XD file viewer: open an Adobe XD file without XD
Adobe put XD into maintenance mode in 2023 and stopped selling it as a single app, yet .xd files keep arriving. Drop one here to see its preview, every artboard with its size, all the text with its font and size, the colours, the fonts this device lacks, the images inside and where each prototype link leads.
The file is read by this tab only. It is not uploaded and not changed.
What it shows
- The preview picture XD stores in every file it saves (preview.png, a picture of one artboard, plus a smaller thumbnail.png), to look at or save.
- Every artboard, with its name, its size in points, its position on the canvas, how many layers and text layers it holds, and whether it scrolls, in canvas order. An artboard that stores its own picture shows it.
- All the text, artboard by artboard, then the pasteboard, then the words inside component masters (XD often keeps a button’s label only in its component). Each layer names its font, style and size; copy one, copy all, search, or save everything as a .txt for a translator or copywriter.
- The fonts used, by family, style and size, each checked against the fonts installed on this device, so you know before opening the file in XD which ones would be swapped.
- Colour swatches and character styles from the document’s Assets panel, each colour with its hex value one press away from the clipboard.
- Every embedded image at its full stored resolution, saved with its original name and extension, with the layers that use it and the path on the designer’s computer it was imported from.
- Prototype links: which layer on which artboard goes to which artboard, on tap or another trigger, with the transition and its length.
What it cannot do
- It does not draw the artboards from their vector data. Only pictures XD itself saved are shown: the preview, the thumbnail and any artboard picture the file keeps. For an exact look at every screen, ask for a PDF or PNG export.
- It edits nothing and cannot save a changed .xd.
- It does not export code: no CSS, HTML, Swift or Android output. The sizes, fonts and hex values are listed for reading off by hand.
- It does not open cloud documents. Those live on Adobe’s servers, not in a file; in XD use File › Save As Local Document.
- Shared libraries and fonts are named, not included. A colour or style linked from a library shows only if the file keeps a copy; a font must be installed for the text to look as designed.
Useful to know about XD files
- What is inside an .xd
- An .xd saved as a local document is a ZIP archive. Its first entry, mimetype, reads application/vnd.adobe.sparkler.project+dcxucf (Sparkler was XD’s code name). Beside it: manifest (the document name, the XD build, the artboard list with sizes), one artwork/artboard-<id>/graphics/graphicContent.agc per artboard (JSON layer trees), resources/ (every placed image, named by a hash, with no extension), interactions/interactions.json (the prototype wiring), preview.png and thumbnail.png. Renaming a copy to .zip shows the same parts; this page reads them and lays them out.
- A worked example
- The MIT-licensed sample Test.xd from the AkyuiUnity project reads as: saved by Adobe XD 51 (build 51.0.12.6, document format 2.33); seven artboards of 428 × 926 points (the iPhone 12 and 13 Pro Max screen) named TestPolygon to TestToggle; three PNG images, one of them, 128 × 128 pixels, filling six rectangles on the artboard TestRectangleImage and imported from a file called test.png on the designer’s desktop; a 428 × 926 preview and a 237 × 512 thumbnail; no text and no prototype links.
- Points, pixels and the iPhone sizes
- XD measures in points, which are pixels at 1×: an artboard of 375 × 812 is an iPhone X to 13 mini screen, 390 × 844 an iPhone 12 to 14, and 1920 × 1080 a full-HD desktop. Exported at 2× and 3×, 390 × 844 becomes 780 × 1688 and 1170 × 2532 pixels. A taller artboard than its viewport scrolls in the prototype; the page says how much is visible.
- Why fonts go missing
- An .xd names its fonts but never contains them. On a computer without, say, a licensed brand typeface, XD shows a missing-font warning and substitutes another one, so lines rewrap and buttons change width. The font table compares each family with what this device has installed, by measuring text drawn in it against the browser’s fallback fonts.
- Without XD
- Adobe put XD into maintenance mode in 2023: it gets bug fixes but no new features, and it is no longer sold as a single app. Figma has no built-in .xd import; third-party converters exist, and they work by uploading the file. This page needs no account and no install, keeps the file on your device, and shows what the file stores as stored. viewhack is not affiliated with Adobe; Adobe XD is Adobe’s trademark.