Overview of Blazor PDF Viewer Component

The Blazor SfPdfViewer component enables viewing, editing, printing, and downloading PDF files in Blazor applications without a web service dependency. It is optimized for speed and responsiveness and provides a feature set comparable to the classic Blazor PDF Viewer. The component is straightforward to integrate into both Blazor Server and Blazor WebAssembly (WASM) applications.

The SfPdfViewer component provides the same key capabilities as the Blazor PDF Viewer component, with additional advantages described below.

Performance Improvements

Rendering, scrolling, zooming, panning, and printing have been optimized for faster, smoother interaction.

Elimination of Service Dependency

The classic PDF Viewer required a separate service URL to load documents. In the Blazor SfPdfViewer, documents can be loaded directly without a service URL, enabling offline scenarios and reducing network overhead. Server-side hosting remains supported when needed.

Common Package

Previously, separate NuGet packages were required for each operating system: Windows, Linux, and OSX. The Syncfusion.Blazor.SfPdfViewer package now provides a single, cross-platform package for all environments.

Reduced Server Calls

In the classic viewer, many C# service calls were required to retrieve information such as page text, hyperlinks, and page images. The SfPdfViewer moves these operations to the client side, decreasing round trips and improving responsiveness.

Some of the key features are listed below

• Accurate, reliable rendering of PDF pages.
• Easy page navigation with:
  • Thumbnail page view
  • Bookmark panel
  • Hyperlink navigation
  • Table of contents navigation
• Core interactions:
  • Zooming and panning
  • Text searching
  • Text selection and copy
• Print PDF files.
• Annotate PDFs with:
  • Highlight, underline, and strikethrough text markup
  • Shape annotations: rectangle, circle, polygon, line, and arrow
  • Stamp annotations: built-in and custom stamps
  • Measurement annotations
  • Free text annotations
  • Redaction annotations
  • Comments and sticky notes for all annotation types
• Form filling
• Form designer
• Handwritten signature

Supported Features: Desktop vs Mobile

The table below lists supported and unsupported features on desktop and mobile devices.

Feature	Desktop	Mobile devices
Keyboard interaction	Yes	No
Open file from a different origin	Yes	Yes
Save a file to a different origin	Yes	Yes
Toolbar	Yes	No
Mobile toolbar	No	Yes
Navigation toolbar	Yes	No
Page navigation	Yes	No
Magnification	Yes	Yes
Text search	Yes	Yes
Text selection	Yes	No
Pan mode	Yes	Yes
Handwritten signature	Yes	Yes
Annotation rendering	Yes	Yes
Annotation interaction	Yes	Yes
Annotation property editing	Yes	No
Add annotation through touch	Yes	No
Import/export annotation	Yes	Yes
Form fields rendering	Yes	Yes

NOTE

Enable desktop mode on mobile devices using the EnableDesktopMode property to display the toolbar as on desktop.

NOTE

Syncfusion^® provides the SfPdfViewer component for both Blazor Server and Blazor WebAssembly applications.

For both Blazor WebAssembly and Blazor Server applications, use the SfPdfViewer component from the Syncfusion.Blazor.SfPdfViewer NuGet package. This component does not require server-side processing through a web service to render PDF files
For Windows, Linux, and macOS, use the Syncfusion.Blazor.SfPdfViewer NuGet package.

NOTE

Refer to the Blazor SfPdfViewer feature tour for an overview of its capabilities. Explore the Blazor SfPdfViewer demo to see the core features in action.