How to view CHM files?

Question

How to view CHM files in Ubuntu?

score 87 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 19 '23 at 14:27

87

xChm Viewer

Install the xChm Viewer for viewing CHM files:

sudo apt-get install xchm

edited Mar 19 '23 at 14:27

karel

122,292
133
301
332

answered Oct 19 '10 at 05:40

Chakra

3,542

score 42 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 19 '23 at 11:59

chmsee is no longer available in Ubuntu, as it is no longer being maintained. Here is the announcement on the project site:

ChmSee is no longer maintained.

ChmSee is not being developed anymore.

I haven't read CHM documents more than a year, new and updated IT books are pdfs or epubs, so it's the right time to end this chm viewer.

ChmSee

alt text

https://code.google.com/p/chmsee/

sudo apt-get install chmsee

score 34 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 19 '10 at 05:28

34

apt-cache --names-only search chm

gives several results.

answered Oct 19 '10 at 05:28

enzotib

96,093

score 19 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:00

kchmViewer

The main advantage of kchmviewer is the best support for non-English languages. Unlike other viewers, kchmviewer in most cases is able to correctly detect the chm file encoding and show it. It correctly shows the index and table of context in Russian, Spanish, Romanian, Korean, Chinese and Arabic help files, and with new search engine is able to search in any chm file no matter what language it is written.

kchmviewer

score 9 · Answer 5 · edited Dec 17 '18 at 10:08

9

I like the reader that comes with wine! (hh.exe?)

Open hh.exe that comes with wine and browse for your CHM file from it, or supply it as a command line argument:

$ wine /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wine-development/fakedlls/hh.exe WindowsHalp.chm

edited Dec 17 '18 at 10:08

unhammer

2,321

answered May 17 '11 at 15:12

MarkovCh1

2,143

score 8 · Answer 6 · edited Sep 12 '14 at 10:40

Use browser extensions

What could be better than a web-browser to view web-pages?

CHMFox is an excellent CHM file reader. It is much better than all the third party programs that others are suggesting, which are mostly lacking many web-browser capabilities that Firefox and alike have.

I initially suggested the CHM reader extension for Firefox, but it isn't actively maintained anymore.

score 7 · Answer 7 · edited Sep 19 '18 at 18:24

7

As an alternative, since the CHM format is not very popular you can convert it to PDF using chm2pdf:

sudo apt-get install chm2pdf
chm2pdf --webpage your.chm

This will produce a your.pdf file. As an alternative you can use the --book or --continuous options instead of --webpage; more info here http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-convert-chm-files-into-pdf-files-in-ubuntu.html

edited Sep 19 '18 at 18:24

Boann

117

answered Mar 11 '16 at 14:27

rsilva4

201

score 4 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 13 '19 at 09:39

4

Calibre is a library manager that can read all sorts of book formats, CHM included.

answered Aug 13 '19 at 09:39

Adrien H

253
2
6

score 3 · Answer 9 · edited Sep 19 '18 at 18:18

extract_chmLib does a very good job of converting chm (compiled html) files into htm format. It is in the Ubuntu repository in the package libchm-bin.

extract_chmLib maintains the full functionality of the original.. However, I did need to rename files to lowercase, for one .chm (becaue chm is a Windows format which is not case-sensitive like Linux), but the overall result is ideal for me...

Here are a couple of links...

score 2 · Answer 10 · edited Jun 24 '11 at 16:13

2

Also a plugin called CHM Reader exists for Firefox.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3235/

edited Jun 24 '11 at 16:13

RolandiXor

51,797

answered Oct 28 '10 at 17:41

score 2 · Answer 11 · answered Apr 11 '16 at 15:38

2

In addition to the Firefox extension(s), there's a neat Chrome app called Chumium that does the job.

answered Apr 11 '16 at 15:38

miq

123

score 2 · Answer 12 · edited Jan 13 '18 at 15:15

2

sudo apt-get install kchmviewer

This worked for me on Ubuntu 16.04

edited Jan 13 '18 at 15:15

Zanna

72,312

answered Jan 13 '18 at 14:46

Ranjitha B S

21

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Jul 10 '14 at 21:39

In Ubuntu Software Center you can do a search for "chm" (no quotes) and find some decent chm viewers.

However, while using them, I'm always missing the scaling features in firefox (to make everything bigger - not just fonts).

Therefore, my favorite CHM viewer is Firefox itself via the ChmFox extension.

score 1 · Answer 14 · edited Sep 19 '18 at 18:19

1

There are a lot of CHM readers. You can find them in Software Center. Just type chm.

edited Sep 19 '18 at 18:19

Boann

117

answered Oct 23 '10 at 11:19

rovshango

1,814

score 0 · Answer 15 · answered May 20 '19 at 06:27

0

By default ubuntu doesn't provide any chm reader.

If you have installed wine, then by default it provides one package named hh.

Right click on file.
Open with wine
Just select hh as default option it shows and select

answered May 20 '19 at 06:27

Rahul

321

score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Nov 08 '21 at 16:46

0

Sumatra PDF can display .chm files also. Although, Sumatra PDF is a Windows program, you can just download the "portable version" and run it under Wine.

answered Nov 08 '21 at 16:46

FedKad

13,420

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Oct 19 '10 at 07:07

0

I prefer GnoCHM.

answered Oct 19 '10 at 07:07

How to view CHM files?

17 Answers17

xChm Viewer

ChmSee

kchmViewer

Use browser extensions