Highlights vs Papers
Highlights
highlightsapp.netPapers
apps.gnome.orgSide by side
| Figure | Highlights | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $2.50/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 3 | 1 |
| Spec score · PDF Readers | 8.3 (#6) | 7.2 (#20) |
| Purpose | Highlights is a PDF reader for research that turns PDF annotations into notes. | Papers is a document viewer for the GNOME desktop that can view, search, and annotate documents. |
| Support | For crash issues, the FAQ asks users to email [email protected] with details and helpful crash reports, screenshots or screen recordings. | The app page directs users to its issue tracker to give feedback or report issues. |
Plans
In their own words
Highlights
Highlights is a PDF reader for research that turns PDF annotations into notes, available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Its free plan supports reading and annotating PDFs, merging annotations, editing PDF metadata, and Handoff. Notes can be exported as Markdown, TextBundle, HTML, WebArchive, or PDF, or sent directly to supported apps including Evernote, DEVONthink, Ulysses, Bear, and Keep It. For scientific articles, Highlights can find DOIs and retrieve metadata; it can link to a PDF on the device if the citation has already been read. Built-in multilingual OCR extracts text from PDFs without searchable text, with processing done on device. Smart Copy outputs copied images as PNG, tables as CSV, and citations as BibTeX. PDFs can be stored on device, in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or another sync service, while annotations use standard PDF annotations. On macOS it integrates with Bookends and Papers. The free plan is available alongside Pro at $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year. The maker describes the app as intended for students and researchers.