Sharing a PDF opened in Safari iOS from a weblink to Zotero creates an empty page

venpopov

This is becoming a major issue in my ipad zotero usage. Most of the time links to papers open a pdf instead of a publisher's page, and it is impossible to share the pdf from Safari directly to Zotero. I have to do a multi stage process - click the share button, click "more", click "save to files", click "save" when the files dislogue pops up, swipe home, open zotero, click "+", click or standalone file, select the file from files, click done. This really need to be fixed soon and it's beer a problem for a long time.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u16078769/n0unknmvr90fqu4debf8.png

michalrentka

Can you share the pdf link which creates an empty item for you? It's definitely possible to just share the pdf directly to zotero, it should detect the metadata as well and create a proper item with attachment.

venpopov

Almost every pdf does this, very rarely do I get anything else. Some collection at random:

https://www.science.org/cms/asset/910714a7-ee2a-486e-9970-42fb893b08d9/pap.pdf

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2023.1191274/pdf

https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Machines-Bureaucracies-and-Markets-as-Artificial-Intelligences.pdf

https://stanford.edu/~jlmcc/papers/PDP/Chapter3.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390788547_A_tutorial_for_estimating_Bayesian_hierarchical_mixture_models_for_visual_working_memory_tasks_Introducing_the_Bayesian_Measurement_Modeling_bmm_package_for_R/fulltext/67fe1ce0d1054b0207d41b33/A-tutorial-for-estimating-Bayesian-hierarchical-mixture-models-for-visual-working-memory-tasks-Introducing-the-Bayesian-Measurement-Modeling-bmm-package-for-R.pdf

Also any pdf from sciencedirect and a bunch of other publishers. The only pdfs that actually get added together with an item are from arxiv. The ones above aren’t a cherrypicked sample - they are just the last 5 pdfs in my browser history

venpopov

It might be a Zotero beta issue. I use the regular version on my phone and there it saves pdfs fine. On my iPad tablet I have the Zotero Beta and there it fails with the empty page

venpopov

Although even on my phone it’s inconsistent- the pdf from Researchgate gets saved as a webpage with just the full link url as the name

dstillman

What exact version of the iOS app do you have? Tap back to the libraries pane, tap on settings in the top right, and look at the bottom of the screen.

All of those PDFs other than ResearchGate should save fine as standalone attachments, and the beta should recognize a few of them and create parent items. (ResearchGate is likely being broken by the bot protection. We'll see what we can do there.)

What iOS version is this? Are you running any browser extensions in Safari?

(Also, @michalrentka misspoke above. PDF metadata retrieval is currently only in the beta. The release version should save standalone PDFs that you can run metadata retrieval on in the desktop app or create parent items for via Add by Identifier.)

venpopov

The iPad app where almost all pdfs get added as a blank webpage link is v.2.0.0 Build 372.I’m sharing from Safari and even with all extensions disabled the result is the same.

The image in my first post is the typical end result for the vast majority of PDFs. When I use the share sheet with Zotero, it first shows “searching for items” and after a second the empty webpage item appears. If I save it to the library and the. open it in Zotero, it is a webpage item with no title and the link to the pdf i. the URL field:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u16078769/vu9a1iordpjf1s34aci9.png

And I know the pdf metadata retrieval only works in the beta - that’s why I’m running it. I’m actually really glad that the team is working on this feature for ipad! The metadata retrieval works often well, but only when I add the PDF from Zotero itself as a standalone file from a saved PDF on the device.

venpopov

Here’s some additional information that might help debug this. I have two devices, an iPhone and an iPad.

Test item: https://www.science.org/cms/asset/910714a7-ee2a-486e-9970-42fb893b08d9/pap.pdf

Test procedure: Open the link in Safari and use the share sheet and select “Zotero”

Configurations I just tested:

- iPad, iPadOS26 Developer Beta 6, Zotero Beta 372
- iPhone, iOS18, Zotero 1.0.051 official appstore version
- iPhone, iOS18, Zotero Beta 372

Both iPhone tests correctly save the PDF as a standalone attachment. So it’s not specifically a Zotero Official vs Zotero beta issue. The iPad test is the only one that saves empty items. So it seems like that this is an issue Zotero Beta has combined with ipadOS26 beta. Or an iPad issue (I don’t have an iPadOS 18 handy to test)

venpopov

Ok, some additional testing on the iPad. It seems to be a safari issue. When I tried with chrome (which I never use), it works

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u16078769/52ypfyipujt6nd1npjza.png

dstillman

OK, in the future, please mention you're running beta software — the app or the OS — in your first post. You can't wait 8 posts into the thread to mention you're running a beta version of the OS.

We'll investigate on iOS 26. Thanks.

dstillman

(Also, the fact that you began your post with "This really need to be fixed soon and it's beer a problem for a long time." when it's about the iOS developer beta is really inappropriate. Please don't do this again.)

venpopov

Sure. Thanks for looking into it. I didn’t mention it because my memory was that this was an ongoing issue I’ve had before I switched to the beta (which was a month ago), so I didn’t think it was relevant. I can’t go back in time and check if that was truly the case, but that’s my recollection.