Upgrade to Pdf Viewer Plus version 3.7

/e/OS Smartphone Operating System Features & Applications
1

Currently Pdf Viewer plus version 3.2 is shipped with /e/ OS.
Version 3.7 is out for almost a year, and it brings a feature I would really enjoy, that is fullscreen mode.

I would love to be able to use version 3.7 on my phone :pray:

Cheers

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2

Isn’t that the same as the one you could get from F-Droid?

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.gsnathan.pdfviewer/

New in version 3.7

  • Added full screen mode
  • Added a new option to keep the screen on while reading
  • Sharing improvements and fixes
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes and robustness improvements
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3

Indeed, but it is not possible to remove the native PDF Plus application from /e/ and replace it with the newer version of F-Droid. (couldn’t find the way to uninstall it)

4

I just tried disabling the default pdf viewer app from an ad shell. Then I installed (version 3.7) from F-Droid. Worked just fine:

pdf-viewer
pdf-viewer614Ă—1024 15.4 KB

I guess you could uninstall the default one from adb shell as well but I chose to keep it to see if the other one gets installed and works or not.

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5

Thanks for the trick. I will do this with adb. That would be more convenient if the base application was upgraded though. I am curious, are there technical reasons that prevent the base app to be upgraded?

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6

you can subscribe to the pvp update ticket though - from the latest comment, updating other apps will come first - Update PdfViewer with v3.3 (#1348) · Issues · e / Backlog · GitLab

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7

How do you unsinstall an app using ADB shell? (My host computer runs Ubuntu 20.04)
Thank you very much!

8

Assuming you already have android-tools (or its equivalent in Ubuntu) and have enabled ADB debugging in the developer settings. Connect your device to your computer, open a terminal and run:

$ adb devices
to make sure your device is “detected”.

Next run:
$ adb shell

In the adb shell:

For getting a list of packages
$ pm list packages

For disabling a certain app:
$ pm disable-user --user 0 < package-to-disable>

For getting a list of disabled apps:

$ pm list packages -d

For re-enabling an app:
pm enable <package-to-enable>

For uninstalling an app:
$ pm uninstall -k --user 0 < package-to-uninstall>

For reinstalling an app
$ cmd package install-existing <package-to-reinstall>

Disclaimer: please exercise caution in using these commands to not disable/uninstall packages that are necessary for well-functioning of your device.

4 Likes
9

Super! Thank you very much!
Indeed, it’s very easy to install adb on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install adb
Your description works fine! Thank you!

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10

You are welcome!
Glad it worked fine for you! :wave:t4:

11

Would the removed app reinstalled again after an OTA update or not ?

12

I am not sure but I suspect that it will. So at the end removing it is perhaps not necessary.
Now I am not sure if disabling it was needed at the first place either since I tried to enable it again and both the default and the one from F-Droid seems to be able to co-exist. So … :man_shrugging:t4:

Hopefully a more knowledgeable user could explain the whole thing further.

2 Likes
13

Thanks for this thread, it also worked fine here on my FP4 (connected to my Manjaro-Linux-PC) via adb!

14

The thing here is

--user 0

this is the primary user. So the command is not a “root uninstall”. To some extent the app stays on the phone, but the primary user cannot use it. If you introduce a second user (System > Multiple users), that user will find the app all present and correct.

3 Likes
15

Seems to works fine if installed from GitHub - JavaCafe01/PdfViewer: A simple Pdf document viewer đź’Ľ and .apkfile.
Co-existence doesn’t seem to be a problem. Afert installation, when opening a pdf for the first time, /e/ offers to choose 3.2 or 3.7. Applying it as default choice, 3.7 is always used

Yet it should be updated in recent /e/ builds

16

Note all of these versions have 55+ known security issues: https://divestos.org/misc/appsec.txt

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17

Thanks!
Can you explain a little bit what is the deal? The file indicates it is dependant on PDFium . It is not clear if it is 3.7 and 3.2 ?

The 3.2 version without the fullscreen mode is not acceptable. It is horrible, especially on a tab (Samsung S2)
Which pdf reader would you advice (that has no security issues and handles full screen mode?)

18

You can try this:

Download with AppLounge or AuroraStore.

19

That looks interesting. Given that it seems to be Open Source, do you know why it is not available in F-Droid?

20

I think it’s like Signal app, not on F-Droid but open source. It’s from GraphenOS, I think it’s one of the reason why it’s not on F-Droid.
But you can found it here also.