Read scientific documents in any language, with realtime translation, on any platform. Powered by PDFMathTranslate.
- Open PDFs up to 50 MiB in independent windows, with drag-and-drop and macOS Finder/Dock support.
- Navigate with thumbnails, zoom, fit-to-page controls, vertical or horizontal scrolling, and one-, two-, or four-page layouts.
- Resume recent documents with their reading position and display settings restored.
- Choose full-document or nearby-page translation, and click detected paragraphs to toggle original text and translation.
- Configure translation language, concurrency, and kernel-specific options in Settings. Interface language is configured separately.
| Date | Feature | Contributor |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-03 | add custom menu and left-side traffic lights | @reycn |
| 2026-10-03 | ship runnable CI packages and improve reader layout motion | @reycn |
| 2026-10-03 | Speed up CI with dependency, Electron and icon caches | @reycn |
| 2026-10-03 | Improve Windows controls and add page-fit shortcuts | @reycn |
| 2026-10-03 | Add Windows PDF context menu and Open with entry | @reycn |
| 2026-10-03 | Improve paragraph grouping, previews and document animations | @reycn |
| 2026-10-03 | Add Intel Mac, 32-bit Windows and Linux ARMv7 builds | @reycn |
| macOS | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|
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Download the package for your system and CPU from GitHub Actions. Extract the Actions artifact ZIP first.
macOS
Extract the macOS ZIP, move PDFMathReader.app to /Applications, and open it.
macOS says the app is “damaged”
For a download you trust, run this in Terminal, enter your Mac login password when prompted (it is not displayed), then reopen the app:
sudo xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/PDFMathReader.appWindows
Double-click PDFMathReader-win32-x64.exe (or the ia32 version for 32-bit Windows). The portable app includes its runtime. Launching it registers the PDF Open with PDFMathReader menu; launch it again after moving the executable.
Linux
Extract the .tar.gz for your CPU, then run the app from its folder:
./PDFMathReaderOpen a PDF. In Settings…, save your OpenAI API key and choose a target language. Reading needs no key; translation does. Ultra fast is included. For Fast or Precise, install uv, then choose Install kernel with uv in Settings.
Local development
Use Node.js 22. To run the desktop app from source:
npm ci
npm run desktopBuild on the matching platform:
# macOS (requires a signing identity; add --unsigned to skip signing)
npm run package:mac
# Windows
npm run package:winFor browser development, set OPENAI_API_KEY, run npm run dev, and open 127.0.0.1:5173. Use OPENAI_MODEL to override the default model. Desktop environment variables can be loaded with Launch PDFMathReader.command.
npm test
npm run buildDetails
PDFMathReader uses Vue 3 and PDF.js for the reader, Electron for the desktop app, and Express for the local backend. Vite supports frontend development and builds; pdf-lib handles PDF manipulation.
Each desktop window has its own renderer and backend running in an Electron utility process. The main process manages windows, menus, credentials, recent documents, and preferences. A sandboxed preload provides desktop IPC; backend requests use authenticated HTTP on 127.0.0.1.
Rendering, layout analysis, and translation run independently. Pages and thumbnails are virtualized, PDF.js and layout analysis load on demand, and rendering caches have bounded memory use. Each document is uploaded to its local backend once; subsequent requests use its document ID. Outdated translation work is cancelled when the document, language, or kernel changes.
| Setting | Engine | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Ultra fast | PDF Inspector | Paragraph overlays on the original PDF |
| Fast | PDFMathTranslate | Translated PDF pages with formula preservation |
| Precise | PDFMathTranslate-next | Translated PDF pages with more detailed typesetting |
PDF rendering and layout analysis stay local. Translation sends document text to OpenAI and may incur API charges. Fast and Precise run in separate app-managed Python environments installed with uv, and access OpenAI through the backend proxy. API keys remain outside the renderer.
Saved desktop keys are encrypted with Electron safeStorage and macOS Keychain protection. A saved key overrides OPENAI_API_KEY; clearing it restores the environment fallback. Saving is disabled when secure storage is unavailable.
Desktop data is stored in the app directory under ~/Library/Application Support/: credentials, recent documents, translation/layout caches, and kernel environments. Browser-development caches use .cache/translations/. Caches and temporary PDFs can contain document content; Clear on the start page removes recent-document history only.
In browser development, Express and Vite run in a standalone Node.js process. Native menus, desktop IPC, and secure desktop key storage are available only in the desktop app.
- Platform support: macOS is the tested platform. Windows and Linux have platform-specific styles, but native runtime validation is pending. Packaging commands target macOS arm64 and Windows x64.
- Layout fidelity: Ultra fast uses geometric paragraph grouping and text overlays. Complex tables, rotated text, unusual backgrounds, and long translations may not retain the original typography. Math-kernel output depends on upstream layout handling.
- Scanned documents: scanned PDFs require OCR, which this app does not implement.
- Translation requirements: translation needs an OpenAI API key and network access. Fast and Precise require separately installed math kernels through
uv. - Scope: this is an experimental local reader and translation app, not a complete PDF editing or export tool.
- Validation: automated tests cover backend and reader support logic. Mock-provider checks do not establish live OpenAI translation quality or API-key validity.
PDFMathReader is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3. See LICENSE for the full text.
PDFMathTranslate and PDFMathTranslate-next are also AGPL-3.0 projects. Their runtime installations retain upstream license files; other dependencies retain their respective licenses.
Many thanks to OpenAI, Anthropic, Warp, Immersive Translate, and SiliconFlow for their support.