A simple desktop app for quickly viewing and making basic edits to common file formats on Linux, Windows and macOS.
One of the things I miss most when I switch from macOS to other systems is the Preview app. I know, it's a small thing, but it can make a big difference in everyday work: cropping and annotating a screenshot, signing a PDF or highlighting a paragraph, adding quick annotations, and so on.
If you've ever used it, you know it's not just about the number of features, but how naturally they fit into a simple interface.
I've never found an alternative that felt right for me across platforms. With the help of AI, I was finally able to build my own. I hope you like it too.
Proview is an independent project and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Apple Inc.
Drag files onto any Proview window to open them on Linux, Windows and macOS. An empty window opens the first file; additional files, or files dropped onto an occupied window, open in separate windows and preserve your current work.
Proview opens the most common image formats and supports basic editing, such as cropping, rotating and annotating.
It also has a built-in OCR engine that recognizes text in images and scanned documents, making it easy to copy text or open links.
Proview also opens ASCII and binary STL files, letting you inspect 3D models with rotation, panning and zoom. You can switch between standard views, toggle wireframe, and crop the current view into an image.
For PDF documents, Proview also lets you highlight text, redact sensitive content, and add, remove, reorder or rotate pages. You can also combine multiple PDFs into one document, or split a PDF into separate files.
All PDF operations preserve native PDF content: added text, ordinary shapes and vector signatures are exported as vector content rather than flattening the whole page into a bitmap.
Signing documents is still a common task in the digital age, and we have to accept that. What shouldn't be necessary is printing, signing and scanning a document just to send it back.
Proview lets you capture your signature once and add it to any document with a single click.
You can draw your signature with a mouse or a stylus, or import it from a photo or scan. For imported signatures, the background is removed automatically and the signature is vectorized, so you can scale it without losing sharpness. You can save signatures to the cloud (S3-compatible storage or Google Drive) and use them across different computers.
Google Drive sync uses the published Proview OAuth app. Cloud sync is optional and uploads your saved signature library. Documents opened for editing stay on your computer. See the cloud sync guide for setup and storage details.
The Redact tool marks words, lines or rectangular regions for removal. When you export, Proview removes the underlying content and sanitizes the PDF, including metadata, attachments and other supported document structures.
Builds are available from the repository's Releases.
| Platform | Package |
|---|---|
| macOS, Apple Silicon or Intel | ZIP containing Proview.app |
| Windows, x64 | ZIP containing proview.exe |
| Linux, x64 or ARM64 | AppImage |
Proview is written in Go with Fyne, using MuPDF and pdfcpu for PDF work and Tesseract for OCR. Build dependencies include Go 1.26+, Python 3.10+, Task and the native libraries for your platform.
task run # Run the app
task check # Run tests and static checks
task build # Build for the current platform
See Development and packaging for setup, native and cross builds, release workflows and local data locations. Project conventions are in agent.md. Third-party notices are available in the app under Help → Third-Party Licenses; icon provenance is documented in assets/README.md.
These are directions to explore, rather than a release schedule:
The aim is to keep useful everyday tools close at hand while preserving a simple interface.
Copyright (C) 2026 Emanuele Longo.
Proview is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or any later version (AGPL-3.0-or-later). See LICENSE and NOTICE. Third-party components retain their respective licenses; see the dependency license review.
A simple desktop app for quickly viewing and making basic edits to common file formats on Linux, Windows and macOS.
One of the things I miss most when I switch from macOS to other systems is the Preview app. I know, it's a small thing, but it can make a big difference in everyday work: cropping and annotating a screenshot, signing a PDF or highlighting a paragraph, adding quick annotations, and so on.
If you've ever used it, you know it's not just about the number of features, but how naturally they fit into a simple interface.
I've never found an alternative that felt right for me across platforms. With the help of AI, I was finally able to build my own. I hope you like it too.
Proview is an independent project and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Apple Inc.
Drag files onto any Proview window to open them on Linux, Windows and macOS. An empty window opens the first file; additional files, or files dropped onto an occupied window, open in separate windows and preserve your current work.
Proview opens the most common image formats and supports basic editing, such as cropping, rotating and annotating.
It also has a built-in OCR engine that recognizes text in images and scanned documents, making it easy to copy text or open links.
Proview also opens ASCII and binary STL files, letting you inspect 3D models with rotation, panning and zoom. You can switch between standard views, toggle wireframe, and crop the current view into an image.
For PDF documents, Proview also lets you highlight text, redact sensitive content, and add, remove, reorder or rotate pages. You can also combine multiple PDFs into one document, or split a PDF into separate files.
All PDF operations preserve native PDF content: added text, ordinary shapes and vector signatures are exported as vector content rather than flattening the whole page into a bitmap.
Signing documents is still a common task in the digital age, and we have to accept that. What shouldn't be necessary is printing, signing and scanning a document just to send it back.
Proview lets you capture your signature once and add it to any document with a single click.
You can draw your signature with a mouse or a stylus, or import it from a photo or scan. For imported signatures, the background is removed automatically and the signature is vectorized, so you can scale it without losing sharpness. You can save signatures to the cloud (S3-compatible storage or Google Drive) and use them across different computers.
Google Drive sync uses the published Proview OAuth app. Cloud sync is optional and uploads your saved signature library. Documents opened for editing stay on your computer. See the cloud sync guide for setup and storage details.
The Redact tool marks words, lines or rectangular regions for removal. When you export, Proview removes the underlying content and sanitizes the PDF, including metadata, attachments and other supported document structures.
Builds are available from the repository's Releases.
| Platform | Package |
|---|---|
| macOS, Apple Silicon or Intel | ZIP containing Proview.app |
| Windows, x64 | ZIP containing proview.exe |
| Linux, x64 or ARM64 | AppImage |
Proview is written in Go with Fyne, using MuPDF and pdfcpu for PDF work and Tesseract for OCR. Build dependencies include Go 1.26+, Python 3.10+, Task and the native libraries for your platform.
task run # Run the app
task check # Run tests and static checks
task build # Build for the current platform
See Development and packaging for setup, native and cross builds, release workflows and local data locations. Project conventions are in agent.md. Third-party notices are available in the app under Help → Third-Party Licenses; icon provenance is documented in assets/README.md.
These are directions to explore, rather than a release schedule:
The aim is to keep useful everyday tools close at hand while preserving a simple interface.
Copyright (C) 2026 Emanuele Longo.
Proview is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or any later version (AGPL-3.0-or-later). See LICENSE and NOTICE. Third-party components retain their respective licenses; see the dependency license review.