Gerber Viewer for GitHub

Render Gerber, Excellon drill, ZIP archives, and KiCad PCB files inline on GitHub.

Preview PCB design files inline while browsing GitHub. No more downloading Gerber archives, unzipping them, and opening a separate tool just to see what a board looks like. Gerber Viewer for GitHub adds an interactive preview panel above the regular file view whenever you open a Gerber, Excellon drill, ZIP archive, or KiCad PCB file in a public or private repository. It works in three places: * On a single-file blob page (e.g. /blob/main/board.gtl), it renders the layer immediately, then fetches sibling files in the same folder to build a realistic Top and Bottom composite view with copper, soldermask, silkscreen, and drill holes. * On a folder page (e.g. /tree/main/gerbers/), it detects layer-set folders automatically and shows the same composite view without needing to open an individual file first. * On a ZIP archive committed to a repo, it downloads and extracts the archive entirely in your browser, finds the Gerber files inside, and builds the same multi-layer preview. For KiCad .kicad_pcb files, the extension embeds the KiCanvas board viewer directly in the page, giving you full layer toggles, zoom, and pan over the native KiCad format. ---------------------------------------- What's in the toolbar ---------------------------------------- Layer / Top / In1 / In2 / ... / Bottom tabs to switch between views. Inner copper tabs appear automatically for multi-layer boards. Zoom controls with mouse-wheel zoom-to-cursor, step buttons, and Fit. Click-and-drag panning. Two rotation buttons for 90 degree steps. Chain measurement tool. Click two or more points to measure distances in mm or mil, with running totals shown in the status bar. Backspace undoes the last point, Escape exits. Outline toggle for boards whose .gko / Edge_Cuts file has disconnected segments, fab markings, or fiducials mixed into the boundary geometry. Flips between using the outline file and computing the boundary from the union of features. Invert (dark mode) for the rendered board. Download SVG of the current view at the current zoom. Hide / Show to collapse the panel without losing state. ---------------------------------------- Gerber X2 and X3 attribute support ---------------------------------------- When a Gerber file declares its role via %TF.FileFunction*%, %TF.GenerationSoftware*%, or related X2/X3 attributes, the preview header shows that information directly. So instead of guessing "is this top copper or bottom?" from a cryptic .gtl filename, you see "Top copper (L1) • KiCad 7.0.5" in the toolbar. ---------------------------------------- Privacy and security ---------------------------------------- All parsing and rendering happens client-side, in your browser, on your machine. The extension does not send file contents to any server, ever. It does not collect telemetry. It does not run remote code. The only network requests it makes are to raw.githubusercontent.com (to fetch the Gerber and drill files you're viewing) and api.github.com (to list the contents of the folder you're in). For .kicad_pcb files, the KiCanvas library is bundled inside the extension and loaded from the extension's own resources, not from any third-party CDN. ---------------------------------------- Built on tracespace and KiCanvas ---------------------------------------- The Gerber rendering pipeline is powered by the tracespace v4 toolkit (gerber-to-svg, pcb-stackup, whats-that-gerber) which is the same library set used by major online PCB review tools. ZIP support uses fflate. KiCad rendering uses KiCanvas. All five libraries are bundled directly into the extension; no remote code is fetched at runtime. ---------------------------------------- Open source ---------------------------------------- GPL-3.0 licensed. Source available at the project repository (see Website link below). Bug reports and feature suggestions welcome. ---------------------------------------- What's new in v0.8.1 ---------------------------------------- * KiCad .kicad_pcb file support via the bundled KiCanvas library * Graceful fallback for systems where WebGL2 is unavailable, with file metadata and a raw-file download link * Inner copper layer browsing for 4+ layer boards (In1, In2, ... tabs) * Chain measurement mode with running totals and undo * Gerber X2 / X3 attribute parsing in the panel header Made by Green Shoe Garage.