This is a big one. In the latest Zotero 7 beta, we’ve introduced a major redesign of Zotero, as well as a new app icon. This redesign represents a monumental effort from the entire team, and we couldn’t be more excited to finally share it.

We’ve tried to create a beautiful, modern design that will still feel familiar to long-time Zotero users. And, yes, there’s a dark mode.

As part of the redesign, we’ve taken the opportunity to rethink some core elements of Zotero. One of the biggest changes is in the item pane, where we’ve replaced the horizontal tabs (Info, Tags, Notes, etc.) with collapsible vertical sections and a side navigation bar for quick access to specific sections. This approach allows us to show additional information right in the item pane without compromising usability. Plugins will also be able to easily create dedicated sections with custom information or actions.

We now offer two UI density options, Compact and Comfortable. Compact resembles the previous density, while Comfortable, the new default, provides a more approachable experience for new users with smaller libraries or people who just prefer a bit more breathing room.

The new design also incorporates a number of long-standing feature requests:

• Collection search
• An open-tabs menu, with tab search and fast tab closing/reordering
• Attachment previews in the item pane (currently for PDFs, EPUBs, webpage snapshots, and images)
• A new item-pane section showing the collections and libraries an item is in
• Improved keyboard access and better support for screen readers (with more improvements to come)

And, of course, dark mode. We know dark mode is important to many people, so we wanted to do it right: every part of the new design was created with dark mode in mind. (We might have missed a few existing components, which we'll fix soon.) By default, Zotero will match your operating system’s current state, but you can override that from the settings. We’ve also implemented preliminary dark-mode support for PDF and EPUB content, and we’ll be refining our approach there as people begin testing it on more documents. There’s an option to disable dark mode for content from the reader’s View menu.

Finally, to complete the look, we’ve created a delightful new app icon. If you’re on Windows, the easiest way to make sure you see the new icon is to re-run the installer — Windows has a bad habit of showing cached versions of icons.

Note that some plugins might not work properly with the new design, so please be prepared to disable them if you run into trouble. You can use Help → “Restart in Troubleshooting Mode…” to quickly restart with all plugins temporarily disabled and check if the problem you’re seeing goes away. If you do encounter a problem, be sure to report it to the plugin developer ASAP.

We’re still fixing bugs and fine-tuning things, so expect to see improvements leading up to the Zotero 7 release and beyond, and let us know if you run into any problems or have other feedback. Please start new threads here in the forums for any specific issues, and be sure to include “Zotero 7 Beta” in your thread title.

You can install the beta from the Beta Builds page. For more details on Zotero 7, see the initial beta announcement and the announcement of the updated reader.

We hope you enjoy it!