Zotero 9 MacBook iPad workflow

nccomfort
Hello, friends,
Here's my situation:

I'm a historian of science w/ 30 years of bibliographic refs. Zotero is my daily WORKHORSE (14+k references, 11.6 GB of attached PDFs + metadata). I want my iPad Zotero to exactly reflect my desktop Zotero, in ± real time when I'm on wifi. I want to open my iPad, see the book I just entered into my MacBook Zotero, open and annotate any attached PDFs on the iPad, and when I save and close, go back to my MacBook Z. and see the changes reflected. It would be super-cool if it also worked the other way—if I could add refs + PDFs to iPad Zotero and have them sync w/ desktop.

My question:
Can I do this by keeping my PDFs in Dropbox, as I've done for years? Or is Zotero's own storage the only reliable, convenient way? Should I just fork for the Zotero cloud storage, or can cheapskate me find a viable workaround?

Thanks to anyone who responds and apologies if this question has been answered before with the current versions of the software,

Nathaniel
  • adamsmith
    No, you can't do this with Dropbox. You _can_ likely find a WebDAV that will sync your files to the app and is cheaper than Zotero unlimited
  • nccomfort
    thanks, adamsmith--appreciate your reply.

    To clarify, you mean that not even Zotero Unlimited will allow me to do what I want? In other words, that WebDav is the ONLY way to do what I want?

    Or are you saying that I could do it either w/ Zotero Unltd or WebDav, but that WebDav is the most economical way?

    Any Rx on WebDav servers for Mac that work with Dropbox gleefully accepted! I did find this on GitHub (https://github.com/nicolascomete/macos-webdav) but don't know how to install it. Sorry for being such a bonehead--I'm an old fart whose programming skills are way out of date.

    many thanks,
  • adamsmith
    edited today at 4:22pm
    Or are you saying that I could do it either w/ Zotero Unltd or WebDav, but that WebDav is the most economical way?
    This -- both work, Zotero unlimited is going to be more convenient, but you'll be able to do WebDAV more cheaply.

    You don't want to install a webDAV server unless you're running your own server.
    Some institutions run their own WebDAV -- for anyone already running a server it's pretty easy to set up -- otherwise find an affordable commercial provider. I believe Koofr is the most popular one people use: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/webdav_services

    edit: pretty sure there's no way to get a webDAV running on top of Dropbox, no
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