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I have used a number of siddurim apps for my smartphone/tablet and have found the text layout so abhorrent (nikkud floating all over the place, unprofessional kerning, ugly fonts etc.) that I've given up on a native rendered text solution.

I've also tried to find a decent pdf but can only find historically significant but difficult to read scans from archive.org or hebrewbooks.org or doc files that have been exported to pdf and suffer from the same hideousness as the native rendered text. Does anyone know of a professionally typeset pdf siddur? Vector text, bookmarks and free are preferred but not essential.

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My father is a professional typesetter for siddurim! I totally hear you about the kerning and wild niqqud. Normally he prepares them for physical printing rather than an app, but since everything is on the computer I assume he has pdf copies. He may not have exactly what you're looking for but you can get in touch with him if you like — his website is www.alephtechnology.com and you can email him from there.

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  • It seems like your father is in the position to release a digital siddur that would obliterate the scant competition. However, absent an online sample I can't tell if he has such a product available.
    – mmdanziger
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 15:22
  • What a nice thing to say! I will pass it along to him — he might just take you up on that...
    – Noam Sienna
    Commented Jan 4, 2013 at 3:34
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Just came across your post, though it has been up since January. You might want to look at a product that my company is currently developing. It's an HTML5 web app version of our Hebrew in Hand product (currently available on older BlackBerry devices). For Hebrew in Hand, we built our own completely self-contained Hebrew display system. We did this to ensure that fully-pointed Hebrew (nekudot and, for Biblical text, te'amim) would display accurately and be easy to read on every device.

The HTML5 version is not yet complete. We have a working demo available here at our web site. It's been tested on several mobile platforms, including: iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), Android (4.1+ using Google Chrome browser); Windows Phone 8; BlackBerry Playbook; and BlackBerry 10. It also runs on modern HTML5 desktop browsers (IE 10, Chrome, Firefox, etc.) More information about the app is available here.

If you use any of the above platforms, you can try it out. If you'd like more information about our library of texts (which includes most of what you would find in a siddur for Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Nusach Ari, or Nusach Sefard), or have any other questions, I'd be happy to answer.

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  • It looks promising, please update this thread if/when you expand it to a full siddur/offline app. Did you really handle all the kerning in JS by yourself?
    – mmdanziger
    Commented Apr 28, 2013 at 8:49
  • @mmdanziger - Yes, we handle all the kerning ourselves. A lot of work went into doing this efficiently in JS (it was originally in Java). The app continues to evolve (I updated the URL) and we expect to have the full version out by the end of the month (at the same updated URL).
    – Ted Hopp
    Commented Dec 2, 2013 at 15:02
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You can find here some siddurim. Copy & paste parts You need in some word processor and make a PDF.

I made one for Mincha Nussach Ashkenaz for my 6" Sony-eEeader even with hyperlinks for additional text (e.g. Rosh Chodesh, Chanuka, etc.). I used for it editor from Microsoft's SkyDrive for Text and Mac's Preview for Hyperlinks.

Happy Davening on the way!

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