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Is there any way to display a PDF file on two columns on Google Chrome?

I.e. instead of having:

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I would like to see something like:

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3 columns would be even nicer in some cases.

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8 Answers 8

Reset to default
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There is a way. Use Notable PDF extension

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Enable Two page view

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  • 4
    Apparently the Notable PDF extension was renamed to Kami - PDF and Document Markup
    – Paul Gorbas
    May 11, 2017 at 20:29
  • This does work, but it is way more than a PDF viewer, its a whole website of things. It sounded really good to me to start, but it is a bit much to view an occasional PDF 2 up. I think for teachers, it may make more sense.
    – nycynik
    Jan 14, 2019 at 21:06
  • Requires permission to "See, edit, create, and delete all of your Google Drive files" FYI
    – hughes
    Oct 22, 2019 at 7:06
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Rotate your computer's screen 270° (from the computer settings "Display" menu) and then rotate the pdf 90° to the right (using the rotate button inside the pdf viewer, top right.) Use Ctrl & Shft & +/- to resize document to get 2 pages per screen. Rotate your keyboard 90° degrees to the left to use the arrow keys for document navigation.

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    I tried this - and it actually works. It shows the two pages side by side, it does not do page turning right, because the pages are all in a row, but it actually does work, as crazy as it sounded.
    – nycynik
    Jan 14, 2019 at 21:05
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    Brilliant! Who needs software? Here's an alternative: open Chrome, rotate your screen backwards by 90°, print out the pdf document in single-page mode (even and odd page numbers separately), arrange the two stacks on your flat computer screen. Adjust distance between eyes and paper to select a comfortable zoom setting. Turn off computer.
    – bers
    Jul 1, 2019 at 10:56
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Actually there is a way to do this... All you need to do is revert to the old Adobe plugins in Chrome following these steps:

  1. In the Chrome address bar, type: chrome://flags.
  2. Search for “NPAPI” and enable it.
  3. Relaunch Chrome.
  4. In the Chrome address bar, type chrome://plugins
  5. Disable Chrome PDF Viewer.
  6. Enable the Adobe Acrobat/ Adobe Reader plugin.
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Because 2-up view is part of the PDF standard, this capability is being implemented in chromium's native PDF viewer.

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=51472

UPDATE (2020-05-15): If you use Chrome Canary, you can enable to PDF Two-Up View flag (visit chrome://flags in the address bar) and when you view PDFs there will be 2-up view option.

Keep in mind the icon for 2-up view in the beta is actually an "edit" icon (pencil) - a more appropriate icon will eventually take its place before the feature becomes official.

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    You don't need canary anymore. I tested this on stable Chrome and it worked well for me.
    – Allen
    Jul 1, 2020 at 20:29
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For those wanting to do it natively within Chrome without downloading a plugin you can do the following:

  1. Click the "Print" button

  2. In that preview popup, select "Pages Per Sheet: 2" on the print preview.

This works for me.. It's obviously not the best solution, but it sure does work! I could probably whip up some javascript to make it go full screen too, but I don't think that'd last too long and would require special knowledge of dev tools to get working properly for regular users.

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    Once you've selected 2 pages per sheet, you can then "Save as PDF" and you have a 2-up .pdf file that can be viewed using the usual Chrome pdf view.
    – Ross Bencina
    Mar 2, 2020 at 15:03
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Late 2020 Update

There's a new, new PDF view that's available under the flag pdf-viewer-update. Per this issue the pdf-two-up-view flag was removed in favor of the new viewer. The Two Page View button is in the overflow menu that is next do the Download and Print buttons.

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2022 Update: Chrome's built-in PDF viewer now has a "two-page view", available by default (= no need to change any setting/flag):

enter image description here

Tested on Ubuntu and Windows with Chrome Version 98.0.4758.82 (Official Build) (64-bit).

Demo:

enter image description here

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2020 update

Chrome now has a native two-page view for PDFs, here is how to enable it. The option is hidden behind the flag -> chrome://flags/#pdf-two-up-view flag.

Select Enabled and restart the browser. Done!

Link for detailed instructions https://techdows.com/2020/03/chrome-adds-two-page-view-for-pdfs-enable-it.html

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