minimal software

Free software for Windows

The window is the content.

These apps have no toolbars, no menus, no settings and no network of their own. Each one is a window onto one kind of content, framed by the single pixel Windows draws. The first is a PDF viewer.

Download Minimal PDF See how it works

Minimal PDF 1.0.0 · first release in testing · Windows 10 and 11 · free, MIT

An empty Minimal PDF window: grey, with the words Drop a PDF here, Ctrl+O to open, and a list of controls Minimal PDF showing a paper on the honeycomb conjecture at fit width, with no title bar, toolbar, menu or scrollbar around the page

The window is a real capture of Minimal PDF at 150 % display scaling. The paper in it is rendered from the PDF at the same size. You can drag the file onto the window yourself.

One window onto one kind of content.

This isn't a suite. There's no launcher, no account and no shared settings. Each app installs, runs and uninstalls on its own, and all they share is how they behave.

First release in testing

Minimal PDF

The PDF viewer that is just the PDF. Continuous pages, zoom around the pointer, sharp at any scale. One small program, no network.

Product page
Next · in development

Minimal AI

One window onto the web assistants you already use: a single row of tabs with plain names, logins that persist, and no network calls of the app's own.

Product page with the first build

Seven rules, applied to every app.

They're numbered because every app is checked against all seven before it ships, and every feature request is answered with the number it would break. Read them in full.

  1. Zero chrome

    No caption, toolbar, menu bar, status bar, sidebar or scrollbars. The window edge is the content edge.

  2. Native frame only

    Windows draws the one-pixel border, rounded corners and shadow, so the window still snaps, stacks and resizes like any other.

  3. Every action is a gesture or a key

    Zoom, scroll, page, open, move, maximize and close all work from the mouse or the keyboard. There isn't a button anywhere.

  4. Feedback is transient

    A page or zoom badge and a hairline scroll mark appear while something changes, then fade in about a second.

  5. No configuration

    No settings, no preferences file, no registry keys. It opens, shows and closes.

  6. No dependencies, no network of its own

    The engine already inside Windows does the work. The app never connects to anything.

  7. Crisp by construction

    Content is drawn at the exact device-pixel size it fills, at your monitor's real scale, so text is never blurry.

0
Toolbars, menus, settings
1px
Of frame, drawn by Windows
0
Accounts, ads, telemetry
7
Rules, applied to every app

Made with what is already in Windows

Nothing bundled, nothing to trust twice.

Windows has shipped a PDF engine since 8.1, along with image codecs, a media pipeline and a browser engine. A Minimal app asks the engine you already have to draw the content at the exact pixel size it fills on your screen, then shows the result. There's no third-party renderer inside the app and no parser of its own to patch. The one it uses is patched by Windows Update, like the rest of your system.

PDF engine
Windows.Data.Pdf, part of Windows since 8.1
Other code
Only Microsoft's own Windows bridge libraries, bundled inside the one file
Writes to disk
Nothing. Version 1.0 only reads your files
Runs as
A normal user. It never asks for administrator rights
Licence
MIT. The source goes public with the first public release

Minimal Software is made by Federico Etinger in New York and Bucharest, with Claude and Grok as the development team. The build log shows who decided what.

How it was built