v10

Breaking changes for v10.x

  • Dropped Python 3.9 compatibility, since it is end of life. Python 3.10 through 3.14 are supported.

  • Dropped macOS 13 support, since it is end of life.

  • Dropped macOS 14 Intel wheels, because GitHub doesn’t provide a way to build them - macOS 15 Intel works fine.

  • Dropped deprecated method Pdf.check() (use .check_pdf_syntax()).

pikepdf now declares unstable “support” for freethreading, and does not publish freethreading wheels. All tests seem to pass, but that’s because the existing tests don’t try to create race conditions. Must be compiled manually.

v10.5.0

  • Fixed logger in ctm module using __file__ instead of __name__, which produced unhelpful log names. :issue:712

  • Modernized README.

  • Test all README code blocks instead of just one.

v10.4.0

  • Enums are now proper Python enum.Enum/enum.IntFlag types (PEP 435 compliant), migrated from pybind11’s deprecated py::enum_ to py::native_enum.

  • Reimplemented the PDFDocEncoding codec in pure Python using the standard library charmap pattern, removing the C++ dependency on qpdf for encoding.

  • Upgraded to qpdf 12.3.2.

  • Fixed incorrect docstrings for StreamDecodeLevel. :issue:708

  • Fixed type stubs: added PEP 570 positional-only markers, and corrected index() signature.

v10.3.0

  • Fixed UnicodeDecodeError when listing keys of a dictionary containing invalid UTF-8. Thanks @qooxzuub. :issue:696

  • Fixed an issue where opening a PDF with duplicate form field names would cause a crash. Accessing a duplicate field by name now returns a proxy list of all matching fields. Thanks @qooxzuub. :issue:697

  • Added .values() accessor to Object for iterating over dictionary values. Thanks @qooxzuub.:issue:699,697

  • Added .copy() and .update() methods to Dictionary. Thanks @qooxzuub.:issue:700

  • Improved Object.copy implementation and added type stubs. Thanks @qooxzuub.:issue:702

  • Fixed missing return in SimpleFont._encode_diffmap(). Thanks @lachlan.charlick :issue:706

  • Improved error messages for invalid dictionary access. Thanks @qooxzuub.:issue:701

  • Lazy load lxml and Pillow to improve import time. Thanks @qooxzuub. :issue:704

  • Improved atomic_overwrite robustness for restricted directories and special files. :issue:695

v10.2.0

  • Fixed unparse_content_stream() not preserving literal strings when given raw Python tuples. :issue:689

  • The pikepdf.explicit_conversion() context manager is now thread-local and takes precedence over the global setting from pikepdf.set_object_conversion_mode(). Nested context managers are supported via a depth counter.

  • Moved explicit conversion functions to their own module for better code organization.

  • Improved C++ test coverage to 97.5% (from 96.4% line coverage, 94.9% to 95.1% function coverage).

v10.1.0

  • Added pikepdf.NamePath for ergonomic access to deeply nested PDF structures. NamePath provides a single-operation traversal with helpful error messages showing exactly where traversal failed. See Accessing nested objects with NamePath for details.

  • Added explicit scalar types: pikepdf.Integer, pikepdf.Boolean, and pikepdf.Real. When explicit conversion mode is enabled, these types are returned instead of Python native types (int, bool, Decimal), enabling better type safety and static type checking.

  • Added pikepdf.set_object_conversion_mode() and pikepdf.get_object_conversion_mode() to control conversion behavior globally.

  • Added pikepdf.explicit_conversion() context manager for temporarily enabling explicit conversion mode.

  • Added safe accessor methods to pikepdf.Object: as_int(), as_bool(), as_float(), and as_decimal() with optional default parameters for type-safe access to scalar values.

  • pikepdf.Integer and pikepdf.Real now support full arithmetic operations with both int and float operands, including true division (/).

v10.0.3

  • Fixed an issue where PdfImage.as_pil_image() would create additional unused objects in the PDF that called it.

  • Fixed a shutdown segfault in the alpha release of Python 3.15.

  • Fixed Pdf.show_xref_table() not actually showing its output.

  • Pin test dependencies python-xmp-toolkit to < 2.1.0. python-xmp-toolkit 2.1.0 is effectively a breaking change, requiring a new version of libexempi to be installed that is not available on some cibuildwheel builders. As a workaround, we have pinned the older version. We only use python-xmp-toolkit for testing to confirm correctness–pikepdf has its own XML-based implementation of XMP.

v10.0.2

  • Fixed presentation of strings using unparse_content_stream - if the stream can be represented using PdfDocEncoding, it is rendered in that way for ease of reading. :issue:682

  • Reformatted C++ source.

v10.0.1

  • Fixed issue with performing equality test on dictionaries with cyclic subgraphs. :issue:677

v10.0.0

See breaking changes for v10.0.0 above.