Forgive me for this stupid question. I just transitioned from iPhone to Pixel (GrapheneOS) and I’m curious why there isn’t a built in PDF viewer like on iPhone? It feels like you have to open things externally pretty often, but I figure there’s a reason for that. I haven’t used Android in many years and I recently developed an interest for the technical aspects of things, so again, do forgive this beginners question.
Cheers y’all!
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Because… Fuck Adobe. This is my near-daily mantra.
Retail Android ships with Google’s proprietary PDF viewer. GrapheneOS isn’t the default experience.
GrapheneOS has an actively maintained PDF viewer app though.
It’s a secure PDF designed to sandbox the file before launching it, but unfortunately it’s painful to use: no page scrolling, and no dark content view…
Page scrolling works fine and dark mode doesn’t make sense…
Dark mode really starts to make sense when you’re looking at documents for 7-10 hrs/day almost every other day for a month or two
Easier to maintain and update when the reader is an app not part of the core OS.
Yeah but system apps can be updated separately from the main OS on Android, so that doesn’t really apply
You really should ask this in
http://discuss.grapheneos.org/
https://lemmy.ml/c/grapheneos.It’s a very helpful community. Someone will either explain why or point you to a FAQ. I bet it has something to do with the built in reader being insecure.
Edited… I totally gave the wrong url. Sorry. Corrected.
Thanks for letting me know! (:
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !grapheneos@lemmy.ml
You could try their official app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adobe.reader
while many people hate it, it does work and has nice UI. Dark theme is my favourite.
I long for the day PDF can just be replaced by SVG since its basically just vector anyways.
Pdf has a mind-bogging array of features, which make it so entrenched in the corporate world with no viable replacements at the moment. Things like forms where users can fill them out and submit (surprisingly a popular feature), cryptographic signing to prevent tampering, DRM, etc. Heck, I think you can even add JavaScript code to a pdf.
GrapheneOS actually has a built in PDF reader. Open the “Apps” app if it isn’t installed. Look for “PDF Reader” and make sure its installed.
I think I might be using the wrong terminology, forgive me. What I mean is, in my case, why does the PDF have to open in PDF reader instead of directly in the browser (like on iPhone)? That’s what I mean when I say “opening things externally.”
It doesn’t have to, but GrapheneOS is designed around security first, privacy second, and usability third
If you install Fennec browser on it and open, e.g., https://www.learningcontainer.com/download/sample-pdf-file-for-testing/?wpdmdl=1566&refresh=6697dcd62a0141721228502
The PDF will display inside Firefox
The default web browser on GrapheneOS, Vanadium, doesn’t parse PDF’s (they’re an incredibly insecure format) and passes them off to a sandboxed, hardened app specifically for that usecase
This allows rejecting more permissions than doing it in the same process
