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PDF reader · Windows

Magpie PDF

A fast, fully offline PDF reader for Windows. It opens a document and gets out of the way: no account, no upload, and nothing running in the background. Your files are read and drawn on your own machine by PDFium, the engine inside Chrome.

Download for Windows What it does

Free · preview 0.1.0 · 5.6 MB · Windows 10 and 11, 64 bit · no account · no telemetry

Magpie PDF with its welcome document open: a contents sidebar on the left listing seven sections, and the cover page showing the magpie logo above the title.

01 What it does

A reader, and only a reader.

01

Fast

A small native app with a Rust backend, not a browser in a costume. Pages are rendered on their own thread and cached, so scrolling a long document stays smooth and the window never freezes while a page draws.

02

Private

Everything happens on your computer. There is no account to create, no document is uploaded, and the app has no analytics or tracking code. It works the same with the network unplugged.

03

Honest navigation

One continuous column of pages with an exact scrollbar, a page box that jumps straight to a number, and the document's own outline in a sidebar. Fit width, fit page, true size, and zoom from 25% to 600%.

04

Night mode

One button turns a white page into light text on a dark background for reading in a dim room. It changes only what you see; the file itself is never modified.

02 See it

What it looks like.

Magpie PDF showing a page of body text at fit width, with the contents sidebar open and the page box reading 4 of 7.
Reading. Fit width with the outline open. Click a section to jump to it.
Magpie PDF in night mode: the same document shown as light text on a black page, open to a table of keyboard shortcuts.
Night mode. The same document inverted, on the keyboard shortcuts page.

03 Download

Get the preview.

This is an early preview. The reader works, and it is free. It is also not finished: search inside a document, tabs, and printing are not built yet, so keep your current reader installed for those.

Download for Windows

Windows will warn you the first time. The preview is not code signed yet, so SmartScreen shows a blue "Windows protected your PC" box when you run the installer. That box appears for any new app from a developer Windows has not seen before. To continue:

  1. Run the downloaded installer.
  2. In the blue box, click More info.
  3. Click Run anyway, then follow the installer.

You can check the file first: its SHA-256 is listed below, and Get-FileHash in PowerShell will print the same value for an untouched download. Installing adds Magpie PDF to the "Open with" list for PDF files; it does not change your default reader unless you choose it.

Version
0.1.0 preview, October 13, 2026
File
MagpiePDF-0.1.0-x64-setup.exe
Size
5.6 MB
Requires
Windows 10 or 11, 64 bit (x64)
SHA-256
f067f794f517b9986431166fbb322a4ac39a869652df1c3965fb3efbe97dcd5b
Price
Free

04 What is next

Where it is going.

Works today

The reader

Open by drag and drop, by Ctrl+O, or by double clicking a file. Continuous scroll, page jump, document outline, fit and zoom modes, night mode, and keyboard shortcuts for all of it.

Building next

Search, tabs, printing

Search inside a document, several documents open in tabs with the session restored on launch, a thumbnail sidebar, and printing. These are what stand between a preview and a daily reader.

Planned

Document tools

Merge, split, OCR, and redact, done on your machine instead of on a website you have to trust with the file. The reader stays free. The tools are planned as a single purchase, with no subscription.

Found a bug, or a PDF it will not open? Email austin@austinwilkins.dev. Magpie PDF uses PDFium, which is distributed under a BSD style license; a copy is installed with the app.