Acrobat Reader has put on weight

[Hector Pascal]

Today, I downloaded Adobe Acrobat Reader from the Adobe website, and I was surprised to learn that its installation would take up more than 2GB on my hard drive.

I suppose 2GB is ultimately acceptable to me, given I have sufficient storage (2TB).

Cheers,
HP.
[edited for clarity]

[benwiggy]

There are some lightweight PDF Readers out there; but most apps try to be all-singing all-dancing PDF editors.

Foxit Reader is one free option for Windows and Mac.
LightPDF is another; though it charges for additional capabilities, including inevitable AI.
muPDF is an open source reader from the makers GhostScript. There are binaries for Windows. The Mac version is accessed on the command line, and comes with GhostScript.
SumatraPDF is another Windows app.

If you're on a Mac, then you have Preview, of course; though it does have some oddities and annoyances. I've actually create my own PDF viewer app for macOS, which purposely does very little -- and comes in at under 2 MEGAbytes...!

PDF Expert is an often-cited PDF app for Mac. There's a subscription for all the features, but it is possible to use without payment, but you still need to create an account.

[Magnus Johansson]

Hello! An alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader is Okular at 783 MB.

Regards,
Magnus

[Hector Pascal]

Hi benwiggy and Magnus
Thanks for all this info. I will check them out with interest
Cheers,
HP.
PS: Yes, I'm on a new macbook pro which comes with Preview. Another program I have been exploring is called Create Booklet 2. It has some useful features for creating and organising pdfs.

[David Ward]

… … …Another program I have been exploring is called Create Booklet 2. It has some useful features for creating and organising pdfs.

I've had that for a while and have used it from time to time (but probably not often enough to give reliable advice).

[Magnus Johansson]

Hector, what did you think of the alternatives to Adobe Acrobat Reader?

[hautbois baryton]

I bought an older version of the full Adobe Acrobat and haven't looked back. Got tired of the bloat creeping in.

[Hector Pascal]

Hi Magnus! I had a look at most of the options (I'm on a mac):

Foxit Reader does things like collaboration and signing, etc.. they say it has 75 million users!
LightPDF looks good if one favours to do work with PDFs in the cloud / online.

Okular looks nice, thanks for the heads-up! It appears to be available for mac, but I am not fully confident about how to download/install from packages).

I decided in the end to keep using Preview for things like viewing PDFs and re-arranging pages. And for fancy stuff like making booklets with creep, I am planning to get Create Booklet 2 which comes highly recommended by score publisher / performance materials preparation type people.

Thanks again,
HP.

[Magnus Johansson]

Hey, Hector! You're welcome. There is a DMG file with Okular at https://cdn.kde.org/ci-builds/graphics/ ... cos-arm64/. It is only 111 MB.

[Hector Pascal]

Thanks, Magnus!