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Hermes PDF Reader
Open. Read. Nothing else.
18 followers
Open. Read. Nothing else.
18 followers
All I wanted to do was open a file. Instead, I had to login to Adobe, close the hideous sidebar, close the AI agent panel, and then read my doc. Why should I? So I built Hermes PDF, the no-nonsense messenger god of PDF readers. Built on Tauri instead of Electron to reduce bloat. 14MB, that's all you've always needed. Open a file, read it. That's it. That's the app.
Hey Product Hunt 👋
I built Hermes PDF after one too many PDF readers made me log in, sit through a sidebar full of features I didn't ask for, or wait several seconds just to see a page render. I wanted something that opened a file and got out of the way. So I built it.
It's a native desktop app (Tauri + Rust + TypeScript), currently free and open source. A few things it does well: multi-tab reading (up to 20 files at once, each with its own zoom/scroll state), smooth continuous scrolling, real OS-level file association (not just "Open with" buried in a submenu), and signed auto-updates that don't nag you.
It's deliberately not trying to be Acrobat — no annotations, no cloud sync, no AI panel, no editing suite. Just a fast, dark-by-default reader for people who read a lot of PDFs and want the tool to disappear.
Still early (v0.1.5, pre-1.0) — I'd genuinely love feedback, bug reports, or "please add X" requests. The repo's linked above if you want to poke around the code or file an issue directly.
This is my first launch so play nice, thanks for checking it out! 🪽
this is exactly what pdf readers should be, just open and read. one thing that would make it even better is basic annotation support like highlighting and adding notes, since right now if i need to mark something up i have to bounce back to acrobat anyway
honestly love the anti-bloat energy here, this is basically the pdf reader adobe should have been. one thing though, would be nice to have a basic annotation or highlighting tool built in, just so you don't need to jump to another app when you actually want to mark something up.
Finally a PDF reader that respects my time. Opened a 50-page report and it launched faster than my browser does for a single tab. This is exactly what Adobe forgot how to make.
Finally, someone had the guts to strip out every piece of bloat Adobe piles on. Building on Tauri just to hit 14MB is the kind of opinionated choice I respect.
Huge congrats on the launch! 🎉
This is exactly what I've been looking for. It's so exhausting dealing with forced logins, AI pop-ups, and heavy UI just to read a quick document. Love that you deliberately kept it simple.