Kiosk vs KioskFrame

Kiosk is a free, open-source PDF reader for web, desktop, mobile, and browser extensions. It renders PDFs and offers full-text search with highlighted results, page thumbnails, zoom, and light, dark, and night display modes. Its Chrome extension adds highlighting, underlining, strikethrough, drawing, shapes, and text annotations. The project says PDFs stay on the device, with no telemetry, cloud processing, or account requirement. Android works offline after installation, and the extension release notes also state that offline use is supported. The web app can run locally or be deployed through GitHub Pages as a self-hosted instance. Desktop apps can open PDFs directly and associate Kiosk with PDF files; the extension can intercept PDFs opened in Chrome. The extension supports Chrome 88+, Edge 88+, and Brave, but not Firefox or Safari. The project is released under the MIT License. Its Android release is an early alpha, and the macOS app is ad-hoc signed but not notarized, so Gatekeeper may warn on first launch.

KioskFrame turns an iPhone or iPad into a fullscreen kiosk for websites, images, PDFs, and photo galleries. It hides browser controls and the status bar, while a configurable gear button gives operators access to settings. An idle screensaver can display a clock, and the screen can reload after inactivity or connection problems. Content includes live websites, local or Photos images, PDFs, and photo slideshows; the free PDF viewer displays only the first page. Free and Pro both include JavaScript allow-or-deny controls and a navigation hostname whitelist. Pro adds settings passcode protection, photo galleries, multi-page PDF slideshows, bookmarks, scheduled reloads, read-only mode, branding removal, and zoom control. The standalone iOS App Store app requires no MDM enrollment, Apple Configurator, or enterprise certificates. Devices are installed and configured separately, with no fleet management. The maker recommends iOS Guided Access to prevent visitors leaving the app. The operator interface supports English, Spanish, German, French, and Japanese. Plans are Free, $4.99 per month, $49.99 per year, or $99.99 once; paid plans include a 14-day trial.