Kiosk vs Papers
Kiosk
github.comPapers
apps.gnome.orgSide by side
| Figure | Kiosk | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · PDF Readers | 8.8 (#3) | 7.2 (#20) |
| Annotations | The Chrome extension supports highlighting, underlining, strikethrough, drawing, shapes, and text annotations. | Free text annotations are printed by default in version 51.0. |
| License | Kiosk is distributed under the MIT License. | The app-specific content on the GNOME page is licensed GPL-2.0-or-later. |
| Support | The Linux release directs users to report bugs by opening a GitHub issue. | The app page directs users to its issue tracker to give feedback or report issues. |
Plans
In their own words
Kiosk
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.