Chrome extensions for highlighting PDFs and web pages are widely used productivity tools, helping us sort through the constant flood of online content.
We have reviewed multiple of those online highlighter extensions in the Chrome Web Store and ranked them based on user reviews. Figures below were checked against public Chrome Web Store listings on 2026-09-23.
Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights.
Marius Bongarts
1. Web Highlights - 4.8 ⭐ (5,000+ user ratings)
Web Highlights is the best rated and most loved online highlighter in our review, with an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars from 5,000+ ratings on the Chrome Web Store.
This PDF and Web Highlighter is free and easy to use without signing up. You can not only highlight any webpage on the internet with multiple colors, you can also highlight local PDFs on your computer by opening them in the Chrome browser and using the Web Highlights PDF viewer.
Two things set Web Highlights apart from every other extension in this review. First, you can download a PDF with your highlights embedded as actual PDF annotations — every highlight kept in its color, every note included as a comment — so the file opens editable in Adobe Acrobat, macOS Preview, and any standard PDF reader. Second, it works in reverse: open a PDF you already annotated in Acrobat or Preview, and Web Highlights offers to import those highlights with one click — and offers a quick sync with the new and updated ones whenever the file changes later.
Web Highlights goes beyond just annotating websites and PDFs. It's a complete productivity tool with many great features.
Here are some other cool things you can do with it:
- save pages as bookmarks 🔖
- organize in tags 🏷️ and collections (folders)
- take notes in a rich-text format ✍️
- one-click export to Notion and Capacities (Ultimate plan), plus Copy Markdown for tools like Obsidian 📑
- download PDFs with your highlights embedded as real annotations that open in Adobe Acrobat 📥
- import & sync highlights from PDFs annotated in Acrobat, Preview, or other PDF editors 🔄
- import your Kindle highlights 📚
- set email reminders ⏰
- learn and recall your highlights with spaced repetition 🧠
- use keyboard shortcuts ⚡
- share your research 🔗
- explore & discover what others shared 👥
What users like most about this extension is its easiness in use, its powerful sidebar and its unique tagging functionality .
The "copy to markdown" feature is another really useful one for many users. It lets them easily save their research into common tools like Notion or Obsidian, where many keep their information as a knowledge-base.
You can install the extension here and start highlighting right away. Basic features work without an account — unlimited offline highlighting and bookmarking , notes, and tags — and the extension is ads-free.
Create an account if you want cloud sync and access on app.web-highlights.com . Syncing across devices is free for a 7-day trial; after that, your highlights stay where they are and only syncing stops until you upgrade to Premium or Ultimate. The web app itself stays free.
That means you can try viewing your highlights from any device during the trial. Highlight key points from an article on your computer, then later — for example on a train — reopen those notes and highlights on your phone through the web app while sync is active.
2. Roam Highlighter - 4.6 ⭐ (57 user ratings)
The Roam Highlighter is rated by 57 users with 4.6 out of 5 stars . This one is a rather simple highlighter with fewer features, but it can also help you highlight and clip websites efficiently. The developer has announced work on a successor called Markway; the Roam Highlighter listing remains available as of this check.
The Roam Highlighter offers an easy way to highlight text on a web page and import it to note-taking apps like Roam Research, Obsidian, Logseq or Notion in the format that best suits your workflow.
Here are the features of the Roam Highlighter:
- easily highlight any text on a web page
- adding tags to bring your highlights into context
- customise the format of your copied highlights with placeholders
3. Highlights - 4.2 ⭐ (26 user ratings)
"Highlights" is rated by 26 users with 4.2 out of 5 stars . It's another tool that allows you to highlight, tag and add notes across the Web.
This Chrome highlighter, by Learning Paths, helps you organize your content & notes across the internet. Similar to Web Highlights it provides a dashboard where you can easily access your research in one place. You can search across the highlighted text, tags you have added, and notes you have taken.
Unlike the first two highlighters, you must sign in to use this extension.
4. Snippet Highlighter - 4.2 ⭐ (137 ratings)
The Snippet Highlighter is rated by 137 users with 4.2 out of 5 stars .
This highlighter tool not only allows you to mark up websites and PDFs but also offers a dashboard to gather and sort your notes. Like Web Highlights , you can import your Kindle highlights and use a structured sidebar with an effective search.
In contrast to the first two highlighters in our review, it also requires you to set up an account. While the free version offers numerous features, you'll need to upgrade to the PRO version to access everything it has to offer.
5. Weava Highlighter - 4.0 ⭐ (2,800+ ratings)
The Weava Highlighter is still one of the most widely installed PDF & Web highlighter Chrome extensions, with a rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars from 2,800+ ratings (~200,000 users on the listing).
While Weava has a large user base among the tools in this review, it places fifth here based on the Chrome Web Store average rating. Recent reviews and independent tests also flag ads on the free tier and reliability complaints.
Weava also enables you to highlight websites and PDFs and has a sidebar containing your research. You can also:
- highlight with multiple colors, and
- make annotations and revisit them with a single click
- organise your highlights into folders and sub-folders
- create citations automatically for your highlights
- access your highlights anywhere (account required)
When stacked against top highlighters like Web Highlights and the Roam Highlighter , a notable downside of Weava is the need to create an account to use it.
Additionally, a growing number of users are voicing concerns about excessive ads, which hamper the user experience and bring down its ratings.
Final Thoughts
In our review, we have two clear options when it comes to highlighting websites and PDFs in your browser:
If you want a top-notch productivity tool that sets email reminders, has learning features, downloads PDFs with your highlights embedded as real annotations (and imports the ones you made in Acrobat), and lets you export to Notion and Capacities (Ultimate plan) or use Copy Markdown for tools like Obsidian — and you can sync across devices on a paid plan after a 7-day trial — then Web Highlights is the way to go.
On the other hand, if you just want a simple way to highlight stuff on websites and send it over to apps like Notion, then the Roam Highlighter is a great choice too.
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Marius Bongarts
