Highlights - PDF Viewer/Editor 4+

Read, Study & Markup Documents

Jonas Myren Ribe

    • 4.6 • 135 Ratings
    • Free
    • Offers In-App Purchases

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 2023.2.10

Speed + Sonoma! Highlights runs smoothly on macOS 14 Sonoma already, but this update brings some major performance improvements:
- Up to 5x faster conversion of image selections to images
- Up to 7x faster text recognition
- Up to 5x faster table recognition
- Up to 5x faster loading of PDF pages
- Faster opening of files

Minor improvements:
- Smoother resizing of image selections
- Existing image selections will no longer keep the previous aspect ratio when resized
- Image selections from rotated pages now grab the expected area
- Fixed an issue with Pro features potentially not being recognized on first parse
- Fixed an issue that could prevent images from appearing in notes
- Fixed an issue that could cause inactive page links
- Improved thread safety
- Fixed a memory leak
- Fixed a potential crash on launch
- Fixed a crash related to tracking of user setting updates
- Remove null characters if present in the text of markup annotations
- Improved Smart Copy when getting text of markup annotations
- Improved handling of highlights:// links

Ratings and Reviews

4.6 out of 5
135 Ratings

135 Ratings

Jimmy H ,

Incredibly important to my workflow as an academic

Highlights is one of the few apps that I don't mind paying a subscription for - generally I wouldn't say this about something as utilitarian as PDF reader or general office app.

But it's incredibly important to my workflow as an academic - I have very specific processes for highlighting and note-taking when reading, as part of Anke Sohren's Zettelkasten-inspired approach. All of the initial work is done in Highlights, which then can send my annotations as a separate file which would be my starting point if I ever needed to review the paper again. Lots more work happens outside Highlights after that, but its integration with Devonthink and other apps makes it ALWAYS my go-to PDF reading app.

dwly ,

Very useful, but could be better

I now use this program to highlight all my PDFs. For this function there is no better program. There are two key things. First, all the highlighting and notes use standard PDF facilities so there is no other database - everything is in the PDF. Second, the workflow is very well thought out - I can do more work with less clicks or key presses than any other PDF program. The reasons it is 4, not 5, stars is that it is missing a crucial feature - showing the bookmarks of a file as a navigation panel. This is standard in pretty much every other PDF program, and essential for some (many?) PDF files. So until then, I cannot set Highlights as my default program to handle PDFs. But I use it whenever I am reviewing and noting one. Finally, although it is a subscription (personally I find that ok, the author has to live you know), the one license for Apple devices works for macOS, iPadOS and iOS. In summary, I can highly recommend this program.

Lunapark23 ,

Best App Ever

This is the best app ever. I had to stop while using it to give it this rating. I love it. Its great for everything. Buy this app and find a way to incorporate it into your workflow.

Subscriptions

Highlights Pro
Highlights Pro
Convert PDF Annotations into Notes and Export
Free Trial

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

Supports

  • Family Sharing

    Some in‑app purchases, including subscriptions, may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled.

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