How to Highlight PDFs using Web Highlights

In the last article, we already learned how to use Web Highlights to highlight text on the Internet. We also know how to create tags and notes to find our research quickly and at any time. Furthermore, we learned how to export your findings in a Markdown format to, e.g., Notion or Oblivion. If you haven’t read the article yet, here it is:

How I Use Web Highlights to Highlight Text & Take Notes on the Internet

Boost your productivity by highlighting text on the internet and accessing them from anywhere.

Web Highlights BlogMarius Bongarts

However, Web Highlights does not only offer the possibility to highlight web pages on the Internet. We can also use it in both local and online PDF files.

Highlighting Online PDFs

Using Web Highlights to mark up PDFs that are available online is very easy. All you need to do is go to any PDF URL, such as this sample PDF. Assuming you have the Web Highlights Chrome Extension installed, a “Highlight this PDF” popup will appear:

Once you click it, Web Highlights will format the PDF for you, and you can start highlighting:

Navigating to the web app, we can see that our PDF appears in the list of highlighted pages. Clicking it will show all highlights and notes made within the PDF:

Highlighting Local PDF files

To highlight local PDF files with Web Highlights, a small setting has to be made in the Chrome Extension to allow access to file URLs. But don’t worry, this is very simple, and Web Highlights already provides built-in instructions for this.

For this instruction, let’s download our sample PDF file from earlier to our local machine. Now, we open our sample.pdf file with the Google Chrome browser:

Afterward, the local PDF will be opened in your Google Chrome Browser, and you can click the “Highlight this PDF” popup:

In case it does not appear click the Web Highlights Icon to open the Overview, and the same popup should appear inside this popup:

Once you click the popup, Web Highlights will try to prepare the PDF for you, but an information screen will show you that you need to allow access to file URLs for Web Highlights.

To allow access to file URLs for Web Highlights, you can right-click the Web Highlights icon in the toolbar and choose “Manage extension.” Then enable “Allow access to file URLs.”

Afterward, you can re-visit the local PDF, click the “Highlight this PDF” popup, and start highlighting.

Final Thoughts

I hope I could help you to get started with highlighting PDFs using Web Highlights.

I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism and feedback.

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