Introduction to PyMuPDF: Features, Installation, and Usage

PyMuPDF is the Python interface to the lightweight MuPDF library, offering fast PDF, XPS, EPUB, CBZ, FB2 and other document viewing and processing capabilities; it provides high‑quality anti‑aliased rendering, precise layout measurement, and support for many formats.

Key functionalities include file decryption, metadata access, raster (PNG) and vector (SVG) page rendering, text search, extraction of text and images, conversion to formats such as HTML, XML, JSON, and full support for embedded files, encryption, watermarks, and password protection.

Installation is straightforward with pip install PyMuPDF ; optional dependencies like Pillow , fontTools , and pymupdf-fonts enhance image saving and font handling.

Basic usage starts by importing the library ( import fitz ), checking the version, and opening a document ( doc = fitz.open(filename) ). The Document object provides properties such as page_count and metadata , and methods like load_page() or the shortcut doc[pno] to access pages.

Pages can be iterated, and each Page object allows retrieval of links ( page.get_links() ), annotations ( page.annots() ), and form widgets ( page.widgets() ). Rendering is performed with page.get_pixmap() (raster) or page.get_svg_image() (vector), and the resulting Pixmap can be saved as PNG.

Text extraction supports multiple options: "text" for plain text, "blocks" , "words" , "html" , "json" , "xml" , etc., using page.get_text(opt) . Searching for a string returns a list of rectangles via page.search_for("mupdf") .

PDF‑specific operations include modifying, creating, reordering, and deleting pages with methods such as Document.delete_page() , Document.copy_page() , Document.move_page() , and Document.insert_pdf() for merging documents. Saving is done with Document.save() , optionally using incremental=True for fast incremental updates, and documents should be closed with Document.close() when finished.