When we buy a new computer, or install Windows from scratch, one of the first things we usually do is install all the programs we are going to need: a browser, a media player, a video editor, the Office suite, a video viewer, PDF… and this, in the long run, can end up being harmful, since having many programs that we don’t need will slow down the PC. For this reason, it never hurts to take advantage of programs that can be used for two things at the same time and that will allow us to install fewer programs on our new PC.
There are many programs to read PDF files on the computer. One of the best known is Adobe Acrobat itself, the viewer par excellence, one of the most complete we can find, and at the same time one of the ones that slow down our computer the most, so we should avoid it. There are also other free programs that are very light, small and fast, which perfectly fulfill this function, such as SumatraPDF. And even intermediate options such as Foxit Reader.
But these programs are nothing more than unnecessary additions to our computer. And it is that, although we surely do not know it, the web browser can open PDF without using an additional program. This function is present in Chrome, Firefox and Edge, and is mainly designed to open PDF files that we can find on the Internet or receive by mail. However, it can also serve us perfectly to open files that we have on the computer.
Edge hides one of the best PDF viewers
Microsoft Edge is one of the programs that comes standard installed in Windows. This is the new browser from Microsoft, which, although it is based on Chromium, improves many of the native functions and features of the Google browser. And one of these enhanced features is none other than its PDF viewer.
When we open a PDF with the Microsoft browser we are going to find a large number of functions, many of them not even present in other specialized programs. For example, we can adjust the type of view we want, add text to the PDF, draw on it, delete content, and even use its text-to-speech engine to read the document aloud. Navigation, and loading, are very fluid, so we won’t have problems opening even quite large documents.
An excellent program that, when we get used to it, will help us install less software on the computer and keep it as fast as possible.
Use as default reader
We can use Edge as a secondary viewer, although the ideal is to configure it as the default document viewer. Although it surely comes configured like this by default in Windows, if it has been changed, or lost, this configuration can be easily forced.
We simply have to go to the Settings menu, within the Applications> Default applications section. There we will search by extension, in this case “.pdf”, and we will be able to see the assigned program.
In case it is not Edge, we can change it by clicking on it and choosing the program we want to use from the list.
