# JavaScript PDF Viewer alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer

**URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/javascript-pdf-viewer-alternative-to-adobe-acrobat-pdf-viewer/30078
**Category:** General
**Tags:** software
**Created:** 2025-08-15T14:34:05Z
**Posts:** 5

## Post 1 by @anonymous395 — 2025-08-15T14:34:05Z

> **[Open-Source JavaScript PDF Viewer – Fast, Customizable &...](https://www.embedpdf.com/)**
>
> EmbedPDF is a blazing-fast, MIT-licensed JavaScript PDF viewer that works with React, Vue, Svelte, and plain JS. Fully customizable, zero vendor lock-in, and perfect for modern web apps.

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## Post 2 by @anon94117004 — 2025-08-15T19:56:37Z

Interesting, they transpiled Chromium’s PDFium library to WASM: [embed-pdf-viewer/packages/pdfium at main · embedpdf/embed-pdf-viewer · GitHub](https://github.com/embedpdf/embed-pdf-viewer/tree/main/packages/pdfium)  
Hope they keep it updated.

edit: Oh wtf: I tried to check what version they were using, but the submodule source of PDFium they use is private: [https://github.com/embedpdf/pdfium](https://github.com/embedpdf/pdfium)  
And the commit they use isn’t in Google’s repo, so they actually made modifications: [https://pdfium.googlesource.com/pdfium/+/ae17320bc11f4f615ad1fe315f637120c6f4fd6b](https://pdfium.googlesource.com/pdfium/+/ae17320bc11f4f615ad1fe315f637120c6f4fd6b)

Great job, so it isn’t actually open source.  
complained about it here: [Where is the source for your forked PDFium · Issue #90 · embedpdf/embed-pdf-viewer · GitHub](https://github.com/embedpdf/embed-pdf-viewer/issues/90)

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## Post 3 by @anon57862721 — 2025-08-15T19:59:42Z

Got exited for a second thinking this was a consumer product. Darn it.

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## Post 4 by @yes — 2025-08-15T22:45:21Z

[Their response](https://github.com/embedpdf/embed-pdf-viewer/issues/90#issuecomment-3192837614):

> Good question! before the launch I made our PDFium fork private while I was still deciding how much of the modified source to publish and whether there were any licensing or distribution concerns to resolve first. The plan is to make the fork (with our additional features like extended annotation and redaction support) public once I’ve cleaned it up and confirmed everything’s ready for release.

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## Post 5 by @anon94117004 — 2025-08-16T00:28:23Z

> [@yes](#):
>
> public once I’ve cleaned it up and confirmed everything’s ready for release.

typical bs openwashing excuse.