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.
"... an app that students, academics, and anyone who does substantial amounts of PDF-based research should try" - Macstories.net
"It’s the novel approach to PDF annotation that makes this app a cut above the rest"- TapSmart.com
*** "App of the Day" - App Store, US ***
USE HIGHLIGHTS FOR FREE
Highlights is a fast and lightweight PDF reader (under 10MB) packed with features to help you do your best 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 PDF documents from anywhere
• Browse files using the familiar document browser
• Open PDFs in Single Page or Two Page scroll mode
• Double tap to Smart Zoom in on a paragraph or figure
• Scrub smoothly to the desired page
• Search the entire document in an instant
• Navigate using any connected keyboard or mouse
STORE YOUR FILES WHERE YOU WANT
• Full support for "Open In Place" lets you make edits to the file where it is
• Access your files from iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or Box using the document browser
• Or keep them privately on device only
HIGHLIGHT AND ANNOTATE FASTER
• Select text with your finger, Apple Pencil or mouse pointer
• Highlight, underline, strikethrough text and make image selections
• Add comments to annotations or as individual sticky notes
• Annotate with fewer taps using context aware popovers
• 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 tap
SMART COPY
Copy annotations to the desired format with one tap:
• 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 tap 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
MUCH MORE
• Dark mode
• Multi-window support on iPadOS
• Keyboard shortcuts and navigation
• Support for system Copy and Undo gestures
• Alternative app icons
• Custom accent colors
• Apple Pencil double-tap gestures
• Power annotation tools
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: highlightsapp.net/privacy
Terms of Use: highlightsapp.net/terms
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
Dsqrtx
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.
Optimistic, if optimized (soon)
BamaGuy006
This app has ALMOST everything that would make it a replacement for PDF Expert (my current workhourse) or other annoation apps. As a Professor and director of a biomed research lab, my primary workflow involves downloading, annotating, and sharing PDFs with my team of 20 scientists. The Mac version is especially good on an M1 machine. Moreover, I find the text and image extraction capabilities to be excellent and so useful, as is the doi citation matching. Together with ReadCubePapers, the two apps are an ulitmate combination for managment of the large volume of publications I read or wish to file. What is missing? 1) The ability to scribble or freehand annoatate - especially on iPad. Really, it is a fatal flaw for me that has long been "planned" but implementation is needed soon, or my Pro subscription to Highlights will expire for good. 2) on iPad, he interaction with Apple Pencil also needs slight improvement with highlighting, as it awkwardly pauses just a second too long before reacting/responding; this leads to errors and then requires me to often try to highight multiple times unless I am VERY slow and careful when selecting text (and errors show in the Notes pane). 3) the ability to edit extracted notes to fix error in real time would be helpful and perhaps a means to have multiple levels of saved/save as notes after editing would be possible? 4) More and lighter color choices for highlighing, and darker (or just black/dark grey for underlining. The color matching schemes and palattes available are limiting and there should be a way to have a color picker integrated as an optional "spot" to be assigned a task or two. Otherwise, Highlights is a real beautiful and useful pp with much going for it...and I *want* to keep paying for it...time will tell, but I am optimistic! I will return to update my review to 5 stars if some of these things are implemented before the next academic year.
Soooo close to great, but needs to remember last page
Sojo616
I read a ton of PDFs, and I’ve never been fully satisfied with the reading/highlighting/annotation experiences in other apps. Highlights is so close to greatness now that it makes its remaining glitches all the more frustrating.I first tried this app earlier this year, but abandoned it back then because the highlighting experience was too difficult to control and I spent more time adjusting the selections than getting on with the reading. I'm happy to report that after checking again now, these issues seem to have been resolved. The interface is lovely, reading is mostly pleasant, and the side-by-side document/highlights view has quickly become a favorite. The simple, no-fuss exporting of highlights and notes and the ability to customize highlight metadata is a dream. In theory it also allows working with files directly from connected cloud services, which would be so much nicer than other pdf readers that make you clone documents and then manually sync.Unfortunately, the app never remembers the page I'm on in a document, and there doesn't even seem to be a way to manually bookmark where I leave off. For the longer documents I read, it's a PITA to find my place again each time.The app is also terribly slow loading from some cloud services like OneDrive. PDFs that load in a blink through other apps cause a spinning circle sometimes.With a bit more improvement, I could see this app becoming my one true pdf reader, but it's not quite there yet.
The iOS and iPadOS 27 release with support for Siri AI. You can ask it to do simple actions:
- "Scan using Highlights"
- "Open Highlights"
Or perform fuzzy searches:
- "Find the PDF where they discuss 3D paper based microfluidics"
- "Search for PDF articles from the journal PNAS"
Or make requests based on the document you have open:
- "Mail this to ..."
- "Does this article have any supplementary information?"
- "Do the authors have a website?"
- "Have they published anything together recently?"
You can both talk and type to Siri AI. You do not need to choose your words as carefully as previously and it is much better at understanding context. Siri AI requires iOS and iPadOS 27 and a compatible device.
This release also brings:
- A refined Liquid Glass design with updated app icons
- Annotations with comments now render with a text bubble icon next to them in the PDF to let you know which have comments at a glance
- New languages for OCR and text recognition in image selections: Finnish, Hindi and Marathi
Версия 2026.2.1
Подписки
Highlights Pro
Convert PDF Annotations into Notes and Export
Пробный период
Разработчик Jonas Myren Ribe указал, что в соответствии с политикой конфиденциальности приложения данные могут обрабатываться так, как описано ниже. Подробные сведения доступны в политике конфиденциальности разработчика .
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Разработчик может использовать различные способы обработки конфиденциальных данных в зависимости от таких факторов, как Ваш возраст и функции, которыми Вы пользуетесь. Подробнее
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