Ade Malsasa Akbar contact
Senior author, Open Source enthusiast.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025 at 22:21

Evince - Intro to the Default Ubuntu Document Viewer Application


Document Viewer or Evince is the default PDF reader application on Ubuntu. It originates from GNOME and its real name is evince. As its name suggests, Document Viewer's purpose is to display various digital documents and electronic books, like PDF and other formats. It has many features: simple, easy to use, presentation mode, and a lot more. We will explain in detail what is and how to use it on Ubuntu 24.04 "Noble Numbat" in the rest of this article. Now, let's start reading!

 


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Logo



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Original Logo



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Screenshots

 

Click to enlarge picture.

(a)

(b)

(c)


(d)

(e)

(f)


Where:

(a) Evince reads a PDF document normally. The left sidebar shows the outline (clickable table of contents).

(b) Evince shows its menu button (the top-right triple-lines one).

(c) Evince shows its zoom button containing several options from 50% to 400%.

(d) Evince shows its find/search capability. Red highlights are words found as a result.

(e) Evince shows its annotation capabilities. Yellow highlights and a yellow pin are added.

(f) Evince shows its Properties dialog. This dialog shows metadata (unseen information) about the currently opened document like the author's name, creation date, paper size, fonts, etc.



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Description



Evince (English meaning: to make something obvious or to show something clearly; Source: Cambridge Dictionary) or Document Viewer is the preinstalled digital document reader application on Ubuntu. A digital document reader is a program that displays the contents of a PDF or another document on a computer screen. Evince is one of many applications from The GNOME Project, and they have altogether built the Ubuntu operating system. Thanks to Evince, an Ubuntu user can double-click a PDF file, then its content pages will be displayed quickly on screen. Just like any other GNOME application, technically, Evince is written in the C programming language with GTK+ libraries. Evince Document Viewer is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License. 


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Purposes

 

Document Viewer aka GNOME Evince serves the Ubuntu users the following purposes:

1. Read digital documents like PDF and others. 

2. Print a PDF or another document with a printer. 

3. Print a document in booklet mode.

4. Display a document in presentation mode, i.e. full screen. 

5. Convert a document from one format to another format.

6. Display, fill in, and save a PDF form. 

7. Annotate a PDF with colored lines, highlights, and text notes. 

 

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Features and Supported Formats

 

Document Viewer offers the following features: 

  • Simple
  • Fast
  • Easy to use 
  • Supports a lot of digital document formats
  • A good user manual 
  • Has been the default document viewer on Ubuntu for a very long time


Document Viewer supports the following formats:

  • Comic book archives (.cb7, .cbr, .cbt, and .cbz)
  • Device independent file format (.dvi)
  • DjVu (.djvu, .djv)
  • Open XML Paper Specification (.oxps, .xps)
  • Portable Document Format (.pdf)
  • PostScript (.ps)

 

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How To Run Document Viewer



1. Click Ubuntu menu button.

2. Type "document" or "evince".

3. Click Document Viewer logo.

4. The application runs. Done. 




 

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How To Use Document Viewer


This application is primarily used for reading PDF documents. 
 

A. How To Read a PDF from Document Viewer


1. Run Document Viewer.

2. Click Open.

3. Navigate and select a PDF file from the dialog then click Open.

4. A PDF document is displayed on screen. Done. 

 


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B. How To Read a PDF from File Manager 


1. Run Files.

2. Navigate to a PDF document file.

3. Double-click that PDF file.

4. The PDF document will be displayed on screen using Document Viewer. Done. 
     


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Commands and Integration with Ubuntu Desktop


Document Viewer can be launched via the command line in the Terminal:

$ evince

 

An example of how this command line is executed is as follows:



Document Viewer can also be called from Files (Ubuntu file manager): 

1. Double-click a PDF file will open it using Document Viewer. Otherwise,

2. right-click on it -> Open With -> Evince. 

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Location on the Screen and System



1. Document Viewer can be found on the Ubuntu applications menu.

2. Document Viewer can also be spawned from Files (Ubuntu file manager) as mentioned above. 

3. Actual location of the program in the filesystem is /usr/bin/evince. 

4. App Store listed Document Viewer as a preinstalled application. 

 


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Documentation and User Manual for Disks


Press F1 when running Document Viewer. This will open the Evince Document Viewer user manual. It is a full documentation organized in chapters from Introduction to Get Involved. This is a free software documentation licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.



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Similar Programs


Okular - the default PDF reader application on Kubuntu.

Paper - the next-generation successor to Evince from The GNOME Project.

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Contributing to Document Viewer


Evince Document Viewer is part of GNOME. So, you can contribute to Evince just like how you contribute to other GNOME applications. You can do many things to participate, such as make a donation to help fund the project, or help translate Evince to your language, or if you are a programmer, help improve its source code, or simply report a bug to the project is considered a contribution and many more. Programmatically, Evince is written in the C language with GTK libraries by using (optionally) the GNOME Builder code editor. Finally, your contribution to Evince will benefit GNOME, Ubuntu and other GNU/Linux projects as well. To start participating, feel free to see Evince's Official Webpage from the References section below.

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