A terminal-based PDF and EPUB viewer that renders documents using the Kitty graphics protocol. Written in Rust for speed and sharp rendering at any zoom level.
It runs in a terminal that supports the Kitty graphics protocol:
cargo install treader
Or brew install wensheng/treader/treader if you are using macOS and homebrew.
If you are on Linux, make sure clang and libfontconfig are installed.
sudo apt install clang libfontconfig1-dev
treader [options] <file.pdf|epub>
| Flag | Description |
|---|---|
-i, --invert |
Start with inverted colours |
-b, --black-color <color> |
Custom black colour (CSS colour string) |
-w, --white-color <color> |
Custom white colour (CSS colour string) |
-h, --help |
Show usage and exit |
--version |
Print version and exit |
treader document.pdf
treader --invert paper.pdf
treader -b '#1a1a2e' -w '#e0e0e0' book.epub
- PDF and EPUB support via MuPDF
- Sharp zoom — pages re-render at higher resolution, not just pixel scaling
- Vertical scrolling within pages, with automatic page turn at boundaries
- Auto-crop — detects content bounds and removes whitespace margins
- Colour tinting — warm sepia tone for comfortable reading
- Search with highlighted results across all pages
- Table of contents navigation
- Internal and external link following
- State persistence — remembers page, rotation, crop, tint, and invert settings per file (stored in XDG cache)
- Shared memory transfer — detects SHM support for faster image display on Kitty and Ghostty
- Clean exit — always cleans up Kitty graphics on quit, Ctrl-C, or panic
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Space |
Next page |
PageDown |
Next page (or move down by one viewport in zoom mode) |
PageUp |
Previous page (or move up by one viewport in zoom mode) |
j, Down |
Scroll down / next page at boundary |
k, Up |
Scroll up / previous page at boundary |
Right |
Next page |
Left |
Previous page |
l |
Next page (or pan right in zoom mode) |
h |
Previous page (or pan left in zoom mode) |
g + number + Enter |
Go to page |
t |
Table of contents |
/ + text + Enter |
Search |
n / N |
Next / previous search result |
q, Esc |
Quit |
Ctrl-C |
Quit |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
r |
Rotate 90° clockwise |
i |
Invert colours |
d |
Toggle warm tint (sepia) |
c |
Toggle auto-crop (remove whitespace margins) |
R, F5 |
Refresh |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
z |
Toggle zoom mode |
o |
Zoom in (1.2x per step) |
O |
Zoom out |
h / l |
Pan horizontally (in zoom mode) |
Up / Down |
Scroll vertically (in zoom mode) |
Zoom re-renders pages at higher resolution through MuPDF, so text stays sharp at any zoom level.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
M |
Show document metadata |
f |
Show links on current page |
? |
Help |
When viewing links, type a number and press Enter to follow. Internal
links jump to the target page. External URLs open in your system browser.
This work is released under the AGPL-3.0 license.
This project is derived from tdf
