Evince

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Free and open-source document viewer

title: "Evince" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["free-pdf-readers", "free-software-programmed-in-c", "gnome-core-applications", "postscript", "office-software-that-uses-gtk", "software-using-the-gnu-general-public-license"] description: "Free and open-source document viewer" topic_path: "general/free-pdf-readers" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evince" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Free and open-source document viewer ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]

FieldValue
titleEvince
logoGNOME Document Viewer icon 2019.svg
logo size100px
screenshotGNOME Evince 40.0 (released in 2021-03).png
captionGNOME Evince 40 (released in March 2021)
other_namesGNOME Document Viewer
developerThe Evince Team{{cite web
urlhttps://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince/Team
titleEvince/Team – GNOME Live!
publisherwiki.gnome.org
date2011-08-06
access-date2012-08-16
archive-date2016-03-05
archive-urlhttps://web.archive.org/web/20160305012704/https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince/Team
url-statuslive
released
latest release version
latest release date
latest preview version
programming languagePrimarily C, C++
operating systemLinux and other Unix-like systems
replaced_byGNOME Papers
genreDocument viewer
licenseGPL-2.0-or-later
website
::

| title = Evince | logo = GNOME Document Viewer icon 2019.svg | logo size = 100px | screenshot = GNOME Evince 40.0 (released in 2021-03).png | caption = GNOME Evince 40 (released in March 2021) | other_names = GNOME Document Viewer | collapsible = | author = | developer = The Evince Team{{cite web |url = https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince/Team |title = Evince/Team – GNOME Live! |publisher = wiki.gnome.org |date = 2011-08-06 |access-date = 2012-08-16 |archive-date = 2016-03-05 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160305012704/https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince/Team |url-status = live | released = | latest release version = | latest release date = | latest preview version = | latest preview date = | discontinued = | programming language = Primarily C, C++ | operating system = Linux and other Unix-like systems | platform = | replaced_by = GNOME Papers | size = | language = | genre = Document viewer | license = GPL-2.0-or-later | website =

Evince (), also known as GNOME Document Viewer, is a free and open-source document viewer supporting many document file formats including PDF, PostScript, DjVu, TIFF, XPS and DVI. It is designed for the GNOME desktop environment.

The developers of Evince intended to replace the multiple GNOME document viewers with a single and simple application. The Evince motto sums up the project aim: "Simply a Document Viewer".

GNOME releases have included Evince since GNOME 2.12 (September 2005). Evince's code is written mainly in C, with a small part (specifically, the interface with Poppler) written in C++. Many Linux distributions that ship GNOME as their default desktop environment — including Ubuntu and Fedora Linux — include or have included Evince as the default document viewer.

Evince is free and open-source software subject to the requirements of the GNU General Public License version 2 or later.

The Evince FAQ highlights the meaning of the word "Evince" as "to show or express something clearly".{{cite web |url = https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince/FrequentlyAskedQuestions |title = Frequently Asked Questions about Evince |date = 2015-10-13 |publisher = The GNOME Project |access-date = 2016-07-28 |quote = Q: What does the word Evince mean? [...] A: Evince means to show or express something clearly. |archive-date = 2016-08-07 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160807071035/https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince/FrequentlyAskedQuestions |url-status = live

In 2025, Evince will be replaced as the default document viewer in GNOME by a GTK 4 & Libadwaita hard fork of itself called Papers.

History

Evince began as a rewrite of GPdf, which its support programmers had started to find unwieldy to maintain. Evince quickly surpassed the functionality of GPdf and replaced both GPdf and GGV in the September 2005 release of GNOME 2.12.{{cite web |url = https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-June/msg00057.html |title = ggv/gpdf and evince |access-date = 14 May 2016 |last = Villa |first = Louis |date = June 2005 |archive-date = 11 April 2016 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160411112844/https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-June/msg00057.html |url-status = live | url = https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.12/ | title = GNOME 2.12 Release Notes | access-date = 2020-01-04 | archive-date = 2017-11-22 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20171122220817/https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.12/ | url-status = live

There was at one time a Windows version of Evince and it was then included on the VALO-CD, a collection of "Best of Free and Open Source Software for Windows".

Ubuntu 25.04 (with their release of GNOME 48) was the first distro to replace Evince with a GTK 4 & Libadwaita hard fork of itself called Papers. In GNOME 49, Evince will be replaced as the default document viewer by upstream GNOME developers by Papers. Joey Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu suggested that the reason that the GNOME developers made a new document viewer application was that it would take a lot of work for Evince, a 20 year old program at the time of the decision, to be ported over to GTK 4 & Libadwaita, hence why a new application hard forked from Evince's codebase was made rather than continuing to rework Evince proper was made. This was similar to why Gedit, Eye of GNOME, and Cheese were replaced by GNOME Text Editor, Loupe, and Snapshot respectively rather than port the existing applications over to GTK 4 and Libadwaita.

Features

Evince incorporates an integrated search that displays the number of results found and highlights the results on the page. Users can optionally display (in the left sidebar of the viewer) thumbnails of pages to assist in page navigation within a document. When documents support indices, Evince gives the option of showing the document index for quickly moving from one section to another.

Evince can show two pages at a time, left and right, and offers full-screen and slide-show views.

Evince allows the selection of text in PDF files and allows users to highlight and copy text from documents made from scanned images, if the PDF includes OCR data.

Evince used to obey the DRM restrictions of PDF files, which may prevent copying, printing, or converting some PDF files, however this has been made optional, and turned off by default in gconf.

Since version 3.18.2, Evince allows for text and highlight annotations of documents.

Supported document formats

Evince supports many different single and multi-page document formats:

;Built-in support

;Optional support

;Possible or planned support

;Not supported

References

References

  1. "Apps/Evince - GNOME Wiki!". GNOME.
  2. "GNOME 48 beta is another nail in X11's coffin".
  3. "Gpdf - Free Software Directory".
  4. KekÀlÀinen, Otto. "VALO-CD".
  5. [http://www.valo-cd.net/programs VALO-CD programs] {{Webarchive. link. (2017-12-13 , retrieved 24 February 2012)
  6. "The Best of Free and Open Source Software for Windows". Valo-Cd.
  7. Sneddon, Joey. (2025-03-05). "Ubuntu's New PDF Viewer App Begins Rolling Out".
  8. "Papers – Apps for GNOME".
  9. patch-jh. (2024-06-15). "Is Papers the replacement for Evince?".
  10. (2025-07-07). "GNOME 49.alpha Released".
  11. Sneddon, Joey. (2024-11-13). "Ubuntu 25.04 Set to Ship With New PDF Viewer".
  12. The GNOME Project. (February 2008). "Evince – Features".
  13. [https://help.gnome.org/users/evince/stable/noprint.html.en PDF printing restrictions] {{Webarchive. link. (2014-09-11 "The ''document viewer'' overrides this restriction by default")
  14. "Bug 305818 – allow the user to override document restrictions".
  15. "DRM protected PDF files".
  16. "Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions [LWN.net]".
  17. Benítez León, Nelson. (15 March 2018). "Allow adding Highlight annotations from text selection".
  18. "Apps/Evince/SupportedDocumentFormats - GNOME Wiki!".
  19. "evince - View multipage documents".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

free-pdf-readersfree-software-programmed-in-cgnome-core-applicationspostscriptoffice-software-that-uses-gtksoftware-using-the-gnu-general-public-license