macOS
Homebrewverified · 100%
brew install xpdflocal Homebrew formula metadata
MacPortsverified · 94%
sudo port install xpdfMacPorts ports tree · graphics/xpdf/Portfile · source: api.github.com
brew
Install xpdf with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman
PDF viewer. Version 4.06 via Homebrew; verified from local package data.
install
Additional install commands
Linux
Alpine Linux apkverified · 92%
sudo apk add xpdfAlpine Linux edge package indexes · xpdf · source: dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org
Debian aptverified · 92%
sudo apt install xpdfDebian stable package indexes · xpdf · source: deb.debian.org
Fedora dnfverified · 92%
sudo dnf install xpdfFedora Rawhide package metadata · xpdf · source: dl.fedoraproject.org
Nixverified · 92%
nix profile install nixpkgs#xpdfnixpkgs package indexes · xpdf · source: raw.githubusercontent.com
Arch Linux pacmanverified · 92%
sudo pacman -S xpdfArch Linux sync databases · xpdf · source: geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com
overview
Package summary
PDF viewer
Project links
Commands and aliases
- pdftopng
- xpdf
history
Project history and usage
Xpdf is a long-running PDF viewer and command-line toolkit from Glyph & Cog, developed by Derek Noonburg. The official site describes it as a PDF viewer plus tools for text extraction, PostScript conversion, image conversion, HTML conversion, metadata extraction, font listing, attachment extraction, and raw image extraction.
Its package-nerd importance comes from being both an end-user viewer and one of the ancestral codebases for Unix PDF tooling, including the Poppler fork that many modern desktop applications and distributions use.
Project history
The official Xpdf about page says Xpdf was first released in 1995, written by Derek Noonburg, and still developed by him. Early Xpdf was closely associated with Unix and the X Window System; modern Xpdf uses Qt and ships cross-platform tools for Linux, Windows, and Mac.
Xpdf's code became a base for a broader ecosystem. Poppler's README states that Poppler is a fork of the Xpdf PDF viewer developed by Derek Noonburg of Glyph & Cog, created to provide shared PDF rendering functionality and centralize maintenance effort for applications that had embedded Xpdf-derived code.
The project later separated branding between the open source xpdf package and XpdfReader. The official site describes XpdfReader as a closed-source viewer build with extra features, while the xpdf package remains the open source viewer and tool collection.
Adoption history
Xpdf became a fixture on Unix-like systems because it was small, scriptable, and useful before PDF support was built into every desktop environment. The command-line tools made it valuable even for users who never launched the GUI viewer: pdftotext, pdfinfo, pdffonts, pdfimages, pdftops, pdftoppm, and pdftopng fit naturally into shell pipelines.
Poppler's creation shows the scale of downstream adoption. Its README says many applications incorporated the Xpdf code base and that duplicated security and maintenance work motivated a shared library fork using modern Unix desktop components such as fontconfig and cairo.
Today Xpdf remains relevant as a compact upstream toolkit and as a historical root of PDF handling in free desktops. Some distributions package Xpdf-derived viewers differently from Poppler utilities, but the conceptual split between viewer, rendering engine, and CLI PDF tools is part of Xpdf's legacy.
How it is used
Typical package usage is split between viewing and conversion. Users launch xpdf to read a document, or use command-line tools to extract text, inspect metadata and fonts, convert pages to images, convert PDFs to PostScript or HTML, and extract embedded images or attachments.
The configuration file xpdfrc controls viewer and tool behavior, including font paths, language support, and related settings. That makes Xpdf useful in both interactive desktop setups and controlled batch environments where predictable PDF extraction matters.
Because PDFs are untrusted document inputs, Xpdf and its descendants also matter to security maintenance. Poppler explicitly calls out PDF rendering as sensitive to security bugs, and the shared-library fork was partly a response to the maintenance burden of many applications carrying Xpdf-derived code.
Why package nerds care
Xpdf is one of the classic examples of a small Unix GUI application whose command-line utilities became just as important as the viewer. Packaging it gives users a PDF reader, but it also gives scripts a set of focused PDF inspection and conversion commands.
Its relationship with Poppler is historically important for package maintainers: one upstream codebase became both a standalone viewer/toolkit and the origin point for a shared rendering library used by many other applications. That fork explains why similar PDF tools and libraries often appear side by side in package collections.
Xpdf also sits at the intersection of old X11 desktop software and modern cross-platform Qt software, making it a useful marker of how long-lived Unix tools survive by keeping a stable command-line surface while changing GUI/toolkit internals.
Timeline
- 1995: Xpdf is first released, according to the official Xpdf about page.
- 2000s: Xpdf code is widely reused by PDF viewers and tools, creating maintenance pressure around duplicated embedded code.
- 2005: Poppler is created as a fork of Xpdf to provide shared PDF rendering functionality and modern desktop integration.
- 2010s: Xpdf 4.x moves the viewer line to a Qt-based, cross-platform presentation under the XpdfReader site.
- 2025-11-14: The official download page lists Xpdf 4.06 as the current release.
Related projects
- Poppler is the major Xpdf-derived PDF rendering library used by many free-desktop applications.
- Evince and Okular are adjacent desktop PDF viewers commonly associated with Poppler-based stacks.
- BePDF, !PDF, SWFTools, PDFKit, and other projects are listed by Xpdf as open source projects based on Xpdf.
- MuPDF and PDF.js are related PDF engines with different implementation and packaging tradeoffs.
Sources
security posture
Risk level: blue
broad file, network, media, or database tool signal.
Risk classifier
blue risk · medium confidence · tool
Why
- broad file, network, media, or database tool signal
Signals
- text:image
Install behavior
- No Homebrew post-install hook is recorded in formula metadata.
- Homebrew bottle metadata is available for 6 platform targets.
- Installs with 5 runtime dependencies.
- Build metadata lists 1 build dependencies.
Recommended review
Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.
local files
Configuration and credential file locations
These source-backed paths show where this package keeps local settings or durable credentials. Automic Vault can use them as review targets for secret scanning, migration, and command approval.
Configuration files
Config paths the tool may read or write during local use.
- Unix
~/.xpdfrc/etc/xpdfrc- Windows
xpdfrc in the same directory as the executable
executables
Installed executables
| Command | Kind | Exposure | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
pdftopng | cli | global executable | |
xpdf | cli | global executable |
freshness
Version and freshness
These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.
page generated2026-07-08
manager version4.06
manager updated
local dataok
upstreamnot checked
latest detectednot detected
- infoNo package-manager update timestamp was available.low confidence
- infoRelease/tag comparison is only available for GitHub repositories.https://www.xpdfreader.com/none confidence
install metadata
Package metadata
| Package key | brew:xpdf |
|---|---|
| Version | 4.06 |
| Package manager | Homebrew |
| Package manager page | https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/xpdf |
| Homepage | https://www.xpdfreader.com/ |
| Upstream docs | https://www.xpdfreader.com/ |
| License | GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only |
| Source archive | https://dl.xpdfreader.com/xpdf-4.06.tar.gz |
| Dependencies | fontconfig, freetype, libpng, qtbase, qtsvg |
| Build dependencies | cmake |
| Uses from macOS | cups |
| Bottle | available (on arm64_linux, arm64_sequoia, arm64_sonoma, arm64_tahoe, sonoma, x86_64_linux) |
| Homebrew post-install | not defined |
| Service | none declared |
registry facts
Source database details
| Source Database | Homebrew formula API |
|---|---|
| Tap | homebrew/core |
| Full Name | xpdf |
| Version Scheme | 0 |
| Revision | 0 |
| Conflicts With |
|
| Bottle Stable Root URL | https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core |
| Deprecated | no |
| Disabled | no |
| Keg Only | no |
| URL Keys |
|
source database matches
Other package-manager records
Matches are pulled from external package-manager indexes and kept separate from local Automic Vault package links.
Debian apt95%
xpdf 3.04+git20250304-1+b1
Motif-based PDF reader using the Poppler library
https://offog.org/code/xpopple/
sudo apt install xpdf- Section: text
- Architecture: amd64
- Source Package: xpdf
- 8 dependencies
- 1 provides
- 5 optional deps
- normalized package name match
- Matched by: Xpdf
Nix95%
xpdf
nix profile install nixpkgs#xpdf- normalized package name match
- Matched by: Xpdf
Ubuntu apt95%
xpdf 3.04+git20240202-1build3
Motif-based PDF reader using the Poppler library
https://offog.org/code/xpopple/
sudo apt install xpdf- Section: universe/text
- Architecture: amd64
- 8 dependencies
- 1 provides
- 5 optional deps
- normalized package name match
- Matched by: Xpdf
apk95%
xpdf 4.06-r0
The classic X11 PDF viewer
sudo apk add xpdf- License: GPL-2.0-or-later OR GPL-3.0-or-later
- Architecture: x86_64
- Source Package: xpdf
- 1 dependencies
- 1 provides
- normalized package name match
- Matched by: Xpdf
apk95%
xpdf-doc 4.06-r0
The classic X11 PDF viewer (documentation)
sudo apk add xpdf-doc- License: GPL-2.0-or-later OR GPL-3.0-or-later
- Architecture: x86_64
- Source Package: xpdf
- normalized package name match
- Matched by: Xpdf
dnf95%
xpdf 4.06-2.fc44
A PDF file viewer for the X Window System
sudo dnf install xpdf- License: (GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only) AND BSD-3-Clause
- Category: Unspecified
- Architecture: i686
- Source Package: xpdf
- 22 dependencies
- 12 provides
- normalized package name match
- Matched by: Xpdf
dnf95%
xpdf-devel 4.06-2.fc44
Development files for xpdf libraries
sudo dnf install xpdf-devel- License: (GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only) AND BSD-3-Clause
- Category: Unspecified
- Architecture: i686
- Source Package: xpdf
- 9 dependencies
- 1 provides
- normalized package name match
- Matched by: Xpdf
dnf95%
xpdf-libs 4.06-2.fc44
Libraries from xpdf
sudo dnf install xpdf-libs- License: (GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only) AND BSD-3-Clause
- Category: Unspecified
- Architecture: i686
- Source Package: xpdf
- 5 dependencies
- 5 provides
- normalized package name match
- Matched by: Xpdf
pacman95%
xpdf 4.06-2
Viewer for Portable Document Format (PDF) files
sudo pacman -S xpdf- License: GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only
- Architecture: x86_64
- 15 dependencies
- 2 optional deps
- normalized package name match
- Matched by: Xpdf
MacPorts95%
xpdf
sudo port install xpdf- normalized package name match
- Matched by: Xpdf
source trail
Generated from repository data
This page is generated by av-web from the private package SQLite artifact built by scripts/generate-pkg-sqlite.py.
Combined YAML source
View the package source record on GitHub.
Used sources
- Geiger risk classifier
- Nucleus package database
- av.db category and tag curation
- cross-ecosystem install command graph
- curated configuration and credential file locations
- curated package history
- external package-manager database matches
- package relationship graph
- package version freshness
- package-page enrichment