Annotations not synced from iOS app

dstillman Zotero Team
This discussion was created from comments split from: Announcing Zotero 6 and Zotero for iOS.
  • a92866480
    Hi thanks for the great work! I just downloaded the ios app and tried making annotation there. But the annotation are not synced, i.e. they are not seen on my mac, with the desktop app.
    It is perfectly synced the other way round. Is it a bug or something to do with my setting?
    Besides, looking forward to having the tags displayed in the directory of ios app :)
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Are you using the built-in PDF reader in Zotero 6 on the desktop?
  • mingmingisme
    I met the same problem. When I opened Zotero for iPadOS and logged in with my account, the synced files could be downloaded on my iPad and the highlights marked on my pdfs could be displayed. But if I add some new highlights to a certain pdf on my iPad, the changes cannot be seen on my Zotero for PC (which has been updated to Zotero 6) after I clicked "sync" button on my PC. Actually there's no such a button for syncing on the panel of iPad version.

    I'm not sure if this is a still existing problem, so I seek for help here and wonder how this problem can be solved.

    Thanks a lot!
  • CSPayton
    I see what @dstillman is getting at: I prefer Acrobat as my Mac's (device A) default PDF reader (OCR baby), and I wasn't seeing my IOS (device B) annotations showing up in Adobe Acrobat. However, when I switched device A to the in-house PDF reader, I saw Device B's annotations. That...is frustrating. Is it possible for A) PDFs to be able to be opened up in a third-party app (e.g., PDF reader) on IOS so that the file can be copied like usual, including all annotations? or B) for the annotations to impact the actual file like all other PDF readers? Meaning, if I annotate in IOS, it shows up in all other PDF readers, not just Zotero?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    @CSPayton: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/annotations_in_database
  • CSPayton
    @dstillman Thank you for that link! OK, I've read each word of that link as closely as I can, and it answered many of my questions. The one question I have remaining (and I may not have understood) is if there is a way to "embed" or "sync" the Zotero annotations with the PDF file so that, with just one "refresh" or "sync" button, the PDFs would be readable across all third-party PDF readers. So, when I read on my iPad through the IOS app, I can hit one button in my library so I can use Acrobat on my desktop after the sync. Right now, it looks like there's just an option to export the file — I'd like for Zotero to save over the internally stored file.

    Does that function exist?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    No — the point is that there's no good way to support such a workflow, which is why the annotations are stored in the database to begin with. From the page:
    (Early versions of Zotero 6 included a “Store Annotations in File…” option as well, but it could result in file conflicts and lost data, and it was removed.)
  • joannarmathias
    Annotations I make on my ipad are not available on my desktop despite the fact that I have automatic data and file syncing on, pay for ample zotero storage, etc. Is the conclusion of this thread that annotations are not going to sync?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited May 31, 2023
    @joannarmathias: Annotations made on the iPad of course sync to the desktop, but they'll only show up in the built-in PDF reader. If you've configured Zotero to use an external PDF reader, they won't show up, as explained in Annotations in Database.

    If you're not seeing annotations in the built-in PDF reader on the desktop, see Changes Not Syncing and start a new thread with the requested info.
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