Adobe launches Liquid Mode to redesign PDFs for mobile devices

Adobe has launched its new “Liquid Mode” for PDFs which plans to change the way people consume digital documents. The Liquid Mode uses Adobe’s Sensei AI framework to understand and analyze the PDFs and make them more user friendly and interactive.

Many times, you open a PDF that is not optimized for mobile viewing which hinders the reading experience. As the “PDF” file format has been there for thirty years now, Adobe looks to rejuvenate the format to make it even more adaptable.

The “Liquid Mode” appears on a pdf that is compatible according to Adobe. Once you tap the “Liquid Mode”, Adobe sends it to its cloud server and applies machine learning and its AI engine “Sensei” to go through the PDF and identify the headers and texts, or starting and ending of a section. After identifying, it restructures the PDF to make it easily readable, and also allows you to change the text format and formatting of the text. You also get easy access to sub-sections at a glance, similar to what “epub format” offers.

“Liquid mode creates an intelligent outline, collapsible and expandable sections, and searchable text for quick navigation. Users can even tailor font size and spacing between words, characters, and lines to suit their specific reading preferences,” wrote Ashley Still, senior vice president of Digital Media at Adobe.

The changes in the “Liquid Mode” don’t change the actual PDF, so once you come out of the reading mode, the PDF is intact as it was before. Adobe has made the “Liquid mode” available for Acrobat Reader in iOS and Android, it will slowly roll out this feature to desktops and other third-party PDF readers as well via an API.