Kiosk vs Skim
Kiosk
github.comSkim
skim-app.sourceforge.ioSide by side
| Figure | Kiosk | Skim |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · PDF Readers | 8.8 (#3) | 7.4 (#17) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | The desktop apps support opening PDFs directly and associating Kiosk with PDF files; the extension can intercept PDFs opened in Chrome. | Skim lists interaction with LaTeX, SyncTeX, and PDFSync, as well as integration with BibDesk and other third-party applications. |
| What it does | Kiosk is an open-source PDF reader intended to provide a simple reading experience across web, desktop, Android and browser-extension environments. | Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker designed for reading and annotating scientific papers, and can also view other PDF files. |
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.