RTF Viewer — Open and Read RTF Files
ID
gakocbldedehknpnjfdeolkgcpbndjjiOpen, read, search and export RTF documents in your browser. Works offline; files never leave your device.
Extension information
Screenshots
Description
Open, read, search and export RTF documents in your browser. Works offline; files never leave your device.
RTF Viewer 4.0 — What's New
Version 4.0 is a complete rebuild of RTF Viewer. Every bug on our public defect
list has been fixed, and the extension has grown from a bare file-preview page
into a proper document reader. Everything below runs entirely on your own
computer: your documents are never uploaded, and the extension works with no
network connection at all.
NEW: RTF LINKS NOW ACTUALLY OPEN
The biggest complaint about earlier versions was simple — an extension called
"RTF Viewer" did not open RTF files. Clicking a .rtf link still downloaded it,
and the viewer could only be reached by hand. Version 4.0 can now intercept
.rtf links and open them directly in the reader. This is strictly opt-in: the
feature is off until you turn it on in Settings, permission is requested at the
moment you enable it, and the extension hands that permission straight back when
you switch it off.
NEW: A REAL TOOLBAR
The toolbar used to be an empty box. It now holds zoom, text size, page width,
theme, document outline, find, print, export, "open another file", and settings —
all of them working, all of them remembered between sessions.
NEW: EXPORT TO PDF, DOCX, HTML AND PLAIN TEXT
You can now save any document you open as a PDF, a Word .docx file, a standalone
HTML page, or plain text. All four conversions happen locally in your browser.
Nothing is sent to a conversion service, and export works offline like the rest
of the extension. The .docx files were tested to open cleanly in Word and
LibreOffice.
NEW: DRAG, DROP AND PASTE
Drop an .rtf file anywhere on the page to open it. Drop a link to one and it will
be fetched and rendered. Paste a file or rich text straight from the clipboard.
The file picker is still there when you want it.
NEW: READING COMFORT
Choose system, light, dark or sepia themes. Adjust text size, page width and
zoom. The document no longer sits at a fixed 816-pixel width that got clipped in
narrow windows — it scrolls in its own container and has a fit-to-window mode.
NEW: FIND, OUTLINE, TABS AND RECENT FILES
Search inside a document with highlighting, a match count, and next/previous
navigation that wraps, on Ctrl+F and F3. A sidebar builds an outline from the
document's headings so you can jump around long files. Open several documents at
once in tabs, each keeping its own scroll position, search and outline. A recent
files list (metadata only, clearable at any time) makes it easy to return to
something you were reading.
NEW: ACCESSIBILITY AND FIRST RUN
Visible focus rings, ARIA roles and landmarks, live regions that announce loading
state to screen readers, keyboard shortcuts throughout, and reduced-motion
support. Installing the extension now opens a short in-extension welcome screen
that explains how to open a file, instead of sending you to an external website.
FIXED: DOCUMENTS THAT RENDERED INCORRECTLY
Files were previously read as UTF-8 text, which silently destroyed any byte that
was not valid UTF-8 — the cause of mangled characters in older documents and
broken embedded images. The whole pipeline now works on raw bytes end to end.
Documents containing PNG, JPEG or GIF images used to throw an internal error and
fail to render; those formats are now supported alongside WMF and EMF metafiles.
FIXED: PAGES THAT HUNG ON "LOADING …"
A document the parser could not handle produced an unhandled error, leaving the
page stuck on "Loading …" with no message and no way out. Failures are now
caught and shown as a clear, recoverable error with a way to try another file.
Network loads have a timeout and can be cancelled. Choosing the same file twice
in a row works again. Very large files are capped and warned about instead of
freezing the tab.
FIXED: SECURITY AND PRIVACY
jQuery was updated from 3.2.1 to 3.7.1 and DOMPurify from 1.0.2 to 3.2.4, closing
several known vulnerabilities on the exact code path that handles untrusted
document content. Sanitized output is now inserted as DOM rather than re-parsed
from a string. Insecure http:// links were removed, along with roughly 630 KB of
unreachable code, unused frameworks and webfonts.
FIXED: LANGUAGE AND LAYOUT
Messages such as "Loading", "File not found" and parse errors were hardcoded
English in a 43-language product. They are now translated like everything else.
Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu finally render right-to-left, with page language
and direction set from your browser's language. Invalid markup that quietly broke
several panels was rewritten and is now checked automatically.
TESTED
The release is covered by 750 automated package checks and 85 in-browser tests.
HONEST LIMITATIONS
.doc and .wri files are still not supported. Parsing runs on the main thread, so
very large documents take a moment; the interface warns you first and stays
responsive. A few of the newest interface strings still fall back to English in
some languages while translation catches up.