Glance

What it does

• Opens anything. One window and one set of controls for every file, instead of a different app for each type.
• Answers questions about it. The Ask AI sidebar talks to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and others about the page you're on, signed in with your own account.
• Does the work for you. Say or type a change and the AI edits a PDF's text in place, in the document's own font. AI apps such as Claude Code and Codex can use Glance as a tool.
• Edits without another app. Rearrange and merge PDF pages, mark up, sign, fill forms, redact for real, remove backgrounds and fix photos.

It's free, has no ads or account, and keeps your files on your device (privacy).

Get Glance

Where	How
Windows 10 and 11	Download the installer (under 20 MB, x64 and ARM64) or get it from the Microsoft Store
Any browser, phones, Macs and Chromebooks included	Open redtrocks.github.io/glance/app. It installs from the browser menu and works offline
Linux	.deb, .rpm and Flatpak on the latest release (install steps)

A quick tour

Everything it can do

Click a group to open it. Everything listed works today.

• Tabs, drag-and-drop to open, Open with / Send to, one window for everything, menus that fit each file type
• PDFs: continuous, single or two-page view, zoom, sharp HiDPI rendering, text selection, links, search, print, slideshow and a dark mode for pages
• Thumbnails, table of contents, contact sheet, Highlights & Notes sidebar and bookmarks
• Images: JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, AVIF, HEIC, JPEG XL, TIFF, PSD, OpenEXR, SVG, camera RAW and many more
• Read-only previews of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and CSV (old 97-2003 .doc, .ppt and .xls too), with Open with… to edit them in Office
• Previews of text and code (with syntax colours), Markdown, video, audio, EPUB e-books, fonts and email (.eml, .msg). Nothing in them loads from the internet
• 3D models: GLB/glTF, OBJ, STL, PLY, 3MF, DAE, FBX, USDZ and 3DS, with camera views, wireframe, turntable, lighting, backgrounds, clay/normals/X-ray materials, ground shadow, grid, animations and snapshots
• Text recognition (Windows OCR): scanned PDFs become searchable and selectable, and you can copy text from images
• The full list of file types is in docs/FORMATS.md

• Ask AI sidebar: chat with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, Qwen, Kimi, Mistral, Meta's Muse or OpenCode about the open file (the whole page or a selected area), signed in with your own account or an API key, or use the company's website in the sidebar. Chats are kept per document
• AI edits: type or say what to change and the AI rewrites a PDF's text in place, in the document's own font, with Keep and Undo for each change
• AI apps: Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Antigravity, Muse Code, Cursor, VS Code and any MCP app can view any format, read text with OCR, convert, combine, split and redact files, and see and control what's open in Glance. One-click setup in Settings → AI apps (how it works)

• Reorder, rotate, delete, duplicate, insert, split and merge pages, with undo and redo
• Drag pages between documents (hover a tab to open it; Shift moves instead of copying) or out of the window to make a new PDF
• Export pages as PDF, PNG, JPEG or TIFF (72-600 ppi)
• Markup: sketch with shape recognition, draw, shapes, arrows, speech bubbles, a loupe, text boxes in any installed font, notes, and highlight, underline and strikethrough in any colour. Saved as standard PDF annotations you can keep editing
• Fill in PDF forms
• Signatures drawn with a mouse or pen (with pressure), captured with the camera, or imported from a photo, stored encrypted
• Certificate signatures (Adobe, DocuSign and others): a banner says whether each is valid, who signed and when, and whether the document changed since. Sign with your own certificate or smart card
• Redaction that truly removes content, and Remove Sensitive Text to find names, emails, phone, card and ID numbers
• Page numbers, headers, footers and watermarks; password-protected export (AES-256); Reduce File Size; Clean Up PDF
• Autosave and version history (File → Browse Versions)

• Remove Background and Copy Subject with a bundled AI model that runs on your PC
• Instant Alpha (Shift adds, Alt subtracts); rectangle, ellipse, lasso and smart-lasso selection; crop, delete and invert selection
• Adjust Color: exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation, temperature, tint, sepia, sharpness, levels with a histogram and Auto Levels, with live preview
• Adjust Size, rotate, flip and Straighten with a grid overlay
• Markup on images; export as PNG, JPEG, WebP, TIFF, BMP or PDF, optionally converted to Display P3, Adobe RGB or Gray
• Inspector (Ctrl+I) for EXIF, colour profile and PDF properties, with Remove Location
• Batch Edit Images, Create Collage, New from Clipboard, Import from Scanner, Set as desktop background or lock screen

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗