Read PDFs on Your Phone With GoodReader
iOS: If hell exists, I’ll spend eternity being forced to read PDFs on my phone. I’ll pinch and scale a D&D piece or working paper, struggling to fit the entire page on the screen, making the text large enough to read, and then doing it all over again on the next page. And I won’t have GoodReader , a powerful and customizable iPhone app that makes PDFs less painful, for a reasonable $ 5 .
It is competent
GoodReader’s designers know that putting a printed page on a phone screen is a nightmare. This way you can zoom in on your page, then swipe or tap to move completely to the next page, and GoodReader will keep your zoom level. And once you’ve got the perfect zoom, you can lock horizontal scrolling so you don’t accidentally flick the page to the side. I can feel the tension leave my shoulders as I write about this.
GoodReader also remembers which document you last opened and where you left off, even after you closed the application. This is a basic feature not found in many document readers or file viewers. (Google Docs on iOS can suck a lemon.) This app seems competent and sane, which many mobile apps don’t. It also works great for Word documents and text files if either of them causes problems in the regular viewer.
It’s customizable
If the interface doesn’t work exactly the way you like it, there is a chance to fix it in the settings. You can set minimum zoom sizes, disable phone sleep, and even disable double tap to zoom. The mobile user interface is rarely customizable.
You can also turn off many of GoodReader’s useful features. So if automatic watermark removal is getting in the way of your document, just turn it off. If the application crashes, disable anti-aliasing features. If the tab bar gets in the way, turn it off. (By the way, you can open multiple documents at the same time.) You can even specify a time frame for your menu of “recently added” files. Each of these options is explained in detailed setting menus.
The app can melt PDFs into mobile-friendly text that looks more like a web page or Instapaper. This feature isn’t perfect, but it can be quirky to customize: instead of choosing a few sensible options like black on white or maroon on eggshells, you tweak the text mode colors with the RBG sliders, as if you were a color-corrected photo. It’s weird but silly.
It is powerful
GoodReader has a wide range of markup tools such as highlighting, commenting, and drawing tools. You can save the markup to the original file or to a new file. The app also includes a file manager to store and sync your entire document library across multiple folders, as well as several import and export tools that support iCloud, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, and private servers.
Digging through these menus and options can be a little tricky, especially since GoodReader’s interface looks more like a desktop app than a mobile app. Fortunately, the markup tools have clearly distinguishable icons, and the settings menu has helpful explanations. But the sheer number of options means that sometimes you have to dig to find what you wanted to do.
The file action menu (which does batch tasks!) Is more flawed. The menu (hidden behind the screwdriver and wrench icon) contains a lot of text-only buttons, so you need to be a little more careful when touching files to email, rename, export, delete and soon. But it’s still better than apps that simply rename your files whenever you touch headers or other ill-defined “touch” functions.
It’s not the only good PDF app
There is one kind of PDF that I don’t read on GoodReader: scripts. They work best with Weekend Read , an iOS app from screenwriter John August. Weekend Read is specifically designed to turn movies and TV scripts into a mobile-friendly format. This is very important because scripted PDFs are incredibly difficult to read on small phones. Unfortunately, if your PDF is a printout image and not just inline text, you’re stuck with GoodReader.
Of course, you can also open PDFs in Kindle, iBooks, Evernote, etc. But if any of this upsets you, go for GoodReader.