Sioyek: An Efficient PDF Reader Designed for Research and Textbooks

🧩 What is Sioyek?

Sioyek is an open-source PDF reader focused on reading academic papers and technical books. The design concept stems from a deep consideration of the features of traditional PDF readers, aiming to provide a more efficient and intelligent reading experience for researchers, students, and technical professionals. The core advantages of Sioyek lie in its powerful literature navigation, annotation management, and multi-document collaboration features, making it especially suitable for academic reading scenarios that require frequent jumps, comparisons, and annotations.

🔧 Key Features

1. Smart Navigation and Citation Jump

Smart Jump: Even if the PDF file does not contain built-in hyperlinks, users can quickly jump to the corresponding location by middle-clicking on references such as figures or citations.
Quick Table of Contents: Allows users to search and jump to items in the table of contents, improving efficiency when reading lengthy documents.

2. Efficient Annotation and Management

Highlights: Supports various highlight types, and users can customize highlight colors and search for highlighted content across all documents.
Bookmarks: Add bookmarks to specific pages, supporting global search and management.
Marks: Set named markers within the document for quick location and jump.

3. Multi-Document Collaboration and Portal Features

Portals: Create dynamically linked windows between documents in multi-monitor setups, allowing for real-time synchronized viewing and improving comparison efficiency.

4. Custom Commands and Extension Support

Custom Commands: Users can define custom commands in configuration files and combine them with external tools (such as translation, text-to-speech) to extend reading functionality.
Script and Plugin Support: Through Python scripts and the Sioyek command-line interface, users can develop custom extensions to achieve more features.

5. High Performance and Cross-Platform Support

Performance Optimization: The first open speed of large files has been optimized for a better user experience.
Cross-Platform Support: Official installation packages are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, supporting major operating systems.

⚙️ Technical Principles and Architecture

Sioyek is developed based on the Qt 5 framework and written in C++, with the MuPDF rendering engine providing efficient PDF rendering and responsive operations. Its architecture focuses on performance and scalability, allowing users to deeply customize the app through configuration files and scripts. The design concept of Sioyek is inspired by the operation style of the Vim editor, emphasizing keyboard shortcuts and efficient document navigation.

🔗 Project Address and Installation Instructions

GitHub Repository: https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek
Official Website: https://sioyek.info

🎯 Use Cases and Target Audience

Researchers: Improve efficiency in literature comparison and knowledge integration by utilizing Sioyek’s smart jump and annotation features while reading large volumes of academic papers.
Students: Enhance learning efficiency by using Sioyek for textbook reading and note management.
Technical Professionals: Achieve efficient information retrieval and processing while reading technical documents, leveraging Sioyek’s multi-document collaboration and custom command features.
Educators: Use Sioyek’s annotation and navigation capabilities to assist in teaching and emphasizing key points.