A new upgrade of the popular dtSearch Desktop program was recently released (version 2026.01) that includes a new built-in PDF viewer. This upgrade is free for all existing dtSearch Desktop users.

dtSearch is a popular search and retrieval program that can be a useful tool for searching discovery and creating brief banks. It can be helpful in viewing different file types (including non-PDF files) even if you do not have the associated program installed on your computer.

The new version displays PDF files with highlighted hits without requiring any additional software. Once upgraded, users no longer need to install the dtSearch PDF hit-highlighting plug-in which had required a licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat to work. The new PDF viewer will work automatically with existing dtSearch indexes. There is no need to re-index for this new viewer to work. Full technical details can be found in the release notes.

To upgrade dtSearch Desktop to the current version, run dtSearch Desktop and click Help > Check for updates > Check now…

If you do not yet have a license of dtSearch Desktop and would like to request a license, fill out the form located in the following post: https://nlsblog.org/2014/03/25/dtsearch-desktop/