Local PDF Reload — nguyenthanhvuh

Description: For people who repeatedly compile documents to PDF and read them in Firefox. E.g., I often edit and compile TeX and Typst documents to PDFs and read them on Firefox.

Click the toolbar button while viewing a local PDF to watch it. When the PDF changes, Local PDF Reload reloads the existing tab so Firefox can retain the current page, zoom, and scroll position when possible.

On Linux (the only one I have tested so far), a small local helper is installed separately. It watches only PDFs you explicitly enable, sends change notices to the extension, and never sends PDF contents or other data over the network.

Installation:
1. Install the add-on from Firefox add-on website.
2. You then will to paste this command into a terminal and run it:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/dynaroars/pdf-reload/releases/latest/download/install-pdf-reload.sh | bash


The installer, which only needs to run ONCE, registers the helper and verifies its checksum. The helper is needed because Firefox extensions cannot directly watch files on disk. No administrator access is needed.

To use: open a local .pdf in Firefox and click the Local PDF Reload toolbar button (in your Firefox extension list, you can also pin it to the tool bar for easier access). Make sure to click it so that the icon changed to have the word ON on top of it. Now you can make changes to the pdf and Firefox will auto update the file.