quartz/content/10-19 LIFE/13 TECH SETUP/13.11 APPS/zathura.md

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publish	permalink	title	created	modified	tags	cssclasses
true	/10-19 LIFE/13 TECH SETUP/13.11 APPS/zathura.md	zathura	2026-02-05T09:08:26.899-07:00	2026-02-05T09:12:58.920-07:00	pdf documents reader

zathura is a minimalist document viewer with vim-like keybindings. Fast, keyboard-driven, and highly customizable.

Installation

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S zathura zathura-pdf-mupdf

When prompted for tesseract data (for OCR), select tesseract-data-eng for English.

Backend plugins

Plugin	Formats
zathura-pdf-mupdf	PDF, EPUB, XPS (recommended)
zathura-pdf-poppler	PDF (alternative)
zathura-djvu	DjVu
zathura-ps	PostScript
zathura-cb	Comic books (CBZ/CBR)

Key Bindings

Navigation

Key	Action
j/k	Scroll down/up
h/l	Scroll left/right
Ctrl+d/u	Half page down/up
gg/G	First/last page
nG	Go to page n
Space	Next page

Zoom

Key	Action
+/-	Zoom in/out
a`	Fit page
s	Fit width

View

Key	Action
d	Toggle dual-page
r	Rotate
R	Reload
Tab	Toggle index
F11	Fullscreen

Other

Key	Action
/	Search
n/N	Next/prev match
y	Copy selection
o/O	Open file
q	Quit

Configuration

~/.config/zathura/zathurarc:

# Enable clipboard
set selection-clipboard clipboard

# Recolor for dark mode
set recolor true
set recolor-darkcolor "#ebdbb2"
set recolor-lightcolor "#282828"

# Default zoom
set zoom-min 10
set adjust-open "best-fit"

# Status bar
set statusbar-home-tilde true

# Window
set window-title-basename true
set window-title-page true

Make Default PDF Viewer

xdg-mime default org.pwmt.zathura.desktop application/pdf

Synctex (LaTeX integration)

For LaTeX editors that support synctex:

zathura --synctex-forward <line>:<col>:<input> <pdf>

Configure your editor to call this for forward search.

Tips

• :help or man zathura for full documentation
• Use :bmark to bookmark pages
• Use i to invert colors (quick dark mode)
• Index/TOC navigation with Tab is very useful for long documents