PDF Preview Dark
Dark PDF preview for VS Code that keeps plot colours. Made for reading plots on a remote machine over Remote-SSH.
Ready to use
Install it and open a .pdf. There is nothing to set up.
- The page follows your VS Code theme, and changes when you switch themes.
- Lines keep their hue. Red stays red and blue stays blue.
- The preview reloads when the file changes, and stays on the same page and zoom. It waits until the file is fully written, so you never see half a plot.
- Files on
/afs and /eos are also checked every 2 s, since file watching misses writes from batch jobs.
- Install it once on your own machine. It then works on every SSH host.
Colours
Press Alt+I, or click the half-circle button in the title bar, to see the original colours.
To change the look, use the drop-down in the toolbar or the pdfPreviewDark.colorScheme setting. The choices are vscodeTheme (default), oled, oneDark, solarizedDark, sepia, custom and off.
Bright colours such as yellow stay visible on a dark page. Images inside the PDF change too, and so does their colour bar, so the values still read right.
Keys
| Key |
Action |
+ / - |
Zoom in or out |
0 |
Back to the default zoom |
Ctrl or Cmd + wheel, or pinch |
Zoom at the pointer |
Ctrl+F / Cmd+F |
Find text |
Alt+I |
Original colours on or off |
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
|
pdfPreviewDark.colorScheme |
vscodeTheme |
Colour scheme |
pdfPreviewDark.customColors.background |
#1e1e1e |
Page colour for custom |
pdfPreviewDark.customColors.foreground |
#d4d4d4 |
Ink colour for custom |
pdfPreviewDark.hueMode |
balanced |
css copies CSS invert and hue-rotate. off is a plain invert |
pdfPreviewDark.defaultZoom |
auto |
page-width, page-fit, page-actual, or a percent such as 150 |
pdfPreviewDark.reload.enabled |
true |
Reload when the file changes |
pdfPreviewDark.reload.poll |
auto |
always or never to override the /afs and /eos check |
pdfPreviewDark.reload.pollInterval |
2 |
Seconds between checks |
Another PDF viewer opens instead?
VS Code asks which viewer to use when you have more than one. To always use this one, add this to your settings.
"workbench.editorAssociations": {
"*.pdf": "pdfPreviewDark.preview"
}
If something goes wrong, open the Output panel and pick PDF Preview Dark.
Licence
MIT. The bundled PDF.js files keep their own licences, see ThirdPartyNotices.md.
To build from source, run npm install, then npm test and npx vsce package.
