Free plan

Viewer modes

Choose how your document is presented to readers, from a plain paged view or a continuous scroll to page-turn animations to story-style swiping.

Your document can be presented to readers in one of five modes: scroll, standard, flipbook, magazine, and swipe. All five are available on every plan, including free — the mode is stored on the document itself and is not a plan feature.

Scroll mode

Scroll mode shows every page in one continuous column, the way a PDF opens in your browser's own PDF viewer. Readers scroll from top to bottom with the mouse wheel, trackpad, touch, or the arrow and space keys. The toolbar has up and down arrows that jump a page, a page counter, and zoom buttons on every screen size. Keyboard shortcuts: Page Up and Page Down jump a page, Home and End go to the first and last page, + and - zoom in and out, and 0 resets the zoom. Ctrl- or cmd-scroll also zooms. Zoom goes up to 3×.

Because readers move through the pages continuously, readership counts a page once the reader has stayed on it — it is the page taking up most of the screen — for about a second (800 ms). Pages scrolled past quickly still count as viewed, so read-through and the page funnel stay accurate, but they do not get their own time rows. A jump with Page Up or Page Down, an internal link, or a deep link counts the target page straight away, like a page turn in standard mode.

Hotspots, PDF links, annotations, watermarks, page ranges, and the page shadow and rounded-corner settings all work in scroll mode.

Best for: Long reports, contracts, policies, manuals, anything people read from top to bottom.

Devices: Works on all screen sizes. It also suits embeds — a portal, a Notion page, or your own site — because readers scroll it the same way they scroll the page around it.

Standard mode

Standard mode is a plain paged document view: one page at a time, rendered on a canvas below a toolbar. Readers navigate with previous and next buttons or by dragging the page scrubber slider, which previews pages as it moves and commits the jump on release. The toolbar also shows the current page and the total page count.

Best for: Reports, proposals, instructions, contracts, any document readers prefer to navigate at their own pace.

Devices: Works on all screen sizes; desktop and mobile render the same interface.

Flipbook mode

Flipbook mode uses a page-turn animation that mimics flipping through a bound document. It renders either a single page (1-up) or a two-page spread (2-up); the default layout you choose can be adaptive, and readers can pin 1-up or 2-up for their session using the toolbar toggle on wider screens. The toolbar also has a thumbnail rail, zoom buttons, and fullscreen; on touch screens, pinch-to-zoom works in place of the zoom buttons. Page-turn speed, sound, and reading direction are configurable. You can try a flipbook without an account by dropping a document onto the PDF flipbook maker.

Best for: Magazines, brochures, catalogs, printed materials, any document that benefits from a magazine-like reading experience.

Devices: Best on larger screens where two-page spreads render comfortably; the 1-up layout adapts to phones.

Magazine mode

Magazine mode presents the document as a flat-lay two-page spread around a centre spine, for content laid out as spreads rather than as individual pages. The scrubber moves a spread at a time, and the toolbar carries thumbnails, zoom, and fullscreen. Page-turn speed, sound, and reading direction apply here as they do in flipbook; the 1-up/2-up layout preference and the page cosmetics do not — spreads are the mode's identity.

Best for: Printed magazines, annual reports, layout-heavy content, books and documents designed for a spread-based reading experience.

Devices: Suited to medium-to-large screens; on a narrow stage the spread collapses to a single page automatically.

Swipe mode

Swipe mode presents the document as a story—one page at a time, with a segmented progress bar instead of a toolbar. Readers advance by swiping or flicking left and right, or by tapping the left and right edges of the page. The stage is full-bleed on touch and narrow screens and a bordered portrait card on desktop. Auto-advance can be enabled so pages turn automatically at a set interval.

Best for: Decks, presentations, event schedules, slide shows, any document meant to be viewed one page at a time in sequence.

Devices: Designed for mobile and tablets; on desktop it renders as a centered card.

Readership tracking

Each view session records the mode it was read in, and the viewer-mode breakdown appears in your readership analytics on Basic and above.

Choosing a mode

Set the viewer mode under Behavior in the Configure & Share step. As a rule of thumb: standard or scroll for documents people read, flipbook or magazine for documents people browse, and swipe for phones. Pick scroll over standard when the document is long or will be embedded; the "Use portal settings" preset under Sharing sets the mode to scroll for you. The mode itself is never locked — the panel around it gates the flip and swipe behaviour settings, not the choice of mode.

If you are uploading anonymously (without an account), the viewer mode is the one setting you can persist before claiming the document; unclaimed documents are treated as free tier, so they render in your chosen mode with stock styling. Claimed documents can have their mode changed at any time from the file's settings.

Readers see the mode you set and cannot switch to another one — the viewer loads the document's stored mode and renders only that.