Show Dev: Building a lightweight, all-in-one PDF Utility App for Android (No Bloatware)

Md Jakaria — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:32:58 +0000

Hey Dev Community! 👋

We’ve all been there: you need to quickly sign a PDF, convert an image of a receipt to a document, or compress a file on your phone, and you end up downloading 3 different apps that are heavy, full of intrusive ads, or locked behind crazy subscriptions.

Frustrated by the bloated state of standard PDF tools, I decided to build my own solution: PDF Manager-PDF Reader.

My goal was simple: pack a smooth viewer, a powerful editor, a file converter, and an OCR scanner into one lightweight, high-performance Android package.

🛠️ The Feature Set

Instead of just building a simple viewer, I wanted to handle the entire document lifecycle right from inside the app. Here is how it's structured:

1. High-Performance PDF Viewer & Reader

A fast document loading engine supporting multiple UX configurations:

Smooth Horizontal & Vertical scrolling modes
Single & Multi-page viewing modes to easily scan through documents
Global search to find and jump to any page instantly, plus a custom bookmarking architecture.

2. Deep File Management & On-Device Editing

Managing PDFs on mobile storage can get messy. The app automatically scans, maps, and lists your storage documents with custom sorting mechanisms (by date, size, name).

Page Manipulation: Drag-and-drop to reorder pages, crop, rotate, or split/merge separate PDF files.
Annotate & Customize: Ability to draw directly on pages, add custom signatures, text, dates, or insert additional images.

3. All-in-One Format Converter (On-Device OCR & Compression)

I integrated utility engines to convert assets without needing server-side processing:

Images ⇄ PDF & Text ⇄ PDF conversions.
Scan to PDF: Direct hardware camera interaction for clean document scanning.
Image to Text (OCR): Extracts raw text from image documents with multi-language support.
ZIP Maker: A file compression tool built natively into the pipeline to easily compress/browse files.

🏗️ Technical Hurdle: Managing Scoped Storage

One of the biggest challenges while building this app was dealing with Android's storage permissions. Since the app relies on discovering scattered PDFs, scanning ZIP archives, and performing heavy page extractions across internal storage, a basic media storage permission wasn't enough.

To make the file browser truly reliable, I had to implement the MANAGE_ALL_FILE_ACCESS permission pipeline. This ensures seamless cross-directory document discovery without tripping over system sandbox limitations.

🧪 Tech Stack Breakdown

Platform: Android

* Architecture: Clean Architecture

💬 I'd Love Your Feedback!

The app is officially live on the Google Play Store! As a solo developer, getting input from fellow engineers is the best way to improve.

I would highly appreciate it if you could test out the scrolling performance, the OCR speed, or the conversion pipelines and let me know your thoughts on the UI/UX.

👉 **[Download PDF Manager-PDF Reader on Google Play Store]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jakaria.pdfmanager]

What do you think of the feature combination? What optimization or tool should I build into version 2.0? Let's talk in the comments! 👇

DEV Community: Md Jakaria