GoodReader supports viewing of very large PDF files (including password-protected files). You have to make sure that your file has .PDF extension, otherwise it may be opened by iPhone's built-in viewing engine, which doesn't have many of the features that our own viewing engine has.

Read Me First

Buttons and controls

Tips for reading, scrolling and zooming

PDF Reflow (Extracting Pure Text)

Copying text from a PDF page

Find Text in PDF

Tap Zones

Horizontal Scroll Lock

PDF Links (tappable hyperlinks)

Bookmarks and Table of Contents (Outlines)

Day / Night reading mode

PDF Portfolios

About page rendering

Help us to help you


Read Me First

When you open any file, you can see a navigation menu and a button bar, which you can use to close the file and to select actions with buttons.

This navigation menu and button bar soon will disappear to give you more viewing space.

To bring the menu and the buttons back you have to quickly tap in the middle of the screen (this applies to every file type). There's a very special case with PDF files, when tapping in the middle of the screen is not desirable. For example, the middle of the screen can be occupied by a big PDF Link, which will take you to a very different place if you tap it. For cases like this we have provided another way to turn the navigation menu on/off - a quick tap with three fingers anywhere on the screen.

The "one page at a time" viewing model was chosen intentionally due to serious stability and performance issues. Read our viewing tips on how to turn pages.

You have 2 options to rotate the screen - automatically or manually. Choose your option in General Settings section of Application Settings. In automatic mode screen orientation will follow the actual device movements. In manual mode (very useful for reading in bed) you can always rotate the screen manually with the dedicated button at the right bottom corner of the screen on a button bar.

Use pinching gestures to zoom in or zoom out. Also use 1-finger double-tap (zoom in) and 2-fingers single tap (zoom out).

Use PDF Reflow feature to extract pure text from a PDF page and to comfortably read it with word wrap, without left/right scrolling and with the font size of your choice. Quickly switch back and forth between the Reflow mode and the original PDF page.

Use Find Text in PDF feature to search for text.

Use Tap Zones feature to read a very wide text without constantly dragging a page to the left and to the right.

Use Horizontal Scroll Lock feature to isolate a single column of a text on the screen and prevent further left/right movement.

Use PDF Links feature to follow hypertext links to different places in the same document, to other documents, or even to web-sites (Safari will be launched to open a web-site).

Use Bookmarks & Outlines feature to add your own named bookmarks or to access Table of Contents (a.k.a. Outlines).

Use PDFPortfolio button of the Actions menu to extract files from a PDF Portfolio.

Use Day / Night Mode switch to quickly dim the screen for comfortable night reading.

Consult our Troubleshooting guide if you're having problems opening PDF files.

 


Buttons and controls

 
  Day / Night mode switch. Quickly dims the screen for comfortable night reading. The level of brightness can be adjusted in Application Settings, Viewing PDF files section.
 
  Go Back button. If you accidentally jumped to a wrong page or tapped a wrong link or bookmark, just go back to the previous page with a button click. Memorizes every page change or link click. Up to 20 recent positions memorized.
 
  PDF Reflow (Extract Pure Text) feature. Extracts pure text from a PDF page to comfortably read it without left/right scrolling and with the font size of your choice. Allows to quickly switch back and forth between the Reflow mode and the original PDF page.
 
  Opens up a choice of actions:
  • Find Text. Use it to search for text. More details here.
  • GoTo Page. Use it to enter an arbitrary page number to quickly jump to it. The same action can be invoked by tapping the floating badge with a page number:
  • Bookmarks & Outlines. Use it to work with your own bookmarks as well as with embedded Table of Contents (a.k.a. Outlines).
 
  Horizontal Scroll Lock. Use it to lock/unlock horizontal scrolling. Use it along with zooming to isolate a single column of text and hide the rest of the page behind screen boundaries. When the Lock is on, no matter how you drag your text with a finger, you will only move page vertically. And tapping any of the Tap Zones will also result in vertical movements only.
 
  You have 2 options to rotate the screen - automatically or manually. Choose your option in General Settings section of Application Settings. In automatic mode screen orientation will follow the actual device movements. In manual mode (very useful for reading in bed) you can always rotate the screen manually with this button.
 
  Tap this badge to invoke GoTo Page feature. Use it to enter an arbitrary page number to quickly jump to it. The same feature is accessible via the magnifying glass button.

 


Tips for reading, scrolling and zooming

 


PDF Reflow (Extracting Pure Text)

PDF Reflow feature allows you to extract pure text from a PDF page to view it as a simple TXT file, without left/right scrolling and with the font size of your choice.

Unlike with TXT files you don't have to choose the correct text encoding to view reflowed text, all necessary text encoding is chosen internally in this case. All other parameters that you normally adjust for reading TXT files in Application Settings apply to this mode.

Use all reading techniques that you normally use for reading TXT files, including Autoscroll.

PDF Reflow is done on page-by-page basis due to performance reasons. So you will only see the text from the current PDF page in Reflow mode. However, all techniques for turning PDF pages apply to Reflow mode - you can turn reflowed pages by swiping, by tapping or by using Turn Page buttons. Please note that when you turn page in Reflow mode, the corresponding page in the original PDF mode is also turned, so two viewing modes are always in sync page-wise.

While being in Reflow mode, you can copy the entire text of a PDF page to clipboard by pressing this button (iPhone OS 3.0 or later required):

If Autoscroll is on and you're turning page, autoscrolling will continue after 3 seconds pause - GoodReader lets you catch up with first few lines of text.

You can easily go back to the original PDF page by pressing back button in navigation menu. For your convenience, we have reserved the same zone of the screen for the same purpose when navigation menu is off. Just tap where the back button is supposed to be, and you'll get back to the original PDF page.

Please note that scanned page is not a text, it's a picture, and there's nothing to extract. However, modern sophisticated PDF creating applications provide OCR (optical character recognition) information when you create a PDF from scanned pictures. In such cases reflowing may be possible.

Please note that text extracted from a PDF page doesn't necessarily have the same grouping order as you visually see it on a page. Text lines may be mixed up. GoodReader extracts text as it is encoded inside PDF file, and it's up to PDF creator to encode text paragraphs in the correct order, which doesn't always happen.

Please note that PDF Reflow is very experimental feature. The correct extraction of text is not always possible. The PDF format allows to omit information that would allow to extract encoded text. So there are many PDF files, which you can read in graphic mode, but extracting text from them may produce unexpected results. For example, PDF format allows to specify the exact page coordinates of every single character, therefore many PDF files do not include whitespace or line-break characters, making it very hard to determine word-breaks and line-breaks. We have implemented very sophisticated heuristic algorithm in GoodReader that makes guesses about word-breaks and line-breaks depending on letter-positioning on a page. Although we did huge amount of testing and we're proud to say that GoodReader handles most of cases well, there's still a chance of breaking words and lines incorrectly.

There are a few options in Application Settings that help break lines correctly depending on a text formatting style:

After changing line-breaking option in Application Settings you have to close PDF Reflow view, if it was open, and reflow the text again.

Notice for right-to-left readers (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.). Some PDF files with right-to-left fonts instead of encoding text as they should - from right to left - actually contain text stored in left-to-right (i.e. reversed) order. GoodReader extracts text in the order as it appears in PDF file, which makes it look backwards in Reflow mode. We're still working on this issue. Please keep in mind that this problem is created by PDF creating software, which doesn't store text inside PDF in the correct order.

 


Copying text from a PDF page

To copy the entire text from a PDF page to clipboard you have to use the PDF Reflow feature to extract pure text from a PDF page, and then, while being in Reflow mode, use this button to copy the entire text of a PDF page to clipboard (iPhone OS 3.0 or later required):

We're sorry about the inability to select parts of text to copy. This feature will be added to one of the future GoodReader updates.

 


Find Text in PDF

Use this button to activate the Find Text feature and to enter a string to search, or to select one of 20 previously searched strings. The search operation is performed starting from the current PDF page. The found string is highlighted in inverse colors.

This button bar pops up when something was found with the Find feature. The buttons are: Find Previous (backward search), Find Next and Clear Find Results. The first two buttons perform a search starting from the highlighted position in respective direction. The third button removes highlight from the found text and hides this button bar. You don't need to clear find results to perform a new search using the main Find feature. The new highlighted search result will automatically replace the old one.

If you want to enlarge the found text without hiding navigation menu, double-tap somewhere near found text. Double-tapping not just zooms in, but it also brings the double-tapped point to the center of the screen.

Important notice about finding text in PDF files. PDF files don't have a continuous text flow, like text files do. PDFs are more like a graphical program with instructions on where to put certain letters on a page. This leads to the following inconveniences when searching for text in PDF files:

Notice for right-to-left readers (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.). Some PDF files with right-to-left fonts actually contain characters stored in left-to-right (i.e. reversed) order. To be able to find text in such files, the search string must be entered backwards. Use the Flip search string switch in PDF section of Application Settings to enter search string in readable form, and it will be flipped backwards internally during the search.

 


Tap Zones

Introducing brand new Tap zones scheme. The screen is divided into 7 zones which trigger different actions when you quickly tap them:

Middle zone  shows and hides navigation menu. Use top left navigation button from that menu to close the current file and to go back to the file list view.
 
 
  1. if you're not at the top of the page, then scrolls one screen up
  2. if you are at the top of the page, then selects the previous page
 
 
  1. if you're not at the bottom of the page, then scrolls one screen down
  2. if you are at the bottom of the page, then selects the next page
 
  this tap zone is useful when you have a lot of very wide text lines and you need to scroll horizontally from left to right several times (one time per each line to read), without moving vertically. It works this way:
  1. if you're not at the right margin of the page, then scrolls one screen to the right
  2. if you are at the right margin of the page, then rewinds back to the left margin of the page without moving vertically
 
  this tap zone is the addition to the previous zone. You use it when you read the last line of a wide text. It scrolls to the right until it reaches the right margin of the page, then it rewinds to the left and scrolls one screen down. If there's no more room to scroll down, it selects the next page.
 
  this tap zone does the opposite thing to its right-arrow counterpart.
 
  this tap zone does the opposite thing to its right-arrow counterpart.

You can always bring up the reminder of 7 tap zones locations using Help button on the navigation menu.

 


Horizontal Scroll Lock

Use it to lock/unlock horizontal scrolling. Use it along with zooming to isolate a single column of text and hide the rest of the page behind screen boundaries. When the Lock is on, no matter how you drag your text with a finger, you will only move page vertically. And tapping any of the Tap Zones will also result in vertical movements only.

If the Lock is on and you want to adjust your zooming/position, there's no need to unlock, adjust and lock again. Simply use pinching to adjust your zooming and position (lock will be temporarily removed during pinching). When you will release your fingers, the lock will be automatically restored.

 


PDF Links (tappable hyperlinks)

Use links in PDF files to quickly jump to different places in a document, to open another document, or to visit a web-site (Safari will be launched to visit a web-site).

Select one of two PDF Link modes - either links will trigger immediately as you tap them, or your taps will trigger Tap Zones events, and you'll have to tap and hold a link to trigger it. This is determined by the PDF Link has priority switch in PDF section of Application Settings.

When you tap a link, it is highlighted to give you a visual clue that it's a link.

Use Show link bounds switch in Viewing PDF files section of Application Settings if you like to see all links surrounded by a thin line to indicate that it's a link.

 


Bookmarks and Table of Contents (Outlines)

Use this button to open the Bookmarks page to work with bookmarks.

There are 2 types of Bookmarks - the ones created by you, and the ones embedded into PDF file (also known as Table of Contents, Sidebar Reference or Outlines).

Creating your own bookmark memorizes current location in an opened file. Use Edit button to delete or rearrange your own bookmarks (you can also swipe a bookmark to delete it).

Embedded bookmarks (Outlines) are structurized in a tree hierarchy. To save precious screen space, outlines only for the current level are shown. To see outlines of the next level, press a blue arrow to the right of the outline of interest.

Select a bookmark to instantly go to the location associated with it.

 


Day / Night reading mode

Day / Night mode switch quickly dims the screen for comfortable night reading. The level of brightness can be adjusted in Application Settings, Viewing PDF files section.

 


PDF Portfolios

PDF Portfolios are supported, but not for a direct reading, like it happens in Adobe Acrobat 9 or later. PDF Portfolios are complex PDF files with a very simple first page (usually it says something like "This file can be opened with Adobe Acrobat 9"), and a set of many PDF files embedded into this file, which is used simply as a container for other PDF files. GoodReader lets you extract those files from a PDF Portfolio for further reading them as normal PDF files. Due to a specific technology used for this extraction, every file must be fully loaded into memory before extraction, so very large embedded files will not be extracted.

 


About page rendering

Each time you change the zoom ratio or scroll to an area which wasn't previously rendered, GoodReader recalculates (rerenders) graphical representation of a page to achieve optimal quality of the graphics. Rendering takes some time, which depends on complexity of a page and the size of embedded pictures. You will see the animated indicator showing that rendering is in progress:

Until rendering is finished, you will see either chequered canvas (if it's the first time you're visiting this page):
,
or stretched (very blurry, if you're zooming in) image that was rendered for previous zoom ratio:
,
which will change to crisp image:

as soon as rendering will be finished.
Rendering takes place at the background, so you can continue scrolling and panning even if rendering is in progress.

Rendering is a very critical process, that takes a lot of operating memory. If you see this sign at the right bottom corner of the screen:
,
that means that there was critical amount of memory allocated to render this page, which almost led to an application crash.
If you see this sign too often, you may want to hard-reboot your iPhone (with powering off). As you run different applications on your iPhone, they can occupy more and more memory and other system resources over the time, regardless of the fact that you've quit all those applications. Rebooting frees operating memory completely.
You may also consider optimizing your PDF file for iPhone viewing if rendering takes too long or if GoodReader shows you the exclamation sign too often.

 


Help us to help you

GoodReader was dramatically improved since its earlier versions. The only thing that made it possible is user feedback. Our customers sent us a lot of problematic files, we studied those files, came to certain conclusions, and finally we were able to write a better code. We can't improve our application if you don't talk to us. We might actually solve the problem if you tell us about it! So we encourage you to send us as much feedback or feature requests as possible. Help us to help you!