Upgrade StorageAnother vote for a watch folder
I know there have been several discussions of this over the years (2017, 2019, 2022, 2023...), and I understand the thought process about focusing on the web based strategy, but as a generally happy user, I nevertheless want to encourage devs to consider adding a watch folder function where a pdf put into a local folder will be automatically added to Zotero.
There's been consistent demand for this over the years, and it seems like a pretty simple thing to accomplish (since you have a drag and drop feature). I bet many, many users tend to go the drag and drop route over, or at least in addition to, the web based save function (I get so many emailed pdfs! I download off websites that Zotero doesn't recognize! etc.) and its not clear to me why adding a watch folder feature would be anything but time saving/flow optimizing. Especially since Zotero itself exposes the drag and drop function already.
There's been consistent demand for this over the years, and it seems like a pretty simple thing to accomplish (since you have a drag and drop feature). I bet many, many users tend to go the drag and drop route over, or at least in addition to, the web based save function (I get so many emailed pdfs! I download off websites that Zotero doesn't recognize! etc.) and its not clear to me why adding a watch folder feature would be anything but time saving/flow optimizing. Especially since Zotero itself exposes the drag and drop function already.
An upcoming version of Zotero will make it possible to open files on via Zotero, which would be an alternative to drag and drop. But Zotero not recognizing a site doesn't mean you can't save a PDF to Zotero. You just click on the PDF and then click Save to Zotero, and then Zotero retrieves metadata for it. Make sure your browser is set to preview PDFs in the browser rather than download them.
I also don't necessarily want to save every document I download from online to Zotero, but I don't know that at the time. For instance, I often download a pdf, read or skim it (on my preferred PDF reader, which is also optimized for my purposes, and which can't be easily replaced by the built in Zotero one), and decide I'm not going to use it. I have no need to add that article to Zotero. In fact, if it had already been added, it would just take up space, add clutter to my collections, and get in the way of eventually making an overall works cited for my project.
On the other hand, once I do read it and decide I'll be citing it, then I want to add it to Zotero, and now that I've read it, I know precisely which sub-collection to put it into and which tags to add.
Frankly, I think this is the main reason why the Save to Zotero feature isn't always ideal and why a quicker way to add from a local drive would be more useful. If it were available, I'd use an automator script (I'm using a mac) connected to a shortcut that would automatically port the file into that watched folder and so have it automatically added to Zotero. Bonus point for a workflow in which I download ten pdfs in the course of research, skim them, and decide to keep a handful – select those, hit the shortcut, and they're all in Zotero with minimal effort and a more streamlined workflow.
The open files via Zotero sounds promising, though I'm not sure exactly what it would look like.
To be clear, when people ask for a watch folder, they’re often not talking about the use case you describe, which is addressed by drag and drop now and will be addressed by "Open With" in a coming update, but rather the ability to save a file permanently in a custom folder and have Zotero add it as a linked file at that location. That's what the linked page is referring to re: letting Zotero organize files for you: even if you're using a linked-file workflow, it makes more sense to let Zotero (and perhaps a plugin) name and store the file for you.