I find the app a great, fundamental, addition to my work flow. Some quick feedback on the iOS app so far: * would be cool to download the papers, without having to open them * would be nice to be able to download an entire collection, if not the library, in one batch * (this applies to the beta PDF as well), open different papers in different tabs and * (this applies to the beta PDF as well), remember for each session what was opened, without the need to reopen them manually * (this applies to the beta PDF as well), export a "flattened" PDF version, i.e. with the notes and highlights embedded in the file ...
My two cents, but so far so good ... you are on an excellent track!
I have to agree. I like the beta a lot (though I'm having trouble getting pdfs to appear as swiftly as I want them after adding ), but I am hankering to annotate. I'm using the pencil but I want to do more than highlight. Also the highlighting is a little dark. Thanks!
I LOVE this so far! I agree that like I would to have more options with the pencil like underline or being able to write in the margins. Also handwriting to text would be ideal. I appreciate the option for speak - it makes it easier to use just one app for all my needs instead of 3!
First, thank you so so much for this! I've been using Zotero almost since the beginning, and as an avid fan and evangelist, want to congratulate the team for all the exciting work over the past few years - the improved PDF metadata, improved design of the web library, iOS app and PDF annotations are all fantastic.
I agree with everyone else that the app even in beta form has surpassed my expectations. The app solves two key pain points in my Zotero workflow - saving from the browser to Zotero directly, and reading and annotating PDFs. I'm especially impressed at how the design neatly simplifies the Zotero interface in an iOS-friendly way - it's mostly extremely intuitive to use if you are moving from Zotero desktop.
Here are my thoughts after testing:
Bugs: I have quite a few Zotero libraries and when syncing, Zotero initially crashed repeatedly. It would restart again and progress syncing, and as it seemed to occur when my iPad went to sleep, I tried changing the auto-lock setting. It turned out it was on the longest timer (15 mins) but I couldn't change it to 'Never' because I was syncing my work email on an Exchange server. When I disconnected that account, the sync completed - I can't be sure though that was the reason, as I was already most of the way through, but perhaps if someone else reports this that would be worth checking.
Zotero annotations sync: I feel like I'm missing something obvious here here, but I've highlighted and made comments in the PDF and installed the Zotero beta on desktop, but I'm still not seeing either the highlights or comments on the desktop although it is synced. (I did have some initial troubles getting the beta to sync, but I don't think these are related to the iOS app).
Highlighting: I have an iPad mini, and found that occasionally highlighting didn't work - I would highlight a couple of lines and try to highlight a half-line, and either it wouldn't highlight or would trigger highlighting of previous paragraphs. I tried using a stylus but this also worked. I zoomed the PDF which seemed to help, but is a little disruptive to the workflow to zoom in and out. It seemed to be most effective though when I used the 'select text' feature in ioS and then chose the 'highlight text' option in the pop-up, rather than using the highlighter at the top first to highlight (which was less user-friendly, as you have to remember to deselect it before navigating).
Features: With the 'save to Zotero', I have several libraries and mostly save to a group library. I can navigate to the library and save it, but it would be useful to either have a search function or be able to default to my most-used library to speed up the entry. I agree with others that adding tags here would be great.
Search: I understand it makes sense to have a more limited search functionality on the iPad, but as part of my workflow now I create a saved search (in a group library) of everything tagged 'to read', and then duplicate it to My Library to use Zotfile to extract annotations. It would be great if I didn't have to do that extra step of duplicating and could somehow pull out the saved search, although I appreciate that since the online library now doesn't allow for saved searches that might not be possible. However, the online library does have a tag library, which would be a great addition.
Dragging between libraries: I tried to drag files into 'My Library' - it appeared to 'drag' but didn't 'drop'. I'm not sure if this is planned functionality, but would be great.
PDF v Zotero annotations: I'm not really clear on the functionality of the annotations (since I can't manage to make them appear on my synced version) and whether they extract into Notes, as Zotfile does, but I find that my main use case for Zotero and would probably prefer the annotations to be extracted the way Zotfile uses it (in my dream world, with an option for splitting the annotations if you have a lot of them). I'm not quite sure how the in-PDF annotations work to enable searching of the comments using a standard Zotero search.
Minor comments: I still don't know what the middle annotation button does (in between highlight and comment). I also feel like the comment icon could be more obvious.
Another suggestion is to have the ability to add an item with an identifier (e.g., DOI, ISBN) as in the zotero.org/save functionality (and wand in desktop). This will help when the Share function fails or grabs the wrong info from a web entry (e.g., I tried to share a book entry but the function wanted to grab individual chapters). Having a fixed solution in the app could act as a backup.
I wonder whether an Android-App is also planned with these features?
I have a Galaxy Tab S6 LTE (great tablet, btw.), which I want to use for research, especially with new zotero-features this might be a great boost for productivity.
Following up on my long post before - Just installed this now on my iPhone 12 mini and it crashed only once this time, bug report ID 905482601. The phone also has an exchange server linked so I’ll try on an older device which isn’t linked.
Also on installing again I see I didn’t read the bit about setting preferences in Zotero beta to sync annotations - thought I must have missed something. Will try again after I’ve done that.
While I’m unlikely to do much with Zotero on my phone, I do a lot of scanning of material so it’s fantastic having the Zotero connector to link it with the library. It looks fantastic too.
Hi. Thank you for your excellent job on the iOS app. It is really great!
Here are a few comments from my testing.
Selecting an item: I am confused by the response after clicking on an item because it depends on whether the item has attachments. Without an attachment the item details are presented and with attachment the document is (downloaded) and opened. I’d welcome if the response remains consistent, e.g., always getting the item details after clicking the item and opening the attachment by clicking on the file icon. Adjustment of item caption: It would be great if the item captions in the list could be adjusted by the user. I really would like to add a call number next to the year.
Search bar: It is not clear for me which fields are covered by the search. However, I strongly hope that we will be able to search in all fields in the future.
Sort by: - Please add also the missing fields to the selection. - If you select "select", what purpose has the middle button at the bottom?
Tag view: Similar to the desktop and web version a tag windows would be very helpful.
Removing downloaded attachments: There is only the option to remove all downloaded attachments. A way to filter on the items with downloaded attachments and the option to multiselect items which attachments should be deleted from the iPad would be very nice.
Settings: There should be some help on what "delete temporary files" means. When is that useful? Can you lose (not synced) data?
Left sidebar: At least with a large iPad the left sidebar is taking too much space. On the other hand, if you have several sub-collections, everything could get cramped. Maybe it would be better if the sidebar is not so wide and that sub-collection are handled similar to the web library (instead of unfolding).
Item detail page: - The caption and text of the entries is vertically not fully aligned. - If the text has more than one line, the caption is presented at the bottom. I think top would look better. - Line breaks are not shown properly. - Bug: In edit mode the text in the abstract field vanishes and further the field could not be selected or edited. - The process of adding an non-existing tag is confusing: If you enter the new tag in the “search tags” field, the „save“ in the upper right corner gives you the wrong impression that you can save this new tag to the item. But it's not, you have to press enter first. There seems to be a bug because sometimes the new entered tag replaces an already existing one.
I haven't had any crashes on either the desktop (macOS) app or the iPad app. I did switch from WebDAV to Zotero for my attachments. The syncing of attachments both to the web and from the web to the iPad is hit or miss. I've had some success by moving items between collections (I have only one library) to get attachments to sync between the web and the iPad app, but it's not consistent.
My suggestions: 1. Allow users to annotate with native pdf annotation. The included PDF annotation tools does not support drawing. However, for me at least, the whole point for reading PDF on iPad is that I can drawing. 2. Allow latex in the comment. 3. When add an external pdf from another app to Zotero library through the share menu, allow user to link the pdf to an existing item.
Bugs: 1. After selecting text, the "share" button in the popup bubble menu does not work.
Thanks to everyone for the comments, bug reports, and feature requests. This thread is getting a bit unwieldy, so we're going to close it, but please feel free to start new threads for other issues. Be sure to put "iOS" in the title so it's clear what you're referring to.
We're tracking everything that's been posted here, so don't worry if you haven't received a response, and keep an eye on upcoming beta builds for many more fixes and improvements. We'll pull out comments into new threads for further discussion as necessary.
Upgrade Storage
* would be cool to download the papers, without having to open them
* would be nice to be able to download an entire collection, if not the library, in one batch
* (this applies to the beta PDF as well), open different papers in different tabs and
* (this applies to the beta PDF as well), remember for each session what was opened, without the need to reopen them manually
* (this applies to the beta PDF as well), export a "flattened" PDF version, i.e. with the notes and highlights embedded in the file ...
My two cents, but so far so good ... you are on an excellent track!
Also the highlighting is a little dark.
Thanks!
I agree with everyone else that the app even in beta form has surpassed my expectations. The app solves two key pain points in my Zotero workflow - saving from the browser to Zotero directly, and reading and annotating PDFs. I'm especially impressed at how the design neatly simplifies the Zotero interface in an iOS-friendly way - it's mostly extremely intuitive to use if you are moving from Zotero desktop.
Here are my thoughts after testing:
Bugs: I have quite a few Zotero libraries and when syncing, Zotero initially crashed repeatedly. It would restart again and progress syncing, and as it seemed to occur when my iPad went to sleep, I tried changing the auto-lock setting. It turned out it was on the longest timer (15 mins) but I couldn't change it to 'Never' because I was syncing my work email on an Exchange server. When I disconnected that account, the sync completed - I can't be sure though that was the reason, as I was already most of the way through, but perhaps if someone else reports this that would be worth checking.
Zotero annotations sync: I feel like I'm missing something obvious here here, but I've highlighted and made comments in the PDF and installed the Zotero beta on desktop, but I'm still not seeing either the highlights or comments on the desktop although it is synced. (I did have some initial troubles getting the beta to sync, but I don't think these are related to the iOS app).
Highlighting: I have an iPad mini, and found that occasionally highlighting didn't work - I would highlight a couple of lines and try to highlight a half-line, and either it wouldn't highlight or would trigger highlighting of previous paragraphs. I tried using a stylus but this also worked. I zoomed the PDF which seemed to help, but is a little disruptive to the workflow to zoom in and out. It seemed to be most effective though when I used the 'select text' feature in ioS and then chose the 'highlight text' option in the pop-up, rather than using the highlighter at the top first to highlight (which was less user-friendly, as you have to remember to deselect it before navigating).
Features: With the 'save to Zotero', I have several libraries and mostly save to a group library. I can navigate to the library and save it, but it would be useful to either have a search function or be able to default to my most-used library to speed up the entry. I agree with others that adding tags here would be great.
Search: I understand it makes sense to have a more limited search functionality on the iPad, but as part of my workflow now I create a saved search (in a group library) of everything tagged 'to read', and then duplicate it to My Library to use Zotfile to extract annotations. It would be great if I didn't have to do that extra step of duplicating and could somehow pull out the saved search, although I appreciate that since the online library now doesn't allow for saved searches that might not be possible. However, the online library does have a tag library, which would be a great addition.
Dragging between libraries: I tried to drag files into 'My Library' - it appeared to 'drag' but didn't 'drop'. I'm not sure if this is planned functionality, but would be great.
PDF v Zotero annotations: I'm not really clear on the functionality of the annotations (since I can't manage to make them appear on my synced version) and whether they extract into Notes, as Zotfile does, but I find that my main use case for Zotero and would probably prefer the annotations to be extracted the way Zotfile uses it (in my dream world, with an option for splitting the annotations if you have a lot of them). I'm not quite sure how the in-PDF annotations work to enable searching of the comments using a standard Zotero search.
Minor comments: I still don't know what the middle annotation button does (in between highlight and comment). I also feel like the comment icon could be more obvious.
I wonder whether an Android-App is also planned with these features?
I have a Galaxy Tab S6 LTE (great tablet, btw.), which I want to use for research, especially with new zotero-features this might be a great boost for productivity.
Also on installing again I see I didn’t read the bit about setting preferences in Zotero beta to sync annotations - thought I must have missed something. Will try again after I’ve done that.
While I’m unlikely to do much with Zotero on my phone, I do a lot of scanning of material so it’s fantastic having the Zotero connector to link it with the library. It looks fantastic too.
Here are a few comments from my testing.
Selecting an item: I am confused by the response after clicking on an item because it depends on whether the item has attachments. Without an attachment the item details are presented and with attachment the document is (downloaded) and opened. I’d welcome if the response remains consistent, e.g., always getting the item details after clicking the item and opening the attachment by clicking on the file icon.
Adjustment of item caption: It would be great if the item captions in the list could be adjusted by the user. I really would like to add a call number next to the year.
Search bar: It is not clear for me which fields are covered by the search. However, I strongly hope that we will be able to search in all fields in the future.
Sort by: - Please add also the missing fields to the selection.
- If you select "select", what purpose has the middle button at the bottom?
Tag view: Similar to the desktop and web version a tag windows would be very helpful.
Removing downloaded attachments: There is only the option to remove all downloaded attachments. A way to filter on the items with downloaded attachments and the option to multiselect items which attachments should be deleted from the iPad would be very nice.
Settings: There should be some help on what "delete temporary files" means. When is that useful? Can you lose (not synced) data?
Left sidebar: At least with a large iPad the left sidebar is taking too much space. On the other hand, if you have several sub-collections, everything could get cramped. Maybe it would be better if the sidebar is not so wide and that sub-collection are handled similar to the web library (instead of unfolding).
Item detail page:
- The caption and text of the entries is vertically not fully aligned.
- If the text has more than one line, the caption is presented at the bottom. I think top would look better.
- Line breaks are not shown properly.
- Bug: In edit mode the text in the abstract field vanishes and further the field could not be selected or edited.
- The process of adding an non-existing tag is confusing: If you enter the new tag in the “search tags” field, the „save“ in the upper right corner gives you the wrong impression that you can save this new tag to the item. But it's not, you have to press enter first. There seems to be a bug because sometimes the new entered tag replaces an already existing one.
Thanks again!
Michael
1. Allow users to annotate with native pdf annotation. The included PDF annotation tools does not support drawing. However, for me at least, the whole point for reading PDF on iPad is that I can drawing.
2. Allow latex in the comment.
3. When add an external pdf from another app to Zotero library through the share menu, allow user to link the pdf to an existing item.
Bugs:
1. After selecting text, the "share" button in the popup bubble menu does not work.
We're tracking everything that's been posted here, so don't worry if you haven't received a response, and keep an eye on upcoming beta builds for many more fixes and improvements. We'll pull out comments into new threads for further discussion as necessary.