📄 Getting started with Ayaan PDF

In a nutshell: Ayaan PDF opens every document for reading, where you can highlight, draw, add notes and stamps. Switch to Edit to change the document itself: click a line of text and type, in English, Hindi or Myanmar, and it stays real text. It works without the internet.

1. Install Ayaan PDF

1. Download AyaanPDF-Setup-<version>.exe from the latest release.
2. Run it. Ayaan PDF isn't code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen may say it doesn't recognise the app. Click More info, then Run anyway.
3. Choose the options you want, then click Next until it's done.

It installs just for your Windows account, so no administrator rights are needed. Ayaan PDF runs on Windows 10 (version 1809 or later) and Windows 11, on 64-bit PCs, and carries everything it needs, so there is nothing else to install.

Updating later: when Ayaan PDF starts, it checks whether a newer version is out and, if one is, tells you in a small bubble. Download the new Setup and run it: it updates your copy in place, and your settings, signatures and stamps are kept.

2. Find your way around

• The menu bar at the top has File, Edit, Page, View and Help.
• Tabs: every document opens in its own tab. Double-click PDFs in File Explorer, or drag them onto the window, and they join the window that's already open. Ctrl+Tab moves between them.
• The tool rail runs down the left. At its top are the two mode buttons, then the tools, and at its foot the Pages and Bookmarks panels and Settings. Drag its handle to move it to the right side if you prefer.
• The options bar appears above the page when a tool has choices, such as colours and line widths.
• The status bar runs along the bottom. On the left: the page you're on, Back and Forward, and a mark when there are unsaved changes. On the right: night mode, turning the view, page layout, full screen and zoom.

Reading and Edit

The two buttons at the top of the tool rail say what Ayaan PDF is doing. Every document opens in Reading.

3. Read a document

• Open a PDF with File > Open... (Ctrl+O), from File > Recent files, or by dropping it on the window. A file protected with a password asks for it first.
• Move through it by scrolling, with Page Down and Page Up, or Home and End for the first and last page. To jump to a page, type its number in the status bar, or press Ctrl+Shift+N.
• Pan by holding Space and dragging, whatever tool you have, or pick the Hand tool (H).
• Zoom with Ctrl+mouse wheel, the buttons in the status bar, or the percentage between them, which offers 50%, 100%, 200% and 400%. Ctrl+0 fits the page, Ctrl+2 fits the width and Ctrl+1 shows it at its actual size. You can zoom up to 800%.
• Page layout: Continuous scrolling or Single page, from the View menu or the status bar.
• Turn the view with Ctrl+Shift+Plus or Minus to read a sideways page. This changes only how you see it; to turn the page in the file itself, see Work with pages.
• Find words with Ctrl+F. Enter or F3 goes to the next match and Shift+F3 to the one before. Its options include Match case and Whole word.
• Links: click one to follow it. A link to a website asks before it opens your browser. Alt+Left takes you back and Alt+Right forward again, and View > Show links outlines every link on the page.
• Panels: F4 shows every page as a small picture, and F6 the document's bookmarks.
• Night mode shows pages dark, for reading in the evening. Full screen (F11) gives the page the whole screen, and Esc leaves it.
• Forms: when a document has a form, click a field to fill it in. The Show form fields button in the tool rail picks out every field.

Ayaan PDF remembers the page you stopped at in each document, and opens there next time.

4. Mark up a page

Pick a tool in the rail, or press its letter. Its choices appear in the options bar above the page.

Effects for shapes

With a shape, Effects in the options bar adds:

• A gradient fill: two colours, the direction, and how long the change from one to the other is. It opens in a small panel you can move, so the shape stays in view while you set it.
• A shadow: pick where the light comes from, then the distance, blur and opacity.
• A glow: its colour, blur and opacity.

Effects are saved into the PDF, so they look the same in every PDF reader, not just this one.

Change a mark later

Switch to Edit and click the mark to pick it up. Then drag it, resize it by its handles, or press Delete. With several selected, the options bar lines them up (Align, and Distribute for three or more), and the right-click menu offers Group (Ctrl+G), Bring forward, Send backward and more. Ctrl+D duplicates.

Made a mistake? Ctrl+Z undoes it, and Ctrl+Y brings it back.

5. Change the words on the page

This is what makes Ayaan PDF different: you change the document's own text, not a box on top of it.

1. Switch to Edit with the page-and-pencil button at the top of the tool rail. The first time, a tip offers to do it for you.
2. Click a line of text. A frame appears round it, and the status bar shows what you picked.
3. Click again where you want to type. A caret appears right in the page.
4. Type. Enter finishes the edit and Esc cancels it.

What you type stays real text, so it can be searched, selected and copied. When you finish a line, the rest of its paragraph reflows to fit. Ctrl+Z undoes the edit.

• Move text: drag a framed line to a new place.
• One word at a time: some lines can't be changed as a whole, such as a justified line in body text. Click one and Ayaan PDF frames the word under the pointer instead, so you can still fix a typo.
• When something can't be changed, the status bar says why when you click it, for example a line that is rotated, or set in more than one font or size.

Hindi and Myanmar

Hindi and Myanmar (Burmese) are shaped as you type, so vowel signs, conjuncts and stacked consonants land where they belong. Type with the keyboard you already use, KeyMagic for Burmese and Hindi Phonetic included.

• For Myanmar, editing works on text set in Myanmar Text or Pyidaungsu. Myanmar Text comes with Windows, and Ayaan PDF carries the common versions of Pyidaungsu itself, so a document made with one of them can be edited even on a PC that doesn't have the font.
• The first time you edit Burmese in a document, Ayaan PDF reads the page's text through first, and a card at the top says Preparing Myanmar text for editing. It takes a few seconds; then click the line again.

6. Text boxes and links

These two tools appear in Edit, because they change the document.

Text boxes T

• Click where the text should go and type. Hindi, Myanmar and English are shaped properly.
• The options bar sets the Font (any font on your PC), its size, Bold, Italic, underline and Strikethrough, the alignment, and the text colour, fill and outline.
• The font goes inside the PDF, so the text looks the same wherever the file goes, and it's saved as real text.
• Resize the box and the words re-wrap. The box can be rotated, and a double-click opens it for typing again.

Links L

• Drag a box over the words that should be clickable, then type a web or email address.
• Right-click a link to Open link, Edit link... or Remove link.

7. Sign a document

Draw your signature once, and place it on any document after that.

1. Switch to Edit, pick Draw (D) and sign on the page with the mouse or a pen.
2. Pick Select (V) and click your signature.
3. Choose Edit > Signature > Save selection as signature... and give it a name.

From then on, in Edit, choose Edit > Signature and your signature's name, then click where it should go. Open signatures folder in the same menu shows where they're kept.

8. Turn scans into text

A scanned page is a picture: you can't search it or copy from it. Page > Recognize text... reads its words and adds them as invisible text over the picture, so the page looks exactly the same but can be searched, selected and copied.

1. Choose the Pages: all of them, the current page, or the ones chosen in the page thumbnails.
2. Tick the Languages on the pages: English, Hindi and Myanmar are included.
3. Choose the Quality: Accurate, best for scans and phone photos, or Fast, for English only, several times quicker but with more mistakes on blurry pages.
4. Click Recognize.

More languages... downloads any of 112 more languages, once each, and every download is checked before it's kept. You'll find the same list in Settings > Recognition languages.... Chinese, Japanese and Korean aren't available yet.

Rescue old documents

Pages typed in old fonts like Kruti Dev, Zawgyi or Win Innwa look right but hold scrambled text underneath. Open File > Document properties... and click Check pages: Ayaan PDF finds those pages, and pages with no text at all, and offers to Recognize text on them, turning them into proper, searchable Unicode text.

9. Look up a word

Right-click an English word and choose Define. You get its meanings from WordNet, with the Myanmar and Hindi meanings right underneath. No internet is needed. To show only one of the two languages, or neither, use Settings > Define.

10. Work with pages

Press F4 for the Pages panel, with every page as a small picture.

• Reorder pages by dragging them. Ctrl+click or Shift+click picks several at once.
• Right-click a page to Rotate 90°, Duplicate, Insert blank page after, Extract page..., Move up, Move down or Delete page.

The Page menu has the same and more:

• Insert > From file... brings in pages from another PDF: pick exactly which pages, and where they go. Insert > A blank page adds an empty one.
• Extract pages... saves chosen pages as a new PDF, or each as a file of its own.
• Rotate page 90 and Rotate pages... turn pages in the file itself, and Delete page removes one.

Merge files

File > Merge files... joins PDFs and pictures into one new document. Add files or drop them in, drag them into order, and choose which pages of each to keep. It can add a bookmark for each file, keep each file's own bookmarks, and fit pictures to A4 or Letter. Then click Merge and save.... Your original files aren't changed.

11. Bookmarks

Press F6 for the Bookmarks panel, and click a bookmark to jump to it. The two buttons at the top of the panel add bookmarks.

• Add one: select a heading on the page and press Ctrl+B, or click the first button. The bookmark is named after the words you selected.
• Rename or delete one: right-click it in the panel.
• Build them all at once: the second button, Create bookmarks from the document's headings, finds the headings By how they look (their font, size and colour) or By what they say (such as "1.2" or "Chapter"). It shows the bookmarks it will make before anything is written. They replace any bookmarks the document already has, and the file is saved as part of this.

12. Save, print and document details

• Save (Ctrl+S) and Save As... (Ctrl+Shift+S) work in the background, so you can keep going while a big file is written.
• Print... (Ctrl+P) sends the document to your printer.
• Flatten and save a copy... saves a copy with your marks pressed into the pages, so nobody can move or remove them. The document you have open stays as it is.

Document properties

File > Document properties... (Alt+Enter) shows and changes:

• The title, author, subject, keywords and language.
• How the file opens in any PDF reader: at which page and zoom, with which panel and layout, and whether the title shows instead of the file name.
• Remove personal info when saving, and if you like the created and modified dates and attached files too.
• Attached files: see them, save them to your PC, or remove them.
• Show fonts lists the fonts the document uses, and Check pages looks for old fonts and pages without text.

If something goes wrong

Ayaan PDF keeps a copy of your unsaved work as you go. If it ever closes unexpectedly, the next time it starts it offers Recover unsaved work: choose Recover to get it back.

13. Make it yours

Open Settings from the foot of the tool rail or File > Settings...:

• Theme: Light, Dark, Sepia, Midnight blue, or the same as Windows, with Color intensity for how strong its colours are.
• When a document opens: fit the whole page, fit the width, or actual size, and whether to Remember where I stopped reading.
• Rulers in Edit mode, and their units. With the rulers on, drag from a ruler to make a guide, and the View > Guides menu adds margin and column guides.
• Define: show the Myanmar meanings, the Hindi meanings, or both.
• Text recognition: the languages it reads, and Recognition languages... to download more.

14. Handy keys

F1 in the app lists every key. The ones you'll use most:

Files and editing

Reading and moving around

Tools

15. Questions

Does Ayaan PDF change my file?

Only when you save. Until then everything you do lives in Ayaan PDF, and Ctrl+Z takes it back. Closing a document with unsaved changes asks you first. The one exception is Create bookmarks, which saves the file as it writes them.

Does it need the internet?

No. Reading, editing, word meanings, text recognition in English, Hindi and Myanmar, and everything else work offline. When it starts, Ayaan PDF asks GitHub whether a newer version is out and, if one is, tells you in a small bubble you can dismiss; it never downloads or installs anything by itself. Otherwise it goes online only when you download a recognition language or open a web link. There is no account and no tracking.

I can't click the text to change it

Check that you're in Edit: the page-and-pencil button at the top of the tool rail. In Reading, a click on text selects it for copying instead.

A line says it can't be changed

The status bar says why. A justified line can't be retyped as a whole, because its spacing would change and the right margin would stop lining up, but every word in it can: click the word. A scanned page has no text to change until you recognise it.

Burmese text won't edit

Editing Burmese works on text set in Myanmar Text or Pyidaungsu. Wait until the Preparing Myanmar text for editing card has gone, then click the line again. Text in an old font like Zawgyi or Win Innwa has to be recognised first.

Can I sign a PDF with a digital certificate?

Not yet. A signature in Ayaan PDF is a picture of your handwriting, placed on the page.

Something else went wrong

Choose Help > Report a problem, which opens a new issue on GitHub, and describe what happened. Ayaan PDF keeps a log, diag.log, in the folder it's installed in (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Ayaan PDF), and attaching it helps.