SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF v1.9.0

KillerPDF v1.9.0

on GitHub

1.9.0 "Overkill" replaces PDFium with KillerPDF's own engine and expands document editing, conversion, security and automation.

Security

• Redaction removes covered vectors and sensitive descriptions from affected content, and refuses output when form values, descriptions or undecodable content cannot be safely removed. Marks survive page edits and Undo; macro approvals remain tied to the source document, and unattended runs stop when rasterization needs approval (#341, #343).
• Signature verification separates expiry from failed trust, checks trusted timestamps for historical validity, and reports authority identity and offline revocation evidence. Embedded certificates never become trust anchors.
• Legacy Office conversion disables VBA macros. Translation test files load as text, unsafe HTML-export links stay inert, and scripts can supply PDF passwords through standard input.
• Table exports and batch CSV reports prevent document values and filenames from becoming spreadsheet formulas.
• Command-line edits honor the permissions of a PDF opened with its user password, as Acrobat does; the owner password lifts them.
• Forwarded file opens are restricted to the same Windows account and session. Installation rejects folders containing unrelated or unverified files, and portable updates no longer run a helper script from the temp folder.
• Updates install only a release whose checksum line names exactly the downloaded file, whose version is the offered release and newer than the running copy, and whose valid signature names the installed copy's publisher, so updates keep working after the publisher's certificate is renewed. The installer is checked again just before it starts, and portable updates roll back when the new launcher cannot be confirmed.

Fixed

• Update and uninstall helpers load PowerShell modules only from Windows' own folder, so a module planted in your Documents cannot run inside them as administrator; a failed uninstall reports the real reason and retries when a copy is still running; a stalled update says so instead of silently doing nothing; and the window no longer freezes while an update is handed off.

• An update that cannot finish because the app did not close says so in its recovery report, the Update button stays off once an update has started, and a translation file can no longer give a setting the wrong kind of value.

• The elevated part of an update compiles its helper code in a folder only administrators can open, so another program running as you cannot slip code into it, and an update that finished is no longer reported as failed when the app cannot be reopened afterward.

• An all-users installation applies automatic updates again. The elevated update step opened a second copy of the app as administrator instead of installing, and the verified download was thrown away once that copy closed.

• The tray icon's menu opens from the pointer upward, out of the notification area, the same way in every Killer app. A short menu no longer covers the tray icons and a taller one no longer floats about 40 pixels above them.

• Saving, flattening, extraction, printing, production layouts, Data Merge and current-document macros retain pending edits and page rotations. Incremental saves rebuild damaged cross-reference chains, including compressed and encrypted documents. Protection, batch resaves and optimization report repairs to broken references without claiming missing content was recovered. Failed or canceled document writes preserve existing outputs, with recovery copies retained after failed replacements; Save As and Extract Pages enforce the PDF extension (#433, #450).

• Close prompts protect active text and keep documents open after cancellation or save failure, including Windows sign-out and shutdown. Saving detects outside changes even when file size and timestamp match; browser downloads ask for a destination, splitting protects the source, and Bates batches reject output collisions. Esc no longer closes the app.

• Saving a new blank document asks where to save it. It used to write Untitled.pdf into whatever folder KillerPDF was started from, and Compare no longer offers an unsaved new document.

• In Two-Page view, the second page of a newly opened document's first spread shows at full size. It used to appear at about a third of the first page's size, and stayed small after paging away and back.

• A tab that had not loaded yet opens its document when you drag it to the other pane or out into a new window, instead of showing an empty pane.

• A comparison reads the same saved file the right pane shows, and F9 no longer changes the sidebar while in full screen.

• New document tab names, file-type lists, the damaged-file and read-only prompts, and recent-file dates follow the app language and your region. The repair prompt on opening a file no longer says the file couldn't be added.

• Command-line search reports a document it cannot read instead of zero hits, batch resave refuses to write over its own input, an unusable --dpi or option value is reported as bad usage (exit 2), and --dpi reads a period as the decimal point in every region.

• On a computer with both a per-user and an all-users copy, answering the duplicate-installation prompt at startup no longer closes KillerPDF. The prompt now appears over the open window.

• A file opened once with forward slashes in its path, from a script or another program, no longer shows up twice in the recent files list.

• A comparison started away from the first page opens both documents on that page, with the changes marked in both panes, instead of showing the second document from its cover. A page jump made while a document is still loading also stays put.

• The comparison details name both documents by their file names instead of the temporary working copy's generated name.

• Dialog title bars match the rest of the dialog in every theme except 98SE. They had their own band, a lighter strip in Light and a gradient in several dark themes, and the title bar painted its film grain twice.

• A visible digital signature shows on the page. The viewer used to leave it out and draw a Sign box over the signed field instead.

• A new text box starts at the same width on every screen. On large or high-resolution displays it used to start a few words wide and wrap almost every word.

• Undo and Redo track saved content and preserve annotation identity. Failed page rotations, moves, transforms, scan straightening and file insertion leave edits and history intact and report the error. Deleting pages keeps the nearest survivor in view and cannot remove the final page. Page dialogs retain the selected split pane. Stamps belong to their document, support Undo and survive tab, pane and window transfers. Tabs from separate windows restore together with the original window's size and position, including after an update when remembering files is disabled. Manually closed tabs stay closed, and closed windows release their document resources and event subscriptions.

• Signing captures current edits, gives unsaved documents a durable output folder, and preserves form appearances in external readers, including blank fields. Signatures bind the certificate and record the correct time across locales. Unchanged signed copies preserve captured bytes. Co-signing chooses prepared fields without repeated tree scans; Sign and Protect confirm overwrites. Field choices honor cancellation and document changes, timestamp reads honor the request timeout, and the saved-signature library survives write failures.

• Fixed crashes when switching themes, restoring a maximized window, and selecting mirrored or upside-down text. Open dialogs update their captions, frames, grain and buttons when the theme changes, and their Close buttons support keyboard and accessibility actions. Search, redaction and cropping also use corrected bounds for that text (#437, #452, #453).

• File dialogs open correctly in packaged builds, stay responsive on slow or crowded folders, recover from missing typed folders, cancel stale loads and identify incomplete listings.

• Footer and toolbar tools remain reachable in narrow windows, including larger app sizes. Hover tooltips clear large pointers and keep custom placement intact.

• Improved source-document checks, tab ownership and cancellation for background document operations. Failed merges preserve other panes' pending edits, and completed background work keeps its owning pane visible (#329, #330, #342, #343, #436).

• Protected PDFs request their opening password and decrypt readable content before display. Improved damaged-PDF opening and saving, including cross-reference tables, encryption dictionaries, crop boxes, object generations and unusual dates. Recoverable repeated pages retain independent comments, widgets, tagged form graphics and tag relationships with unique registered identities while sharing form values; separate tagged pages keep their comments and identity links. Merge, Split and Extract read damaged files that open in the viewer, and accept additional Type 3/CID fonts, gradient boundaries and common font metric defects; page import errors identify the source PDF (#406, #455).

• Fixed truncated rendering beyond the cached page-content limit, bounded malformed JBIG2 and deeply repeated forms, and improved raster-export recovery and missing-content reports. Compatibility rendering recovers from invalid line styles, transforms, text-state commands and unsupported image or mask sizes. Printing and image export name any page whose content could not be drawn exactly instead of refusing it; the command line refuses such pages unless --allow-incomplete is passed.

• Corrected JPEG 2000 decoding with CoreJ2K 2.4.1, damaged JPEG filters, CCITT markers, JBIG2 refinement and clipped scan columns.

• Fixed missing, invisible and badly spaced text in unusual or damaged TrueType, Type 1, Type 3, CFF and CJK fonts, with improved substitution for unembedded fonts. Malformed font dictionaries no longer stop compatibility rendering; CFF text stays consistent when pages render concurrently.

• Corrected rendering of affected transparency groups, masks, gradients, patterns, indexed colors, CMYK and spot inks, transfer functions and JPEG colors. Compatibility rendering retains images with unsupported soft masks. YCCK JPEG comparison colors now match the viewer.

• Fixed annotation and form appearances, including reversed bounds, saved screen and print visibility, and reflections, rotation and skew in flattened pages. Flattening isolates page graphics state, preserves layers and shared appearance visibility, keeps hidden fields hidden and retains print-only appearances as annotations. Sidebar layer toggles show effective visibility and preserve other layers. Printing honors layer print settings, and print previews retain pending redaction marks. Malformed annotation geometry no longer stops compatibility rendering. Copied annotations retain letter spacing, fills and erased cover areas (#411).

• Saved Hebrew text that contains numbers or Latin words keeps the order shown in its text box (#435).

• Fixed shared-name fields, checkbox imports, missing text appearances, calculation rounding and supported repeated XFA bindings. Form formatting appears on blur while editing and saving retain raw values; invalid values, unsupported scripts and failed calculations have accessible feedback. Form values use symbol and emoji font fallbacks when needed. Ambiguous XFA paths are reported without mixing values, fields can be removed without a form catalog, and signed fields show their signatures (#329, #330, #342, #425, #457).

• Incomplete scans report errors and retain recovered pages; parallel PNG export preserves every completed page. OCR checks installed languages, retains the Tesseract fallback for invalid models, and can save when no words are recognized. Watched folders check OCR support before starting and identify unsupported or failed macro steps (#73).

• Editable color conversion rejects unsupported profiled-image conversions. Restored Archival, Scanning and Privacy macro starters, including searchable OCR and reviewed redaction. Editing a Validate step preserves its existing profile and other settings (#343).

• Updates preserve custom install paths and wait for unsaved changes in every window; failed portable updates retain executable copies and a recovery report. Startup cleanup preserves active temporary PDFs, Office conversion timeouts preserve existing sessions, and PDF/model downloads enforce response-body timeouts. Release checks include the final Store installer, embedded signatures and checksum.

• Installers honor desktop-shortcut choices for both per-user and all-users installs, verify shortcut targets and icons, and finish with a warning when Windows refuses the optional desktop shortcut. Uninstall refuses while KillerPDF is open in another Windows session, and removes KillerPDF from a user folder whose name has accented or non-Latin letters. Setup no longer restores a partly removed previous version after a completed upgrade, or leaves a failed first install into an empty folder listed without its program.

• Printer properties apply to the job, including duplex settings from drivers that use document-level controls. Fixed confirmation buttons acting as Cancel, page extraction order and unchanged all-page selections (#454).

• Fixed keyboard focus entry, containment and restoration for About and Shortcuts. PDF text supports keyboard reading and selection with readable lines in zoomed spreads; commands follow the pane reached by keyboard, and radio options announce their individual values. Added accessible names to icon buttons, thumbnails, scrollbars, file-picker rows, shortcut options and RGB fields; decorative elements stay out of the accessibility tree. Website shortcut lists include current commands and preserve Unicode text.

• Export reviews identify affected pages, content limitations and counts before saving.

• Fixed long paths overlapping the recent-locations arrow in 98SE, missing app and installer translations, and truncated installer version text (#321, #409, #440).

• Release publishing validates artifacts before upload and reports steps needing a retry. Chocolatey publishing reports failure if validation still fails after retrying.

• Command-line runs report an unexpected failure on the console and exit instead of opening the crash window, which stalled scripts.

• The website's film grain is lighter, matching KillerTools, and the theme menu can turn it off (Alt+Shift+G). The top bar no longer leaves extra space above the page on narrower windows, and the release details box lifts with an accent border on hover.

Added

• Permanent redaction: Remove content by area, text search or sensitive-data pattern, including text in form fields and annotations, with verification, batches, optional sanitization and separate output. Content rewriting retains unaffected searchable text and uncovered image pixels; whole-page raster fallback requires approval (#341).
• Document protection: Save AES-256 encrypted copies with passwords, permissions or certificate recipients, and open certificate-encrypted PDFs using a matching Windows certificate.
• Added recovery snapshots and restart handling for display failures (#456).
• Signatures and certificates: Inspect signers, certificate chains, signing times and document changes, with RFC 3161 timestamps. Browse Windows certificates and import, inspect, trust or remove certificates used only by KillerPDF (#336, #425).
• Document and table export: Export to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, Markdown, text and JSON with page selection, reviewed OCR, batches and loss warnings. Word and PowerPoint support editable text, ruled tables and pictures or page-image output; selected ruled tables can be corrected before XLSX/CSV export (#345, #346).
• Paragraph editing and Find and Replace: Edit simple paragraphs with a resizable box, font size, alignment, spacing, preview and Undo, with specific guidance when page rotation or tagged structure prevents editing. Find and Replace rewrites supported source text (#422, #431).
• Convert Scan to Text: Replace scanned words with searchable text using approximate font matching. Review uncertain matches, retain rejected words as scans, and keep compact lossless black-and-white images where possible; command-line review controls are included.
• Form tools: Recognize fields, review changes, flatten forms, convert supported XFA layouts, exchange FDF/XFDF data and comments, and reuse text-field presets. Supported calculations use a limited field-script subset without a general JavaScript interpreter (#329, #330, #340, #342).
• Guided tasks and automation: Prepare email copies, clean scans, redact documents or create fillable forms through reviewed steps. Save compatible tasks as macros, run files or watched folders with pause/retry controls, and merge CSV, JSON or XLSX data using mappings, conditions and images (#343, #347, #350, #351, #352).
• Accessibility review: Inspect language and description problems with page previews, guided repairs, rechecking and Undo. Added document-reading support for page text, tagged reading order, links, comments and marked text, plus keyboard and accessibility support for form, stamp and palette controls (#335).
• Repair and optimization: Added preflight corrections, sanitization, resource cleanup, print-production and structural reports, plus Reduce File Size for optimized copies. Optimization preserves uncompressed XMP metadata and resources used by forms and inline images (#333, #334, #433).
• Office conversion and scanning: Convert DOCX/XLSX directly to PDF; legacy DOC/XLS conversion uses installed Word or Excel. Scan pages through TWAIN into a new PDF (#73, #74).
• Page tools: Reverse pages, correct orientation, straighten scans and divide scanned spreads into separate pages in reading order. Delete and Extract accept typed page ranges and sidebar box selections, with Ctrl/Shift modifiers and edge scrolling. Rasterize Region previews affected content while preserving text and vectors outside the selection (#369, #382, #436).
• Production tools: Add headers, footers, page numbers and continuous Bates batches; preview N-up, booklet, repeat, cut-stack, manual and poster layouts. Separations previews individual process and spot-ink plates (#264, #344, #349).
• Document organization: Added comment threads and replies, attachment and portfolio editing, layer controls, bookmark/link audits, table-of-contents generation, page labels and initial-view settings (#288, #338, #347, #350, #351).
• Optional title-bar Previous and Next page buttons stay off by default. Toggle them from the title-bar menu or with Alt+Shift+N; the choice is saved and follows the focused document.
• Added vector SVG signatures, a shared image library for images, watermarks and signatures, and adjustable paper-background removal for imported signatures (#326, #398).
• Added optional File Explorer and Outlook PDF previews to installed copies, with scrolling, zoom and read-only opening (#410).
• Added Search Tools (Ctrl+K), customizable shortcuts and one-letter tools, with expanded view, page, clipboard and tab actions. Scan, Office conversion, Macros and Certificates are searchable before opening a PDF (#190).
• Added Windows 11 snap layouts, comparison-bar docking and Close to System Tray. Tray Exit retains save prompts (#374, #427).
• Added Slovenian across the app, installer, previews, OCR language selection, website and engine guides.

Changed

• Install: The footer's PORTABLE button installs the running portable copy in place, for this account or for everyone, from the same confirm as the other Killer Tools apps, and the installed copy reopens the active document. Unsaved changes hold the install.
• Updates: The About card and the startup update prompt use the same update dialog as the other Killer Tools apps. Portable updates stop waiting for a stuck launcher after five minutes and report the failure instead.
• PDF engine: Replaced PDFium, Docnet.Core and PdfPig with KillerPDF.Engine for rendering, text extraction, search, selection, editing, printing and export, including encrypted documents, forms and common PDF image formats.
• Rendering and startup: Moved rendering off the UI thread with viewport priority, cancellation and zoom refinement. Precompiled the app and engine, cached installed fonts and moved discovery into the background; batch work releases resources sooner and uses lower default rendering concurrency (#424).
• Restricted PDFs open read-only with their original text and bookmarks and can be unlocked using the owner password. Forms whose author allows filling can still be filled and saved, keeping their protection, as in Acrobat. PDFs encrypted for a certificate recipient that may not edit them also open read-only.
• Expanded command-line workflows with flexible splitting, single-input merging and batch rendering; macros and command-line workflows support editable resize, color conversion and separate exports. Installed copies support commands through PATH with exit codes; portable copies run directly.
• Expanded measurement tools with calibrated Distance, Perimeter, Area and Angle, snapping, units, reports and editable PDF measurement annotations (#348).
• Line editing preserves supported styling and rewrites source text, including rotated text, with a cover fallback for scans. Select handles selection; PDF text editing uses the Text tool, and arrow keys move selected objects (#368, #413, #422, #431).
• Flattening now offers resolution, color and compression controls plus an optional scanned appearance (#366, #426).
• Separated Transform and Color Correction, with live exposure, saturation and white-balance adjustments, zoom and pan.
• Undo and Redo follow Print in the default toolbar. Toolbar and overflow actions are dimmed and disabled when unavailable. Exported redacted copies open in an empty second pane or a new tab.
• Reorganized navigation with Comments, Attachments, Layers and Signatures panels, four sidebar positions and remembered rail order. Bookmarks and their children can be dragged into order; narrow layouts, horizontal scrolling and full titles keep navigation reachable (#391).
• Windows and split panes adapt to the current monitor and app scale. Windows contrast themes use system colors without grain or shadows; option groups use a single Tab stop and arrow-key navigation.
• Tabs match KillerShell's font, spacing, subtle corners, fading outline, larger close targets and New Tab button. Tab menus and shortcuts choose top or bottom placement, with bottom borders and dividers mirrored; 98SE bottom tabs keep Win98's top-left lighting. Black table headers match their content, and Blood, Greed and Cyanotic tabs use cream borders. About groups settings in two columns and can hide menu and tooltip shortcut hints.
• Silent installation supports per-user installs without elevation, bundles .NET in the Store package, detects Arm64 runtimes and rejects concurrent installs with useful error codes.
• Unified message and setup dialogs, kept actions visible in long forms, and simplified Table Export and About. Interface fonts now resolve from embedded files, including menus, tooltips and shortcuts.
• Updated theme contrast, selection colors and field presets. Light uses gray window surfaces, lighter document panes and white input fields; several dark themes use darker menus and bars to distinguish them from panes (#340).
• Every theme and accent uses the shared Killer Tools palette for each color, size and spacing value the family defines, so tabs, menus, buttons, captions and accent colors match the other Killer Tools apps.
• The window menu from the title bar or Alt+Space uses the shared Killer Tools menu, and opens at the window's corner on the correct monitor when the window is maximized.
• Ctrl+Q quits KillerPDF, as in the other Killer Tools apps, with the usual save and quit prompts. Close All Tabs moves to Ctrl+Shift+Q.
• The maximize button shows the restore glyph while the window is maximized, as in the other Killer Tools apps.
• The theme and language menus on the rail are the shared Killer Tools menus: they open in the corner of the document area, and a theme or accent change cross-fades.
• File dialogs use the shared Killer Tools picker, which shows image thumbnails in the icon view, and dialogs take the shared Killer Tools styles for text fields, drop-down lists, check boxes, sliders and menus.
• Modern menus and Search Tools results use readable accent-colored hover text; Customize Toolbar button rows have clearer hover contrast. Theme-menu hover fills have equal side insets, and About/Shortcuts edges follow gradient themes.
• Reduced Black film grain and refined checkbox ticks, radio alignment and file-picker styling. Popup textures cover their padding, sliders have tighter corners without square surrounds, and 98SE keeps classic bevels, compact fields and a gray document workspace.
• Wordmarks and headings use a subtle bevel in their own color, retaining shadows where enabled. Dark's red accent uses the brand red; the empty drop target uses corner brackets and aiming marks at 80% opacity.
• Simplified mobile website navigation, localized labels, improved contrast and Corpus layout, and added Store and related-app links. Updated Help, technical guides, shortcut references and application metadata.