Rune v0.4.0

The biggest release so far — Rune is substantially faster to use, and looks the part.

Fixed

Random freezes. The cause: PDFium was being called on the UI thread in several hot paths — most damagingly, a hit-test on every mouse move while selecting text. Each call blocked on the PDFium lock held by the render thread, freezing the window. Meanwhile sidebar thumbnails and full-document search competed for that same lock and starved the visible page.

All PDFium work now runs on a single render thread behind a priority queue (interactive edits beat tile rendering, tiles beat thumbnails and search), and text selection is a pure in-memory lookup that never touches PDFium. Scroll work is coalesced, and night mode no longer allocates a GPU effect per tile per frame.

Pages opening pinned to the left edge. The layout was built before the window had been measured, so the page was laid out against a guessed size and left-aligned until you nudged it.

Pages not re-centering when the sidebar toggled, leaving ghost strips of the previous render on screen. A ScrollViewer reports its new size only after the resize event fires, so the layout was rebuilt against the old width — and the canvas was never invalidated afterwards.

Arrow keys did nothing. They were unbound, and the tab strip was swallowing them.

New

• Full keyboard navigation, always on — arrows scroll and page, PgUp/PgDn, Home/End. Vim keys (j k h l, gg/G, p/n) remain a Settings toggle.
• Presentation mode (F5) — fullscreen, one page at a time; arrows, space or click to advance, Esc to leave. Exits onto the page you finished on.
• Page editing in the thumbnail sidebar — multi-select, drag to reorder, Delete, and copy/cut/paste pages with Ctrl+C/X/V including between open tabs. Drop a PDF onto the sidebar to insert its pages.
• Undo / redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y) across both annotations and page edits.
• Bookmarks (Ctrl+B) — name a page, jump back to it later; saved per document.
• Keyboard shortcuts overlay (F1).
• Sidebar open by default, with a switcher for thumbnails / chapters / bookmarks (turn off in Settings).

Redesigned

The interface now follows GNOME Papers' proportions, built entirely from native Windows 11 controls:

• One slim header bar replaces the old 15-button toolbar — everything else lives in a single menu
• A floating zoom control sits over the page, bottom-right
• Bigger, sharper sidebar thumbnails
• A clean recent-documents grid on the start page, with proper placeholders and an empty state

Notes

• Page edits only touch your file when you press Ctrl+S. Undo is available until you save.
• Deleting an annotation created by a different PDF editor works, but can't be undone — Rune can only faithfully rebuild its own annotation types.
• 93 automated tests (up from 50), all passing.

Install

Portable (recommended) — download rune-v0.4.0-win-x64.zip, extract anywhere, run Rune.exe. No installer, no registry.

MSIX (for "default PDF app" integration) — download the .msix and rune-signing.cer, then trust the certificate once from an admin PowerShell:

Import-Certificate -FilePath rune-signing.cer -CertStoreLocation Cert:\LocalMachine\TrustedPeople
Add-AppxPackage -Path Rune.App_0.4.0.0_x64.msix

Rune is not yet code-signed by a recognised authority. Machines with Smart App Control enabled will block it, and SmartScreen may warn on first run (More info → Run anyway). The portable build on a machine with SAC off is the smoothest path.

Packages aren't size-optimised yet — the download carries the full self-contained .NET and Windows App SDK runtimes.

Rune v0.3.0

Rune v0.3.0 — freehand ink, a refreshed toolbar, a thumbnail homepage, and two visual fixes.

New

• Freehand pen (ink) annotations: press Ctrl+E (or the pen button), draw on the page, and it's saved as a standard PDF ink annotation. Pick the pen color and width from the toolbar's overflow menu; each stroke is individually deletable via right-click.
• Windows 11 toolbar: the command bar now uses the stock Fluent control — uniform button sizing, and it collapses commands into an overflow (⋯) menu on narrow windows. Title-bar tabs stay.
• Recent-documents homepage: your last files appear as first-page thumbnail cards on the start page — click to open. Toggle it in Settings.

Fixed

• Black box when zoomed far out: a document smaller than the window now fills and centers cleanly instead of showing a mismatched background box.
• Stray "Ctrl++" tooltip: clicking the page no longer pops up an accelerator tooltip.

Downloads

File	What it is
rune-v0.3.0-win-x64.zip	Portable — extract and run Rune.exe. Self-updates.
Rune.App_0.3.0.0_x64.msix + rune-signing.cer	Installed app with .pdf association. Trust the cert once (see README), then Add-AppxPackage.

Requires Windows 10 1809+ (x64).

Not yet code-signed: machines with Smart App Control on will block it, and SmartScreen may warn on first run. Code signing is planned; until then the portable build with SAC off is smoothest.

Coming next

Form filling, digital signature verification, page organizing, more formats, and code signing.

Rune v0.2.0

Rune v0.2.0 — annotations, self-update, and gesture fixes.

New

• Annotations: highlight, underline, and strikeout from a text selection, plus sticky notes — saved as standard PDF annotations that any reader can see. Right-click a selection, press Ctrl+H to highlight, and save with Ctrl+S / Ctrl+Shift+S. Unsaved changes are flagged on the tab and prompt on close.
• Self-updating: Rune checks GitHub for newer releases (toggle in Settings, or "Check for updates now") and, for the portable build, downloads and installs the update in place.
• Pinch-to-zoom: touch and precision-touchpad pinch now zoom, alongside Ctrl+scroll — both zoom at the cursor and re-render crisp.

Fixed

• Night mode button/Ctrl+I did nothing after v0.1's title-bar tab refactor — now inverts every open tab again.
• Zoom gestures weren't wired at all — pinch and Ctrl+wheel now work.
• Rotate left pages blank (wide rotated tiles silently failed to draw) — rotation now renders correctly through all four orientations and clears stale selection/search highlights.

Downloads

File	What it is
rune-v0.2.0-win-x64.zip	Portable — extract and run Rune.exe. Self-updates.
Rune.App_0.2.0.0_x64.msix + rune-signing.cer	Installed app with .pdf association. Trust the cert once (see README), then Add-AppxPackage.

Requires Windows 10 1809+ (x64).

Not yet code-signed: machines with Smart App Control on will block it, and SmartScreen may warn on first run. Code signing is planned; until then the portable build with SAC off is smoothest.

Coming next

Freehand ink annotations, form filling, signature verification, page organizing, more formats, and code signing.

Rune v0.1.0

The first release of Rune — a fast, free, modern PDF reader for Windows.

Highlights

• Fast: instant open, smooth virtualized scrolling through 1,000-page documents, tile-based progressive rendering, strict memory budget
• Modern: Windows 11 Fluent design with Mica, dark mode, and Chrome-style tabs in the title bar
• Keyboard-first: command palette (Ctrl+K), vim-style navigation (j/k, gg/G, n), full shortcut map
• Night mode (Ctrl+I): GPU-inverted page colors for dark-room reading
• Tabs with session restore (reopens exactly where you left off), thumbnails + outline sidebar, links, back/forward
• Text selection & copy, find with highlight-all, printing with preview, document properties
• Powered by PDFium (Chrome's PDF engine) via a from-scratch WinUI 3 shell — GPLv3

Downloads

File	What it is
rune-v0.1.0-win-x64.zip	Portable — extract and run Rune.exe. No install.
Rune.App_0.1.0.0_x64.msix + rune-signing.cer	Installed app with .pdf file association. Trust the certificate once (admin PowerShell): Import-Certificate -FilePath rune-signing.cer -CertStoreLocation Cert:\LocalMachine\TrustedPeople then Add-AppxPackage -Path Rune.App_0.1.0.0_x64.msix

Requires Windows 10 1809+ (x64). Packages aren't size-optimized yet — that's on the roadmap.

Known limitations

• No annotations / form filling / signatures yet (planned for v2)
• Single-file portable and smaller downloads planned