text annotation from macOS preview not showing in zotero desktop 8.0-beta.4+96dd7b16a

foss- · 2025-08-12T10:32:21+00:00

Reproduce
1. open pdf in macOS (15.6) preview app and create a text annotation
2. add pdf to zotero

Currently
On both Android 1.0.0-186 and iOS 2.0.0-372 the annotation does show. Surprisingly on Android the annotation text can even be edited which was not possible on iOS.
The main issue however is, the annotation does not show in Zotero macOS desktop 8.0-beta.4+96dd7b16a at all.

Expected
Show text annotations on all platforms including macOS client.
It would be great if textbox could be moved, which also does not seem possible currently.

poettli · 2025-08-12T10:48:34+00:00

Similar to https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/126052/zotero-8-beta-external-pdf-annotations-strikethrough-not-displaying

martynas_b · 2025-08-12T11:35:21+00:00

Text annotations made with other viewers will become visible again in the next beta update.

dstillman · 2025-08-12T15:49:55+00:00

Fixed now in the latest beta

foss- · 2025-08-16T17:33:40+00:00

Thanks so much for handling this problem so swiftly.

Confirming that in 8.0-beta.6+8df8182f0 the text annotation created in macOS preview.app does show as expected again in Zotero desktop on macOS.

While it is possible to also edit such an annotation on Android that is not possible on macOS Zotero. Should editing text annotations from preview.app be possible on Zotero macOS?

dstillman · 2025-08-16T17:42:28+00:00

File → Import Annotations

Being able to edit them currently on Android is a bug and probably not actually working.

foss- · 2025-08-17T09:47:28+00:00

What should File → Import Annotations do? In my test with the file in question that option is greyed out.

dstillman · 2025-08-18T03:39:22+00:00

If there are supported external annotations in the file, Import Annotations will be active and prompt whether to transfer those from the file into the Zotero database so they can be edited within Zotero. If you see locked annotations in the sidebar, that menu option should be active.

foss- · 2025-08-23T12:23:36+00:00

Thanks for elaborating. You mention that being able to edit third party annotations on android is a bug (covered in https://github.com/zotero/zotero-android/issues/265). Is there any hope that this will be possible? Theoretically it should feasible, correct?

dstillman · 2025-08-23T13:05:37+00:00

In theory, yes, but Import Annotations transfers annotations from the file to the database, and that requires uploading the modified file. The mobile apps currently upload new files when they're added, but since they don't allow files to be edited externally, they don't need to support uploading of modified files, which means they don't need to deal with the possibility of file conflicts from files that were also edited remotely. So we're just able to have a simpler, less error-prone file sync process in those apps.

That said, we'd have to support uploading of modified files in order to support page rotation/deletion/addition, which some people want, so it's possible we'd need to support that anyway at some point.