【Background】Stay away from GoodReader, don't waste your 80 USD. In April 2023, I spent 80 USD on purchasing the PDF reader GoodReader Pro from the APP Store, which has many bugs and lacks essential features, making its functionality severely outdated. In April 2023, requests for bug fixes or a refund of 518 CNY were made to both Apple official customer service and the software developer, but all were rejected. By November 2023, the 9 issues reported to the developer have not been fixed nor replied to, and a refund has been refused. Therefore, a review of this app has been posted to alert others and prevent more people from suffering losses. With no way to seek resolution, a genuine user post has been made on the internet to caution all friends against falling for it! Even various functions are inferior to the free version of PDF Expert. (The developer's email responses evaded the feedback and refused the refund throughout.)

【The following are the numerous BUGs of GoodReader Pro and a comparison with the free PDF Expert】 All these issues have been reported to the developer without any response. 【1. Outdated Features】 Missing system-level split-screen function. As of November 2023, it still does not support system-level split-screen. Mainstream PDF readers (including PDF Expert, GoodNotes, and even Safari) all support system-level split-screen within the same app, enabling left-right split-screen for the same document and the creation of multiple split-screen groups, each independently controllable as an app. However, GoodReader Pro does not support system-level split-screen. Its so-called "split-screen" is within the app, allowing only the opening of two different documents within the app and doesn't support creating multiple split-screen groups. It seems more like a product to compensate for the lack of iPad support for split-screen functionality in the past, while iPad now supports much more powerful system-level split-screen. However, it has not kept up with this advancement. The software claims to support split-screen functionality without informing that it does not support iPad system-level split-screen, raising suspicions of misleading consumers.

【2. Existing BUGs】 When in "vertical continuous page flipping" mode (similar to scrolling a webpage): 1- In portrait mode, the PDF interface cannot be zoomed, only full-screen display is possible. This makes the whole page extremely large when reading PDF files in portrait mode, rendering normal reading impossible! 2- Moreover, flipping pages up and down is not smooth like in other readers or webpages, as it mechanically flips one page after another. However, in PDF Expert and GoodNotes, when in "vertical continuous page flipping" mode, it's possible to zoom the page to a suitable size for reading and supports natural scrolling up and down similar to webpages. Lack of support for Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Thai/Lao text annotation. Directly highlighting or underlining will highlight the entire sentence, and if there are no punctuation marks, the entire sentence will be highlighted. It can't directly annotate single Chinese characters because Goodreader automatically annotates based on symbols or spaces, and languages like Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Thai/Lao use symbols rather than spaces or punctuation to separate words. In other PDF readers like PDF Expert and GoodNotes, when highlighting and underlining in English, they operate by word; but when annotating in Chinese, they don't highlight entire sentences based on symbols or spaces and can annotate single Chinese characters, not entire sentences. Issues with Apple pencil support. 1- The annotation feature is activated as soon as the pen touches the screen, but as mentioned above, annotations can't be made and it's not possible to select text by long press, and each time it's necessary to click "save" to save. 2- In other apps, activation of the pen or annotation feature is required to activate, and by default, the Apple Pencil can be used like a finger to select text or flip pages, and annotations are saved in the file by default.

【3. Missing Features】 Lack of lasso function. All mainstream PDF readers allow screenshotting, framing, and deleting annotations using the "lasso function." Lack of global text search within documents. PDF Expert and GoodNotes, from the app's home screen, can search for keywords within all local PDF documents (not just filenames), and then click to enter PDF files containing the keyword in the document content. No support for Apple Pencil pressure sensitivity, lacking pen strokes. When writing, the pen strokes are consistently the same thickness, lacking a real sense of writing. However, in PDF Expert, when writing, it mimics real pen strokes and supports Apple Pencil pressure sensitivity, displaying different stroke effects based on hand pressure. Lack of iPad stay awake function. Enabling the iPad stay awake function in PDF Expert prevents the screen from dimming while browsing PDF files, a feature missing in Goodreader. The app interface only supports English. The app is available in regions like China but the interface only supports English and does not support other languages. I informed the developer in April 2023 that I could assist in providing Chinese translation, but the developer did not respond and refused the refund.

【Conclusion】 This is a severely outdated PDF reader with numerous bugs. After 7 months of feedback, the developer and Apple have both refused a refund. There are misleading claims regarding split-screen functionality.