This is a way for showing PDF in android app that is embedding the PDF document to android webview using support from http://docs.google.com/viewer

pseudo

String doc="<iframe src='http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=+location to your PDF File+' 
          width='100%' height='100%' 
          style='border: none;'></iframe>";

a sample is is shown below

String doc="<iframe src='http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.iasted.org/conferences/formatting/presentations-tips.ppt&embedded=true' 
          width='100%' height='100%' 
          style='border: none;'></iframe>";

Code

WebView  wv = (WebView)findViewById(R.id.webView); 
wv.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
wv.getSettings().setPluginsEnabled(true);
wv.getSettings().setAllowFileAccess(true);
wv.loadUrl(doc);
//wv.loadData( doc, "text/html",  "UTF-8");

and in manifest provide

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"/>

SEE THIS ANSWER

EDIT

If your PDF document is accessible online, use the Google Docs Viewer to open your PDF in a WebView

REFER

 wv.loadUrl("https://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url=http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf");

Don't Know how Stable These are

Here is the list of the other open sources PDF readers running on the top of the Android

  • Android PDF Viewer
  • APDFViewer
  • droidreader
  • android-pdf

Please note that these and any other project derived from MuPDF is bound by the terms of GPL and may not be suitable for the commerical use.

The following is a list of SDKs suitable for commerical use:

  • PDFTron
  • Adobe
  • Qoppa
  • Radaee
Answer from edwin on Stack Overflow
🌐
Appscms
appscms.com › library › android-pdf-viewer-library-from-url
Android pdf viewer from url libraries for use in your project
Simple and easy to use Android PDF Viewer library. Made with and for Jetpack Compose. PDFs from Raw Resources, URIs and URLs are supported.
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pspdfkit.com
pspdfkit.com › blog › sdk › open pdf android
How to view PDFs on Android
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GitHub
github.com › voghDev › PdfViewPager
GitHub - voghDev/PdfViewPager: Android widget that can render PDF documents stored on SD card, linked as assets, or downloaded from a remote URL.
Android widget that can render PDF documents stored on SD card, linked as assets, or downloaded from a remote URL. - voghDev/PdfViewPager
Starred by 1.7K users
Forked by 336 users
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Top answer
1 of 1
1

This is a way for showing PDF in android app that is embedding the PDF document to android webview using support from http://docs.google.com/viewer

pseudo

String doc="<iframe src='http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=+location to your PDF File+' 
          width='100%' height='100%' 
          style='border: none;'></iframe>";

a sample is is shown below

String doc="<iframe src='http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.iasted.org/conferences/formatting/presentations-tips.ppt&embedded=true' 
          width='100%' height='100%' 
          style='border: none;'></iframe>";

Code

WebView  wv = (WebView)findViewById(R.id.webView); 
wv.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
wv.getSettings().setPluginsEnabled(true);
wv.getSettings().setAllowFileAccess(true);
wv.loadUrl(doc);
//wv.loadData( doc, "text/html",  "UTF-8");

and in manifest provide

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"/>

SEE THIS ANSWER

EDIT

If your PDF document is accessible online, use the Google Docs Viewer to open your PDF in a WebView

REFER

 wv.loadUrl("https://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url=http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf");

Don't Know how Stable These are

Here is the list of the other open sources PDF readers running on the top of the Android

  • Android PDF Viewer
  • APDFViewer
  • droidreader
  • android-pdf

Please note that these and any other project derived from MuPDF is bound by the terms of GPL and may not be suitable for the commerical use.

The following is a list of SDKs suitable for commerical use:

  • PDFTron
  • Adobe
  • Qoppa
  • Radaee
🌐
GitConnected
levelup.gitconnected.com › open-pdf-files-in-android-without-webviews-or-intents-3cc960752cca
Open PDF Files in Android without WebViews or Intents | by Doha Kash | Level Up Coding
December 2, 2020 - So I was searching for an Android Library that could handle this task for me and I actually found a good library that can do just that! I’ve stumbled across this library “PdfViewPager” through one of Stackoverflow posts where one of the users was recommending it. The good thing about this library is that in addition to being able to load PDF files from assets or SD card, it can also easily load PDF files from Urls which is what I want to show you in this article.
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February 27, 2026 - Learn to display PDFs in Android apps using PdfRenderer, Android PdfViewer, or Nutrient SDK. Includes setup guides and code examples for each approach.
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GitHub
github.com › fajaranugrah › pdfviewer
GitHub - fajaranugrah/pdfviewer: A lightweight, high-performance Android PDF Viewer library powered by WebView and PDF.js. Features native pinch-to-zoom, text selection, and canvas tiling for high-resolution rendering.
A high-performance, Hybrid Android PDF Viewer library built on top of WebView and PDF.js. It solves the complex problems of rendering PDFs on Android, including Scoped Storage restrictions (Android 11+), Authenticated URLs, and Client-Side PDF Generators (HTML to PDF).
Author   fajaranugrah
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JitPack
jitpack.io › p › shxdos › AndroidPdfViewer
shxdos / AndroidPdfViewer Download
Android view for displaying PDFs(add load from url ) rendered with PdfiumAndroid
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Medium
medium.com › @chiragyprajapati044 › download-pdf-file-from-url-and-view-in-pdf-viewer-41a179a52ac8
Download PDF File From URL and View in PDF Viewer. | by Chirag Prajapati | Medium
September 13, 2020 - Download PDF File From URL and View in PDF Viewer. 1,Integrate PDF Viewer Library in Gradle file. implementation ‘com.github.barteksc:android-pdf-viewer:2.8.2’ 2,Design Screen as Per …
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GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org › how-to-load-pdf-from-url-in-android
How to Load PDF from URL in Android? - GeeksforGeeks
April 1, 2025 - So in this article, we will take a look at How to Load PDF files from URLs inside our Android App. To create a new project in Android Studio please refer to How to Create/Start a New Project in Android Studio. Navigate to the Gradle Scripts > build.gradle.kts (Module:app) and add the below dependency in the dependencies section. dependencies { ... implementation ("com.github.mhiew:android-pdf-viewer:3.2.0-beta.3") } Refer to this github repo for the documentation ·
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GitHub
github.com › afreakyelf › Pdf-Viewer
GitHub - afreakyelf/Pdf-Viewer: A Lightweight PDF Viewer Android library which only occupies around 80kb while most of the Pdf viewer occupies up to 16MB space. · GitHub
A Lightweight PDF Viewer Android library which only occupies around 80kb while most of the Pdf viewer occupies up to 16MB space. - afreakyelf/Pdf-Viewer
Starred by 1.2K users
Forked by 240 users
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Android Developers
developer.android.com › camera & media dev center › android pdf viewer
Android PDF viewer | Android media | Android Developers
The Jetpack PDF viewer library, backed by framework APIs, offers a ready-made, performant solution for PDF document–related applications on Android.
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Stack Overflow
stackoverflow.com › questions › 23163148 › reading-pdf-from-url-and-parsing-with-android-pdf-viewer
httpurlconnection - Reading Pdf from URL and Parsing with Android PDF Viewer - Stack Overflow
I have successfully displayed Pdf from Assets folder using Android Pdf Viewer library https://github.com/jblough/Android-Pdf-Viewer-Library. I am now trying to parse and display online pdf "http://...
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Mindorks
blog.mindorks.com › how-to-open-a-pdf-file-in-android-programmatically
How to open a PDF file in Android programmatically? - MindOrks
June 17, 2019 - In our tutorial, we will learn how to open a PDF file from Assets, Phone Storage, and from the Internet by using the AndroidPdfViewer library.
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appsnipp
appsnipp.com › home › android pdfviewer library
Android PDFVIEWER Library - App Snipp
January 18, 2019 - Link:- https://github.com/barteksc/AndroidPdfViewer ... <com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.PDFView android:id="@+id/pdfView" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent"/> ... pdfView.fromUri(Uri) or pdfView.fromFile(File) ...
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GitHub
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Android Developers
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YouTube
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Published   May 16, 2020
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JitPack
jitpack.io › p › barteksc › AndroidPdfViewerV1
barteksc / AndroidPdfViewerV1 Download
Library for displaying PDF documents on Android, with animations, gestures, zoom and double tap support. It is based on PdfiumAndroid for decoding PDF files. Works on API 11 and higher. Licensed under Apache License 2.0. Add change from AndroidPdfViewer 2.4.0 which replaces RenderingAsyncTask with Handler to simplify code and work with testing frameworks