Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes 4+

Edit Research Documents/Books

Jonas Myren Ribe

    • 4.6 • 84 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 2025.1

Liquid Glass design on macOS 26 with a new app icon, transparent toolbar and floating sidebar. The app icon now also adapts to dark and tinted modes! Menu bar actions now include icons to make them easier to find at a glance.

New languages are also available for OCR and text recognition in image selections: Turkish, Indonesian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Malay, Polish, Romanian and Swedish.

Minor improvement:
- Fixed a crash related to grabbing image selections on first parse

Ratings and Reviews

4.6 out of 5
84 Ratings

84 Ratings

MasaruYamamoto ,

An outstanding app, with minor room for future potential improvement

This app has done an excellent job in significantly enhancing work efficiency and productivity. I was wondering, however, if future updates could allow users to use wider range of colours with varying brightness for annotations. The current default colours (esp when used to highlight) are too dark to read the original paper.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for the kind words! Optional annotation colors are coming😊

Haruki752 ,

MarkdownXLのStrikeout ("||")に対応してほしいです。

 とても便利に使わせて頂いています。

 論文などを読むときは、iPad の手書きノートアプリで読むより、Markdown でノートを取ったほうが管理しやすくて好きなので、いつも Mac & Ulysses を使っています。

 今までは、わざわざコピー&ペーストやクリーンショットをしてUlysses にまとめていましたが、このアプリのおかげで非常に捗るようになりました。

 欲を言えば2点改善してほしいです。

1. MarkdownXL のStrikeoutへの対応
 Ulysses では、Strikeoutとして ("||...||") が出力されるようにしてほしいです。<del>だと、PDF やdocx への書き出しで認識されないので。

2. OCR の日本語対応
 スキャンされた文章を読むときにとても便利な機能なので、日本語にも対応してもらえると嬉しいです。

japchap ,

Useful for highlighted PDF text, true to the name

This app fills a useful niche, making it easy to display and export highlted text in PDFs. I like how you can sort the PDF highlights by color, and add lines between the notes to make them easier to read. Also, text rendering is also very good, and the app loads and runs quickly.

Sadly, the export functionality that most people likely want and need from this app is only available (as of Apr 3 2023) by upgrading to a monthly or yearly Pro subscription. For users who just need this highlight and export-related functionality, it's a better value than Adobe's offering by a long shot, but Highlights doesn't offer too many frills outside of its highlight functionality. It does seem to support Unicode and Japanese text in PDFs well enough.

For users who need a basic PDF reader that can export and manage highlighted text in a better way than the standard Preview app but who don't want to go all the way with more full-featured (and more expensive) offerings, Highlights is definitely worth a look. (Keep in mind that the app doesn't seem to be updated too often, but it does support macOS Monterey and Ventura as of this writing.)

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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