Most of the eBooks nowadays are in either PDF or CHM format. While Windows have native support for CHMs (of course…), Macs have native support for PDFs. If you want to read PDF files under Windows, all you have to do is to install Acrobat Reader, but what if you want to read CHM files under Mac OS X? Since a number of eBooks that I’ve got are in CHM format, I was conformed with the task of finding a CHM reader for my Mac. So I did a little research online and found an application called xchm. Its a really basic application for reading CHM files, but it also have some really handy functions too. I will demonstrate the app using the help file from my Comodo Firewall Pro.
Before you install the reader, you probably wouldn’t get the icon preview of your CHM files; after you’ve installed xchm, your CHM files should look something like this:
Here is a screen shot of the application. As you can see, the interface is pretty clean 🙂
At the top left, you have a few options like changing the fonts of your CHM file (really useful if the default font is a bit too small for you), navigation, printing etc.
At the bottom left, you have a bookmarking system which allows you to add / remove bookmarks so you know where you were last time.
Surprising enough, this simple app didn’t forget about keyboard shortcuts! Command + S / P / T / Q are the ones that I frequently use.
The printing option is really handy if you like the speech service in Leopard (there is a new voice in Leopard called Alex). If you are lazy like me, you can always ask your Mac to read your books to you 😉 Alex (the new voice in Leopard) sounds pretty good to me 🙂 So how are we gonna let our Mac to read the books to us?
Step 1. Go to File and then click on Print page or press the keyboard shortcut for print (command + p)
Step 2. Click on the Preview button:
Step 3. After a few seconds, preview should be opened with your page (in PDF):
Step 4. Now you can take advantage of the speech service and ask your Mac to tell you a bed time story 😉
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Download xCHM 1.13:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=87007
Other CHM readers:
iChm 1.0: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/28171/ichm
ArCHMock 1.2: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/27897/archmock
omg i loooove ebooks! i know what pdf is, but what’s chm??!! anyways.
most of the things you say sound/look like 天書 to me. so i’ll just stop here. lol
bernie actor
I Googled for something completely different, but found your page…and have to say thanks. nice read.
Hi there!
I`m new in this mac stuff world, i just have a question, did you install this xchm using a distro package or source code? The source code option sounds quite complicated. Thanks!
Re Alex:
Hi there, hows it going? All you have to do is to download the “.dmg” file from the website, drag it to the “Applications” folder…and you can start using it right away 🙂
xCHM 1.13 for Mac: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=87007&package_id=171033&release_id=500319
Hi David,
Thanks a lot for your efforts and time. I downloaded xchm through the link you provided for Alex and others. It works perfectly. Once again, many thanks!!!
Hi Absar
Thanks for your comments, I am glad my article helped you 🙂
Well, I tried xCHM and Chmox, and Chmox has a much better rendering.
Just try to open the same book on both, and it will shows.
http://chmox.sourceforge.net/
Re faz: thanks, I will give Chmox a try 🙂
Yes but CHmox hasn’t got a bookmarks facility
this is T H E BEST CHM reader for the Mac (MBPro…OS X)!!!
cool app !
xie xie
I have Chmox, and it doesn’t support printing, which blows!
If you have a 500 page book and want to pdf and or print you have to do it page by page!
Might as well just buy the paperback, and save time and money :-S
Going to give this a whirl and see how it goes… wish me luck!
Yeah so no luck with the print feature with xchom either!
I prefer the smoother look and feel or Chmox so I am reverting
Thanks for the effort and good hint though!!!
All that I needed to know. Thanx David.
I tried xCHM and it seems that it can’t open multiple CHMs at the same time. Any clue, anyone? Thanks in advance.
Hello. Just in case anyone comes here like I did… xchm is no longer offered/supported on Mac OS X. Ugh.
Hi lp7comics
Thanks for your comments. I will update my post now and include a few CHM readers that I’ve found along the way 🙂
Hi people the best program for CHM view is iChm (mac). I had problem for opening some medical book with XCHM & Chmox also. ichm open that document without any problem. Site for download is, http://www.robinlu.com/blog/ichm/
Enjoy!!!
Hi David,
Great article. I am just making the switch from Windows to MacOS and this is a big help!
@kdas, thanks for the recommendation of iChm. It’s way better than xCHM, which I was using before.
Thanks for the useful information.
iChm is great, thanks for the link, it is faster than xChm. You are the best guy i have met on the internet in months!
The chm for Mac landscape has changed since this blog entry was written. These days the two real options are iChm and ArCHMock … and fwiw I prefer iChm.
Thanks for the helpful article. I’ve been using Chmox for a while and want to try something else out.
Same here. Chmox is 4 years old now & it’s not showing pictures in some of my documents 😦
Thanks for the recommendation of iChm – it’s nice.
thank you a lot!!!
Thank’s for the hint.
I found it hard to get xchm, wxGTK and chmlib, with chmlib gone away from the url You gave. All this just to discover that each of them had to be compiled, when obviously the compilation of the first package fails.
As an average user this is far too hard for me. Reading through the other comments on Your post, I just googled for iChm, downloaded, installed – and I’m happy with what I got.
Dominik
Just downloaded iChm 1.4 from the link provided. Works very well. Thank You!
Casey
I tired ArCHMock, worked very good.
Thanks! New Mac user; needed to read medical books in CHM format. Your page helped a lot!
Thanks A lot!!!
[…] CHM files under Mac OS X This is a great article that illustrates and goes into more detail about how to work with CHM files. When will Apple build this functionality […]