My favorite PDF reader on Android: MJ PDF

While I mainly used the PDF reader integrated into Firefox on Android to view PDFs on my phone so far, I now have a new favorite PDF reader.

What bugged me about the reader in Firefox was especially the performance when viewing big PDFs like newspapers. It always took a second or so to rerender when zooming or going fast between pages.

Not so with MJ PDF. The app, which isn’t available on the Play Store but is available using some alternative download methods and is fully open-source, is absolutely fast. I can quickly scroll through a newspaper, zoom in, and zoom out; no rendering lag is noticeable on my mid-range smartphone. And what’s also important, especially when reading newspapers on the small smartphone screen, is that when zooming, the text stays sharp.

MJ PDF also has loads of other features I haven’t tried yet, but of course it also supports bookmarks, highlights, notes, signatures, and another cool thing: dark mode. That’s a cool thing when you want to read a newspaper in the morning but don’t want to get blinded by the white background.

Although MJ PDF is loaded with features, it stays small in file size, has no ads, and has no tracking.