PDF Outline Viewer

Free

View the bookmark / table-of-contents tree of any PDF, with page references. Useful for previewing long docs before reading. Free, in-browser.

What you'll get: the bookmark tree of the PDF with page numbers per entry. For another use, try PDF Inspector.

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Stays in your browser

Free tools run fully on-device — nothing is uploaded to a server.

No watermarks

Clean output, no branding, no daily limits.

Free forever

No signup required. Seriously.

Why people view PDF outlines

An outline (bookmarks tree) is a PDF's table of contents. Seeing it before you open the document tells you whether it's worth opening — and where to start.

Long-doc previews

Research papers, textbooks, government filings. Skim the outline first to decide which chapters to actually read. Saves opening a 400-page PDF just to find the right section.

Citation lookup

When citing a chapter or section number, extract the outline to confirm the section exists at the page you're claiming. Especially useful for legal exhibits.

Re-publishing prep

Before reformatting a PDF as a website or blog series, exporting its outline gives you the editorial map — what sections to keep, what to merge, what to drop.

Compliance + audit

Confirming a regulatory filing's structure matches the prescribed table of contents. The outline export shows nesting depth + page refs at a glance.

TOC documentation

Generating a documentation page that lists all chapters of a PDF manual with page numbers — useful for ops runbooks and indexed knowledge bases.

How PDF Outline Viewer works

Three steps, no signup, no uploads.

STEP 1
Drop your PDF
Up to 100 MB. We parse the outline tree directly from the PDF bytes — no PDFium engine needed.
STEP 2
Click View outline
We walk the outline tree, decode each title (handling Unicode + escape sequences), and resolve destinations to 1-based page numbers.
STEP 3
Copy or export
Copy as indented text, or export as JSON for programmatic use.

What makes pdfcraft ai different

Same engine Chrome uses
PDFium is Google's PDF engine — the one that powers Chrome's built-in PDF viewer. We compile it to WebAssembly so it runs in your browser at near-native speed.
100% local processing
Most free PDF tools upload your file to a server, process it, and stream the result back. We don't. Your file lives in your browser tab and never touches our infrastructure. Verifiable in your browser's Network panel.
No watermark, no signup, no daily limit
Convert 1 PDF or 1,000. We don't gate on volume because there's nothing to gate on — the engine runs on your machine.
Honest about limitations
When something the tool can't do (encrypted PDFs, cross-reference streams), we tell you clearly instead of failing silently. Same for partial results: sampled vs exact, embedded vs not.
Open standards, free engines
PDFium is BSD/Apache licensed (free for any use). We don't pay vendor license fees and pass that savings on to you (and to ourselves) as a free, ad-supported tool with no upgrade-to-pro pressure.

Frequently asked questions

What if the PDF has no bookmarks?

We tell you clearly. Many PDFs (especially scanned or auto-generated ones) have no outline tree. For those, try PDF Inspector for high-level stats or Search in PDF to find specific text.

Are nested bookmarks shown?

Yes, with proper indent depth. The export preserves the hierarchy — JSON has a depth field; copied text uses two-space indent per level.

Why is no page number shown for some entries?

PDF allows two destination styles: direct page refs and named destinations (an extra dereference). We resolve direct refs cleanly; named destinations show the title without a page number. Most modern PDFs use direct refs.

Does it handle PDFs with cross-reference streams (PDF 1.5+)?

Mostly no. Cross-reference streams hide objects in compressed object streams that our byte parser can't follow. We return 'unsupported' clearly when this happens.

Is anything uploaded?

No. Pure byte-stream parsing in your browser.

Want full document stats too?

PDF Inspector adds page count, dimensions, word count, metadata, and more — same in-browser, in one drop.

Try PDF Inspector

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