Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes 4+
Edit Research Documents/Books
Jonas Myren Ribe
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- Free
- Offers In-App Purchases
Screenshots
Description
The PDF reader optimized for research on Mac, iPad & iPhone. Turn your annotations into powerful notes and export them anywhere, so you can focus on the bigger picture.
"It’s the novel approach to PDF annotation that makes this app a cut above the rest"- TapSmart.com
"A simple and effective tool for helping you strip key information out of research PDFs." - iCreate Magazine, Issue 221
"... an app that students, academics, and anyone who does substantial amounts of PDF-based research should try" - Macstories.net
USE HIGHLIGHTS FOR FREE
Highlights is a fast and lightweight PDF reader (under 10MB) packed with features to help with your research.
Free users have access to standard PDF reader features including document browsing, reading and annotating. There are NO ADS, time limits or tracking.
READ PDF DOCUMENTS
• Open PDFs in Single Page or Two Page scroll mode
• Double-tap with two fingers to Smart Zoom in on a paragraph or figure
• Display PDFs in regular, sepia or night appearance
HIGHLIGHT AND ANNOTATE FASTER
• Annotate with fewer clicks using context aware popovers
• Highlight, underline, strikethrough text and make image selections
• Add comments to annotations or as individual sticky notes
• Default annotation colors prevents you from having to repeatedly setting the color for the same type of annotation every time
TURN ANNOTATIONS INTO NOTES
• As you markup text and images the contents are extracted and sorted into notes
• Customize the formatting and contents of your notes
• Sort the annotations chronologically or create your own color coding
EXTRACT TABLE DATA AND RECOGNIZE TEXT
• Convert images containing text or tables to actual text and tables using machine learning - letting you get to the underlying data with a single click
SMART COPY
Copy annotations to the desired format with one click:
• Text markup as text
• Image selections as images
• Tables as CSV
• Citations as BibTex
LOOKUP CITATIONS
• Highlights will fetch DOI-links and metadata
• Markup any reference and click the link icon to look it up
• If you have read the work already or have it in your reference manager library, Highlights will link you to it
EXPORT ANYWHERE
• Save or share your notes as portable files: Markdown, TextBundle, HTML, WebArchive or PDF
• Share them to your favorite notes app: Apple Notes, Bear, Craft, Evernote, DEVONThink, Keep It, MindNode, Notion, Obsidian, Roam Research or Ulysses
• Or send them to a colleague via mail. It's your notes, you decide where they go
• Customize the contents of your notes using templates
MUCH MORE
• Night and Sepia PDF appearances
• Automatically save notes as a sidecar Markdown file
• Multi-lingual text recognition
• Default annotation colors
• Integration with reference managers like Paper and Bookends
• Integration with DEVONthink
For a full list of features see: highlightsapp.net/features
HIGHLIGHTS PRO
The Highlights Pro subscription unlocks advanced features on your iPhone, iPad and Mac:
• Export options for other apps and easily editable formats
• Extract information using table and text recognition
• Customize accent colors and alternative app icons
• Power annotation tools
• Citation lookups
• Smart Copy
Highlights Pro includes a 14-day free trial. You can cancel your subscription at any time. The subscription will automatically renew unless auto-renew is turned off within 24-hour prior to the end of of the current period.
Payments will be charged to your iTunes account and your account will be charged within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period. Any unused portion of a free trial period will be forfeited when you purchase a subscription.
For more information about Highlights Pro: highlightsapp.net/pro
Privacy Policy and Terms: highlightsapp.net/privacy
What’s New
Version 2024.1
Ready for macOS 15 Sequoia! This release improves text recognition in images and tables with automatic language detection and support for more languages.
The new languages are: Cantonese (China mainland), Cantonese (Hong Kong), Korean, Japanese, Russian, Ukrainian, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic (Modern Standard), Arabic (Najdi)
Automatic language detection requires macOS 13 . Thai and Vietnamese requires macOS 14 Sonoma. Arabic requires macOS 15 Sequoia. All languages also work with OCR when scanning documents on iOS/iPadOS 18.
Minor improvement:
- Print dialog now includes the page range
Ratings and Reviews
Just downloaded this app
I use this for online school but I do have to save the web pages (lessons) as PDFs in order to use this app, which is not a big deal bc iOS makes it so simple. After using it for a couple of hours, I can already say, the free version is soooo good, I’m bout ready to buy the pro version. Well done. PLEASE keep up the good work. All I would change is that when you want to add a comment, it should just show the input box instead of having to click “add comment” and THEN the input box shows up. Also more color options for highlighting.
I was using Weava before this, and between that app and this one, this one takes the cake. Awesome. I just wish they would add more color options like Weava. I’m bouncing between both apps because I love that I can choose whatever color I want on Weava.
I want to like this but I don’t
I really like the highlighting capabilities, when they work that is. Plain highlighting usually works ok, but little details have bugs. Like, say I have a highlight that spans multiple pages. Half the time, that doesn’t work, and some strange area vaguely related to what I selected ends up being highlighted. So I have to delete the highlight and try again. Usually I end up making two separate highlights. Or, say I select some text and I end up missing a word or two, so I want to expand the selection. Good luck getting that to work. It’s easier to delete the selection and try again. And again. But I could deal with little nits lick that if only the app could remember what location I’ve read up to in the document. I don’t know how many times I’ve read 10 or 20 pages of a document, then come back the next day, and the app places me on page one again, and I have to figure out where I left off. Then I read another 10 or 20 pages, come back the next day, and the app puts me on page one again. So, I wrote to the developer to ask for help with that. No response. Nothing. I like the idea, but this app doesn’t feel complete. I see the other reviews and I wonder how they aren’t seeing the same problems I am.
Pricey for a simple needed tool.
I bit the bullet and subscribed to this app, knowing (and hoping) that something better comes along that doesn’t require a pricey subscription to do something so relatively simple. Exporting highlights and notes from a PDF shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg and should be better managed by native tools. For the price, it lacks some basic features like the ability to add bookmarks and makes navigating lengthy PDFs cumbersome. To the developers… please add different page options for viewing PDFs, like single page turns as opposed to continuous scrolling. Some of us don’t like scrolling, and prefer the hard clean transition of a traditional page turn. Having these options would at least make this feel like the most basic of PDF viewers. The app does it what it’s supposed to do well, namely exporting highlights and notes in markdown, but is overpriced for the main functionality. If it were more imaginative, and offered additional value, I’d consider something like this, but for now am hoping that tools like omnivore and others improve their PDF annotating.
Subscriptions
App Privacy
The developer, Jonas Myren Ribe, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Jonas Myren Ribe
- Size
- 8.2 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
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- iPhone
- Requires iOS 13.4 or later.
- iPad
- Requires iPadOS 13.4 or later.
- iPod touch
- Requires iOS 13.4 or later.
- Mac
- Requires macOS 10.15 or later.
- Apple Vision
- Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- Languages
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English
- Age Rating
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2024 Jonas Ribe
- Price
- Free
- In-App Purchases
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- Highlights Pro $29.99
- Highlights Pro: Monthly $3.99
- Highlights Pro: Legacy Upgrade $29.99
Supports
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Family Sharing
Some in‑app purchases, including subscriptions, may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled.