Zotero for tablet

cmiltiadis · January 3, 2018

I have been using Zotero extensively to organise my readings and notes, and I decided to buy a tablet for doing my readings besides my laptop, and more mobile.

I have recently borrowed an iPad pro 12.9 with a pencil that I used with PaperShip, plus the $10 pdf annotation plugin. It works perfectly for the last 2 weeks I have been using it, given that it can sync annotations with my Zotero library, and also download papers and material on demand from the library to read offline.

At the moment I am considering a couple of tablets, namely the iPad Pro 9.7 and the newer 10.5 or the Huawei M2 Premium (9.7 + stylus)

What I would like to ask then, is if there is an app with equivalent functionality for Android (PDF annotation, offline reading, syncing) or what are close alternatives in the Android platform.

Most reviews I read, recommend Apple tablets for academic reading. Is that the case?

Also any idea if the Remarkable e-ink tablet is compatible with Zotero?

adamsmith · January 3, 2018

By far the best user experience on a tablet with Zotero is on the Windows Surface plus ones, but those are, of course, rather pricey (the big draw there is that you can just use regular Zotero). I know an increasing number of academics who use Surface tablets, sometimes as their only laptop.

PaperShip is actually only marginally maintained, so it's a bit of a risky bet, but it's still more polished than anything on Android. There is, however, an app on Android that appears to be developed very actively: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/67409/zotdroid-a-zotero-client-for-android#latest
-- it's a single developer, though, so always hard to say how sustainable that is.

So overall, the tablet situation isn't great, I'm afraid. It's probably a small edge for iOS, but really only a small one.

dmhowcroft · January 23, 2020

If anyone is coming to this more recently, there is also Zootero for Android, which seems to be working better for me over the past several months (compared to Zotdroid). It handles my library with >5000 papers easily.