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
As a researcher, I have to read extensively for a number of topics; this means that I need a good tool to collect important points (argument, evidence, conclusion, future directions...). Before I used Highlights, I jotted down all the possiblly useful quotes on a notebook (traditional or electronic one). By so doing, i have felt more comfortable as i knew i kept the records of those significant points. However, it is illusionary, because i often forgot where I put those notes. Hightlights can a life-saver, because the hightlighted lines can be easily exported as a searchable pdf. Toegther with pdf search tools, notes and hightlighted quotes can be easily accessible, no matter how many pdfs I have on my computer.
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.
Lacks essential export feature and has annoyances
DrJJWMac
I had high hopes for this app to annotate PDFs collected as a background bibliography for review to prepare a science/engineering publication. But not in its current version.* Markdown export does not include the images. This eliminates my intent to use sophisticated, markdown-aware tools (e.g. Obsidian) to manage the exported annotation content. The lack of this ability alone leaves me with no greater power than my current go-to PDF editor app across macOS and iPadOS.* There is no way to clear the (exhaustive) list of recent files on the iPadOS app.* As another review noted, you will end in the File Editor and can inadvertently delete a folder or file from some other app (this may be a problem for other iPadOS apps due solely to the poor control in the Files app itself and if so should raise a red flag that apps should only be able to READ in the File directory, not muck about in it fully).* After you highlight a text region, you will not easily be able to adjust it. Essentially, the best if not only viable way to short or lengthen the highlight is to delete it and remake it.On the plus side, Highlights appears to work well dynamically with other PDF-editing apps (e.g. Devonthink, Bookends), both on macOS and iPadOS.Finally, I hope that a future update will allow a user to put tags on annotations (as possible in apps such as MarginNote or ZenReader).
Pretty darn close
Tripp88
Key feature that would make this near perfect: the ability to group highlights together. I'm studying med/surgery texts, so frequently highlight only short segments of sentences/paragraphs, rather than entire paragraphs. Would be awesome if I could group these together e.g. if a paragraph is describing a surgical technique, I could group the 2-3 highlights I made and add a group title with the name of the surgery. This is how my notes would ideally look if i was writing them out myself - will save significant time creating notes (especially going back over old highlights), which can then be exported and turned into flashcards e.g. with RemNotes. Liquidtext and Marginnotes kind of do this, but the output and user interface is bad and most of us don't need mind maps for everything.Draw/pen tool would also be cool but not as cool as the above feature.
A whole new dark appearance for PDFs with smart content handling: text and backgrounds are changed while images and annotations are left untouched. This can reduce eye strain and improve readability in dark environments while conserving battery life. Set your preferred appearance in Settings > General > PDF Appearance or from the menu bar under View > PDF Appearance. The Auto Dark setting will automatically match the PDF appearance to the system appearance. No more glaring white pages in Dark Mode!
The new dark appearance for PDFs requires macOS 26.
Minor improvements:
- Fixed an issue with quoted text in markdown exports containing line breaks
- New onboarding flow
- Added back the legacy dark PDF appearance with inverted colors on macOS 26 as "Inverted"
- Presenting the thumbnail sidebar in full screen by moving the mouse to the left edge no longer crashes the app on macOS 26
- Updated Introduction Guide
- Increased size of thumbnails
- Updated export icons
- Fixed a formatting issue when printing or saving notes as PDF on macOS 26.2
Version 2026.1.3
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
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
