[Feature Request] Programmatically create an item from arxiv by opening a link

12f23eddde · 2025-07-31T17:31:21+00:00

Hi Zotero developers! I'm working on an arxiv paper dashboard and it will be great to have a "add to zotero" button. GPT told me zotero://new?url=https://arxiv.org/X/Y does the trick but it did not. Pasted it into the browser, zotero poped up a window, and nothing happened. Looking into the source, I found that zotero does support opening a zotero:// link ( https://github.com/zotero/zotero/blob/19a848484aec2929c1bbafd36d7ca3cf113598d2/chrome/content/zotero/ZoteroProtocolHandler.mjs ) but there is no functionality to create an item from a url. Questions:

1. Is there a way to programmatically add an zotero item (like drag and drop) from a webpage?
2. If not, is there any plans to implement such a feature: zotero://new?url=https://XXXX fetches the pdf document, and drag-and-drops it into zotero?

Thank you!

dstillman · 2025-07-31T17:34:35+00:00

We don't have any current plans to support that in the desktop app, but you can save to the online library:

https://www.zotero.org/save?q=https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00208

adamsmith · 2025-07-31T20:57:26+00:00

See also https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/exposing_metadata for some strategies on making your dashboard work with the Save to Zotero button, which is the expected way to save items to Zotero.