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ADD: MuPDF v1.26.7: the MuPDF source as downloaded by a default build of PyMuPDF 1.26.4. The directory name has changed: no version number in the expanded directory now.
author Franz Glasner <fzglas.hg@dom66.de>
date Mon, 15 Sep 2025 11:43:07 +0200
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1 # What is MuPDF?
2
3 MuPDF is an open source software framework for viewing, converting, and
4 manipulating PDF, XPS, and E-book documents. There are viewers for various
5 platforms, several command line tools, and a software library for building
6 tools and applications.
7
8 ## Formats
9
10 As you can tell by the name, we support reading PDF files. But that's not all!
11
12 - PDF
13 - XPS and OpenXPS
14 - EPUB (DRM-free 2.0, limited support for 3.0)
15 - Mobipocket (MOBI)
16 - FictionBook 2 (FB2)
17 - ComicBook (CBZ and CBT)
18 - Images (TIFF, JPEG, PNG, etc)
19 - SVG (a limited subset only)
20
21 ## Viewers
22
23 There are many different viewer applications that build on the MuPDF library
24 for a large variety of platforms.
25
26 ### Linux, Windows, and BSD
27
28 For Linux and Windows there are two viewer applications.
29 The main viewer (mupdf-gl) has many features such as a table of contents
30 sidebar, full unicode search, annotation editing, redaction, etc.
31 On systems where this viewer cannot be built, we still support the older
32 legacy viewer which does not have as many features.
33
34 <dl>
35 <dt><a href="../tools/mupdf-gl.html">mupdf-gl</a>
36 <dd>The main viewer program that sports the most features.
37 <dt>mupdf-x11
38 <dd>The legacy X11 viewer that works everywhere.
39 <dt>mupdf-win32
40 <dd>The legacy win32 viewer for Windows.
41 </dl>
42
43 ### Android
44
45 Android currently has two different viewers with varying degrees of complexity:
46
47 <dl>
48 <dt><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.artifex.mupdf.viewer.app">MuPDF viewer</a>
49 <dd>A high performance PDF viewer with a smooth and polished interface.
50 <dt><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.artifex.mupdf.mini.app">MuPDF mini</a>
51 <dd>An example of how to create a PDF viewer with the least amount of code.
52 </dl>
53
54 ### Web Browser
55
56 There's a simple
57 <a href="https://mupdf.com/wasm/demo/?file=/docs/mupdf_explored.pdf">WebAssembly demo</a>
58 that runs MuPDF in the browser.
59
60 There's also a commercial license only <a href="https://webviewer.mupdf.com/">MuPDF WebViewer</a> product.
61
62 ### Third party viewers
63
64 Here's a non-exhaustive list of other non-affiliated open source projects that use MuPDF:
65
66 - <a href="https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/download-free-pdf-viewer">SumatraPDF</a> for Windows
67 - <a href="https://pwmt.org/projects/zathura/">Zathura</a> for Linux
68 - <a href="https://repo.or.cz/llpp.git">llpp</a>
69
70 ## Command Line
71
72 The command line tools are all gathered into one umbrella command: mutool.
73 This swiss army knife has a lot of sub-commands for performing different
74 tasks on PDF documents.
75
76 For rendering and converting documents use these two commands:
77
78 <dl>
79 <dt><a href="../tools/mutool-draw.html">mutool draw</a>
80 <dd>This is the more customizable tool, but also has a more difficult set of command line options.
81 It is primarily used for rendering a document to image files.
82 <dt><a href="../tools/mutool-convert.html">mutool convert</a>
83 <dd>This tool is used for converting documents into other formats, and is easier to use.
84 </dl>
85
86 A highlight of some other tools useful for working with PDF documents:
87
88 <dl>
89 <dt><a href="../tools/mutool-show.html">mutool show</a>
90 <dd>A tool for displaying the internal objects in a PDF file.
91 <dt><a href="../tools/mutool-extract.html">mutool extract</a>
92 <dd>Extract images and embedded font resources.
93 <dt><a href="../tools/mutool-clean.html">mutool clean</a>
94 <dd>Rewrite PDF file. Used to fix broken files, or to make a PDF file human editable.
95 <dt><a href="../tools/mutool-create.html">mutool create</a>
96 <dd>Create a new PDF file from a text file with graphics commands.
97 <dt><a href="../tools/mutool-merge.html">mutool merge</a>
98 <dd>Merge pages from multiple input files into a new PDF.
99 <dt><a href="../tools/mutool-poster.html">mutool poster</a>
100 <dd>Divide pages of a PDF into pieces that can be printed and merged into a large poster.
101 </dl>
102
103 And finally, there is a tool for doing anything you can imagine:
104
105 <dl>
106 <dt><a href="../tools/mutool-run.html">mutool run</a>
107 <dd>A tool for running Javascript programs with access to the MuPDF library functions.
108 </dl>
109
110 ## Library
111
112 The library is written in portable C.
113
114 To learn more about the C interface, read the <a href="../cookbook/mupdf-explored.html">MuPDF Explored</a> book.
115
116 ### Javascript
117
118 There is a library available to use MuPDF from Javascript and Typescript,
119 powered by WebAssembly. You can use this library to build applications that run
120 in a web browser, or that run server side using Node or Bun.
121
122 The Javascript library is available as a module on NPM.
123
124 ### Java
125
126 There is also a Java library, which uses JNI to provide access to the C library.
127
128 The Java classes provide an interface very similar to that available in the
129 <a href="../tools/mutool-run.html">mutool run</a> command line tool.
130 This Java library also powers the Android viewers.
131
132 If you want to build an application for Android, you have several options. You
133 can base it off one of the existing viewers, or build a new app using the Java
134 library directly.
135
136 ### Python
137
138 The popular [PyMuPDF](https://pypi.org/project/PyMuPDF/) library makes it trivial to use MuPDF from Python!