New Features

The big iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 update with support for widgets and shortcuts! Scan documents faster by launching directly into the document scanner using all these new ways:

• The Lock Screen widget on both iPhone and iPad
• The StandBy widget on iPhone
• The Home Screen widget on both iPhone and iPad
• Ready-made Scan & OCR Document shortcut from the Shortcuts app
• Scan & OCR Document action from Spotlight search
• Touch-and-hold the Highlights app icon
• Asking Siri to “Scan using Highlights”, “Open Highlights scanner” or similar phrases

The new Shortcut action is available on devices running iOS and iPadOS 16, but the new widgets require iOS and iPadOS 17 which will officially be released on Monday September 18th.

Improvements

• Added an option for Pro users to never be prompted for metadata fetches (Advanced Settings > Fetch Metadata > “Manual”)
• Fixed a bug where in rare cases the document would be unnecessary reloaded while running AutoSave
• Fixed a bug where null characters in annotation comments could stop annotation extraction

Improvements

• Fixed a bug where comments on annotations were not updated when the annotation popover was hidden instead of dismissed (e.g. when moving a sticky note or rotating a device)

Improvements

• Resolved a bug causing the 2023.1 version to crash on launch on devices running iOS 13
• Devices without hardware support for Live Text now hide the unsupported Scan and OCR actions
• Documents now show a spin indicator in the document browser while being processed for OCR

New Features

Highlights can now scan and OCR documents:

• Scan documents to searchable PDF files using the camera on your iPhone or iPad
• Smart OCR: Live Text let’s you select text in PDFs without a text layer on the fly. Now Highlights will detect and automatically embed the Live Text in the background. In other words: automatically OCR the entire PDF on device without you needing to tap a button.
• If you prefer, you can also manually OCR any document in the document browser from the action menu

These features require iOS/iPadOS 16 or later. Smart OCR works with English, Chinese, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Ukrainian text on hardware that supports Live Text.

Improvements

• Fixed a crash caused by popover presentation when quickly switching between annotations

New Feature

• Access Help from the More menu inside the document viewer on iOS/iPadOS 16

Improvements

• Added some missing accessibility labels
• The thumbnail selection now only changes in the currently selected window when changing the page with multiple Highlights windows open
• Removed keyboard shortcut for toggling the sidebar on older releases as the sidebar requires iPadOS 16

Improvements

• Removed keyboard shortcut for toggling the sidebar on older releases as the sidebar requires iPadOS 16

New features

The big iPadOS 16 update! A whole new design optimized for Stage Manager and customizable toolbars:

• Customizable toolbars: The center area of the toolbar is fully customizable including functionality previously only available using keyboard commands. Select “Customize Toolbar” from the bottom of the More menu to make it your own.
• Document menu: The document title is always visible in the toolbar and when selected brings up the document menu with easy access to file operations including duplicate, move, rename, print and export actions.
• Thumbnail sidebar: The bottom bar is gone to free up space for more content and replaced by a collapsable sidebar with larger thumbnails similar to on the Mac.
• The segmented control in the center of the toolbar to control the View Mode has been replaced by a sleek button at the trailing end of the toolbar, giving space for customizable items at the center. Tap it for fast switching or long press to see the view options.
• Search is now inline
• A new export menu for fewer taps and a sleeker look
• Settings is now available from the top of the More menu at all times
• New edit menus and text selection popovers with support for light and dark mode
• Improved support for keyboard/pointer navigation

In iPadOS 16 you can also collaborate on PDF documents via iCloud links. Just share the document and select Collaborate instead of Send Copy. The documents show up in the new Shared-tab in the document browser. Tapping on the “Shared with You”-button below the document in the document browser will take you directly to the conversation where the document was shared in Messages or Mail.

Improvements

• Lots of minor UI tweaks

Improvements

• The duplicate file action from the document menu now creates a new document and opens it without having to give it a new name
• Fixed a bug where making a new text selection using touch could change slightly after lifting your finger
• Fixed a bug where text selection actions would disappear from the popover when using touch
• Improved switching between the text selection popover for touch and pointer/Apple Pencil on iOS 16

Improvements

• Fixed a bug where images would not load correctly in notes when the notes view is hidden
• Fixed a crash where the metadata lookup popover on iPads would present before the navigation toolbar was visible
• Smoother transitions by matching window background colors to the light/dark appearance when collapsing or showing views

New features

The big iOS 16 update! A whole new design for iPhone to bring even more functionality within reach:

• A new bottom toolbar with an improved share menu, segmented control for fast switching between your PDF and Notes and a whole new inline search experience.
• A new top toolbar showing the document name and giving you access to file functions directly, in addition to a sleeker More-menu exposing more functionality than ever before
• New text selection popover with support for light and dark mode

In iOS 16 you can also collaborate on PDF documents via iCloud links. Just share the document and select Collaborate instead of Send Copy. The documents show up in the new Shared-tab in the document browser. Tapping on the “Shared with You”-button below the document in the document browser will take you directly to the conversation where the document was shared in Messages or Mail.

Improvements

• Lots of minor UI tweaks

Improvements

• Improved compatibility with the upcoming iOS/iPadOS 16 release
• Minor improvements to popover presentation including automatically hiding popovers when scrolling using the pointer (trackpad or mouse wheel) on iPad

New features

• Automatically fetch metadata for scientific articles from arXiv - the open-access archive with more than 2 million preprints and postprints.

Improvements

• Fixes an issue with fetching metadata for DOI-links with extended prefixes

New features

• Export PDFs without including your annotations (e.g. to share the original document with a colleague or friend)

New features

• Text translation right from the selection popover: just select text and tap the globe icon to try it!

The feature requires iOS/iPadOS 15 and works with the system supported languages: Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin - China mainland), Chinese (Mandarin - Taiwan), English (US), English (UK), French (France), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish (Spain).

New features

• New Table of Contents view for navigating books and other large PDFs.

Improvements

• Placeholder image and text shown when notes are empty
• Keyboard navigation using arrow keys on iOS 15 works again
• Trying to open search while search is open in compact layouts no longer crashes

Improvements

• Attempting to open corrupt PDF files no longer crashes the app, but shows an alert

Improvements

• Optimized interface for the new iPad Mini (2021)
• Better support for larger text sizes

New features

• Support for saving links to PDFs in Highlights from a Quick Note on iPadOS 15

New features

• New keyboard shortcuts menu on iPadOS 15
• Flexible half height sheets for search and document settings on iOS 15
• Input text for annotation comments and other text fields via camera using Live Text on iOS/iPadOS 15

Improvements

• Fixes a bug where the notes view could turn blank after the app was in the background for a prolonged time

Improvements

• Improved keyboard shortcuts with more verbose titles for accessibility purposes.

New features

• A new color palette: Light! Light is a semi-transparent color palette for those of you who wanted something even more subtle than Pastel for your annotations and notes.

Improvements

• Faster and more precise categorization of annotations into color categories (e.g. when sorting by colors)
• Fixed a bug where exporting as Markdown files included unecessary HTML-elements when the note format included colors in the border and/or text

Improvements

• Improved keyboard shortcuts with better organization, state dependent descriptions and a more consistent user experience with macOS including a new keyboard shortcut for Smart Copy (Option-Command-C).

Improvements

• #hashtags in annotation comments are now recognized as inline tags and displayed in your notes
• Bear export now supports highlight, underline and strikethrough text markup
• DEVONthink To Go export now supports highlight and strikethrough text markup
• Keep It export now supports highlight and strikethrough text markup

Minor improvements

• The text wrapping setting now also applies for Markdown export with markup (bold, underlined, strikethrough..)
• Fixed a bug where the notes view would not sync scroll position for pages with different page label from index
• Citation links in Markdown documents now use Markdown syntax instead of HTML syntax

New features

• Lots of new tutorials! (Settings > Tutorials)

Other improvements

• Improved DOI-link recognition (incl. PNAS, The Lancet)
• Fixed a bug that broke navigating PDFs using internal links
• Tapping to stop a decelerating PDF scrollview no longer toggles show/hide bars

New design

• New app icon!
• Set alternative icons (requires Pro)
• Light theme for popovers (when not in dark mode)
• Cleaner looking selection states for color and annotation tool buttons
• New icons for a whole bunch of buttons
• Improved contrast for the info popup
• Updated launch screen image

New features

• Dictionary lookup right from the text selection popover
• Better language support for text/table recognition (added German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Simplified and Traditional Chinese)
• Export as WebArchive (requires Pro)

Other improvements

• Made keyboard commands list easier to read
• Changed previous/next page commands to match macOS (Alt-Up/Alt-Down)
• Info popup now displays correctly beneath the toolbar when the toolbar is visible

Minor improvements

• Citation lookup now handles citations with ‘&’-characters correctly
• Copying text from the PDF using the selection popover after selecting text in a text field caused a crash
• Non-smart copy button inside annotation popovers now copies the marked up text (similar to macOS)

Colorful new features

• A new lighter default color set for PDF markup
• Optional color sets to choose from: Pastel, Bright and Retro
• Notes now show annotation colors in the quote borders
• Notes can also reflect the text formatting of the annotation
• You can customize the color set for notes to be the same or different from the markup set

Other improvements

• iOS 14 fixes an issue with jumpy text selection in some PDFs with superscript text (e.g. for citations)
• Improved handling of switching between keyboard, Apple Pencil, mouse and touch
• Fixed an issue where a subset of PDFs would not correctly autosave annotations after the first save
• Improved positioning of popovers when showing a keyboard
• Text changes to comments are now saved when changing colors/types in the annotation popover
• Settings screens are now clearer and easier to navigate
• Reordered the colors in the popover and annotation bar
• Improved color sorting for color categories
• Lots of minor improvements to the annotating experience and working with multiple windows on iPad

Minor improvement

• Keyboard shortcuts for changing page using left/right arrows

Minor improvement

• The PDF and Notes no longer move when hiding the top and bottom bars (the content extends underneath)

Minor improvement

• Palm rejection added to the thumbnail scrubber in the bottom bar to prevent accidental page jumps while annotating

New feature

• Interact with the text and images in the notes pane and share via drag and drop (Requires Pro)

Minor improvement

• Improved compatibility with markup from other PDF readers (missing characters from text selections)

Minor improvement

• Improved accuracy for sorting annotations in both single and multi-column PDFs

Minor improvements

• Improved text selection: popover menu now shows immediately when selecting text
• Much improved export to DEVONthink: now uses Markdown for plain text and HTML for rich text + support for tags and titles
• Optimized images: Notes now optimize image files to improve speed and reduce the size of exported TextBundles and HTML files
• Added option to change the image quality in Settings -> Export Settings (Default is optimized, change to Original for highest quality)
• Fixed a bug where exporting files with ampersand characters to Bear, Keep It and DEVONthink could result in partial notes
• Fixed a bug where tapping an annotation while having an annotation tool selected in the annotation bar would result in the annotation being marked up

Minor improvements

• Selecting Highlight, Strikethrough or Underline from the annotation bar now lets you annotate with your finger without bringing up the popover
• Sharing Notes as a PDF is much improved with more options for locations and actions
• The “Note File Name”-setting now works as intended when sharing Notes as files
• Note annotations are now sorted correctly according to their position on a page (top to bottom)
• The page is no longer automatically zoomed out when changing the page if zoomed in

Minor improvement

• Fixed a bug where Smart Copy of tables with merged cells would give the wrong output

Minor improvements

• Improved keyboard shortcuts:
  • Adds keyboard shortcuts for exporting to specific apps and formats directly (same keyboard shortcuts as macOS)
  • Changed to Command+O for going back to the document browser (same as system apps)
  • Improved descriptions for keyboard shortcuts
• Exporting plaintext files now uses .md instead of .txt for their file extension for improved compatibility with Markdown apps

Minor improvement

• Fixes an issue with review requests

New feature

• Adds support for annotating using pointing devices (mouse/trackpad)

Minor improvement

• Fixed App Store Review link in Settings