Forgive me for this stupid question. I just transitioned from iPhone to Pixel (GrapheneOS) and I’m curious why there isn’t a built in PDF viewer like on iPhone? It feels like you have to open things externally pretty often, but I figure there’s a reason for that. I haven’t used Android in many years and I recently developed an interest for the technical aspects of things, so again, do forgive this beginners question.

Cheers y’all!

  • pe1uca@lemmy.pe1uca.dev
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    3 months ago

    A browser is also an app, it’s not embedded into an OS.
    In some it comes preinstalled, which is the case for safari in ios.
    Also, some browsers just happen to include a PDF reader, but not all had or currently have.

    As @viking@infosec.pub mentioned, Android is meant to be lightweight so it can run in several configurations of hardware.
    Most OEM do include a browser in Android, this usually being Chrome. GrapheneOS is basically just Android (in this context) so it doesn’t include a browser or a PDF reader, but both are available as a dedicated app from the GrapheneOS team or with any other app you want, for example I use readera, or sometimes Firefox.