Highlights

Highlights is a PDF reader designed for research on macOS, iPadOS, and iOS. It lets users open PDFs, create annotations, and extract elements such as images, tables, and citations. The app stores annotations as standard PDF annotations, preserving the original file, and can extract the annotated content into notes that can be exported in formats like Markdown, TextBundle, HTML, WebArchive, or PDF.

The software integrates with a range of note‑taking and information‑management tools, including Ulysses, Evernote, DEVONthink, Keep It, nvALT, and Bear, allowing users to send their notes directly to those applications. It also supports dark mode, custom accent colors, and file‑browser access through iOS, browser Finder, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or other sync services, with Handoff enabling seamless continuation across devices.

For academic work, Highlights can automatically locate DOIs for scientific articles, download metadata, and link citations to the corresponding PDFs on the device. The interface includes shortcuts such as double‑tap gestures for the Apple Pencil and default annotation colors to speed up the annotation workflow.