The PDF reader is included in the Zotero beta. You can turn it on from the General pane of the preferences. (In the next beta it will be on by default.)
I use Firefox on a Mac. I'd love it if I could set my default PDF reader to be the Zotero reader. The Zotero reader' seems to be better for copy/paste of text from the PDF than Preview or Acrobat clones. (I r-e-a-l-l-y like the Zotero reader.) Almost all of the times I open a PDF I want to import it to Zotero. Is this feature likely to ever be possible?
edit: I want to open all PDFs in Zotero without needing to drag the file to Zotero.
Firefox allows me to select several options for action when clicking on a PDF. I'd love to have Zotero as one of the options.
Oh, sorry, I may have misunderstood the original request from @v4rrage.
We do plan to make it possible to "open" PDFs via Zotero, which would import them into the library and run metadata retrieval. But Zotero isn't a generic PDF reader, and it doesn't really make sense for it to just be set as the system default unless you actually want to import every PDF you double-click on your system (product manuals, invoices, bus schedules…) into Zotero, which sounds fairly annoying to me.
I'd like the option to set Zotero as the default. For things like invoices that arrive by email I can right-click to save or open the file with another program.
My use of Zotero is more of an edge case but for me the default to open in Zotero would be like having delicious profiteroles for dessert every meal. (Who gets tired of ice cream?)
@DWL-SDCA The Zotero pdf reader is based on pdf.js, which also renders PDFs in Firefox. If the goal is just to read and copy/paste text from a pdf reader (and not to import PDFs into Zotero) and you prefer the Zotero reader, I assume you can just default to opening PDF files in Firefox, which works just fine (at least on my Mac).
@dstillman Sorry for the vague wording, but yes I was asking about whether there already existed a way to "open" PDFs via Zotero. I'm excited that it'll be an option as it makes the most sense with the way I use Zotero. I'll admit I forgot all the other types of PDF documents i go through in my day to day life.
Windows 11 here. If I'm interpreting it right, the OP is asking for a way to open a pdf in the file explorer with zotero pdf reader other than adobe pdf reader, etc. That's also my needs, lol. Since I annotated the research paper pdf in zotero (already existed in the zotero library), and want to open the pdf with the internal zotero pdf reader with my annotations.
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edit: I want to open all PDFs in Zotero without needing to drag the file to Zotero.
Firefox allows me to select several options for action when clicking on a PDF. I'd love to have Zotero as one of the options.
We do plan to make it possible to "open" PDFs via Zotero, which would import them into the library and run metadata retrieval. But Zotero isn't a generic PDF reader, and it doesn't really make sense for it to just be set as the system default unless you actually want to import every PDF you double-click on your system (product manuals, invoices, bus schedules…) into Zotero, which sounds fairly annoying to me.
My use of Zotero is more of an edge case but for me the default to open in Zotero would be like having delicious profiteroles for dessert every meal. (Who gets tired of ice cream?)