Tool for reading and annotating PDFs?

October 7, 2022 9:01 AM

What's the best way to annotate PDFs with Mac and Windows devices?

I'm trying to make the shift to a fully electronic workflow - I've done this with general notetaking from meetings, for example, but need an approach for reading. I'm in a reading heavy profession - white papers, briefs, research articles, etc. - and need to be able to download/save PDFs with annotations (primarily highlighting and short text). Ideally, also integrated with some kind of citation management so I could generate a list of references. Complications: I'm in a mixed OS universe: laptop, phone, are on Windows/Android, and the device I would want to read on is an iPad. The iPad is also a household iPad so linked to someone else's cloud account (I wish we could just have two separate logins on the same iPad!). I'm open to paid solutions, but would prefer free if possible, and would like to be able to move across the iPad and my laptop.

Bonus question: what other productivity things could I use the iPad for?

posted by spockaway to Technology (16 answers total)

I don't reside within the Apple ecosystem, firstly, and secondly, my solutions aren't free: for Windows, via my company license, i use Adobe Acrobat - though i believe even basic one can do text highlighting. That's on my work laptop. For personal stuff it's all on mobile and I use Evernote (which is cross platform). And now that I have a Samsung, I can say their Samsung Notes is really very good for this.
posted by cendawanita at 9:06 AM on October 7, 2022

I don't know about citation management anymore, but I usually mark up PDFs on my iPad in Goodreader (with a Pencil). Those annotations are visible if I open the PDF in Acrobat on my Mac.

You probably don't want another device, but I have seen a fair number of people singing the praises of the reMarkable.
posted by praemunire at 9:09 AM on October 7, 2022

Best answer: I have been using the Zotero iPad app for highlighting and annotating PDFs that I then use as sources for undergraduate academic writing on a MacBook, which I have been very happy with as a workflow and would fit all your requirements.

(The "create note from annotations" and "generate report from items" features on desktop Zotero are particularly useful for compiling all highlights and notes from many PDFs for a project into a single document of notes for reference while writing.)

The only two caveats with that are:

• in order for document syncing between iPad and desktop to work, you have to use Zotero's cloud storage, which is only free up to 300MB; paid storage ranges from $20-120/year
• my understanding is that the markup on the PDFs don't export out to non-Zotero apps, so if you think you might want to export marked-up PDFs to use in other applications, you might prefer to use another app.

There are other PDF annotation apps, e.g. LiquidText that can sync with Zotero or Mendeley and can also export markup to other apps. Of the PDF apps I've tried I've been happiest with this workflow for citation-heavy work. However, I'm sure there are other solutions for this I haven't explored.
posted by beryllium at 9:52 AM on October 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

Pricey, but Adobe Acrobat DC? Can't help with the citations, you might have to pair some other piece of software like Endnote and make cross references.
posted by porpoise at 10:30 AM on October 7, 2022

On windows I used the free Pdfxchange viewer. It lets you highlight, underline, type, add text boxes and my favorite, text boxes with arrrows pointing to a particular place on a document. I doubt it does anything with citations.
posted by melamakarona at 1:14 PM on October 7, 2022

For the Mac, look for PDF Expert. There's a free version but it's worth upgrading to the paid one, it's much cheaper than fancy Adobe and will do everything you need.
posted by mccxxiii at 1:17 PM on October 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I just double-checked and Zotero does now have the option to export PDF markup via the Export PDF and Export Library functions on desktop - just tested to make sure it works! So only my first caveat about storage costs holds.

I've also used PDF Expert, which mccxxiii mentions, for more general PDF annotation on iPad, though I've just used the free version and I haven't used it in combination with a citation manager. Looks like it is another app you could sync with desktop Zotero for citation management using a WebDAV server (though the list may be outdated), which would also give you more free storage, though it would mean juggling more services.
posted by beryllium at 2:42 PM on October 7, 2022

Maybe offbeat suggestion - if you can have OneDrive on both, and use a consistent naming system for citations, you could save the PDFs to there and access then from the PC on any other PDF reader. Can use excel queries in a folder to get a list, manipulate with formulas for hyperlinks and to track citations, last modified. A little techy though.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:09 PM on October 7, 2022

Best answer: I've been using Noteshelf on ipad for pdf annotation and bullet journaling (re your productivity question) and I really like it. A lot of people recommend Goodnotes too, but you have to switch to a non-annotating mode to follow hyperlinks within the document - really specific reason I chose Noteshelf instead. For the bullet journaling, I bought a "minimalist digital planner" on Etsy. It's been great.
posted by beyond_pink at 12:42 AM on October 8, 2022

Best answer: My tool of choice for this kind of work is PDF Escape, which is browser-based and therefore doesn't care what the underlying OS is. It's a little clunky but gets the job done.
posted by flabdablet at 5:36 AM on October 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I’ve been using PDF Annotator on Windows, which is also available for Macs. Many of the options mentioned above also sound good though.
posted by eviemath at 6:19 AM on October 8, 2022

I'm also in a reading-heaving profession (academia). My approach has been using Zotero for saving articles, and DEVONthink Pro for everything else, including reading and marking up PDFs. I use a combination of special DEVONthink features, open-source third-party software (like this), and automation scripts written in a mix of AppleScript and Python to help me integrate Zotero and DEVONthink better. DEVONthink is unfortunately Mac-only, so it doesn't satisfy some of your criteria, but I'm mentioning it anyway in case it's still useful to know or you end up altering your mix of technologies.
posted by StrawberryPie at 12:36 PM on October 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I use Zotero with the Zotfile addon to save files in my Google drive, which avoids storage constraints, and PDF expert on iOS or Xodo on Android to read and annotate. The notes and annotations in both sync properly to Zotero. I wrote about it here.
posted by idb at 12:44 PM on October 8, 2022

Best answer: I'm seconding PDF Expert (linked above).

I use it on a Mac, and iPhone, and an iPad. It's an excellent program.

For organizing huge numbers of PDFs on my Mac, I second DevonThink Pro (also linked in a comment above). There is a learning curve but it is a powerful and useful program.
posted by diabolik at 1:45 PM on October 8, 2022

Best answer: Over 20+ years in academia, I spent years using first Papers and then Mendeley before settling on Zotero, and I'm now really happy with Zotero. I think it would be very awkward to use two separate apps for this.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:52 AM on October 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Lots of good ideas here, thank you. While some people will probably find all of these tools useful, I only marked as best answer the ones that also addressed moving across operating systems. I've previously used Zotero for citation management and liked it but lost files in a move to a new computer, so I was hesitant to start again. As I'm reading through these suggestions though, I think I may have made the mistake of turning off sync, so I'll try again.
posted by spockaway at 1:13 PM on October 13, 2022