Highlights for Mac

Highlights extracts highlighted text, notes and image selections from PDFs and lets you share them via email, archive them to shoebox applications such as Evernote, DEVONthink and VoodooPad or just save them to portable formats such as Markdown and HTML.

PDFs are like paper, abundant and made for reading. And like paper, they are typically the end point of creation, making them difficult to edit or interact with. However, many of us like to highlight, comment and make notes on PDFs to give feedback, bring out important parts or summarize the content. If you end up having to go back through PDFs looking for your own notes - Highlights can be of service.

When you open an annotated PDF in Highlights, the annotations are extracted, organized and neatly formatted:
- highlighted text is formatted as quotes
- if there is a note attached to the highlighted text, the note becomes regular text below the quote
- independent note items become italic text
- square selections are turned into images
- notes attached to square selections are used for image captions

You can make edits to your extracted highlights directly using Markdown syntax. You can add further PDF annotations using the built in PDF tools. Lookup metadata and references for scientific articles. Highlights will keep your PDF and Markdown in sync, giving you the freedom to annotate and take notes at the same time. Finally, you can share your highlights via email or save them to Markdown, HTML or Evernote for future reference.