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Can Google Pdf Reader Sync Reading Progress Across Devices?

2025-07-15 10:40:54
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3 Answers

Sawyer
Sawyer
As a student, I interact daily with numerous PDF files on my tablet, phone, and laptop. Simplest PDF Reader from Google is my default PDF reader because it is so simple. Unfortunately, there is no progress syncing between devices, so I have to resort to Bookmarking individual pages or even taking screenshots of the PDF where I left off. Xodo or Foxit Reader have excellent progress syncing via their cloud services, but I am just a Google guy at heart.

Oddly, PDFs that are opened via Google Drive (in the web interface) do appear to remember where one left off. But that does not translate to the mobile app, apparently a separate program with no sharing of state. I suspect here that Google is missing an opportunity to “get PDF reading right” in a manner consistent with their other syncing data in the air and on various devices. Workarounds will do for now, but I hope that proper syncing of PDFs across devices is something they’ll implement in the near future. For casual readers, Google PDF Reader is fine. But for serious readers of PDFs who wish to read them on multiple devices, it’s not worth it.
2025-07-18
Zion
Zion
Google PDF Reader is a lightweight reader that renders PDFs quickly. I’ve tested it out, and unfortunately it doesn’t support cross-device syncing of progress, which is a major limitation for power users. My typical workflow is to store the PDFs in a Dropbox/OneDrive folder, and view them with the viewer that is embedded within, which tends to remember the last page opened.

As an alternative approach, the PDF can be opened in Google Docs and converted to an editable document. The edits are then saved, and Google’s syncing ability is leveraged to save the reader’s place. Serious readers will want to look at “Kindle” or “Apple Books” solutions that support PDF syncing to get a true reading experience. Google PDF Reader is a light weight and fast viewer, but it is not intended for serious readers that require syncing.

It’s worth a look from Google to see if this can be enabled in the future, but for now readers for whom syncing is a crucial part of their work will have to look to other apps to read their PDFs.
2025-07-18
Kevin
Kevin
I use Google PDF Reader quite frequently, and for my type of reading, it does not support syncing reading progress between devices like many e-readers do. For example, I will open up a PDF on my phone and then my laptop to continue reading, but it always starts from the beginning. I have seen that some people use the ‘Recent files’ section of Google Drive to track where they left off in a PDF, but this is not quite as easy as syncing, and is supported in other readers such as ‘Adobe Acrobat Reader’ and ‘Moon+ Reader’ amongst others. Google PDF Reader is very easy to use for opening up PDFs quickly, but it does not have as many advanced features as other readers.
2025-07-20

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