PDF Viewer with tabs

Question

Is there a non-bloated PDF viewer where I could open different chapters (pages) in the same PDF File in different tabs? I'm so tired of jumping around chapter to chapter. Especially, when I'm just trying to go to the appendix for a brief look.

Answer 1

No, there isn't. There are PDF readers (e.g. Foxit Reader) that can display different PDFs in separate tabs, but none of them can display different pages from the same document in separate tabs.

If you're using Adobe Reader then Alt + Left or Right Arrow will take you to the previous or next view, if you just want to flick between two pages.

Answer 2

Foxit Reader has multiple-tab support:

However, this is only for separate PDF files, not chapters within a single PDF file, so you won't be able to do this directly in the Foxit UI. However, you can come at it by getting your PDF into multiple files and then opening these as tabs in Foxit Reader. You can do one of the following to get your PDF into multiple files:

• If disk space is not an issue, just make separate copies of the PDF file.
• If disk space is a concern, use NTFS Link to easily create hardlinks of the original file. These will open up as separate tabs in Foxit.
• Use PDF Split and Merge to split the PDF chapters into individual PDFs

Answer 3

You can use Okular pdf reader. It can be installed with following command if you are using apt package:

sudo apt install okular

After installing Okular, you need to enable the multitab option as explained here.

Settings > Configrue Okular... > Program Features > Open new files in tabs

You can open the same document in the same window by drag and drop in different tabs.

Answer 4

It is possible to do it. Infact, I use this feature everyday. I have Foxit Reader version 3.0 (build 1506, but that should not matter)

1. Open a pdf document in foxit.
2. go to Window menu
3. click on New Window option.
4. Now you have two tabs of the same pdf document. you can keep the two different chapters and just switch between them by clicking on tabs!

I find this feature very helpful, but seems later versions of the foxit reader removed this options. Hence, I still use version 3.0

Answer 5

Not a conventional PDF reader but it might be helpful for others that come across this question.

You can download Visual Studio Code and install the vscode-pdf plugin. After this, you can open PDF files in its tabs and deal with them like any other tab. You can split the view horizontally or vertically or with a combination of both. You can also open the same PDF file in two views. Your screen estate is the limit.

It doesn't have the more advanced editing and annotation features a dedicated PDF reader would but it's great for viewing.

Answer 6

This is an answer to a very old question (and probably this solution was not available at the time), but Adobe Reader lets you open multiple windows of the same document. From the Window menu, select New Window.

So, although not tabbed, you can have multiple concurrent views of your doc, and jump between them using the taskbar buttons.

Answer 7

If you open a PDF in Google Chrome, middle-clicking (or right-click -> open in new tab, or ctrl-click) on a link inside the PDF (e.g. to a chapter or page reference anchor) will open the same pdf in a new tab, at the linked anchor. More or less equivalent to how navigating with internal links in other documents work in the web browser.

Unfortunately it doesn't offer bookmarks, stack-based navigation etc. The Google Chrome PDF viewer does have very good security sandboxing, though.

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I'm aware this is an old question, but it is as of this posting the first result for "PDF viewer with tabs" on Google search, has no particularly satisfactory answers, and the question hasn't been archived.

I still am looking for a fully-featured reader program with good navigation, bookmarking, annotation, ability to open internal links in tabs, split-window, etc.

Answer 8

Not quite tabs and it's Mac only...but in Skim you can cmd-drag to create a pop up window of part of a page. This allows you to view (and scroll through) multiple sections of one pdf.