Mac look up and data detector errors

Labrador4
Hi, I am new to Zotero and am loving it so far. I would like to transition from reading in Apple Preview to Zotero but I am facing some errors when I use the functionality of look ups. Look ups essentially allow you to search through apple dictionary, Siri recommendations and more by tapping a word with three fingers or any other gesture you set up in you trackpad settings on a Mac. When I try and use the functionality, Zotero ends up selecting one or two words behind the word I had clicked. This error seems to be Zotero specific as the look up feature works on web browsers and on Apple Preview. I have attached a screenshot for reference.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u17075724/xuqf33qe2djw8v12nq9z.png
I hope I am posting this at the right place.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited May 5, 2025
    I'll let @martynas_b comment on the feasibility of improving this, but when you say "web browsers", what are you referring to? As far as I can tell, Safari's PDF reader works the same as Preview (unsurprisingly), Firefox's works the same as Zotero's (because Zotero is based on Firefox), and Chrome's doesn't support Look Up at all.
  • Labrador4
    Hi @dstillman, thanks for the response. Regarding the web browsers, I use Brave which is chromium based. When I said the feature works on Web Browsers I meant the general web browsing experience and not the browser PDF readers, for example using the look up feature on Wikipedia gives no errors. I hope that helps.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Right, only the PDF reader is relevant. PDFs have a hidden text layer that may not be perfectly aligned with the visual image. Webpages just have text.
  • Labrador4
    edited May 8, 2025
    Got it @dstillman. Do update me if any progress is made on that front or if I can do anything else from my part to improve the look up functionality on my side.
  • t04dJ14n9
    The misalignment tortures me greatly recently, it would really help me alot to have it fixed.
  • linglongm
    This is definitely a very painful thing. The shifting happens at non-scanned pdf too.
    For example, I hard pressed word "perpetual" on Mac trackpad but actually it selected and looked up word "the".

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u18445059/62wxuxnleft1id2lm64c.png
  • yuxiao.zhu
    I can consistently reproduce this issue across all PDFs I tested, including non-scanned PDFs.
    Some additional observations:
    - Text selection and copying return the correct text.
    - The offset is the same on both the built-in and external displays.
    - The apparent offset remains approximately the same at different PDF zoom levels.
    - The same PDFs work correctly with macOS Look Up in Preview.
    This makes me wonder whether the issue is related not only to PDF text-layer alignment, but also to the coordinate or word-hit-testing interface between Zotero and macOS Look Up.

    Zotero 9.0.6
    MacOS 26.5.2
    Apple Silicon
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