four female. The model is quantized to int8 + fp16, and it uses onnx for runtime. The model is designed to run literally anywhere eg. raspberry pi, low-end smartphones, wearables, browsers etc. No GPU required! We're releasing this to give early users a sense of the latency and voices…
Dev tools · 2025 · github.com
- IW
I was wondering how I can arrange objects along a spherical helix path, and read some articles on it. I ended up learning about parametric equations again, and make this visualization to document what I learned: https://visualrambling.space/moving-objects-in-3d/ feel free to visit and let me know what you think!
Life & fun · 2025 · visualrambling.space
- TC
For HTML Day 2025 [1], I made a web service that displays the current sky at your approximate location as a CSS gradient. Colours are simulated on-demand using atmospheric absorption and scattering coefficients. Updates every minute, without the use of client-side JavaScript. Source code and additional information is available on GitHub: https://github.com/dnlzro/horizon [1] https://html.energy/html-day/2025/index.html
Dev tools · 2025 · sky.dlazaro.ca