SsakView: a free Windows viewer with region OCR, improved after user feedback

I’m Lim Seongjun, the developer and operator of SsakView, a free Windows 10/11 x64 viewer for images, video, music and PDF/documents. I’m posting as its maker, and I would appreciate practical feedback from Windows users.

The workflow I wanted to simplify

When a product sheet or a video frame contains text, I want to inspect the file, select the relevant region, read the text and review or translate it without opening several applications.

A quick way to try it:

1. Open an image, PDF or video. For video, choose the current frame.
2. Use Read text and select a region. Local recognition does not need a Google account.
3. Review the extracted text, copy it, or choose a translation method. Offline translation requires language packs; cloud options are separate.

There are also image comparison tools, filters, playback speed, A–B repeat and bookmarks. Basic local viewing is free and requires no registration. Installer and portable ZIP downloads are available.

What user feedback changed in 1.7.13

A user recently pointed out two mistakes: opening an ordinary TXT file could request a large Office component, and the portable build could register file types/create shortcuts on launch. Those were valid complaints.

• TXT now opens through the bundled document worker without Office. UTF-8 and BOM-marked UTF-16 are supported, with a system-encoding fallback. The viewer checks that system fonts can represent the characters. TXT is limited to 2 MB / 500,000 characters. Selection, search and PDF export work locally.
• New portable ZIPs keep settings and downloaded application engines in a data folder beside the executable. They do not automatically create shortcuts or register file associations. Close the app before replacing the ZIP and preserve data. Existing folders and shortcuts from older versions are not silently deleted. Windows OCR language packs remain Windows components.
• Chinese font selection and Office setup prompts were improved. The interface and website offer 11 languages. Some detailed application explanations may still be English.

The document viewer uses an isolated PDFium worker; Office files use an optional local conversion component. Office documents are converted to PDF for display, so layout, fonts and some objects can differ from the source. This is viewing, not a replacement for editing in the original office application.

Limits and privacy worth knowing before downloading

OCR, spelling suggestions and translation can be wrong. Please compare them with the original, especially names, numbers and specifications. Offline translation needs a model download and has quality/language limitations. Optional Google OCR requires sign-in, a network connection and usage quotas; Google Cloud translation with your own API key can incur provider charges.

Basic application usage counts are enabled by default and can be stopped in settings. They use an application-specific hashed Windows-installation identifier and the Windows country/region setting. Files, extracted text, email addresses and raw IP addresses are not stored in the usage-statistics database.

The current Windows binaries do not yet have a public Authenticode code signature. Security warnings may appear; I do not recommend disabling Windows protection. The download page provides signed release metadata and checksums. Some users in mainland China have reported a site-access block; that connection issue is still under investigation.

Download SsakView · Help and known issues

Development and this English write-up use AI assistance. The behavior described above was checked against the application and release tests; responsibility for the product and corrections remains with me.

If you try it, I would particularly value feedback on region selection, portable behavior, and the clarity of the text-reading controls. Please use a non-sensitive sample rather than posting a private document.