PDF display title
Silktide checks that a PDF is set to show its title rather than its file name. Having a title is one thing; a separate setting inside the document decides which of the two a reader actually sees and hears when the document opens.
That setting is a single yes or no, and PDFs default to no. A document can carry a perfectly good title and still introduce itself by file name because nobody turned the setting on.
Why this matters
This is a one-click fix for a problem that undoes work already done. Writing a good title and then leaving it undisplayed means the effort reaches nobody: users hear the file name on opening, and the file name appears in the window title bar and in the list of open windows.
File names are a poor introduction for reasons that have nothing to do with carelessness. They carry version suffixes, dates in unhelpful formats, and internal reference codes, because that is what file names are for. Read aloud, Council_Minutes_2025-03-14_v2_APPROVED.pdf becomes a recitation of underscores. Read on a small screen, it is truncated to the least informative half.
It also matters for anyone who keeps several documents open at once, which describes most people doing research. Window titles are how you tell them apart, and they are all indistinguishable when they show file names from the same folder.
How to fix it
- Turn the setting on in Acrobat Pro: File > Properties > Initial View, then set "Show" to "Document Title".
- Or export from a tool that sets it for you. Word, InDesign, and LibreOffice all turn it on when exporting with accessibility or PDF/UA output enabled, which is the more durable fix because it survives the next revision.
- Give the document a title as well, if it has none. The setting cannot show a title that does not exist. See PDF title.
- Or run Silktide remediation, which sets both together. See How PDF remediation works.
How Silktide tests this
- Find the PDF documents linked from your website, and analyze each unique file once however many pages link to it.
- Read the document's viewer settings to see whether it asks for the title to be displayed.
- Report the document when the setting is absent or turned off.
Troubleshooting
My viewer shows the title anyway
Some viewers ignore the setting and show a title when they find one, and browsers behave differently from desktop readers. That is why the check reads the setting in the file rather than trusting one viewer: the file has to state its intention, so that every reader behaves the same way.
The document has no title to show
Then fix that first, and both checks are satisfied by the same edit. See PDF title.
Is this really worth reporting?
On its own it is a small thing, and it is also close to free to fix, which is why it is worth doing rather than carrying. It is one setting per document, and it is what makes the title you already wrote reach the reader.