PDF Inspector

PDF Inspector is an open-source Android application in MirrorNest’s Writing category for inspecting and modifying the internal contents of PDF documents. It is intended for users who need to work with individual page elements rather than only read or view complete pages. The application parses each page’s content stream and presents its contents in a navigable tree. This tree can show text blocks, vector paths, and images, reflecting the order and structure used to draw the page. Users can identify an element by selecting it on the rendered page or by choosing its corresponding entry in the tree. The selected object is highlighted in both views with a visible outline, making it easier to connect the document’s appearance with its underlying content. Tree entries can use readable labels or display the content-stream operators for a more technical inspection.

PDF Inspector allows selected elements to be edited in place. Users can move or resize an element, change its fill or stroke color with hexadecimal values, and view its color space. Text can be retyped within the document, including by re-encoding a line with a fallback font when the original font lacks a required character. The fallback font may be supplied with the application, available on the device, or imported by the user. Editing actions support both undo and redo. Individual elements can also be deleted by rewriting the relevant part of the page’s content stream while leaving the rest of the page unchanged. Edited documents are saved as new PDF files through the Android system file picker, so the original file is not modified. Standard navigation includes panning, pinch-to-zoom, fitting a page to its width or height, and maintaining a global zoom level across pages, while full-screen mode reduces surrounding interface elements during viewing. MirrorNest mirrors the official Android build directly on its own storage and scans it for malware before publishing, giving users a catalog copy of the open-source application.