How to install Zathura document viewer in Ubuntu?


Zathura is a free, lightweight, highly customizable plugin-based document viewer. It provides a minimalistic, easy-to-use, and space-saving user interface. Plugins are available for pdf through poppler or MuPDF, PostScript, etc.

In this article, I will discuss how to install and use the Zathura document viewer in Ubuntu. You can also follow this guide for installing in a Ubuntu-based distribution such as Linux Mint, Elementary OS, etc.

Features of Zathura

The key features of Zathura are given below.

  • Automatic reload documents
  • Support multiple document formats
  • Option for inverse search
  • Offers mouse-free navigation
  • Can be controlled with vi-like keybindings

How to install Zathura in Ubuntu

Zathura is available in Ubuntu’s official repository you can directly install it on your system by using the apt command. But before running the command to install it on your system make sure to update the apt package index.

Use the following command to install the apt package index on your system –

sudo apt update

Execute the given command to install Zathura on your system –

sudo apt install zathura

If it asks for your confirmation press y and then Enter to proceed with the installation process.

You can verify the installation by using the following command –

zathura --version

zathura version

How to use Zathura in Ubuntu

The syntax of using Zathura in a Ubuntu system is given below –

zathura [options] file1 file2..

You can find the list of commands and options that can be used with the Zathura command on its manpage.

Open a file using Zathura –

zathura google.pdf

google pdf

You can scroll a page by pressing the space key.

To open a pdf to a specific page for example the following command will open the second page of the rediff.pdf file.

zathura -P 2 rediff.pdf

You can see the output in the given image –

pdf to specific page

You can find help on how to use Zathura, options by using the given command –

zathura --help

This will display the given output in your terminal –

zathura help

Conclusion

I hope you are now able to use Zathura document viewer on your Ubuntu system. Now if you have a query then write us in the comments below.

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