Sizes of Adobe Reader Installers Through the Years
Alexander Gromnitsky (via Hacker News):
At the time of writing, the most recent Adobe Reader 25.x.y.z 64-bit installer for Windows 11 weights 687,230,424 bytes. After installation, the program includes ‘AI’ (of course), an auto-updater, sprinkled ads for Acrobat online services everywhere, and 2 GUIs: ’new’ and ‘old’.
It looks like a steady, pretty linear increase until you realize that the graph use a log scale…
Previously:
Update (2025-09-02): Nick Heer:
The installed size of the latest version of Acrobat is, on my Mac, 2.18 GB — or, to spell it out as Gromnitsky did, 2,176,053,007 bytes. Of course, over 435 MB of that is because it includes a copy of the Chromium web browser engine. I primarily use this application to view, edit, and add form fields to text-based documents, and to dismiss ads for A.I. features and Adobe services. Gromnitsky is describing only Reader, which is far more limited than Acrobat, even more so than Apple’s own Preview software; you cannot even split a PDF into multiple files with Reader.
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Adobe Reader has earned its way on to my kill list whenever I'm trying to make a Windows computer work better. There is no reason a PDF READER needs to be such an absolute pig in every conceivable way.
As much as Microsoft wants to drill Edge into everyone's brain, just let them open the damn PDFs. It's literally the same engine now.
Adobe seems like a massive bloated shell of its former self. The decline and added junk seemed to start around the same time they stopped using the native MacOS and Windows UI toolkits, with CS4, I believe.
When Windows folks start using a Mac I notice they think need Adobe Reader, unaware Preview can not only read a PDF but can add comments and markup, re-order pages, add signatures etc. (things Adobe charges for in Acrobat Pro) It's hard for Windows users to shake that muscle memory Microsoft has ingrained in them that PDFs require some bloated piece of software. Nearly 700MB?! SMH Each megabyte is another CVE waiting to happen.
