RTF Viewer — Open and Read RTF Files users statistics

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.