Evince is a simple yet powerful document reader for the GNOME desktop environment. It can render a variety of digital document formats as well as include the tools for basic annotation work. This makes Evince a reliable and versatile document reader that you can use for both quick skimming and marathon reading.
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One of the most handy features of Evince is its ability to delegate its tools to a bunch of keyboard shortcuts. This approach makes using Evince an effortless experience for casual and power users. For example, the reader program can scroll through documents and annotate them through shortcuts alone.
This cheatsheet shows you the basic keyboard shortcuts for the Evince PDF Reader. Furthermore, it will highlight some of its more advanced features, such as Bookmarks and Presentation Mode, which you can use while browsing your documents.
| Shortcut | Function |
|---|---|
| Document Manipulation | |
| Ctrl + O | Open a digital document to the current Evince buffer. |
| Ctrl + R | Reload the currently open document on the buffer. |
| Ctrl + N | Open a new window containing an exact duplicate of the current buffer. |
| Ctrl + W | Close the currently open Evince buffer. |
| Ctrl + S | Save the currently open Evince buffer to a different file. |
| Document Display | |
| Ctrl + Plus (+) | Zoom in the document on the current buffer. |
| Ctrl + Minus (-) | Zoom out of the document on the current buffer. |
| Ctrl + 0 | Return the zoom level of the document to its “automatic” value. |
| A | Return the zoom level of the document back to its “automatic” value. |
| F | Force the buffer to display the entire page. |
| W | Force the buffer to zoom the page to its maximum width. |
| C | Toggle Evince’s “Continuous” page view mode. |
| D | Force the buffer to display two pages at a time. |
| Ctrl + Right Arrow | Turn the entire document 90 degrees to the right. |
| Ctrl + Left Arrow | Turn the entire document 90 degrees to the left. |
| Ctrl + I | Invert the colors of the document in the current buffer. |
| Buffer Movement | |
| N | Go to the next page of the current document. |
| P | Go back to the previous page of the current document. |
| End | Go to the end of the page of the current document. |
| Home | Go to the beginning of the page of the current document. |
| Ctrl + End | Go to the end of the current document. |
| Ctrl + Home | Go to the beginning of the current document. |
| Left Arrow | Move one column to the left on the current buffer. |
| Right Arrow | Move one column to the right on the current buffer. |
| Up Arrow | Move one line up on the current buffer. |
| Down Arrow | Move one line down on the current buffer. |
| Page Up | Move half a screen up on the current buffer. |
| Page Down | Move half a screen down on the current buffer. |
| Caret Movement and Selection | |
| F7 | Toggle Evince’s Caret Navigation mode. |
| Left Arrow | Move the caret cursor one character to the left. |
| Right Arrow | Move the caret cursor one character to the right. |
| Up Arrow | Move the caret cursor one line up. |
| Down Arrow | Move the caret cursor one line down. |
| Shift + Left Arrow | Select the character to the left of the caret cursor. |
| Shift + Right Arrow | Select the character to the right of the caret cursor. |
| Shift + Up Arrow | Select the line above the caret cursor. |
| Shift + Down Arrow | Select the line below the caret cursor. |
| Ctrl + Left Arrow | Select the word to the left of the caret cursor. |
| Text Highlighting | |
| Double Click | Select the word under the cursor. |
| Ctrl + A | Select all the OCR text in the current document. |
| Ctrl + C | Copy the currently selected text to the system buffer. |
| Ctrl + V | Paste the contents of the system buffer under the current cursor. |
| Document Searching | |
| Ctrl + F | Open Evince’s search toolbar prompt. |
| Ctrl + G | Jump to the next occurrence of the current query. |
| Ctrl + Shift + G | Jump back to the previous occurrence of the current query. |
| Document Annotation | |
| F9 | Display all the available bookmarks in the current document. |
| Ctrl + D | Bookmark the current page on the buffer. |
| Ctrl + Shift + D | Delete any bookmarks on the current page. |
| S | Create a note on the current page. |
| Ctrl + H | Highlight the currently selected text on the buffer. |
| Window Manipulation | |
| Ctrl + P | Open Evince’s Print dialog box for the current buffer. |
| F11 | Toggle the Full screen Mode for the current buffer. |
| F5 | Toggle Evince’s Presentation Mode for the current buffer. |
| W | Blank the entire presentation screen with a plain white image. |
| B | Blank the entire presentation screen with a plain black image. |
Image credit: Mediamodifier via Unsplash (Background) and Wikimedia Commons (Logo). All alterations by Ramces Red.
