wkhtmltopdf today · Install

wkhtmltopdf on Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 13

Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 13 have no official wkhtmltopdf package: the last ones, 0.12.6.1-3 of 22 May 2023, stop at Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian 12, and the packaging repository is archived. pdfkiln installs /usr/bin/wkhtmltopdf there, with a current Chromium.

What the distributions offer

• Ubuntu 24.04 has its own package (0.12.6-2build2, universe), built on the distribution’s Qt, without the patches of wkhtmltopdf’s builds. wkhtmltopdf lists what needs them: headers and footers, the table of contents, links and outline in the PDF, several HTML documents in one PDF, running without an X11 server. Its version line also lacks (with patched qt), which Frappe reads before using HTML headers and footers.
• Debian 13 has none at all; Debian 12 had 0.12.6-2.

Install pdfkiln

Signed APT repository for Debian 12 and 13 and Ubuntu 22.04 and later, amd64 and arm64, tested on Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 13. It installs /usr/bin/wkhtmltopdf and /usr/bin/pdfkiln in place of the wkhtmltox package, with an AppArmor profile so that Chromium’s sandbox works on Ubuntu 24.04.

curl -fsS https://apt.pdfkiln.org/pdfkiln-archive-keyring.asc | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/pdfkiln-archive-keyring.asc > /dev/null
printf 'Types: deb\nURIs: https://apt.pdfkiln.org\nSuites: stable\nComponents: main\nSigned-By: /usr/share/keyrings/pdfkiln-archive-keyring.asc\n' \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pdfkiln.sources
sudo apt update && sudo apt install pdfkiln

Chromium’s security fixes then come with apt upgrade.

Check

wkhtmltopdf --version
# wkhtmltopdf 0.12.6 (with patched qt), pdfkiln 1.0.3, Chromium 156.0.8078.73

The answer starts as wkhtmltopdf 0.12.6’s does, (with patched qt) included: libraries that read the version keep working.