So far the beta looks good, and I appreciate the work put into making it possible to use Zotero on the iPad. One feature that I would really like to see in this app is the iOS open in place feature. There are some good PDF readers available on the iPad, it would be great if Zotero enabled users to take advantage of these by making it possible to open up PDFs in another app without making a separate copy of the PDF. At the moment Bookends does a good job of this, but I would consider moving to something like Zotero if this was possible as it integrates better into services like Roam and Overleaf.
Beta looks good! Having some problems with the note writing. I can make the note but when I tap on it, it doesn’t open the note. I need to deselect it before selecting it to make notes
I really appreciate the beta app you have developed. Most of the features are very nice. I'm very glad to see a small return button on the southwest corner after I jump to some definition with hyperlinks in the pdf. It will be good if the desktop version could have this feature. It's a little bit annoying that in the iosbeta app I need to set the "page transition" and "scroll direction" styles every time I reopen a pdf file. And I also expect the webDAV support in the future version.
(Again thanks). Am I missing an obvious way to share/export annotation notes to apps/destinations outside of zotero on the ipad? It seems I can create, view, and edit them, but they live only in zotero?
Again, thanks for this—got the nesting folder triangles now. The function works perfect as it is. The update looks great but it seems like the notes section is a missed opportunity for markdown use. I am particularly skeptical of the new Wordpress-style blocks function. At least it would be great to support both XML and plain text notes.
It works really good for me. The only problem I have currently: when I annotate on the phone I can't see the annotations in Zotero MacOS. I am pretty sure I read somewhere that I have to activate an option or something but I can't find the comment anymore.
GOOOOD! A feature I REALLY desire is highlighting as convenent as possible because most papers contain the text layers. The beta version so far is wonderful except that the highlight process is cumbersome in a sense... I just want to press the sentence for a short while e.g. 2 seconds to make the sentence get highlighted. Furthermore, color of this highlight annotation should be easily changed through just another click... and no overlapping highlightings of the same color! They should be merged into an annotation. Thx!
I can't open pdfs on the iPad. I'm not sure why. I sync files in My Library using Zotero, and sync attachment files in group libraries using Zotero storage.
However, I do currently use Zotfile to transfer files from Zotero to my iPad and back using a Dropbox folder location. Is that the problem?
@mossposs: If you can open something via the web library, you should be able to open it in the app. Note that you're at your file sync quota (which Zotero will warn you about when you sync), so some of your files aren't being uploaded and won't be available in the app.
I have the iOS beta installed and I'd like to share a link to documents stored in Zotero to my to-do app (Todoist) but the share menu copies the whole pdf across. Is it possible to have an option to share wither the doc or a link? Thanks
Wow, the beta version already works great and is helpful! I'm curious about annotations and further plans for them. Would it be possible to use the iOS (iPadOS?) built-in annotation tool, like when a PDF is opened from "Files"? It has all kinds of tools and settings for writing in the pdf with a pencil. Then these drawings just get saved to the pdf, and are available for any other reader on any platform.
So far so good! Apple Pencil support is the only thing right off the bat. I often store my "stream of consciousness" notes in the same folder as the sources and having the ability to use the pencil both in a standalone note and also to annotate pdfs would be great!
Is there an easy way to highlight when the PDFs have two columns of text per page? (i.e., it wants to highlight the whole line (both columns) when that's not the order of the text). My solution was just to go line-by-line within column, but that means they come out as separate annotations?
(Otherwise I'm very happy with the app, and so grateful it exists! Makes my life much easier)
Is there a way to create new tags in the iOS app? I want to create a new colored tag, but I can’t find any way to create any tag, much less a colored one
Is it possible to support opening PDFs in an external reader in the iOS version too? One of the reasons I like Zotero desktop is that I can set the default reader to an external one of my choice:) I can envision this being realized through the share function of iOS. So first by sharing it to an external pdf reader. After annotating it, I would like to share it back to Zotero and select which item I want this attachment to be linked to, and I would also like to choose whether I want to replace the old attachment with this newly annotated one under this item.
I‘ve played with the beta for a few hours and it feels much smoother and reliable than the Mendeley iOS app, great work!
As mentioned by a few others, it would be great to be able to scribble on the PDFs as well, but this is probably hard to implement.
I also agree that some more view options would be nice: fit to with was mentioned above, some other nice examples are used by koreader, such as „fit to column and read column by column“, which essentially turns two-column articles into single column ones.
Another useful view is „recently read articles“ and tabs for multiple articles.
I will buy Zotero storage now and hope the app will be scaling reliably to thousands of articles :) One thing which was always frustrating in Mendeley was that the sync was mysterious on large libraries and if something didn‘t sync, it was very intransparent why not. I trust Zotero will be much better.
Last but not least, I am torn between the in-PDF and the in-database annotations. On the one hand, in-PDF is a lot more flexible, I can use almost any app, in particular also on android. But syncing is much less efficient and PDF standards are very messy. On the other hand, in-database is fast, has more flexibility in remaining editable and searchable. Currently, both is possible, which is quite risky. What happens to the database annotations when a file is modified externally, will the file still be recognised in the built-in viewer? When exporting database annotations as in-PDF, opening and editing elsewhere and reimporting the file, will there be double annotations? Can the external annotations which are usually recognised by Zotfile and attached as notes, instead in the future be „cleaned‘ from the PDF and moved to database annotations? Will other apps such as Zoo (Android Zotero) support database annotations? Can the koreader annotations (which are stored in a secondary file) be converted to database annotations and vice-versa? I don‘t have good answers to all these points but it shows that this is quite an ambitious undertaking.
I just started using the app. I like that we can switch the appearance (I prefer to read white PDFs even though my iPad is in black mode), page transition and scroll direction. What I don't like: - I downloaded a bunch of PDFs to have them on the iPad, but after downloading they all popped open. It would be good to download them in the background without opening after they are downloaded. - When I want to annotate I need to click the "..." to open an additional menu. Here I have two issues. Firstly, I don't like that the menu opens up "small" and then expands which takes nearly 1s. Secondly, I think that colors and a delete button are so frequently used, that they shouldn't be behind this second menu and should be available right after pressing on an annotation.
feedback: I think one of the excellent function for iPad is that it has Apple Pencil. Therefore pls consider adding the iOS build-in pencil toolkit to the PDF editor. Thx to the team.
Upgrade Storage
Edit: iPhone
A feature I REALLY desire is highlighting as convenent as possible because most papers contain the text layers. The beta version so far is wonderful except that the highlight process is cumbersome in a sense... I just want to press the sentence for a short while e.g. 2 seconds to make the sentence get highlighted. Furthermore, color of this highlight annotation should be easily changed through just another click... and no overlapping highlightings of the same color! They should be merged into an annotation.
Thx!
It looks very good.
I can't open pdfs on the iPad. I'm not sure why. I sync files in My Library using Zotero, and sync attachment files in group libraries using Zotero storage.
However, I do currently use Zotfile to transfer files from Zotero to my iPad and back using a Dropbox folder location. Is that the problem?
Is there an error in my web connection or a bug?
I still miss document thumbnails preview (when their is a PDF or website capture) on Zotero and in mobile it would be even more critical.
I'm curious about annotations and further plans for them. Would it be possible to use the iOS (iPadOS?) built-in annotation tool, like when a PDF is opened from "Files"? It has all kinds of tools and settings for writing in the pdf with a pencil. Then these drawings just get saved to the pdf, and are available for any other reader on any platform.
(Otherwise I'm very happy with the app, and so grateful it exists! Makes my life much easier)
I can envision this being realized through the share function of iOS. So first by sharing it to an external pdf reader. After annotating it, I would like to share it back to Zotero and select which item I want this attachment to be linked to, and I would also like to choose whether I want to replace the old attachment with this newly annotated one under this item.
As mentioned by a few others, it would be great to be able to scribble on the PDFs as well, but this is probably hard to implement.
I also agree that some more view options would be nice: fit to with was mentioned above, some other nice examples are used by koreader, such as „fit to column and read column by column“, which essentially turns two-column articles into single column ones.
Another useful view is „recently read articles“ and tabs for multiple articles.
I will buy Zotero storage now and hope the app will be scaling reliably to thousands of articles :) One thing which was always frustrating in Mendeley was that the sync was mysterious on large libraries and if something didn‘t sync, it was very intransparent why not. I trust Zotero will be much better.
Last but not least, I am torn between the in-PDF and the in-database annotations. On the one hand, in-PDF is a lot more flexible, I can use almost any app, in particular also on android. But syncing is much less efficient and PDF standards are very messy. On the other hand, in-database is fast, has more flexibility in remaining editable and searchable. Currently, both is possible, which is quite risky. What happens to the database annotations when a file is modified externally, will the file still be recognised in the built-in viewer? When exporting database annotations as in-PDF, opening and editing elsewhere and reimporting the file, will there be double annotations? Can the external annotations which are usually recognised by Zotfile and attached as notes, instead in the future be „cleaned‘ from the PDF and moved to database annotations? Will other apps such as Zoo (Android Zotero) support database annotations? Can the koreader annotations (which are stored in a secondary file) be converted to database annotations and vice-versa? I don‘t have good answers to all these points but it shows that this is quite an ambitious undertaking.
- I downloaded a bunch of PDFs to have them on the iPad, but after downloading they all popped open. It would be good to download them in the background without opening after they are downloaded.
- When I want to annotate I need to click the "..." to open an additional menu. Here I have two issues. Firstly, I don't like that the menu opens up "small" and then expands which takes nearly 1s. Secondly, I think that colors and a delete button are so frequently used, that they shouldn't be behind this second menu and should be available right after pressing on an annotation.
I think one of the excellent function for iPad is that it has Apple Pencil. Therefore pls consider adding the iOS build-in pencil toolkit to the PDF editor.
Thx to the team.