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Before you begin
We're rolling out a new, more intuitive product experience. If the screen shown here doesn’t match your product interface, select help for your current experience.
The initial view of the PDF depends on how its creator set the document properties. For example, a document may open at a particular page or magnification.
When you’re reading a document, you can hide all the toolbars and task panes to maximize the viewing area on your screen.
The basic reading controls, such as page navigation and zoom, appear in a semi-transparent floating toolbar near the bottom of the window.
To open Read mode, choose View > Read Mode, or click the Read Mode button in the floating toolbar.
To restore the work area to its previous view, choose View > Read Mode again. You can also click the collapse button in the floating toolbar.
In Full Screen mode, only the document appears; the menu bar, toolbars, task panes, and window controls are hidden. A PDF creator can set a PDF to open in Full Screen mode, or you can set the view yourself. Full Screen mode is often used for presentations, sometimes with automatic page advancement and transitions.
The pointer remains active in Full Screen mode so that you can select links and open notes. There are two ways to advance through a PDF in Full Screen mode. You can use keyboard shortcuts for navigational and magnification commands, and you can set a Full Screen preference to display Full Screen navigation buttons that you select to change pages or exit Full Screen mode.
With the October 2019 release of Acrobat, you can now open the review PDF files in Full Screen mode. It helps keep the focus on the content and the received comments. To switch to Full Screen mode, use the keyboard shortcut - Ctrl + L.
Select View > Full Screen Mode.
The Full Screen navigation bar contains Previous Page , Next Page , and Close Full Screen View buttons. These buttons appear in the lower-left corner of the work area.
If the Full Screen navigation bar is not shown, you can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through a PDF.
If you have two monitors installed, the Full Screen mode of a page sometimes appears on only one of the monitors. To page through the document, click the screen displaying the page in Full Screen mode.
To go to the next page, press Enter, Page Down, Down Arrow, or the Right arrow key.
To go to the previous page, press Shift+Enter, Page Up, Up Arrow, or the Left arrow key.
To show a Full Screen tool in the Common Tools toolbar, right-click the toolbar area and choose Show Page Display Tools > Full Screen Mode. Then click the Full Screen tool to switch to Full Screen mode.
Follow the steps in the article to retain the current state of the Tools pane in Acrobat Reader.
You can adjust the display size of your PDF for easier reading as per the device you are using. Go to View > Display Size, and then choose Small, Standard, or Large as required.
You can change the overall look and feel of Acrobat by setting the display themes. To choose the theme, go to View > Display Theme, and then select one of the themes below:
The Preferences dialog box defines a default page layout and customizes your application in many other ways. For viewing PDFs, examine the preferences options for Documents, Full Screen, General, Page Display, and 3D & Multimedia.
The preferences settings control how the application behaves whenever you use it; they are not associated with any particular PDF document. To access the preferences dialog, choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat / Adobe Acrobat Reader > Preferences (macOS).
If you install any third-party plug-ins, set these preferences using Third-Party Preferences.
Open Settings
Save Settings
PDF/A View Mode
Hidden Information
Searches the PDF for items that may not be apparent, such as metadata, file attachments, comments, and hidden text and layers. The search results appear in a dialog box, and you can remove any type of item that appears there.
Redaction
Full-Screen Setup
Full-Screen Navigation
Full-Screen Appearance
Full-Screen Transitions
Basic Tools
Warnings
Messages From Adobe
Transactional messages, which facilitate the Adobe Online Service, cannot be turned off.
Application Startup
This option is available only when the option Use 2D Graphics Acceleration in the Page Display preferences is selected.
Default Layout And Zoom
Two conditions can affect page layout and zoom. 1) Someone has already set an individual PDF to a different initial view in File > Properties. 2) You have the option Restore Last View Settings When Reopening Documents selected in Edit > Preferences > Document category.
Resolution
Rendering
If this option isn't available in the Page Display preferences, you may have to update your GPU card driver to enable this hardware feature. Contact your card vendor or computer manufacturer for an updated driver.
Page Content And Information
Reference XObjects View Mode
Touch mode makes it easier to use Acrobat and Acrobat Reader on touch devices. Toolbar buttons, panels, and menus shift apart slightly to accommodate selecting with your fingers. The Touch reading mode optimizes viewing and supports most common gestures. Acrobat and Acrobat Reader automatically switch to Touch mode when on a touch-enabled device. You can change the default preference setting for Touch mode.
Choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat / Adobe Acrobat Reader > Preferences (macOS).
Under Categories, select General.
In Basic Tools, choose the desired default setting from the Touch Mode menu.
PDF/A is an ISO standard for long-term archiving and preservation of electronic documents. Documents you scan to PDF are PDF/A-compliant. You can specify whether you want to view documents in this viewing mode.
When you open a PDF/A compliant document in PDF/A viewing mode, the document is opened in Read mode to prevent modification. A message is displayed in the document message bar. You will be unable to make changes and add annotations to the document. If you turn off PDF/A mode, you can edit the document.
In the Preferences dialog box under Categories, select Documents.
You can switch in or out of PDF/A viewing mode by changing this preference setting.
The Line Weights view displays lines with the weights defined in the PDF. When Line Weights view is off, it applies a constant stroke width (one pixel) to lines, regardless of zoom. When you print the document, the stroke prints at the true width.
Choose View > Show/Hide > Rulers & Grids > Line Weights. To turn off Line Weights view, choose View > Show/Hide > Rulers & Grids > Line Weights again.
You cannot turn off Line Weights view when viewing PDFs within a web browser.
While viewing a PDF, you can choose to select the following elements to be displayed in Acrobat from the View > Show/Hide menu:
Use the Compare Files feature to show the differences between two versions of a PDF. You can customize many options for displaying the compare results. For more information, see Compare two versions of a PDF file.