Turn your PDF into a story

What is PDF story mode?

Story mode - the FileDroppr swipe viewer - presents each page of a PDF as a fullscreen card, advanced with a tap or a flick under a segmented progress bar. It borrows the presentation grammar of social stories because that is simply how people read on their phones now - but what you are sharing is still your document: the proposal, the one-pager, the lookbook, delivered as a link that opens perfectly from a tap in a chat, an email, or a QR scan.

That is the whole idea: meet readers where their thumbs are. A prospect who opens your one-pager on the train gets something built for the hand it is in - not a pinch-and-squint rendition of an A4 page - and the document itself remains a lasting artifact: the link lives as long as you choose, indefinitely on Pro.

How to share a PDF that reads like a story

1. Upload your PDF. Drop it in the uploader above - no account needed to try it - and FileDroppr hosts it as a shareable link.
2. Choose the swipe viewer. Set the viewer mode to Swipe and every page becomes a fullscreen story card. All four viewer modes are free on every plan.
3. Add auto-advance if you want it (Basic and up). Pages can turn themselves at an interval you choose, from 3 to 30 seconds - readers press and hold to pause. It is off by default, so nothing moves unless you say so.
4. Share or embed it. Send the link, put the QR code on print, or copy the embed snippet to put the story on your own site.
5. Read the readership. Page-by-page reading time, a read-through funnel, returning readers - and from Basic, the re-read rate and your most re-read pages.

Story, magazine, or flipbook?

Every viewer mode shares the same tracked link - the choice is presentation. Story mode is the phone-first one: single fullscreen pages, tap to advance, built for a document that will mostly be opened from a link tap on a phone. The magazine viewer is the flat-lay for artwork designed as facing-page spreads, and the flipbook is the bound book in your brand - both at their best on larger screens, and both adapt to single pages on phones.

A fair rule of thumb: if the design is the hero, choose magazine; if the object should feel like a book, choose flipbook; if most of your audience reads from their hand - a one-pager, a menu, a lookbook sent by chat - choose story. Either way you can switch modes at any time without re-uploading.

Built for the phone, honest on the desktop

On a phone the story is fullscreen: the page fills the display, the progress bar sits along the top, and the tap zones are exactly where story-trained thumbs expect them. Drag and flick work too, with a rubber-band snap at the first and last page - and pinch-to-zoom for the detail.

On a desktop, FileDroppr does not stretch a portrait page across a landscape monitor. The story renders as a centred portrait card with side arrows and a dimmed backdrop - the same reading rhythm, at the proportions it was designed around.

Everything you attach still works

Story mode is a presentation, not a compromise: per-viewer watermarks, passwords and email gates, your branding, and readership analytics all carry through unchanged. Auto-advance (from Basic) behaves politely too - it waits while a reader holds the page or has a sheet open, and it stops at the last page rather than looping.

On Pro, your custom call-to-action appears as a story-style swipe-up sheet at the bottom of the screen, and interactive hotspots - video, audio, and images drawn onto your pages - open the same way: as bottom sheets that slide over the story and hand it back when closed.