pdfx_lite 3.4.1

Minimal, legacy-free PDF rendering & viewing for Flutter (Android + iOS) — no CocoaPods, SPM-only, no web/desktop renderers. Replacement for pdfx.

pdfx_lite

Standalone PDF renderer & viewer for Flutter on Android and iOS — a replacement for pdfx, forked from ScerIO/packages.flutter at pdfx 2.9.2, with the Web, macOS and Windows renderers removed.

Purpose: minimal and legacy-free, for current toolchains only — no CocoaPods (SPM only), no pdf.js, no CMake, and built against the latest Flutter, AGP, Gradle, Android SDK and Xcode rather than older ones. If you need Web, desktop, or CocoaPods, use the upstream package instead.

Same 2 APIs as upstream, both slightly reduced (see Migrating from pdfx):

• renderer — work with a PDF document, its pages, render a page to an image
• viewer — PdfViewPinch, the texture-backed viewer with pinch-to-zoom. Upstream's second, image-backed PdfView is gone, and with it the photo_view dependency.

Getting started

dependencies:
  pdfx_lite: ^3.4.1

import 'package:pdfx_lite/pdfx_lite.dart';

final controller = PdfControllerPinch(
  document: PdfDocument.openAsset('assets/hello.pdf'),
);
// ...
PdfViewPinch(controller: controller);

Migrating from pdfx

1. Replace the dependency, and package:pdfx/pdfx.dart → package:pdfx_lite/pdfx_lite.dart.
2. Web: drop the pdf.js <script> tags from web/index.html, and guard any PDF viewing behind kIsWeb, falling back to the browser's native viewer.
3. Drop hasPdfSupport() — it was hardcoded true.
4. PdfView → PdfViewPinch (and PdfController → PdfControllerPinch). The image-backed viewer is gone with the unmaintained photo_view it wrapped. To rebuild it: PdfPageImageProvider is still exported.

Encrypted PDFs

final doc = await PdfDocument.openFile(path, password: 'secret');

password: is a fallback, used only if the document demands one — passing it to a document that opens without one is harmless. (A permissions-only PDF, restricted but with an empty user password, needs none.)

iOS	supported on every version
Android 15+ (API 35)	supported
Android below API 35	not supported

PdfDocument.isPasswordSupported() reports that up front, so you can skip a prompt the device cannot honour. Otherwise catch:

• PdfPasswordProtectedException — needs a password, and none was given or the given one is wrong. The two are not distinguished; the platform cannot tell them apart. Re-prompt.
• PdfPasswordUnsupportedException — encrypted, and this Android device cannot take a password at all. Never a wrong password. Fall back, e.g. to an external viewer.

What changed vs upstream

	pdfx	pdfx_lite
Platforms	Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Web	Android, iOS
Platform channel	pigeon 4 (mobile) + method channel (web/Windows)	pigeon 27 only — generated Kotlin + Swift + Dart
Generated native bridge	1479 lines of Java + a hand-translated Messages.swift	generated from one schema, no Java
Android
minSdk / compileSdk	16 / 35	24 / 37
Gradle	8.10.2	9.6.1
AGP	Groovy build.gradle, AGP 8.5.2 + kotlin-android	9 only, Kotlin DSL
iOS
Integration	CocoaPods podspec + SPM	SPM only
Deployment target	13.0	15.0
Swift / Swift-Tools	5 / 5.9	6 / 6.2 — strict concurrency, Xcode 26+
Dart
Dart / Flutter	>=3.3 / >=3.24	^3.12 / >=3.44
Viewers	PdfView (image, via photo_view) + PdfViewPinch (texture)	PdfViewPinch only — photo_view is unmaintained
Dependencies	+ photo_view, flutter_web_plugins, web, universal_platform, uuid, extension, plugin_platform_interface	those seven dropped — only meta, synchronized, vector_math remain
Encrypted PDFs	password: accepted, then silently ignored	honoured on iOS and Android 15+

Plus bug fixes pdfx 2.9.2 still has — a crash in PdfViewPinch, broken cropping on Android, an iOS data race, and more. See the CHANGELOG.