Adobe has updated the Acrobat Reader app on iOS and Android with a new “Liquid Mode” that automatically reformats text, images, and tables for quick navigation and consumption on small screens. It promises desktops and browsers will follow.

Powered by Adobe Sensei, Liquid Mode uses AI and machine learning in the background to understand and identify parts of a PDF, like headings, paragraphs, images, lists, tables, and more. It also attempts to understand the hierarchy and ordering of those parts to reformat a static PDF into a more dynamic and customizable experience.

Liquid Mode simultaneously creates an intelligent outline, collapsible and expandable sections, and searchable text for quick navigation. Users can tailor font size and spacing between words, characters, and lines to suit their specific reading preferences. This is especially useful for those who may see text as too small, squished together, tight, or jumbled.

A spokesperson said, “We’ve gone to great lengths to be thoughtful and methodical in addressing the most common reading pain-points, but it is still early days for the technology behind Liquid Mode. Like all machine learning, the more documents pass through Liquid Mode, the more knowledge it will gain to expand its functionality and improve its reliability.”

Adobe says its long-term vision is centred around bringing more Adobe Sensei technology into all of its document products and services. 

Examples it cites include: “using AI to replace months of intensive document research with a quick query that cross-references millions of PDFs in your organization at once. Or, uncovering groundbreaking medical insights from PDF data spread across millions of scientific research reports, medical records, or academic studies. Unleashing this technology to state and local governments could also significantly improve document accessibility and collaboration across disparate agencies.”

With Liquid Mode, pinching and zooming is no longer necessary. Words are resizable and reflowable, images are tappable and expandable, and tables are responsive.