# Web Highlights Blog > Web Highlights is a PDF & web highlighter browser extension and web app used by 300,000+ readers, researchers, and students to highlight text on any website, PDF, or YouTube video, take notes, and organize research with tags and flashcards. --- # Top 10 Chrome Text to Speech Extensions: The Great Comparison > Compare the 10 best text to speech extensions for Chrome — GPT Reader, Helperbird, Speechify, Read Aloud and more — by free tier, voices and privacy. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-10-11 - Updated: 2026-10-11 - Tags: Chrome Extension, comparison, Reading - Reading time: 24 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-text-to-speech-chrome-extensions/ --- The best text to speech extension for Chrome right now is GPT Reader. It reads web pages, PDFs and Google Docs in ChatGPT’s voices, doesn’t cap free listening and scores 8.88/10 on Tooltivity. Helperbird (8.33) is the better pick when reading itself is hard work, and Speechify (8.00) is the most complete reader if you’re willing to pay. If all you want is the free classic, Read Aloud has 6,000,000 users and needs no account, though its voices are plainer. There is a point in every long article where your eyes stop working. You reach the bottom of a paragraph and realise nothing went in, so you scroll back up and start it again. A text to speech extension takes the reading off your eyes: you listen while you walk, cook or commute. For a long time, browser speech sounded like a robot reading a phone book. The better extensions now use AI voices that pause at commas and hold a sentence together. The category has also split into four kinds of tool: readers for the page in front of you, document readers built for PDFs, accessibility suites aimed at dyslexia, and voice tools for teachers. This comparison ranks the ten text to speech extensions Tooltivity has reviewed on the Chrome Web Store. Read side by side, their listings and recent reviews show that the voices matter less than three other things: whether the tool reads the page you’re on or sends your text somewhere else, what the free tier gives you before it stops, and whether the extension opens reliably. On that last point, the one with 19,000,000 users does worst. ### Key takeaways - **GPT Reader** (8.88/10) leads on free listening: ChatGPT’s voices with no character cap. As of October, audio downloads, seeking and speeds above 1.5x need its Pro plan. - **Helperbird** (8.33) is the accessibility pick, with an Immersive Reader, dyslexia fonts, a reading ruler and colour overlays. Its listing prices Pro at $30 a year. - **Speechify** (8.00) is the most complete reader: 1,000 voices in 60+ languages, according to its listing. Its last 100 reviews average 4.40, up from 4.18 a month ago. - **Read Aloud** (7.33) is the free classic: 6,000,000 users, 40+ languages and no account, with plainer voices unless you connect a paid cloud provider. - **Mind where your text goes** – Selection Reader speaks with the browser’s own engine, so nothing is uploaded. ElevenReader adds the page to your account on its own service before it reads it. - **Reach isn’t quality** – Read&Write has 19,000,000 users and a 2.22 average across its last 100 reviews, the lowest of the ten. How this list was made: the scores come from Tooltivity, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each extension from its Chrome Web Store listing, its ratings and what recent reviews report, and this list is ordered by that score. I haven’t tested these ten hands-on, so the descriptions below summarize each listing and what its users report. The store numbers were read from the Chrome Web Store on October 11, 2026; where I compare them with “a month ago”, that is Tooltivity’s crawl from early September. Web Highlights isn’t in the list because it doesn’t read text aloud. ### List of the Best Text to Speech Extensions for Chrome: - [GPT Reader: Free AI Text to Speech](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech) - [Helperbird: Dyslexia & Accessibility Tools](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/helperbird) - [Speechify — Text to Speech](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/speechify-text-to-speech) - [Mote for Google Chrome™](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/mote-voice-notes) - [Read Aloud TTS: Text to Speech AI Voice Generator](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator) - [Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader) - [NaturalReader - AI Text to Speech](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) - [Selection Reader (Text to Speech)](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/selection-reader-text-to-speech) - [ElevenReader — Text Reader by ElevenLabs](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs) - [Read&Write for Google Chrome™](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-and-write-for-google-chrome) If you prefer a comparison overview, check out the [full comparison table of all Chrome text to speech extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/text-to-speech/chrome): ![Comparison table of all Chrome text to speech extensions with Tooltivity ratings, user counts and store ratings](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/screenshot-text-to-speech-comparison-extensions.webp) *Comparison of all Chrome Text to Speech Extensions* ## Can Chrome read a page aloud without an extension? Yes. Chrome on desktop has a reading mode with a Play button. Right-click a page and choose “Open in reading mode”, or press Alt + Shift + R (Command + Option + R on a Mac), then press Play. You can change the voice and the playback speed and choose how the spoken text is highlighted. [Google’s help page](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/14218344?hl=en) also lists the limits: reading mode isn’t available on every website, and it may not work as expected on forms, image galleries and some video or forum sites. So try that first. The extensions below earn their place when you need what it lacks: PDFs and Google Docs, more natural voices, audio you can take with you, or reading aids such as dyslexia fonts and overlays. And if the clutter on the page is the real problem, a [reader mode extension](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-5-reader-mode-chrome-extensions-for-focused-reading/) is the lighter fix. ## [1\. GPT Reader: Free AI Text to Speech](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech) ![GPT Reader in Chrome’s right-click menu, with a “Read Aloud Using GPT Reader” entry on selected text](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech/images/gallery-image-1.webp) GPT Reader is one of the two smallest tools in this comparison and the one that scores highest. It has 30,000 users and a 4.55-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 228 ratings, and its recent reviews hold close to that, as evidenced by its 4.48 rating for the last 100 reviews against 4.43 across the last 500. The store now lists it under a longer name, “ChatGPT Reader/Transcriber: Free AI Text to Speech/Speech to Text (TTS/STT)”. The idea is that it borrows ChatGPT’s voices instead of building its own. You sign in with a ChatGPT account, and it reads web pages, PDFs, Google Docs and pasted text. The same panel transcribes a recording back into text. Listening on the free version has no character cap. What has changed since the summer is the paywall. Tooltivity’s review, updated on October 5, notes that audio downloads, playback above 1.5x and jumping around with the seek bar now belong to a Pro subscription. The store listing still calls the extension “completely free to use” with “a premium tier for more serious users”, so check what the free version includes before you count on the download. ### Key Features - **ChatGPT Voices** – natural-sounding AI speech that runs through your own ChatGPT account - **Document Support** – reads PDFs, Google Docs and ordinary web content from one panel - **Audio Download** – saves the generated speech as a file for offline listening; the full download options are part of Pro - **Speech to Text** – transcribes recordings back into text, so one extension covers both directions - **Playback Controls** – adjustable speed, pause and rewind, with speeds above 1.5x reserved for Pro - **Multi-Format Input** – works with pasted text, uploaded documents and the page you’re on ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Audio download for offline listening (full options on Pro) - High-quality, natural-sounding voice output - Unlimited free listening - Supports multiple document formats **Cons:** - Requires ChatGPT registration - Limited functionality with large documents - Seeking and fast speeds are paid - Rating pop-up on every session ### Who is this great for? GPT Reader is perfect for anyone who already has a ChatGPT account and doesn’t want a second subscription just to have things read to them. Free listening with no cap is rare in this list. It’s especially great for users who read articles and study notes more than whole books. Its reviewers report that very large documents can trip it up, and ChatGPT’s own hourly request limit still applies. ### Compared to others Against [NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech), which also exports audio, GPT Reader has the looser free tier: NaturalReader’s listing limits its premium voices to 20 minutes a day. [Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/speechify-text-to-speech) covers more formats and languages, and the price of its paid plan is the complaint that comes up most in its reviews. And where [ElevenReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs) saves your page to its own service to read it, GPT Reader sends the text through your own ChatGPT account. ### Detailed comparisons [GPT Reader vs NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech-vs-naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) • [GPT Reader vs Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech-vs-speechify-text-to-speech) • [ElevenReader vs GPT Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs-vs-gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech) ### Rating Summary 30,000 users is modest, but a 4.55 rating from 228 ratings with 4.48 across the last 100 reviews is one of the steadiest scorecards in this comparison. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave GPT Reader: Free AI Text to Speech a score of **8.88/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech). ## [2\. Helperbird: Dyslexia & Accessibility Tools](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/helperbird) ![Helperbird’s accessibility panel open next to a web page, with coloured sticky notes and a reading toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/helperbird/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Helperbird has 500,000 users and a 4.59-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 175 ratings, and recent feedback is holding up, as evidenced by its 4.51 rating for the last 100 reviews. A month ago the store showed 400,000 users. It also has a Firefox build, though a much smaller one. This is the broadest tool here by a distance. Alongside reading text aloud, it offers an Immersive Reader that strips a cluttered page down to legible text, dyslexia-friendly fonts, letter and line spacing controls, a reading ruler, colour overlays, OCR, a summariser and annotation tools, and it applies them to PDFs as well as web pages. That is much of what [Read&Write](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-and-write-for-google-chrome) promises, from a small independent developer, and its reviews don’t carry Read&Write’s complaints about a toolbar that fails to load. The honest caveat is that speech is its weakest part. Reviewers describe the voices as serviceable but not excellent, and the speed controls are thinner than a dedicated reader’s. ### Key Features - **Immersive Reader** – reformats any page into clean, adjustable reading text, then reads from that instead of the raw page - **Dyslexia Support** – OpenDyslexic and similar fonts, letter and line spacing, and a reading ruler to hold your place - **Colour Overlays and Tints** – page tinting that reduces visual stress for Irlen syndrome and scotopic sensitivity - **Text to Speech** – reads a selection or a whole page, across web pages and PDFs - **Built-In PDF Reader** – applies the same accessibility tooling to PDFs instead of sending you elsewhere - **OCR** – pulls readable text out of images and scanned documents so they can be read aloud - **Highlighter and Sticky Notes** – annotate a page and export what you marked - **AI Summariser** – condenses a long page before you commit to reading it ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Excellent Immersive Reader mode - Deep, genuine dyslexia tooling - All-in-one accessibility toolkit - Responsive, engaged developer - Works on web pages and PDFs **Cons:** - Speech voices are only adequate - Limited speed customisation - Best features need a Pro plan - Settings occasionally fail to save - Small Firefox build lags Chrome ### Who is this great for? Helperbird is perfect for anyone whose reason for being in this category is accessibility more than convenience. If reading takes real effort because of dyslexia, visual stress or a processing difficulty, the fonts, spacing, rulers and overlays do more for you than better voices would. It’s especially great for users who’d otherwise install four extensions. Reformatting, tinting, summarising, annotating and reading aloud all come from one panel. According to Tooltivity’s review, the free tier covers the fonts, the ruler, the overlays, basic text to speech and the Immersive Reader, and the listing prices Pro at $30 a year. ### Compared to others The direct rival is [Read&Write](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-and-write-for-google-chrome), which has a comparable toolkit and an institutional licence, and whose last 100 reviews average 2.22. [NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) and [Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/speechify-text-to-speech) both get better marks for their voices if listening is the whole job, but neither offers reading aids like these. ### Detailed comparisons [Helperbird vs Read&Write](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/helperbird-vs-read-and-write-for-google-chrome) • [Helperbird vs NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/helperbird-vs-naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) • [Helperbird vs Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/helperbird-vs-speechify-text-to-speech) ### Rating Summary 500,000 users, a 4.59 rating from 175 ratings and 4.51 across the last 100 reviews describe a small product with a loyal audience. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Helperbird: Dyslexia & Accessibility Tools a score of **8.33/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/helperbird). ## [3\. Speechify — Text to Speech](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/speechify-text-to-speech) ![Speechify’s floating player reading a news article aloud, with speed and voice controls in a side toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/speechify-text-to-speech/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Speechify is the name most people find first, and its numbers explain why: 1,000,000 users and a 4.58-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 22,689 ratings, a count no other reader here comes close to. The recent picture has improved, as evidenced by its 4.40 rating for the last 100 reviews. A month ago that figure was 4.18, and much of the lift comes from a run of short five-star reviews in September. What you get is the most complete reading experience in this list. Its listing promises 1,000 voices in 60+ languages for Google Docs, PDFs, web pages and books. It highlights each word as it speaks and scrolls the page to follow. Two themes run through its reviews. The first is focus: a large share of the praise comes from students and people with ADHD or dyslexia, who say it got them through reading they would otherwise have abandoned. The second is price, the most common complaint, along with pop-ups that push the upgrade. ### Key Features - **Natural AI Voices** – 1,000 voices across 60+ languages, per its store listing - **Reads Almost Anything** – web pages, Google Docs, PDFs, emails and ebooks without exporting the text first - **Follow-Along Highlighting** – highlights each word as it’s spoken and scrolls the page with it - **Speed Control** – ramps well past normal talking pace, which is the point for reading in volume - **Skip and Scrub** – jump by sentence or paragraph instead of restarting a long article - **Cross-Device Sync** – hand a document between the extension and the mobile app - **OCR on Scanned Text** – pulls readable text out of scanned PDFs and images - **Multilingual Switching** – changes voice to match the language it meets mid-page ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Best-in-class natural AI voices - Big focus gain for ADHD and dyslexia - Reads PDFs, Docs and web pages - Follow-along word highlighting - Genuinely usable free tier - Responsive customer support **Cons:** - Premium price is the top complaint - Settings can reset after updates - Local PDFs can be finicky - Pop-ups push the upgrade hard - Some AI features unavailable at times ### Who is this great for? Speechify is perfect for anyone who listens daily and not just now and then. If reading is part of your job or your degree and you’re doing an hour of it a day, the format coverage and the follow-along highlighting are what you’re paying for. It’s especially great for users who want one tool for every file type. According to Tooltivity’s review, the free tier covers standard voices and web-page listening, so you can find out whether it fits before you pay. ### Compared to others [NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) is the closest like-for-like, with OCR and MP3 export on top. [Read Aloud TTS](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator) covers everyday article reading inside a daily free quota. And [ElevenReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs) gets the highest marks for voice quality in this list, but it doesn’t read the page you’re on. ### Detailed comparisons [NaturalReader vs Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech-vs-speechify-text-to-speech) • [Read Aloud TTS vs Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator-vs-speechify-text-to-speech) • [ElevenReader vs Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs-vs-speechify-text-to-speech) ### Rating Summary 1,000,000 users and a 4.58 rating from 22,689 ratings make this the most-reviewed tool in the comparison, and its last 100 reviews have recovered to 4.40. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Speechify — Text to Speech a score of **8.00/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/speechify-text-to-speech). ## [4\. Mote for Google Chrome™](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/mote-voice-notes) ![Mote’s Reading Mode toolbar on a classroom slide, with play and translate buttons](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/mote-voice-notes/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Mote approaches this category from the opposite end. Instead of turning text into speech for you, it turns your speech into feedback for someone else: voice comments dropped into Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms and Classroom, each with a transcript attached. It has 2,000,000 users, twice what the store showed a month ago, and a 4.57-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 170 ratings, holding steady at 4.52 for the last 100 reviews. The audience is teachers, overwhelmingly. Its reviewers say a thirty-second spoken comment on an essay takes a fraction of the time typing it would, and that tone survives in a way it doesn’t in a margin note. It belongs in a text to speech list because the listening half is real. Its listing now leads with a Reading Mode that reads pages aloud, a picture dictionary, and translation with AI voices in 50+ languages, which is what makes it work in a classroom with mixed reading levels. ### Key Features - **Voice Comments** – record a spoken note straight into a Google Doc, Slide, Sheet or Form comment, where it plays inline - **Automatic Transcripts** – every recording gets a written transcript, so feedback is searchable and accessible - **Google Classroom Integration** – works inside the assignment and feedback flow teachers already use - **Read Aloud** – a Reading Mode that speaks text back, covering the receiving half of the accessibility equation - **Translation** – translates text and transcripts and reads them in 50+ languages, per its listing - **Mote Everywhere** – drops voice notes into web tools beyond the Google stack - **Playback Speed** – listeners can speed up or slow down a recording to suit themselves - **Shareable Audio Links** – recordings get a link that works outside the original document ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Huge time-saver for marking work - Fast, intuitive recording flow - Deep Google Workspace integration - Transcripts and translation included - Makes feedback more personal **Cons:** - Intrusive pop-ups and new tabs - Noticeably slows the browser - Recording occasionally fails - Slides insertion can be unreliable - Free tier is capped ### Who is this great for? Mote is perfect for teachers, and for few other people. If you mark student work every week, replacing typed margin notes with spoken ones changes how long an evening of marking takes. It’s especially great for classrooms where reading levels and home languages vary. Voice plus transcript plus translation means the same piece of feedback reaches a student who struggles to read, one who reads fine, and one still learning the language. ### Compared to others Nothing else here does what Mote does, so the real question is whether you want it instead of a reader. [Helperbird](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/helperbird) is the better pick if the students need reading support more than you need to give feedback faster. [Read&Write](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-and-write-for-google-chrome) covers the same classroom territory with much weaker recent reviews. And [GPT Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech) also handles both speech directions if transcription is what drew you here. ### Detailed comparisons [Helperbird vs Mote](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/helperbird-vs-mote-voice-notes) • [Mote vs Read&Write](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/mote-voice-notes-vs-read-and-write-for-google-chrome) • [GPT Reader vs Mote](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech-vs-mote-voice-notes) ### Rating Summary 2,000,000 users, a 4.57 rating from 170 ratings and 4.52 across the last 100 reviews: a product that knows who it’s for and keeps them. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Mote for Google Chrome™ a score of **7.67/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/mote-voice-notes). ## [5\. Read Aloud TTS: Text to Speech AI Voice Generator](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator) ![Read Aloud TTS voice picker showing three AI voices named Marcus, Sofia and Daniel](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Read Aloud TTS is where people land when the free system voices stop being good enough but a full subscription is off the table. It has 600,000 users and a 4.27-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 3,221 ratings, though the recent direction has turned sharply, as evidenced by its 3.48 rating for the last 100 reviews against 4.10 across the last 500. The pitch is natural AI voices with no cloud account to configure. According to Tooltivity’s review, its best habit is reading on the page: it highlights the current text and scrolls with it instead of lifting the content into a popup window. What has soured is the free tier. Recent reviewers describe a daily character quota, and tighter limits for non-English text, that they only discovered when the reading stopped mid-page. The store listing itself says only that the extension “is free and easy to use”. The developer is shipping fixes quickly (the extension went from version 2.1.5 to 2.1.13 within a month), but the recent average hasn’t recovered yet. ### Key Features - **Natural AI Voices** – cloud-generated speech well beyond the browser’s built-in voices, with no provider account to set up - **On-Page Reading** – highlights and scrolls the live page instead of copying text into a separate window - **Wide Language Support** – reads a broad set of languages with voice options for each - **Speed Control** – adjustable from slow study pace up to skim listening - **PDF and E-Book Reading** – handles documents alongside ordinary web pages - **Voice Picker** – choose the specific voice per language instead of accepting a default - **Free Tier** – a daily character allowance that covers light reading without payment - **No Account to Start** – begins reading right after install ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Natural AI voices without setup - Reads and scrolls on the page - Easy, uncluttered interface - Broad language and voice choice - Adjustable reading speed **Cons:** - Daily character quota on free tier - Limits not disclosed before install - Weaker non-English free support - A recent update hurt reliability - Premium speed complaints after purchase ### Who is this great for? Read Aloud TTS is perfect for someone who reads a couple of English articles a day and wants them to sound good. Inside the free allowance, reviewers rate the voices well, and it costs nothing. It’s especially great for users who dislike popup readers. Watching the actual page highlight and scroll as it reads is the difference between following along and just listening. ### Compared to others [Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/speechify-text-to-speech) does the same job with a much larger voice and language catalogue and a paid plan. [NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) sits at a similar level and adds MP3 export, with its own free-tier caps. And [Read Aloud](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader), the older and similarly named extension, is unlimited and free if you’ll accept plainer voices. ### Detailed comparisons [Read Aloud vs Read Aloud TTS](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader-vs-read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator) • [NaturalReader vs Read Aloud TTS](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech-vs-read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator) • [Read Aloud TTS vs Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator-vs-speechify-text-to-speech) ### Rating Summary 600,000 users and a 4.27 rating from 3,221 ratings, undercut by a 3.48 average across the last 100 reviews: a capable reader hurt by how it communicates its limits. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Read Aloud TTS: Text to Speech AI Voice Generator a score of **7.67/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator). ## [6\. Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader) ![Read Aloud’s toolbar popup in Chrome with a single play button](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Read Aloud is the workhorse of this category, the free reader that needs no account. It has 6,000,000 users, up from 5,000,000 a month ago, and a 4.13-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 3,640 ratings. Its recent reviews sit lower, as evidenced by its 3.74 rating for the last 100 reviews, though that is up from 3.62 in September. It’s also on Firefox. What keeps people on it is control. You pick the speech engine, the voice, the speed, the pitch and the volume, and it reads the current article with one click. Its listing counts 40+ languages, with voices from the browser itself or from cloud providers including Google Wavenet, Amazon Polly, IBM Watson, Microsoft Azure and OpenAI. The trade-off is age. Its reviews describe clean reading on simple article pages and trouble on complex layouts: reading that starts in the wrong place, scrolling that loses its position, the occasional hang. Several also complain that it asks for permissions again after every browser restart. ### Key Features - **One-Click Article Reading** – finds the readable article and starts speaking with no selection or setup - **40+ Languages** – broad coverage using whatever voices your system and chosen provider expose - **Multiple Speech Engines** – browser-native voices, or cloud voices from Google, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and OpenAI - **Full Voice Controls** – speed, pitch and volume are all adjustable - **Text Highlighting** – marks the sentence being read so you can follow along - **Keyboard Shortcuts** – start, stop and skip without reaching for the toolbar - **Reads PDFs and Google Docs** – handles common documents alongside ordinary web pages - **Free and Account-Free** – the core reader works right away with nothing gating it ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Completely free, no account needed - Deep voice, speed and pitch control - Works in over 40 languages - Choice of several speech engines - Huge, long-established install base **Cons:** - Glitches, hangs and misreads pages - Re-asks permissions every restart - Best voices need paid providers - Uneven language support - Interface looks dated ### Who is this great for? Read Aloud is perfect for tinkerers and for anyone who refuses to pay for reading. If you want to choose your speech engine and set the pitch by hand, this is the tool here that lets you. It’s especially great for multilingual readers on a budget: 40+ languages with no cap and no account, as long as you can live with system-grade voices or connect your own cloud provider, which that provider then bills you for. ### Compared to others [Read Aloud TTS](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator), a similar name and a different product, has better voices out of the box and meters them. [Selection Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/selection-reader-text-to-speech) is the simpler local alternative if you only ever read short passages. And [NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) is the upgrade path when system voices stop being good enough. ### Detailed comparisons [Read Aloud vs Read Aloud TTS](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader-vs-read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator) • [Read Aloud vs Selection Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader-vs-selection-reader-text-to-speech) • [NaturalReader vs Read Aloud](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech-vs-read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader) ### Rating Summary 6,000,000 users and a 4.13 rating from 3,640 ratings, with the last 100 reviews at 3.74 and the last 500 at 3.58: an old favourite whose recent reviews sit well below its record. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader a score of **7.33/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader). ## [7\. NaturalReader - AI Text to Speech](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) ![NaturalReader’s “Listen to any online text” graphic with icons for web pages, Gmail, Kindle, Google Docs and PDF](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech/images/gallery-image-1.webp) NaturalReader is one of the oldest names in text to speech and still one of the most capable. It has 1,000,000 users and a 4.21-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 2,406 ratings, though the recent trend has slipped, as evidenced by its 3.51 rating for the last 100 reviews against 4.11 across the last 500. Tooltivity’s review traces the slide to a late-August update that moved reading out of the page and into a side panel. Its range is what keeps it relevant. The listing covers web pages, PDFs, Google Docs, emails and Kindle ebooks. Tooltivity’s review adds OCR that pulls text out of screenshots, MP3 export, and a pronunciation editor for the words a reader keeps getting wrong, which matters if you read technical material or unusual names. The pressure point is the free tier, and the listing spells it out: free voices are unlimited, premium voices stop after 20 minutes a day and Plus voices after 5. ### Key Features - **Lifelike AI Voices** – a broad voice set with adjustable speed and pitch - **Multi-Format Reading** – web pages, PDFs, Google Docs, Word files and emails from one extension - **OCR for Scanned Text** – extracts text from images and screenshots so it can be read - **MP3 Export** – converts what it reads into downloadable audio for offline listening - **Pronunciation Editor** – fine-tune how specific words are spoken, then keep that setting - **Floating Mini Player** – quick play, pause and voice controls while you browse - **Cloud Library** – save texts and pick them up on another device ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Lifelike voices with easy controls - Simple MP3 export workflow - Works well on webpages and PDFs **Cons:** - Free plan caps and gated features - Occasional glitches on heavy use - Commercial rights require higher tiers - Unpopular side-panel redesign ### Who is this great for? NaturalReader is perfect for anyone who reads a mix of formats and wants the audio afterwards. With MP3 export and OCR together, a scanned PDF someone emailed you can become something you listen to on a run. It’s especially great for users reading specialised material. The pronunciation editor is the feature you don’t know you need until a reader mangles the same term forty times in one document. ### Compared to others [Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/speechify-text-to-speech) is the closest rival, with a far larger review base and better recent ratings. [Read Aloud TTS](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator) matches it for everyday article reading, without the OCR or the pronunciation control. And [GPT Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech) offers free listening without a daily cap if you have a ChatGPT account. ### Detailed comparisons [NaturalReader vs Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech-vs-speechify-text-to-speech) • [NaturalReader vs Read Aloud TTS](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech-vs-read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator) • [GPT Reader vs NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech-vs-naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) ### Rating Summary 1,000,000 users and a 4.21 rating from 2,406 ratings, with the last 100 reviews at 3.51: a deep, mature product whose redesign and free-tier limits are testing people’s patience. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave NaturalReader - AI Text to Speech a score of **7.12/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech). ## [8\. Selection Reader (Text to Speech)](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/selection-reader-text-to-speech) ![Selected text on a web page with Selection Reader’s “Read out selection” entry in the right-click menu](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/selection-reader-text-to-speech/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Selection Reader is the minimal option: highlight text, hear it read, nothing else happens. It has 200,000 users, double the 100,000 of a month ago, and a 3.65-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 730 ratings. Unusually for this comparison, the recent trend points up, as evidenced by its 4.03 rating for the last 100 reviews against 3.48 across the last 500. That improvement matters, because for a long stretch this extension looked abandoned. Its older reviews are full of people reporting that it had stopped working. The current version, 2.0.10, was published on September 8, 2026, so the developer has come back to it. Its real distinction is architectural. Speech is synthesised by the browser’s own engine, so, according to Tooltivity’s review, the text you select never leaves your machine. In a category that has mostly moved to the cloud, it’s the privacy pick. ### Key Features - **Read the Selection** – highlight any text and have just that read; a newer option reads the whole article when you click the icon - **Handles Long Passages** – built to read large blocks of text without cutting out, with no cap on length - **Multilingual** – reads across a wide set of languages using the voices your system provides - **Speed Adjustment** – set the speaking rate to suit how you listen - **Local Speech** – uses the browser’s own engine, so nothing is uploaded - **No Account Needed** – works from the moment it’s installed - **Lightweight** – a small install that adds almost nothing to page load - **Keyboard and Context Menu** – trigger a read without hunting for the toolbar ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Reads selected text fluently - Very simple, no learning curve - Works across many languages - Local speech, nothing uploaded - Handles long passages well **Cons:** - Long history of breaking silently - Very limited voice choice - Settings reset when changing speed - Inconsistent across websites - Occasional pronunciation errors ### Who is this great for? Selection Reader is perfect for anyone who wants a paragraph read aloud and nothing else to happen: no library, no account, no upload. It’s especially great for reading anything you’d rather not send to a server, such as confidential documents, internal pages or draft work. ### Compared to others [Read Aloud](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader) is the other option that can run on the browser’s own voices, and it gives you far more control at the cost of complexity. [Read Aloud TTS](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator) has much better voices but sends your text to a server to produce them. And [ElevenReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs) sits at the opposite extreme: the best-rated voices here and the largest privacy trade-off. ### Detailed comparisons [Read Aloud vs Selection Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader-vs-selection-reader-text-to-speech) • [Read Aloud TTS vs Selection Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator-vs-selection-reader-text-to-speech) • [ElevenReader vs Selection Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs-vs-selection-reader-text-to-speech) ### Rating Summary 200,000 users and a 3.65 lifetime rating from 730 ratings, but 4.03 across the last 100 reviews against 3.48 over the last 500: one of the few entries here trending upward. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Selection Reader (Text to Speech) a score of **6.83/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/selection-reader-text-to-speech). ## [9\. ElevenReader — Text Reader by ElevenLabs](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs) ![A web article with ElevenReader’s “Added to ElevenReader” notice and a Listen now button](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs/images/gallery-image-1.webp) ElevenReader has the best pedigree here. It’s ElevenLabs’ reader, built on the voice models that made the company’s name, and Tooltivity’s review rates its voices the most natural of the ten. It has 20,000 users and a 4.14-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 65 ratings, and its written reviews average lower, at 3.83. The gap between voice quality and score comes down to one decision. ElevenReader doesn’t read the page you’re on. Click it and, as its listing puts it, the page is added to your ElevenReader account, where it’s read back to you. The audio is excellent, but it’s detached from the article, and your text now sits on someone else’s service. Where it does best is documents. Per its listing it reads Google Docs, PDFs, web pages and books in 130 voices across 30+ languages, and Tooltivity’s review notes that playback keeps going when you switch tabs. ### Key Features - **ElevenLabs Voices** – 130 voices across 30+ languages, per its store listing - **Document Reading** – upload PDFs and Word files and have them read, including long-form material - **Multi-Source Queues** – combine several articles or pages into one continuous listening session - **Background Playback** – keeps reading when you move to another tab or window - **Article Capture** – send a web page or post to your reader library with one click - **Cross-Device Library** – what you save is available in the ElevenReader mobile apps - **Speed Control** – adjustable playback pace for skimming or study - **Free Tier** – a monthly listening allowance at no cost, with the same voice quality ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Best-in-class natural voices - Strong PDF and Word support - Background playback across tabs - Queue several sources together - Free tier uses the good voices **Cons:** - No on-page or inline reading - Sends your content off-site - Redirects away from the page - Breaks with some VPN setups - Small, buggy install base ### Who is this great for? ElevenReader is perfect for long-form listening on material you don’t mind uploading. Queue a few articles and a report, press play and go do something else. It’s especially great for anyone who has tried the rest and found the voices wearing. If the flat cadence of ordinary text to speech is what stops you using these tools, this is the one aimed at that problem. ### Compared to others [Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/speechify-text-to-speech) reads the page itself, with highlighting, which for most people is the better trade. [NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) also exports audio and handles more formats in the browser. And [Selection Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/selection-reader-text-to-speech) is the answer if the upload is what bothers you. ### Detailed comparisons [ElevenReader vs Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs-vs-speechify-text-to-speech) • [ElevenReader vs NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs-vs-naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) • [ElevenReader vs Selection Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs-vs-selection-reader-text-to-speech) ### Rating Summary 20,000 users and a 4.14 rating from only 65 ratings: highly rated voices attached to a product that is still finding its feet. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave ElevenReader — Text Reader by ElevenLabs a score of **6.50/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs). ## [10\. Read&Write for Google Chrome™](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-and-write-for-google-chrome) ![Read&Write’s toolbar above a Google Doc, with its dictionary and picture dictionary panels open](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/read-and-write-for-google-chrome/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Read&Write is the institutional heavyweight of this category, and the cautionary tale. Texthelp’s literacy suite is deployed across schools and universities and rarely discovered by individuals, and the scale shows: 19,000,000 users, up from 13,000,000 in early September. The reception does not match. It holds a 3.43-star rating from 1,594 ratings, and the recent picture is the worst in this comparison by a distance, as evidenced by its 2.22 rating for the last 100 reviews. The capability is real and worth stating first. Its listing covers web pages, Google Docs, PDFs and ePubs, and Tooltivity’s review lists hover-to-speak, word prediction, picture dictionaries and vocabulary tools in one toolbar, inside Google Docs where the coursework happens. The problem is reliability. The complaint that dominates its recent reviews, well ahead of anything about the features, is that the toolbar doesn’t open on pages where it should. ### Key Features - **High-Quality Text to Speech** – natural voices with adjustable speed and a choice of accents - **Hover Speech** – speaks text as you move over it, useful for scanning a page - **Word Prediction** – suggests the next word while writing, aimed at students who struggle to start sentences - **Picture and Text Dictionaries** – definitions with visual support for unfamiliar vocabulary - **Screen Masking** – tints and shades the page to reduce visual crowding - **Vocabulary and Highlight Tools** – collect highlighted terms into a vocabulary list for study - **Google Workspace Integration** – works inside Docs, Slides and the wider Google stack schools run on - **Translation** – word and passage translation for multilingual classrooms ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Genuinely high-quality reading voices - Deep literacy and writing support - Strong Google Workspace integration - Adjustable speed and accents - Broad accessibility toolset **Cons:** - Frequently fails to open on sites - Clunky, slow, unresponsive UI - Free version is heavily limited - Usually imposed by a school - Privacy worries about monitored installs ### Who is this great for? Read&Write is for students whose school has already bought it. If it’s on your managed device, the reading voices and the Docs integration are worth using, and the toolset is deeper than anything else here. It’s especially useful in a school that trains people on it and has IT support when it breaks. It isn’t something an individual should go out and buy: the listing offers every feature free for 30 days and a free premium subscription for teachers, and according to Tooltivity’s review the free tier that remains keeps text to speech and translation and puts the rest behind a licence priced for institutions. ### Compared to others [Helperbird](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/helperbird) is the direct answer: a comparable accessibility toolkit with Pro listed at $30 a year. [Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/speechify-text-to-speech) is the better choice if you mainly want reading with good voices. And [NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech) covers the reading and export side without the institutional overhead. ### Detailed comparisons [Helperbird vs Read&Write](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/helperbird-vs-read-and-write-for-google-chrome) • [Read&Write vs Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/read-and-write-for-google-chrome-vs-speechify-text-to-speech) • [NaturalReader vs Read&Write](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech-vs-read-and-write-for-google-chrome) ### Rating Summary 19,000,000 users against a 3.43 rating from 1,594 ratings, 2.79 across the last 500 reviews and 2.22 across the last 100: the widest gap between reach and satisfaction in this comparison. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Read&Write for Google Chrome™ a score of **5.17/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-and-write-for-google-chrome). ## Which text to speech extension should you choose? On Tooltivity’s score the winner is **[GPT Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech)** at 8.88/10. It borrows ChatGPT’s voices instead of building its own, and free listening has no cap. A 4.55 rating with 4.48 across its last 100 reviews says the people who find it stay. The catches are the ChatGPT account it needs, the Pro plan that now holds downloads and seeking, and very large documents, which its reviewers say still trip it up. The rest of the field sorts itself by what you’re trying to do. **[Helperbird](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/helperbird)** is the pick if reading is hard for you: the Immersive Reader, dyslexia fonts, rulers and overlays matter more than voice quality, and most of it is free. **[Speechify](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/speechify-text-to-speech)** is the one to pay for if you listen for an hour a day and want every format covered. **[NaturalReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/naturalreader-ai-text-to-speech)** wins on formats, with OCR and a pronunciation editor, and **[Read Aloud TTS](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-tts-ai-voice-generator)** suits light everyday reading as long as you stay inside its daily quota. **[Read Aloud](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-aloud-text-to-speech-voice-reader)** is the answer if you never want to pay or sign up. Teachers should look at **[Mote](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/mote-voice-notes)** instead of any of these. Two warnings. **[ElevenReader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/elevenreader-by-elevenlabs)** has the best-rated voices here but saves your pages to its own service to read them, so keep it for material you don’t mind sending off your device. **[Selection Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/selection-reader-text-to-speech)** is the local alternative when that matters. And **[Read&Write](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/read-and-write-for-google-chrome)** has 19,000,000 users and a 2.22 average across its last 100 reviews, mostly because people say it won’t open. If your school hasn’t already bought it, pick something else. Every extension here installs free, so try the ones you like on the material you really read before you pay for anything. The disappointments in this category are rarely about how the voices sound. They’re about a daily quota nobody mentioned, a document that went somewhere you didn’t expect, or a toolbar that didn’t load. Start with [the full comparison table](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/text-to-speech/chrome), pick two, and give them a week. Listening isn’t the only way to get through a long page. A [reader mode extension](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-5-reader-mode-chrome-extensions-for-focused-reading/) strips the clutter away, there’s a separate list of [reading tools for dyslexic students](https://web-highlights.com/blog/reading-tools-for-dyslexic-students/), and for documents there’s the comparison of [PDF extensions for Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-pdf-chrome-extensions/). And if the goal is to keep what you read or hear, [active recall](https://web-highlights.com/blog/active-recall-how-to-actually-remember-what-you-read/) is what makes it stick. ## Frequently asked questions ### What’s the best Chrome extension for text to speech? Tooltivity ranks GPT Reader first at 8.88/10: it reads web pages, PDFs and Google Docs in ChatGPT’s voices and doesn’t cap free listening. But “best” depends on the job. Helperbird (8.33) is built for dyslexia and reading difficulties, Speechify (8.00) covers the most formats and languages on a paid plan, and Read Aloud is the free classic with 6,000,000 users. ### Is there a free text to speech reader for Google Chrome? Yes. Read Aloud is free with no account or daily cap and uses your browser’s voices. GPT Reader gives unlimited free listening in ChatGPT’s voices if you sign in with a ChatGPT account. Selection Reader reads any text you select for free, on your own machine. Chrome’s built-in reading mode can also read many pages aloud without any extension. ### How do I get a PDF read aloud in Chrome? Install an extension that handles documents. According to their listings and Tooltivity’s reviews, GPT Reader, Speechify, NaturalReader, Helperbird and Read Aloud all read PDFs, and ElevenReader reads PDFs you upload to its library. NaturalReader and Helperbird add OCR, which you need when the PDF is a scan and not real text. --- # Microsoft Edge Collections Is Gone: How to Get Your Pages Back (and What to Use Instead) > Microsoft removed Collections in Edge 149. Here’s where your saved pages went, how to get them back, the unofficial flag that restores the feature for now, and what to use instead. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-10-07 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension, Reading - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/microsoft-edge-collections-removed/ --- If you opened Edge one day this summer and the Collections button was simply gone, you’re not alone. Microsoft Q&A and Reddit filled up with the same question in June: where did all my saved pages go? **Short answer:** Microsoft removed Collections in Microsoft Edge 149, released on June 4, 2026. Your pages aren’t necessarily lost — depending on what you did before the update, they’re in a Favorites folder, at bing.com/saves, or in an export file. The notes and images you added to Collections did not survive the move to Favorites. I build a browser extension that runs in Edge, so I followed this one closely. Below is where your Collections went, how to get them back, the unofficial workaround that brings the feature back for now, and what I’d use instead. **Key takeaways** - Collections stopped accepting new items in Edge 145 and was removed in Edge 149 (June 4, 2026). - “Move to Favorites” kept only the page links. Notes, images and other non-page items were not moved. - Personal Microsoft accounts can still see synced Collections at bing.com/saves. - A command-line flag brings the old Collections pane back for now, but it’s unofficial and can break with any update. - For saving pages _with_ your notes, use a tool that keeps them together — I show how to move your old Collections into one below. ## What happened to Collections in Microsoft Edge? Microsoft retired it in steps. Edge started showing a retirement banner inside Collections early in 2026. From Edge 145 you could no longer add new items. Then the [Edge 149 release notes](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-relnote-archive-stable-channel) said Collections “have been removed in this update” and that users “can no longer access or use the feature.” Collections wasn’t the only casualty. The same release retired the sidebar app list for enterprise users, and Edge 152 retired Drop. Microsoft’s one-line explanation for that cleanup: “We’re simplifying Microsoft Edge.” Several tech outlets connect it to Edge’s shift toward Copilot, but Microsoft hasn’t said more than that. Microsoft’s own [Collections support page](https://support.microsoft.com/en-US/edge/organize-your-ideas-with-collections-in-microsoft-edge) now opens with the same news: Collections is no longer available starting with Edge version 149. ## Where are my saved Collections now? There are three places to look, depending on your account and what you clicked before the update. ### 1\. In your Favorites Before the removal, Collections showed a **Move to Favorites** button. If you used it, each collection became a folder in your Favorites. Open the Favorites pane (Ctrl + Shift + O) and look for folders named like your old collections. The catch: Microsoft moved only the saved web pages. Images, notes and other non-page items were not moved. If your collections were mostly links, you’re fine. If they were research boards full of notes, those notes are gone from Edge. ### 2\. At bing.com/saves (personal Microsoft accounts) If you were signed in to Edge with a personal Microsoft account, Microsoft says your saved Collections are still visible at **bing.com/saves**. You can’t add to them from Edge anymore, but you can open them there and copy what you need. That’s probably why searches for “Bing Saves” nearly tripled in June. ### 3\. In an export file (work or school accounts) Work and school accounts got an **Export your data** option, which saved Collections as a CSV file. Before that, you could also send a collection to Excel, Word or OneNote. If you or your IT team did either, look for that file in your Documents or Downloads folder. One honest warning: in a [Microsoft Q&A thread from June 11](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-nz/answers/questions/5918210/ms-edge-collections-missing-lots-of-separate-colle), a user reports that several collections were missing from both the CSV export and Bing Saves. If something you remember isn’t in any of the three places, it may be gone for good. ## Can I get Collections back in Edge? Officially, no. Unofficially, for now, yes. People found that starting Edge with a command-line flag brings the old Collections pane back: ``` --disable-features=msEdgeCollectionsUnship ``` Techdows has a [step-by-step guide](https://techdows.com/how-to-restore-collections-in-microsoft-edge-149-and-later-versions.html) with screenshots. The short version for Windows: 1. Turn off **Startup boost** and **Continue running background extensions and apps** in `edge://settings/system`. Otherwise Windows reuses an Edge process that started without the flag. 2. Right-click your Edge shortcut → **Properties** → **Shortcut** tab. 3. In **Target**, add one space after the closing quote and paste the flag, so it ends in `msedge.exe" --disable-features=msEdgeCollectionsUnship`. 4. Close every Edge window, then start Edge from that shortcut. Collections is back under More tools (Ctrl + Shift + Y). Two things to know before you rely on it. It only shows Collections data that still exists in your profile — it can’t bring back anything that was deleted. And Microsoft can remove the remaining code in any update. Edge now ships a new major version every two weeks, so I’d use the flag for one thing only: getting your notes and links out while you still can. ## What can replace Edge Collections? It depends on what you used Collections for. - **Just a pile of links?** Favorites does the job. It syncs across devices and folders work fine. - **Free-form notes and clippings?** OneNote is the closest Microsoft tool. You lose the “save this page in one click while browsing” part, though. - **Saving pages and keeping your thoughts next to them?** That’s what Collections did best, and it’s exactly what I built Web Highlights for. ### What is Web Highlights? [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a free browser extension I built, used by hundreds of thousands of people. It’s in the [Microsoft Edge Add-ons store](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) (and for Chrome and Firefox). You save a page in one click, highlight the parts that matter in different colors, and write notes right on the highlight or on the page. Every page lands in one searchable library. Funny enough, Web Highlights calls its folders [Collections](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/collections) too — with sub-folders, drag-and-drop and tags on top. The difference to Edge’s version: your notes stay attached to the exact sentence you wrote them about, and they work on PDFs opened in Edge as well. ## How do I move my old Collections into Web Highlights? If your Collections ended up in Favorites, this takes about five minutes: 1. **Export your Favorites.** In Edge, open the three-dot menu → **Favorites** → three-dot menu in the Favorites pane → **Export favorites**, and save the HTML file. Here’s the [full Edge export guide](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/edge/how-to-export-bookmarks) with every click. 2. **Install Web Highlights** from the [install page](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/pdf-web-highlighter/install). No account needed to start. 3. **Import the file.** Open **Settings → Integrations → Import browser bookmarks** and upload the HTML file ([docs](https://web-highlights.com/docs/integrations/bookmark-import-chrome)). 4. **Sort them again.** The import flattens browser folders, so move pages into collections or give them tags. I’d only do this for the collections you still care about. Your old Collections notes are a different story. If you got them out — via the flag, Bing Saves or a OneNote export — paste them into a page note in Web Highlights so they sit next to the page again. There’s no automatic import for them, and I don’t want to pretend there is. More detail on the bookmark import, with screenshots, is in [how to export bookmarks and import them into Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-bookmarks-and-import-to-web-highlights/). ## What won’t Web Highlights do? Better you hear it from me than find out after switching: - It doesn’t read Microsoft’s Collections CSV export. Favorites (as HTML) is the way in. - It can’t recover notes or images Microsoft didn’t move to Favorites. - Syncing your library across devices is the paid part, after a 7-day free trial. Highlighting, notes and your library on one device stay free. - No Safari extension and no iPhone app yet. On Android there’s an app; on iPhone you use the web app. ## So what should you do now? First, rescue what’s left: check your Favorites, then bing.com/saves, then any export file. If something important is missing, try the flag while it still works and copy your notes out. Then pick a home that won’t be “simplified” away next year. If you want your pages and your notes in one place, give [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/pdf-web-highlighter/install) a try on the next article you read in Edge. You’ll know in a minute whether it fits. I’m happy to answer questions, and I’m open to criticism 😊 You can reach me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts). ## Frequently asked questions ### Why did Microsoft remove Collections from Edge? Microsoft hasn’t given a detailed reason. Collections was removed in Edge 149 (June 4, 2026) as part of a cleanup that also retired the sidebar app list for enterprise users and, in Edge 152, Drop. The release notes describe it as simplifying Microsoft Edge. ### Can I recover my Edge Collections after updating? Often, yes. If you clicked Move to Favorites, each collection is now a Favorites folder (links only). Personal Microsoft accounts can see synced Collections at bing.com/saves. Work and school accounts could export a CSV file. Notes and images that weren’t exported can’t be recovered. ### Does Move to Favorites keep my notes? No. Microsoft moved only the saved web pages. Images, notes and other non-page items were not moved to Favorites. ### Is there a way to bring Collections back in Edge? Unofficially. Starting Edge with the flag --disable-features=msEdgeCollectionsUnship (with Startup boost turned off) brings the old Collections pane back for now. It only shows data still in your profile, and Microsoft can remove it in any update. --- # Omnivore Alternative: The Best Read-Later Apps With Highlighting (2026) > Omnivore shut down in November 2024. Here are the best alternatives — Readwise Reader, Instapaper, Raindrop, Matter, Wallabag and Web Highlights — with prices, free plans and who each one fits. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-10-06 - Updated: 2026-10-06 - Tags: comparison, Reading, Chrome Extension - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/omnivore-alternative/ --- Omnivore shut down in November 2024, and the best alternative depends on which part of it you miss. If you want the full read-later app — a reading queue, newsletters, RSS — Readwise Reader is the closest match, and Instapaper or Raindrop are the free-plan options. If what you really used Omnivore for was highlighting what you read and finding it again, Web Highlights does that for free, right on the page. Full disclosure: I built Web Highlights. The reviews I link for the other apps live on Tooltivity and Productivity Apps, which are run by my company too. Prices below come from each app’s own pages, checked in October 2026. 💡 **Key takeaways** - Omnivore closed when its team joined ElevenLabs; all user data was deleted on November 15, 2024. - Closest full replacement: Readwise Reader ($9.99/month billed yearly). Free read-later options: Instapaper, Raindrop, or self-hosted Wallabag. - For free highlighting and notes on web pages and PDFs, plus flashcards to remember them: Web Highlights. - After losing one library, prefer tools that let you export everything. ## What happened to Omnivore? Omnivore was a free, open-source read-later app with good highlighting, and a lot of people loved it for exactly that. In late October 2024 its team announced they were joining ElevenLabs. The hosted service was switched off, and everything still in it was deleted on November 15, 2024 — about two weeks after the announcement. The code is still on GitHub, and a community self-hosted version exists, but it needs a database, a search server and several services to run. For most people, Omnivore as they knew it is gone. That’s the real lesson here. Before you move your reading into a new app, check two things: can you export everything, and will the app still be around? Less than a year later, Pocket shut down too. ## What are the best Omnivore alternatives? | App | Best for | Free plan | Paid | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [Readwise Reader](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/readwise-reader) | The full Omnivore experience and more: articles, PDFs, newsletters, RSS, EPUBs | No (30-day trial) | $9.99/month billed yearly | | [Instapaper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/instapaper) | A simple, calm reading queue | Yes; 5 notes per month | $5.99/month or $59.99/year | | [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) | Bookmarks in collections, with highlights | Yes | Pro about $28/year (full-text search, permanent copies) | | [Matter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/matter) | Reading and listening on iPhone and the web | Yes | $14.99/month or $79.99/year | | Wallabag | Open source you host yourself, so it can’t be shut down on you | Free to self-host | Small yearly fee for the hosted version | | Web Highlights | Highlighting and notes on any web page or PDF, plus flashcards | Yes, no account needed | Sync across devices from $6.49/month or $56.99/year | ### Readwise Reader If you want something that does everything Omnivore did, this is it. Reader saves articles, PDFs, newsletters, RSS feeds, YouTube videos and EPUBs, has very good highlighting, syncs to Obsidian, Notion and Logseq, and reads articles aloud. It has no free plan, though: $9.99 a month billed yearly after a 30-day trial. I compared it in detail in [Web Highlights vs Readwise](https://web-highlights.com/blog/readwise-alternative/). ### Instapaper The calm, simple option. Save articles, read them later in a clean view, highlight. The free plan is generous for saving, but limits you to five notes a month; Premium adds full-text search, a PDF reader and text-to-speech. ### Raindrop.io If you used Omnivore partly as a bookmark manager, Raindrop is excellent: collections, tags, a clean interface, and highlights. It’s weaker as a reading app. Pro adds full-text search and permanent copies of your pages. ### Matter A beautiful reading app with good highlighting and audio. The catch: its app is for iPhone and iPad, with no Android app, and Premium is the priciest on this list. ### Wallabag The answer if you never want to lose your library again. It’s open source, you can host it yourself, and it supports highlights and notes. It’s less polished, and self-hosting takes some setup — or you pay a small yearly fee for their hosted version. ## Is there a free Omnivore alternative with highlighting? Yes — and this is where Web Highlights fits. It isn’t a reading inbox like Omnivore. Instead, you highlight the page where it lives: open an article, select a sentence, and it’s highlighted in the color you pick, with your notes in a sidebar next to it. Every page you highlight or [save as a bookmark](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/save-bookmarks-with-web-clipper) lands in one searchable library with tags and collections. A few things Omnivore users usually ask about: - **PDFs:** highlight online and local PDFs, upload your own (up to 30 MB), and download them with highlights as real PDF annotations. - **Reading later:** save any page in one click and set an [email reminder](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/email-reminders) to come back to it. Reader mode gives you a clean view when you want one. - **Getting things out:** copy any page as Markdown or HTML, and export to Notion and Capacities in one click. - **Remembering:** turn highlights into flashcards and review them with [spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning). - **Your phone:** on Android, share a page from any app into Web Highlights; on iPhone, use the web app. It’s free to use, and the extension doesn’t even need an account. You only pay if you want your library synced across devices. ## What won’t Web Highlights do? I’d rather you know this now than after switching: - No RSS feeds, newsletters or EPUBs — Readwise Reader and Wallabag do those. - No text-to-speech. Reader, Instapaper and Matter read articles aloud. - No iOS app or Safari extension yet. - No direct Obsidian sync; you copy Markdown and paste it. - No import of an old Omnivore export. If your Omnivore habit was “subscribe to newsletters and read them in one app”, pick Reader or Wallabag. If it was “highlight the good parts and find them again”, Web Highlights will feel lighter. ## How do I pick the right one? - **Want everything Omnivore did, and happy to pay?** Readwise Reader. - **Want a simple free reading queue?** Instapaper. - **Mostly organizing links?** Raindrop.io. - **Never want to lose your data to a shutdown again?** Self-hosted Wallabag. - **Mostly highlighting and remembering what you read, for free?** Web Highlights. Coming from Pocket as well? Our guide to the [best Pocket alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-in-july-2025-the-10-best-alternatives/) covers that shutdown, and you can [import a Pocket export](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-pocket-saves-and-import-to-webhighlights/) into Web Highlights. To try Web Highlights, [install it for Chrome, Edge or Firefox](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/pdf-web-highlighter/install) and highlight the next article you read. It takes about a minute to know if it fits. I’m happy to answer questions, and I’m open to criticism 😊 You can reach me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts). ## Frequently asked questions ### Why did Omnivore shut down? Omnivore's team joined ElevenLabs in late October 2024. The hosted service was switched off and all remaining user data was deleted on November 15, 2024. The open-source code is still on GitHub, and a community self-hosted version exists, but it needs several services to run. ### What is the best free Omnivore alternative? For a free reading queue, Instapaper or Raindrop.io. For data you fully control, self-hosted Wallabag. For free highlighting and notes on any web page or PDF, plus flashcards, Web Highlights. Readwise Reader is the closest full replacement, but it has no free plan. ### Can I import my Omnivore export into Web Highlights? No. Web Highlights can import Pocket exports, browser bookmarks, Kindle highlights and Weava data, but not Omnivore. If you still have your Omnivore export, Wallabag offers a migration path. ### Is Pocket a good Omnivore alternative? No. Mozilla shut Pocket down in July 2025, so it's no longer an option. If you were using Pocket too, our Pocket alternatives guide covers that shutdown. --- # Readwise Alternative: Web Highlights vs Readwise Reader (2026) > Looking for a cheaper Readwise alternative? An honest comparison of Web Highlights and Readwise Reader: price, highlighting, PDFs, flashcards vs daily review, exports — and what Readwise does better. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-10-06 - Updated: 2026-10-06 - Tags: comparison, Chrome Extension, Reading - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/readwise-alternative/ --- If you want a cheaper Readwise alternative for highlighting web pages and PDFs, Web Highlights covers that part for free, and its paid plan costs about half of Readwise. What it doesn’t replace is Readwise Reader as a reading app: RSS feeds, newsletters, EPUBs, text-to-speech and iPhone and desktop apps are Readwise’s home turf, and if you use them every day, Readwise is worth its price. Full disclosure: I built Web Highlights. The Readwise reviews linked below live on Tooltivity and Productivity Apps, which are run by my company too. Readwise’s prices and features in this article come from their own pricing and product pages, checked on October 6, 2026. 💡 **Key takeaways** - Readwise has no free plan: Lite is $5.59/month and Full (with Reader) is $9.99/month, both billed yearly, after a 30-day trial. - Web Highlights is free for highlighting, notes, PDFs and flashcards. Syncing across devices starts at $56.99/year. - Pick Readwise for a full reading app: feeds, newsletters, ebooks, audio and apps on every platform. - Pick Web Highlights to highlight where you already read — any website or PDF — and turn it into flashcards, without a subscription. ## What is Readwise, and what does it cost? Readwise is really two products. The original Readwise collects highlights from everywhere — Kindle, apps, the web — and brings them back in a daily review. [Readwise Reader](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/readwise-reader) is their read-it-later app, where you save articles, PDFs, newsletters, RSS feeds, YouTube videos and EPUBs and highlight them in one place. Here’s what their pricing page shows (October 2026): - **Readwise Lite:** $5.59/month, billed yearly. Daily review, highlight library, tags and notes. - **Readwise (Full):** $9.99/month billed yearly, or $12.99 paid monthly. Adds Reader and export to Notion and Obsidian. - A 30-day free trial, and 50% off for students. There’s no free tier for the service itself. The [Readwise Highlighter extension](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/readwise-highlighter) is free to install, but it saves into your Readwise account — 100,000 users and 4.14★ from 63 ratings on the Chrome Web Store (October 2026). ## Web Highlights vs Readwise at a glance | | Web Highlights | Readwise + Reader | | --- | --- | --- | | Price | Free; sync from $6.49/month or $56.99/year (Ultimate $59.99/year) | Lite $5.59/month, Full $9.99/month (billed yearly); no free plan | | Where you highlight | On the original web page, in a sidebar next to it | Inside Reader, after you save the page (or on the page with the extension) | | PDFs | Online, local and uploaded (up to 30 MB); download with highlights as real PDF annotations | Yes, in Reader | | YouTube | Highlight and take notes on the transcript while you watch | Yes, in Reader | | RSS, newsletters, EPUBs | No | Yes | | Kindle | Import My Clippings.txt or your Amazon notebook | Syncs Kindle highlights | | Remember what you read | Flashcards from highlights with spaced repetition | Daily review that resurfaces your highlights | | AI | Summaries, chat and flashcards on your own device | Ghostreader (GPT) in Reader, plus an MCP server for AI assistants | | Export | One-click to Notion and Capacities; copy as Markdown or HTML | Obsidian, Notion, Roam, Logseq, Evernote and more (Full plan) | | Apps | Extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox; Android app; web app | Web, iOS, Android, Mac and Windows apps; extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari | | Text-to-speech | No | Yes, with AI voices | | Account | Not needed for the extension | A paid Readwise account after the trial | ## Is there a free Readwise alternative? For highlighting, yes. Web Highlights is free to use: highlight any website or PDF in different colors, add notes and tags, sort pages into collections and search across everything. No account, no trial that runs out. What costs money is syncing your library across devices. That’s the Premium plan at $6.49/month or $56.99/year, with a 7-day free trial. If you only read on one computer, you may never need it. Want unlimited one-click exports and no daily AI limits? That’s Ultimate at $59.99/year — about half of Readwise Full at $119.88/year. ## How is highlighting different? This is the real difference, and it’s easy to miss. Readwise Reader wants you to read _in Reader_: you save a page, it opens in a clean reading view, and you highlight there. That’s great if you like reading in one app. Web Highlights works on the page itself. You read the article where it lives, select a sentence, and it’s highlighted — on the original site, with the sidebar showing your notes next to it. Come back next week and your highlights are still on that page. If you prefer a clean view, there’s a reader mode too, and it works on PDFs. Neither is better in general. If you love a reading inbox, Reader fits. If you read in tabs and don’t want another app, Web Highlights fits. ## Can Web Highlights replace the Readwise daily review? Partly, and differently. Readwise brings back a handful of your highlights every day, by email or in the app, so you see them again. Web Highlights turns highlights into question-and-answer flashcards and [schedules them with spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning), so you actively test yourself instead of just re-reading. Re-reading is easy and pleasant. Testing yourself is more work, and it’s what makes things stick. If you’re studying — for exams, a language, a certification — flashcards will do more for you. If you want a gentle daily reminder of what you read, the Readwise review is the nicer habit. Kindle readers aren’t left out: [import your Kindle highlights](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/import-kindle-highlights), and each book becomes its own deck. ## Can I export highlights to Notion and Obsidian? Notion and [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/docs/integrations/capacities-export): yes, in one click. Free and Premium get one export per day to each, Ultimate is unlimited. Obsidian is where Readwise is clearly ahead. Readwise syncs to Obsidian, Roam, Logseq and Evernote automatically. With Web Highlights, you [copy your highlights as Markdown](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) and paste them into your vault. If an automatic Obsidian sync is the center of your workflow, stay with Readwise. ## What does Readwise do better? - **A complete reading app.** RSS feeds, newsletters, EPUBs, YouTube and Twitter threads in one inbox. Web Highlights doesn’t do feeds or ebooks. - **Apps everywhere.** iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows and Safari. We have no iOS app or Safari extension. - **Text-to-speech** for articles, PDFs and ebooks. - **Automatic sync to note apps,** including Obsidian, Roam and Logseq. - **Cloud AI on any device** with Ghostreader, where our AI needs a desktop browser with a built-in model. ## What does Web Highlights do better? - **Price:** free to use, and about half the price when you do pay. - **Highlighting on the original page,** without saving it into another app first. - **PDFs you hand to others:** [download a PDF](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/download-print-pdf-with-highlights) and your highlights are real annotations that open in Acrobat, Preview or Edge. - **Flashcards and spaced repetition** built in, not just re-reading. - **Private, on-device AI:** [summaries](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/ai-summary), chat and flashcards run in Chrome or Edge on your computer, with no Web Highlights AI server. - **No account to start.** Install and highlight. ## How do I switch from Readwise to Web Highlights? One honest note first: there’s no direct import of Readwise highlights into Web Highlights. Your Readwise library stays where it is — Readwise lets you export it as Markdown, so keep a copy before you cancel. 1. [Install Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/pdf-web-highlighter/install) for Chrome, Edge or Firefox. No account needed. 2. Read your next article where it is and highlight the sentences that matter. Add a note or a tag. 3. Turn the highlights you want to remember into flashcards. 4. If you read Kindle books, import your clippings, so your book highlights and web highlights sit in one library. Comparing other tools too? We also wrote [Web Highlights vs Glasp](https://web-highlights.com/blog/glasp-alternative/), the [best Omnivore alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/omnivore-alternative/) and [Web Highlights vs Weava](https://web-highlights.com/blog/webhighlights-weava-alternative/). ## So which one should you pick? If Readwise Reader is where you read every day — feeds, newsletters, ebooks, audio, on your phone and your laptop — keep it. It’s a great product, and the price buys a lot. If you mostly highlight web pages and PDFs and want to remember them, you’re paying for a lot you don’t use. Try Web Highlights for a week. It’s free, and you’ll know quickly if it’s enough. I’m happy to answer questions, and I’m open to criticism 😊 You can reach me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts). ## Frequently asked questions ### Is there a free version of Readwise? No. Readwise offers a 30-day free trial, then Readwise Lite costs $5.59 a month and the full plan with Reader $9.99 a month, both billed yearly (October 2026). The Readwise Highlighter extension is free to install, but it saves into a paid Readwise account. Web Highlights is free for highlighting, notes, PDFs and flashcards; only syncing across devices is paid. ### Can I import my Readwise highlights into Web Highlights? Not directly. Readwise lets you export your highlights as Markdown, so keep that export as an archive before you cancel. Web Highlights can import Kindle highlights, browser bookmarks, Pocket and Weava data, but not a Readwise library. ### Does Web Highlights work like Readwise Reader? Only partly. Reader is a reading inbox for articles, PDFs, newsletters, RSS feeds and ebooks. Web Highlights lets you highlight on the original web page or PDF instead, keeps everything in a searchable library and turns highlights into flashcards. It has a reader mode, but no RSS, newsletters, EPUBs or text-to-speech. ### Which is better for students? If the goal is to remember what you read, Web Highlights: highlights become flashcards with spaced repetition, it's free to use, and PDFs download with real annotations. Readwise offers 50% off for students and suits those who read a lot of newsletters, feeds and ebooks in one app. --- # Best Free Quizlet Alternatives in 2026 (7 Apps Compared) > Hit Quizlet’s Learn limit? I compared 7 free Quizlet alternatives — Knowt, Anki, RemNote, Brainscape and more — by free plan, price and Quizlet import. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-10-04 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Learning, comparison - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-free-quizlet-alternatives/ --- Quizlet was the site half my generation studied on, so I get why switching feels hard. For many people, that changes on the day Learn mode stops in the middle of a session and asks for a credit card. The short answer: the best free Quizlet alternative for most students is **Knowt** — it imports your Quizlet sets and keeps Learn mode free. If you want to remember things for months, **Anki** is free on computers and Android. And if your study material is what you read online, **Web Highlights** turns your highlights into flashcards. One thing up front: I built Web Highlights, so it’s on this list. I placed it where I think it honestly fits, and every competitor fact below was checked on the vendor’s own pricing and help pages on October 4, 2026. ### Key takeaways - **Quizlet’s free plan** still works for flashcards, but Learn and practice tests are limited and there are ads. Quizlet Plus costs $35.99 a year on the web. - **Knowt** is the closest swap: free Learn mode, free spaced repetition, and a free Chrome extension that copies a Quizlet set over in one click. - **Anki** is the most powerful free option for long-term memory — but it takes setup, and the iPhone app costs $24.99. - **RemNote** and **Web Highlights** are for people whose cards should come from their own notes or reading, not from a typed set. ## The best free Quizlet alternatives at a glance | App | Best for | Free plan | Imports Quizlet sets | Paid from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Knowt | Switching from Quizlet with your sets | Unlimited Learn, practice tests, spaced repetition (with ads) | ✅ One click with its Chrome extension | $149.99/yr | | Anki | Remembering for months and years | Everything on desktop, Android and the web | ⚠️ Only as a text file | $24.99 once (iPhone app) | | RemNote | Notes and flashcards in one place | Unlimited notes and cards, spaced repetition, 3 annotated PDFs | ✅ Built-in importer | $8/mo | | Brainscape | Rating how well you know each card | Unlimited own cards, spaced repetition, AI cards (in the hundreds) | ⚠️ Via a CSV export | $95.88/yr | | Web Highlights | Flashcards from what you read online | Highlighting, flashcards, spaced repetition, ready-made decks | ❌ | Paid plans add sync after a 7-day trial | | Gizmo | Gamified quizzing | Unlimited cards, quizzing up to 15 hearts | ✅ Paste the set link | Varies (App Store lists several prices) | | Noji | Studying on your phone | Spaced repetition up to 50 cards a day | ✅ Paste the export text | Varies (App Store lists several prices) | ## What changed at Quizlet — and is it still free? Yes, Quizlet is still free for making and flipping through flashcards. What’s limited is the part that does the studying for you. Quizlet’s help center says free users get Learn “for a limited number of rounds per flashcard set” and practice tests “with limited access” — it doesn’t publish the exact numbers. The free plan also shows ads. The paid plans, as listed on Quizlet’s upgrade page: **Quizlet Plus** is $35.99 a year or $7.99 a month and still caps you at 20 rounds of Learn and 3 practice tests a month. **Plus Unlimited** is $44.99 a year or $9.99 a month. Buy through the iPhone app and Plus costs $44.99 a year instead. To be fair to Quizlet: in August 2026 it added a real **spaced repetition** mode to Flashcards — you rate each card from Repeat to Easy, and it schedules the next review. For now it works on the website only. If you study in a class, there’s another exception: sets your teacher assigns get unlimited, ad-free Learn and Test. So when is it worth looking elsewhere? When you hit the Learn limit every week, when you want to study on your phone without a subscription, or when your material isn’t a typed set at all. ## 1\. Knowt — the best free Quizlet alternative overall [Knowt](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/knowt) calls itself the “#1 free Quizlet alternative”, and for most students switching away from Quizlet that’s fair. Learn mode is free with unlimited rounds, practice tests are free, and spaced repetition is free. Full disclosure: Tooltivity and Productivity Apps, which this article links to, are run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. The best part for switchers: Knowt’s free Chrome extension adds a button to any Quizlet set that copies it into Knowt. Your years of sets don’t have to stay behind. - **Free:** unlimited Learn rounds, practice tests, spaced repetition, unlimited sets. The free plan shows ads. - **Paid:** Knowt Ultra, $149.99 a year or $24.99 a month — no ads, plus AI summaries of PDFs, videos and lectures. - **Platforms:** web, iPhone, Android, and the Chrome extension. **Skip it if** ads bother you — or if what you need is long-term retention tuning, where Anki goes deeper. ## 2\. Anki — best for remembering things for months [Anki](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/anki) is the tool med students and language learners swear by. It’s free and open source, and it schedules every card with a spaced repetition algorithm — the classic SM-2 or the newer FSRS — so you review each card right before you’d forget it. - **Free:** the desktop app (Windows, Mac, Linux), AnkiDroid for Android, and AnkiWeb sync between devices. - **Paid:** the iPhone and iPad app, AnkiMobile, is a one-time $24.99. It funds the project. - **Quizlet sets:** no direct import. Anki reads plain text files, so you can paste a Quizlet set’s export text into one. **Skip it if** you want it to just work in five minutes. Anki is plain to look at, and getting the most out of it means learning its settings. ## 3\. RemNote — best if your notes and flashcards should be one thing [RemNote](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/remnote) is a note-taking app where any line of your notes can become a flashcard. You write your lecture notes once, and the review queue builds itself from them. - **Free:** unlimited notes and flashcards on unlimited devices, spaced repetition, 3 annotated PDFs and 250 AI credits a month. - **Paid:** Pro is $8 a month ($96 a year). Pro with AI is $18 a month. - **Quizlet sets:** Quizlet is one of the import sources in its import menu. **Skip it if** you only want ready-made decks — RemNote shines when you write your own notes. ## 4\. Brainscape — best for rating how well you know each card [Brainscape](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/brainscape) asks you to rate every card from 1 to 5 by how confident you are, and shows the shaky ones more often. It also has a big catalogue of expert-made “Certified” decks. - **Free:** unlimited cards you make or that are shared with you, spaced repetition, importing, AI to make hundreds of flashcards, and 2,500 pre-loaded cards. - **Paid:** Pro is $19.99 a month, or $95.88 billed yearly — that’s the “$7.99 a month” you’ll see advertised. Pro unlocks all Certified decks and unlimited AI cards. - **Quizlet sets:** export them from Quizlet and import the file. ## 5\. Web Highlights — best for flashcards from what you read This is mine, so take it with that in mind. [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a free browser extension that lets you highlight text on any website or PDF. Every highlight can become a real question-and-answer flashcard, and spaced repetition brings it back before you forget it. It’s different from the others on this list in one way: your cards come from your own reading — the article you highlighted, the PDF from your course, a ChatGPT answer, your Kindle highlights. You can also let the AI built into Chrome draft the question for you, right on your device. - **Free:** highlighting, flashcards and spaced repetition. Ready-made decks in the [Learning Hub](https://web-highlights.com/learning), and a [free learner](https://app.web-highlights.com/learner) you can try without an account. - **AI:** free users get a small daily number of AI-drafted cards and one AI deck a day. The free [flashcard generators](https://web-highlights.com/tools/flashcard-generator) turn a website, YouTube video or PDF into a deck without signing up (Chrome 138 or newer). - **Paid:** sync between devices is free for 7 days, then part of the paid plans — your cards stay where they are either way. - **Platforms:** Chrome, Edge and Firefox (and Brave, Vivaldi, Opera), the web app, and an Android app. **Skip it if** you want to bring your Quizlet sets along — it can’t import them — or if you mostly study typed vocabulary lists on an iPhone. Then Knowt or Anki fit better. ## 6\. Gizmo — best if games keep you studying Gizmo turns your cards into quizzes with hearts, coins and leaderboards, and uses spaced repetition underneath to decide when a card comes back. Its “Magic Import” takes a Quizlet set link and copies the set over. - **Free:** unlimited cards and decks, quizzing up to 15 hearts, and Quizlet imports with a 20-minute wait between them. - **Paid:** Gizmo Unlimited removes the heart and import limits. It doesn’t publish one official price — the App Store lists several, so check in the app. ## 7\. Noji — best for studying on your phone [Noji](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/noji) (it used to be called AnkiPro) is a mobile-first flashcard app with spaced repetition and more than 50,000 pre-made decks. You can bring a Quizlet set over by pasting the text from Quizlet’s export. - **Free:** the essentials, capped at 50 cards a day. - **Paid:** Premium lifts the daily limit and adds images, audio, AI cards and offline study. Like Gizmo, it lists several prices in the App Store. ## How do I move my Quizlet sets to another app? Quizlet can export a set as plain text: open the set, choose Export, and copy the text. Most apps on this list can take that text — Anki and Noji read it directly, Brainscape takes it as a file. Knowt and Gizmo skip the step and copy the set from its page or link. ## Which one should you pick? - **You want Quizlet without the paywall:** Knowt. - **You need to remember a lot for a long time** (med school, a language, the bar): Anki. - **You take notes anyway:** RemNote. - **You learn from articles, PDFs and books:** Web Highlights. - **You need a game to keep going:** Gizmo. If you want more options beyond Quizlet replacements, I also compared the [best language-learning Chrome extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-chrome-language-learning-extensions-the-great-comparison/) and wrote about [how spaced repetition works](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) — it’s the idea behind every app on this list. ## Final thoughts Quizlet is still a good place to find a set someone already made. But if Learn mode keeps stopping halfway, you have real free options now — and moving your sets takes a few minutes, not a weekend. I am always happy to answer questions, and I am open to criticism. Feel free to contact me at any time 😊 Get in touch with me via [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . ## Frequently asked questions ### Does Quizlet have spaced repetition now? Yes. Since August 2026, Quizlet’s Flashcards mode has a spaced repetition option: you rate each card from Repeat to Easy, and Quizlet schedules the next review. It works on the Quizlet website only for now. ### Is Knowt really free? Yes for the study modes. Knowt’s free plan includes unlimited Learn rounds, practice tests and spaced repetition, and its Chrome extension imports Quizlet sets for free. The free plan shows ads; Knowt Ultra ($149.99 a year) removes them and adds AI summaries. ### Is Anki free on iPhone? No. Anki is free on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android (AnkiDroid) and the web, but the iPhone and iPad app, AnkiMobile, is a one-time $24.99 purchase. Sync through AnkiWeb is free on every platform. --- # Glasp Alternative: Web Highlights vs Glasp (2026 Comparison) > Looking for a Glasp alternative? An honest comparison of Web Highlights and Glasp: private highlights, PDFs, AI, flashcards, exports and price — and what Glasp still does better. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-10-01 - Updated: 2026-10-01 - Tags: comparison, Chrome Extension, Research - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/glasp-alternative/ --- The best Glasp alternative depends on why you want to leave. If you like Glasp’s highlighting but want your highlights private by default, real PDF annotation and flashcards to actually remember what you read, Web Highlights is the closest swap. If what you love about Glasp is its social side — public profiles and seeing what other readers highlight — no alternative replaces that, and you should probably stay. Full disclosure before we start: I built Web Highlights. Tooltivity, where the Glasp review linked below lives, is run by my company too. That’s why every Glasp number in this article comes from its public Chrome Web Store listing and reviews, with a date next to it, and why there’s a section on what Glasp does better. 💡 **Key takeaways** - Glasp is a social highlighter: 500,000 users, 4.45★ from 987 ratings on the Chrome Web Store (September 2026). Its strengths are public profiles, discovery and cloud AI summaries. - Web Highlights is a private highlighter: 300,000+ users, 4.8★ from 5,000+ ratings. Its strengths are PDFs, flashcards with spaced repetition and on-device AI. - Both are free to start. Web Highlights needs no account at all for the extension. - Pick Glasp for the social feed and Safari on iPhone. Pick Web Highlights for private highlights, PDFs, learning and the Android app. ## Why are people looking for a Glasp alternative? Most of them aren’t unhappy with highlighting itself. Glasp is a good highlighter, and the rating shows it. The complaints are about where the free plan ends. We read 500 recent Chrome Web Store reviews of Glasp for its [Tooltivity review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter). “Paywall placement” came up 15 times, and 60% of those mentions were negative. One reviewer in June 2026 put it bluntly: they didn’t want to pay for private web highlights and for more than five PDFs. Another found that YouTube summaries were Pro only. The second big theme was AI features — some people wanted them, some wanted a way to switch them off. So if you’re searching for an alternative, you probably want one of three things: private highlights without paying, more PDFs, or less AI in your way. Let’s see how Web Highlights handles each one, and where it doesn’t. ## Web Highlights vs Glasp at a glance | | Web Highlights | Glasp | | --- | --- | --- | | Chrome Web Store | 300,000+ users, 4.8★ (5,000+ ratings) | 500,000 users, 4.45★ (987 ratings, Sept 2026) | | Highlight websites | Yes, in multiple colors, with notes | Yes, in multiple colors, with notes | | Who sees your highlights | Only you, unless you share a page via a public link | Built around a public profile; reviewers say private highlights are a paid feature | | PDFs | Online, local and uploaded PDFs (up to 30 MB); download them with highlights as real PDF annotations | Yes; reviewers report a five-PDF limit on the free plan | | YouTube | Highlight and take notes on the transcript while you watch | Highlights with timestamps and AI summaries; reviewers say summaries need the paid plan | | AI | Summaries, chat and flashcards on your own device (Gemini Nano in Chrome, Phi-4-mini in Edge) | Summaries with ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini in the cloud | | Remember what you read | Highlights become flashcards with spaced repetition | Not part of Glasp’s listing | | Kindle | Import My Clippings.txt or your Amazon notebook | Import and sync Kindle highlights | | Export | One-click to Notion and Capacities; copy as Markdown or HTML (paste into Obsidian) | Obsidian, Notion, Roam and other note apps | | Social discovery | No | Yes — follow readers and see what they highlight | | Browsers | Chrome, Edge, Firefox (also Brave, Vivaldi, Opera) | Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari | | Phone | Android app; web app on iPhone | Safari extension on iPhone | | Price | Free; cloud sync from $6.49/month or $56.99/year, 7-day free trial | Free plan plus a paid plan | ## Can I keep my highlights private for free? With Web Highlights, yes — private is the default, not an upgrade. Your highlights and notes live in your own library. Nobody sees them unless you decide to [share a single page as a public link](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/sharing-public-pages), and you can revoke that link any time. This is the biggest difference in how the two tools think. Glasp is a social reading network that happens to be a great highlighter. Web Highlights is a personal library that happens to let you share. Neither is wrong, but you should know which one you’re signing up for. You also don’t need an account to start. Install the extension, highlight, and everything stays on your device. You only sign in if you want your library on more than one device. ## Which is better for PDFs? Web Highlights, if PDFs are a big part of your reading. It opens online and local PDFs in its own viewer, and you can [upload your own PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/upload-pdf) (up to 30 MB) so they sit in your library next to your web pages. There’s no five-PDF ceiling. Here’s the part most people don’t expect: when you [download a PDF](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/download-print-pdf-with-highlights), your highlights are embedded as real PDF annotations, each in its own color, with your notes as comments. Open the file in Acrobat, Preview or Edge and they’re all there. That matters if you hand papers to a professor or a colleague who will never install an extension. Don’t have the extension? The [free online PDF highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/tools/pdf-highlighter) works in the browser with no install and no account. ## Does Web Highlights have AI like Glasp? Yes, but it works differently. Glasp sends your content to cloud models — ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini — for YouTube and article summaries. Web Highlights runs [AI summaries](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/ai-summary), AI chat and AI flashcards on your own device, with the model built into Chrome (Gemini Nano) or Edge (Phi-4-mini). There’s no Web Highlights AI server, so your pages never leave your computer for it. The honest catch: on-device AI needs a desktop browser that ships the model. Chrome works on Windows, macOS and Linux; Edge only on Windows and macOS. It doesn’t run on phones, and the free plan has a daily allowance (one summary, one new chat and one generated deck per day). If you want cloud models on any device, Glasp is the better fit here. And if the AI features bother you? You can simply not use them. Highlighting works the same without them. ## Can I turn highlights into flashcards? This is the one thing I’d point every student to. In Web Highlights, any highlight can become a question-and-answer flashcard, and you [review your cards with spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning), which brings each card back at growing intervals. Highlighting feels like learning, but it only sticks if you come back to it — and almost nobody re-reads old highlights on their own. If that sounds familiar, our guide on [creating a study guide from your highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-create-a-study-guide/) walks through it. You can bring your Kindle books in too: [import your Kindle highlights](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/import-kindle-highlights), and each book becomes its own deck. ## Can I export to Notion and Obsidian? Notion, yes, in one click — and [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/docs/integrations/capacities-export) too. Free and Premium get one export per day to each, and Ultimate is unlimited. Any page can also be copied as Markdown or HTML. Obsidian is where Glasp is ahead. Glasp exports there directly. With Web Highlights, you [copy your highlights as Markdown](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) and paste them into your vault. It takes a few seconds, but it’s a manual step. Glasp also exports to Roam; we don’t. ## What does Glasp do better? I promised this section, so here it is. Glasp is the better choice if: - **You want the social side.** Following other readers and discovering articles through their highlights is Glasp’s core idea. Web Highlights has nothing like it. - **You read on Safari or iPhone.** Glasp has a Safari extension, mobile Safari included. Web Highlights has no Safari extension; on iPhone you use our web app. - **You want cloud AI models everywhere,** including on your phone, rather than an on-device model on desktop. - **You live in Obsidian or Roam** and want a direct export instead of copy and paste. If any of these is the reason you use Glasp, keep it. Switching tools is work, and it should buy you something. ## What does Web Highlights do better? - **Private by default,** with no account needed to start. - **PDFs:** uploads up to 30 MB, no small free cap, and downloads with real PDF annotations. - **Learning:** flashcards and spaced repetition built in. - **On-device AI:** your pages stay on your computer. - **Android:** a native Android app, synced with the extension. - **Organizing:** tags, [collections](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/collections) (folders in a tree), page notes and search across everything. And some limits, so you’re not surprised: syncing across devices is part of the paid plans (with a 7-day free trial), there’s no shared team workspace, and there’s no iOS app yet. ## How do I switch from Glasp to Web Highlights? 1. [Install Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/pdf-web-highlighter/install) for Chrome, Edge or Firefox. No account needed. 2. Open an article you read recently and highlight something. Click the highlight to add a note or a tag. 3. For the pages you care about in Glasp, open them again and re-highlight the passages that still matter. It’s a good moment to keep only what you’ll actually use. 4. Turn your favorite highlights into flashcards, and let spaced repetition bring them back. Coming from another highlighter instead? We also compared [Web Highlights and Weava](https://web-highlights.com/blog/webhighlights-weava-alternative/), looked at [Readwise alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/readwise-alternative/), and rounded up the [best highlighter extensions for Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlighter-extension-for-chrome/). ## So which one should you pick? If you read in public and like learning from what others highlight, stay with Glasp. If you read for yourself — to study, to research, to remember — and want that to stay private, try Web Highlights. It’s free, and it takes about a minute to find out if it fits. I’m happy to answer questions, and I’m open to criticism 😊 You can reach me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts). ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Glasp free? Glasp has a free plan and a paid plan. In Chrome Web Store reviews, users say private highlights, more than five PDFs and YouTube AI summaries need the paid plan. Web Highlights is free to use with private highlights and no PDF cap; only syncing across devices is paid, from $6.49 a month after a 7-day trial. ### Are my Glasp highlights public? Glasp is built as a social reading network, so highlights are tied to a public profile by default, and reviewers say keeping them private is a paid feature. In Web Highlights, highlights are private by default and only become visible if you share a single page via a public link, which you can revoke. ### Can I use Web Highlights without an account? Yes. The browser extension works without signing up, and your highlights stay on your device. You only need an account if you want to sync your library across devices or use the web app and Android app with the same data. ### Does Web Highlights work on iPhone and Safari? Not as a Safari extension. On iPhone and iPad you can use the Web Highlights web app, and Android has a native app. If highlighting inside Safari is a must, Glasp supports Safari, including on iPhone. --- # Chrome Extensions on Android: How to Install Them in 2026 > Chrome for Android can't run extensions, but Edge, Firefox, Vivaldi and a few other browsers can. Here's which ones, how to install extensions on your phone, and what happened to Kiwi. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-09-18 - Updated: 2026-10-05 - Tags: Tutorial, Chrome Extension, Tools - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-install-chrome-extensions-on-android/ --- Recently, a user wrote me that highlighting had stopped working on their phone _and_ their tablet. They were using Web Highlights in Edge on Android. I installed it on my own Android phone, found the bug, and fixed it. And while doing that, I learned a lot about which Android browsers can run extensions at all. Here is what works in 2026. **So, can you use Chrome extensions on Android?** Not in the Chrome app. But you can use them in **Microsoft Edge** (from Edge's own extension list), in **Firefox** (add-ons marked for Android), in **Vivaldi** (since September 2026), and in a few smaller browsers that open the Chrome Web Store directly. ## Key Takeaways - Chrome for Android has no extension support. On a phone, the Chrome Web Store only offers to install an extension on your computer. - Microsoft Edge for Android installs extensions from its menu: **☰ → Extensions**, search, tap **Get**. - Firefox for Android installs every add-on that its developer marked as Android-compatible. - Vivaldi for Android installs extensions from the Chrome Web Store since version 8.2 (September 2026). - Kiwi Browser was discontinued in January 2025. Browsers like Lemur, Quetta and Yandex open the Chrome Web Store instead. - Samsung Browser only runs its own add-ons from the Galaxy Store, not Chrome extensions. ## Can I Install Chrome Extensions in Chrome for Android? No. The Chrome app from Google Play doesn't support extensions, and there is no setting or flag that turns them on. If you open the Chrome Web Store on your phone, the button says **Add to Desktop**. That installs the extension in Chrome on your computer the next time you open it, not on your phone (see Google's [Chrome Web Store help](https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/2664769)). You might have read that Google is testing extensions on Android. That's true, but only in experimental "desktop" Chromium builds for Android-powered PCs. You have to sideload them, they show up as "Chromium" instead of Chrome, and they aren't made for phones ([Android Authority](https://www.androidauthority.com/try-new-chrome-for-android-with-extensions-3569268/)). For your phone, you need a different browser. ## Which Android Browsers Support Extensions? | Browser | Extensions? | Where they come from | | --- | --- | --- | | Microsoft Edge | Yes | Edge Add-ons, from ☰ → Extensions | | Firefox | Yes | Firefox add-ons marked for Android | | Vivaldi (8.2 and later) | Yes | Chrome Web Store, from the puzzle icon in the address bar | | Lemur, Quetta, Yandex | Yes | Chrome Web Store (third-party browsers) | | Samsung Browser (formerly Samsung Internet) | Only its own | Samsung add-ons from the Galaxy Store | | Google Chrome | No | – | | Brave, Opera | No | – | | Kiwi Browser | Discontinued | No longer maintained since January 2025 | ## How Can I Install Extensions in Microsoft Edge for Android? Edge is the easiest way to get desktop extensions on an Android phone. It started in 2025 with a short list of hand-picked extensions (22 at launch, according to [How-To Geek](https://www.howtogeek.com/microsoft-edge-on-android-has-extensions-now/)). Today, you can search the Edge Add-ons catalog right from the menu: 1. Install **Microsoft Edge** from Google Play and open it. 2. Tap the menu button (**☰**) in the bottom bar, then **Extensions**. 3. Search for the extension you want and tap **Get**. 4. Confirm with **Add**. That's it, the extension now runs on every page you open in Edge. Edge may warn you that an extension was not tested on mobile devices. You can still add it. Just don't be surprised if some buttons or popups don't fit on your phone screen. Here is how that looks with my own extension. [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com) is my free extension for highlighting websites and PDFs, and hundreds of thousands of people use it. On a phone, you select text as usual, a bar slides up from the bottom, and you tap a color to highlight: ![Web Highlights in Microsoft Edge on Android: selected text and the highlight bar at the bottom of the screen](https://web-highlights.com/images/tutorials/phone/android-highlight-bar.webp) *Highlighting a Wikipedia article with Web Highlights in Edge for Android* If you want to try it, the full walkthrough (including where your highlights end up afterwards) is here: [How to use Web Highlights on your Android phone](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/pdf-web-highlighter/how-to-use-web-highlights-on-android). And if you'd rather not switch browsers at all: since October 2026, Web Highlights also has its own [Android app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.webhighlights.app). You share a page or PDF from any app into it and highlight there, synced with the extension. ## How Can I Install Add-ons in Firefox for Android? Firefox for Android has an open add-on store. Since December 2023, you can install every add-on whose developer marked it as Android-compatible. Mozilla's own [help article](https://support.mozilla.org/kb/find-and-install-add-ons-firefox-android) describes it like this: 1. Tap the three-dot menu (**⋮**), then **Extensions**. 2. Tap an extension to learn more, then tap **+** to install it. 3. Check the permissions it asks for and tap **Add**. You can also browse all Android add-ons on [addons.mozilla.org/android](https://addons.mozilla.org/android/) and install them from there. If an add-on you know from desktop Firefox doesn't show up, its developer hasn't marked it for Android yet. Web Highlights wasn't marked either until recently. It is now: I tested it in Firefox on my own Android phone, and highlighting works just like in Edge. ## What Happened to Kiwi Browser? For years, Kiwi was _the_ answer to "Chrome extensions on Android". It was discontinued in January 2025 because its developer no longer had time to maintain it, and its extension code went into Microsoft Edge (see [AlternativeTo](https://alternativeto.net/news/2025/1/kiwi-browser-discontinued-explore-alternatives-for-extension-support-and-security/)). Please don't install old Kiwi APKs from random websites: an unmaintained browser doesn't get security updates. If you're looking for a Kiwi alternative that opens the Chrome Web Store directly, a few Chromium-based browsers in Google Play do that, for example **Lemur**, **Quetta** and **Yandex Browser**. The idea is the same in all of them: 1. Install the browser from Google Play. 2. Open _chromewebstore.google.com_ in that browser and find the extension. 3. Tap **Add to Chrome** and confirm. Vivaldi now does the same with its own menu: in version 8.2, it added a puzzle icon to the address bar that opens the Chrome Web Store, where you tap **Add to Vivaldi**. Vivaldi says not every desktop extension works on a phone and that "Desktop site" has to stay on in the store ([Vivaldi blog](https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-on-mobile-8-2/)). I haven't tested Web Highlights in these browsers, so I can't vouch for them. They're made by small third-party teams, so check who makes the browser and which permissions an extension asks for before you install it. ## Does Samsung Browser Support Extensions? Only its own. Samsung Browser, which was called Samsung Internet until recently, has an add-on menu, but the add-ons come from Samsung's Galaxy Store, not from the Chrome Web Store. On a Galaxy phone, [Samsung describes it](https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS10012967/) like this: tap the three-dot **Tools** icon, then **Add-ons** → **Get more add-ons**, and install one from the Galaxy Store. So if you need a specific Chrome extension, Samsung Browser won't help you. Use Edge instead. ## Which Android Browser Has the Best Extension Support? It depends on what you need, but here is how I'd pick: - **Edge** if you want the easiest setup. It's one of the two browsers I test Web Highlights on, and it searches the same catalog as Edge on your computer. - **Firefox** if the add-on you need is marked for Android. It's the same Mozilla store the desktop version uses, and it's the other browser I test Web Highlights on. - **Vivaldi** if you need a Chrome extension that's in neither store. You get the whole Chrome Web Store from an established browser maker, but its extension support is brand new. - **Lemur, Quetta or Yandex** if Vivaldi doesn't work for you. They also open the whole Chrome Web Store, but come from much smaller teams. ## Why Do Some Extensions Not Work on a Phone? Almost every extension was built for a computer: a mouse, a right-click menu, keyboard shortcuts and a big screen. On a phone, some of that simply doesn't exist. While preparing Web Highlights for Firefox on Android, I found out that Firefox for Android has no right-click menu and no keyboard shortcuts for extensions at all. An extension that expects them at startup can stop working completely. Popups are another problem: many are designed for a desktop window and end up cut off on a phone. So if an extension behaves strangely on your phone, it's usually not your fault. Check whether the developer says anything about mobile support, or look for a web version of the tool instead. ## What About iPhone? On an iPhone, the rules are completely different: extensions only come as apps from the App Store, and only Safari runs them. I wrote about it here: [Safari extensions on iPhone, and what about Chrome?](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-browser-extensions-on-iphone/) --- I hope this saves you some trial and error. If a browser on this list changed or I missed one, let me know. I'm happy to answer any questions, and I'm always open to criticism 😊 Get in touch with me via [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts). ## Frequently asked questions ### Can I use Chrome extensions on Android without root? Yes. You don't need root or developer tools. Install Microsoft Edge and add extensions from its menu under Extensions, use Firefox with add-ons marked for Android, or use Vivaldi (8.2 and later) or a third-party browser such as Lemur, Quetta or Yandex that opens the Chrome Web Store. ### Is Kiwi Browser still available? Kiwi Browser was discontinued in January 2025, and its developer asked users to switch to a maintained browser. Its extension code went into Microsoft Edge. Old Kiwi installers no longer get security updates, so avoid them. ### Why does the Chrome Web Store say "Add to Desktop" on my phone? Chrome for Android cannot run extensions. The button installs the extension in Chrome on your computer the next time you open it, where you are signed in with the same Google account. ### Can I use Chrome extensions in Samsung Internet? No. Samsung Browser (formerly Samsung Internet) only installs Samsung's own add-ons from the Galaxy Store. For Chrome Web Store extensions on a Galaxy phone, install Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi or a browser like Lemur or Quetta. --- # Safari Extensions on iPhone: How to Install Them (and What About Chrome?) > Safari on iPhone runs extensions from the App Store, Chrome and Edge for iOS run none, and Orion loads some Chrome extensions in beta. Here's how to install them and what actually works. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-09-18 - Updated: 2026-09-18 - Tags: Tutorial, Apple, Chrome Extension - Reading time: 3 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-browser-extensions-on-iphone/ --- I keep getting emails from people who want to use Web Highlights on their iPhone or iPad. And every time, I have to give the same answer: the extension doesn't run there — and it's not something I can fix, because Apple decides how extensions work on iOS. That's not a very satisfying answer, I know. So I looked into what does work on an iPhone today. **The short answer:** iPhones do support extensions, but only in **Safari**, and only extensions that come as apps from the **App Store**. Chrome, Edge and Firefox on iPhone can't run extensions at all. The one exception is **Orion**, a browser that can load some Chrome and Firefox extensions in a beta. ## Key Takeaways - Safari extensions on iPhone and iPad are small apps you install from the App Store. - You add them in Safari under **Manage Extensions** and switch them on in **Settings → Apps → Safari → Extensions**. - Chrome, Edge and Firefox for iOS have no extension support. There is no Chrome Web Store on iPhone. - Orion by Kagi can load some Chrome and Firefox extensions on iPhone, with fewer features than on a computer. - If the extension you need isn't available on iOS, look for a web version of the tool. ## How Do I Install Safari Extensions on iPhone? Safari extensions on iPhone aren't downloaded from a website like on a computer. They're small apps from the App Store. This is how Apple describes it in its [iPhone User Guide](https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/get-extensions-iphab0432bf6/ios): 1. Open **Safari**. 2. Tap the page menu button on the left side of the address bar, then **Manage Extensions**. 3. Search for an extension, or tap **Browse Extensions** to look in the App Store. 4. Tap **Get** (or the price) and follow the instructions. After installing one, make sure it's actually switched on: 1. Open the **Settings** app. 2. Tap **Apps**, then **Safari**, then **Extensions**. 3. Tap the extension and turn on **Allow Extension**. You can also switch an extension on or off for a single website: tap the page menu button next to the address bar and choose **Manage Extensions** there. To remove an extension, delete it like any other app. ## Can I Create My Own Safari Extension in iOS 27? Yes, if your iPhone supports Apple Intelligence. With iOS 27, Safari has a **Describe Extension** option in the same page menu: you describe what you want, and Safari first checks whether a matching extension already exists in the App Store. If not, it creates one for you that you can try out and edit. I find that pretty wild, and I'm curious how well it works for more than small tweaks. ## Can I Use Chrome Extensions on My iPhone? Not in Chrome. Chrome for iOS has no extension support, and neither do Edge and Firefox for iOS. On iPhone, every browser has to use Apple's WebKit engine, and Apple only allows extensions through Safari's App Store route. So there is no Chrome Web Store on iPhone, no developer mode and no workaround inside those apps. Many popular extensions do have a Safari version in the App Store, though. So before you give up, search the App Store for the extension's name. ## Can Orion Run Chrome Extensions on iPhone? Partly. Orion is a browser by Kagi that implements the extension APIs of Chrome and Firefox on top of WebKit. In its [own docs](https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/ios-ipados-extensions.html), Kagi explains how to turn it on: 1. In Orion, tap the **•••** menu, then **Settings**. 2. In the **Extensions** section, turn on Chrome extensions, Firefox extensions or both. 3. Go back to the **•••** menu, tap **Extensions** and use **+** to install one from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons. Kagi is open about the limits: extension support on iOS is in beta, and Apple restricts which APIs a browser can offer, so fewer extensions work fully than on a computer. I haven't tested Web Highlights in Orion, so I can't tell you whether it works there. ## Can I Use Chrome Extensions on iPad? No, iPad follows the same rules as iPhone. iPad Safari shows the desktop version of websites, which makes many people expect desktop extensions too. But the rules don't change: extensions only run in Safari, they come from the App Store, and Orion is the one beta exception. ## What If the Extension You Need Isn't on iOS? Look for a web version of the tool. Many extensions come with a website or web app that does the core job without any install. That's exactly what I did for Web Highlights, the free highlighter extension I've been building for the past few years. Hundreds of thousands of people use it on their computers, but it doesn't run on an iPhone. So instead, you can paste any article link into the free Reader Mode tool on our website and highlight the article right there, with the same highlight bar as on Android: ![An article in the Web Highlights reader on an iPhone, with selected text and the highlight bar at the bottom](https://web-highlights.com/images/tutorials/phone/iphone-highlight-bar.webp) *Highlighting an article in the Web Highlights reader on an iPhone* The steps are here: [How to use Web Highlights on your iPhone and iPad](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/pdf-web-highlighter/how-to-use-web-highlights-on-iphone). And if you have an Android phone, you have more options: [How to install Chrome extensions on Android](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-install-chrome-extensions-on-android/). --- If Apple changes the rules again, I'll update this article. I'm happy to answer any questions, and I'm always open to criticism 😊 Get in touch with me via [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts). ## Frequently asked questions ### Can I use Chrome extensions on my iPhone? Not in Chrome, Edge or Firefox for iOS, because none of them support extensions. Safari runs extensions that come as apps from the App Store, and the Orion browser can load some Chrome and Firefox extensions in a beta with limited features. ### Where do I turn on Safari extensions on iPhone? Open the Settings app, tap Apps, then Safari, then Extensions. Tap an extension and turn on Allow Extension. You can also switch extensions on or off per website from the page menu next to Safari’s address bar. ### Do iPad browsers support desktop extensions? No. iPad Safari shows desktop websites, but extensions follow the same rules as on iPhone: only App Store extensions in Safari, none in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, and Orion as a beta exception. --- # Top 10 Chrome SEO Extensions: The Great Comparison > Compare the 10 best SEO extensions for Chrome — Detailed SEO, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest and more — on data, free limits and privacy. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-09-04 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension, SEO, comparison, Tools, Productivity - Reading time: 25 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-seo-chrome-extensions/ --- A page isn't ranking and nobody can tell you why. The title looks fine in the browser tab, the content reads well, and the client is on the call in ten minutes. So you open the source, hit Ctrl+F, and start hunting for a canonical tag through four hundred lines of minified markup — which is roughly where every SEO audit has begun since 2006, and roughly where every SEO extension has promised to end. The promise splits into three jobs that get lumped under one label, and telling them apart before you install anything will save you an afternoon. Some of these tools read the page in front of you and report what it declares: title, headings, schema, hreflang, the things you can fix yourself this afternoon. Others answer questions about demand — how many people search a term, what it costs, whether interest is climbing. A third group estimates what other sites are getting: traffic, backlinks, domain authority. Almost nobody needs all three, and a tool that's excellent at one is usually mediocre at the others. We spent time with the ten most-installed SEO extensions on the Chrome Web Store, judging them on whether the numbers hold up, how much of the tool survives the free tier, what happens to your browsing data, and — a question this category makes unavoidable — how the vendor behaves when it decides to move the paywall. Two of the ten have been through exactly that in the last two years, and the ratings still carry the scars. What follows ranks all ten with real Chrome download counts and store ratings behind every claim. Every number below comes from the Chrome Web Store, which is where this category lives: none of these ten currently ship a Firefox or Edge build. ### Key takeaways - **Detailed SEO Extension** (9.17/10) wins on the job most people actually need — read the page, show what it declares — free, with no account and the clearest panel of the ten. - **SEO META in 1 CLICK** (9.08) is the privacy pick: it runs on activeTab alone rather than every site you visit, and its last 100 reviews average 4.96, ahead of its all-time score. - **Ahrefs SEO Toolbar** (8.17) is the technical choice — redirect chains, indexation and what Googlebot sees. Diagnostics are free; the famous metrics need a subscription. - **Ubersuggest** (8.08) is the best starting point for keyword research and the only tool here with a lifetime plan instead of a renewal. - **Watch the paywall history** – Keywords Everywhere moved search volume behind payment in 2023 and Ahrefs pulled Domain Rating from free users in 2025. Both still show it in their ratings. - **Two ask for a lot** – Similarweb needs your whole browsing clickstream to work, and Detailed SEO holds host permissions for every site. SEOquake declares it collects nothing. How this list was made: the scores come from Tooltivity, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each extension from its Chrome Web Store listing, its ratings and what recent reviews report, and this list is ordered by that score. The descriptions below summarize each listing and what its users report. ### List of the Best SEO Extensions for Chrome: - [Detailed SEO Extension](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/detailed-seo-extension) - [SEO META in 1 CLICK](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seo-meta-in-one-click) - [Ahrefs SEO Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ahrefs-seo-toolbar) - [Ubersuggest - SEO and Keyword Discovery](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ubersuggest) - [META SEO inspector](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/meta-seo-inspector) - [GMB Everywhere - GBP Audit for Local SEO](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gmb-everywhere) - [Glimpse – Google Trends Supercharged](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glimpse) - [Similarweb - Website Traffic, AI Traffic & SEO Checker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/similarweb) - [Keywords Everywhere - Keyword Tool](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/keywords-everywhere) - [SEOquake: On-Page SEO Checker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seoquake) If you prefer a comparison overview, check out the [full comparison table of all SEO extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/seo-tools/chrome): ![Comparison table of all Chrome SEO extensions with Tooltivity ratings, install counts and store ratings](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/09/screenshot-seo-tools-comparison-extensions.webp) *Comparison of all Chrome SEO Extensions* ## [1\. Detailed SEO Extension](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/detailed-seo-extension) ![Detailed SEO Extension panel showing a page's title, meta description and heading outline](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/detailed-seo-extension/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Detailed SEO Extension has 600,000 downloads and a 4.91-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 232 reviews, as evidenced by its 4.81 rating for the last 100 reviews — a shade under its all-time average, and the first time this tool has drifted the wrong way. It's a step, not a slide, and we'll name exactly what caused it. The pitch is one button. Click it on any page and you get the title tag, meta description, canonical and robots directives, the complete heading outline, the schema markup laid out readably, internal and external links split by followed and no-follow, images with their ALT text, a word count and the hreflang alternates. Built by working SEOs for their own use, and it shows in what got included and what didn't. ### Key Features - **Overview panel** – Title tag, meta description, canonical and meta robots on one screen, so a page's basic declarations take a single click to confirm - **Heading structure** – The full H1 to H6 outline with multiple H1s flagged, plus a copy button that lifts every heading out as text - **Schema viewer** – Structured data laid out readably instead of as raw JSON-LD, the feature most of its daily users name first - **Link breakdown** – Internal and external links split by followed and no-follow, listed rather than counted - **Image audit** – Every image with its ALT text, exportable when you need the list outside the browser - **Word count** – The page's content length, without pasting anything into a separate tool - **Hreflang** – Declared language and region alternates, which for international sites is the tab that earns the install on its own - **Research shortcuts** – Jumps from the current page into external SEO tools and search operators ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Clean, genuinely readable panel - Schema shown without raw JSON - Copy all headings at once - Free with no account - Light on browser resources **Cons:** - Misses noindex via X-Robots-Tag - Stale on JavaScript-heavy sites - Social tab lost Open Graph detail - Wants access to all sites ### Who is this great for? Detailed SEO Extension is perfect for anyone who checks pages in front of other people. Showing a client their broken heading structure from this panel is a conversation; doing the same from developer tools is a lecture. The information is identical — the reception isn't. It's especially great for users who work with structured data or international sites. The schema viewer turns "is this job posting marked up correctly?" into a two-second glance, and the hreflang tab justifies the install on its own if you run anything multilingual. Everything is free, with no account and no metered tab. ### Compared to others Its closest rival is [SEO Meta 1 Click](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seo-meta-in-one-click), which covers similar ground with more raw detail in a denser layout — this one is the better-organized panel with a proper schema viewer, that one digs deeper into image and link specifics and asks for far fewer permissions. Against [META SEO inspector](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/meta-seo-inspector) it's faster for a surface check but slightly shallower on structured data. Neither it nor its rivals replace [Ahrefs SEO Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ahrefs-seo-toolbar), which answers a question about a domain's authority rather than a page's contents. ### Detailed comparisons [Detailed SEO vs SEO Meta 1 Click](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/detailed-seo-extension-vs-seo-meta-in-one-click) • [Detailed SEO vs Ahrefs Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/detailed-seo-extension-vs-ahrefs-seo-toolbar) • [Detailed SEO vs SEO Inspector](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/detailed-seo-extension-vs-meta-seo-inspector) ### Rating Summary Detailed SEO Extension has 600,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.91-star rating from 232 reviews — the highest store rating in this comparison. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Detailed SEO Extension a score of **9.17/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/detailed-seo-extension). ## [2\. SEO META in 1 CLICK](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seo-meta-in-one-click) ![SEO META in 1 CLICK panel listing title, description, canonical and heading tags for a page](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/seo-meta-in-one-click/images/gallery-image-1.webp) SEO META in 1 CLICK has 900,000 downloads and a 4.87-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 1,257 reviews, as evidenced by its 4.96 rating for the last 100 reviews — ahead of its all-time average, which is a rare direction of travel for an extension this old. Where most tools in this category drift downward as free tiers shrink, this one is being received better now than it was. The proposition hasn't changed in years: click the icon and the page's SEO facts appear in a single panel. Title and description with character counts, the canonical, meta robots, every heading in the order the HTML declares them, how many images carry ALT text and how many don't, link counts, and the Open Graph and Twitter tags. No dashboard, no account, no queue. ### Key Features - **Title and description with lengths** – Both tags with character counts, so you can see at a glance what will truncate in the results page - **URL and canonical** – The page URL beside the declared canonical, the fastest way to catch a self-referencing tag pointing somewhere else - **Meta robots** – Index and follow directives surfaced without opening the source - **Heading outline** – H1 through H6 in the order they appear in the HTML, so a broken hierarchy is obvious rather than inferred - **Image ALT audit** – A count of images with and without ALT text on the current page - **Link breakdown** – Internal, external and unique link counts for the page you're on - **Social tags** – Open Graph and Twitter card data, checked in the same pass as the rest - **Robots.txt, sitemap and Tools tab** – Direct jumps to robots.txt and sitemap.xml, plus shortcuts out to validators ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Genuinely free, no account - Everything on one screen - Heading order shown as written - Minimal permissions, activeTab only - Fast on ordinary pages **Cons:** - No schema markup view - Tools tab feels cluttered - No export of findings - ALT detection occasionally disagrees ### Who is this great for? SEO META in 1 CLICK is perfect for anyone whose question is simply "what does this page actually declare?". It answers that faster than opening the inspector, which is the entire reason a tool this narrow has survived a decade in a category full of platforms. It's especially great for users who care about what an extension can reach. This one runs on activeTab alone — it sees the tab you clicked on and nothing else — which is a meaningfully smaller ask than the all-sites host permission most of its rivals want. If you're installing an SEO tool on a machine that also handles client work, that difference matters more than a feature list. ### Compared to others Against [Detailed SEO Extension](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/detailed-seo-extension), it trades looks and a schema viewer for raw detail and a far smaller permission footprint — the schema gap is the one real reason to pick the other. [META SEO inspector](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/meta-seo-inspector) covers comparable ground and does show structured data, but it interrupts you with its own tabs; this one never does. Compared to [SEOquake](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seoquake), it does less and does it reliably, which right now is the better trade. ### Detailed comparisons [SEO Meta 1 Click vs Detailed SEO](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/seo-meta-in-one-click-vs-detailed-seo-extension) • [SEO Meta 1 Click vs SEO Inspector](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/seo-meta-in-one-click-vs-meta-seo-inspector) • [SEO Meta 1 Click vs SEOquake](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/seo-meta-in-one-click-vs-seoquake) ### Rating Summary SEO META in 1 CLICK has 900,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.87-star rating from 1,257 reviews, and its last 100 reviews average 4.96 — the best recent trajectory in this comparison. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave SEO META in 1 CLICK a score of **9.08/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seo-meta-in-one-click). ## [3\. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ahrefs-seo-toolbar) ![Ahrefs SEO Toolbar on-page report with title, headings and indexation directives](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/ahrefs-seo-toolbar/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Ahrefs SEO Toolbar has 400,000 downloads and a 4.37-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 539 reviews, as evidenced by its 4.74 rating for the last 100 reviews — well clear of its all-time average. The recovery is the interesting part: this extension took a beating in early 2025 and has spent the time since winning people back. What it does, it does more thoroughly than anything else here. One click produces a full on-page report read from the page source rather than the rendered text, which is why it catches headings other tools misread on sites using decorative fonts. Beyond that sit link highlighting, redirect chains with status codes at every hop, broken-link detection, CSV export, user-agent switching so you can load a page as Googlebot, and SERP region switching that shows another country's results without a VPN. ### Key Features - **One-click on-page report** – Title, meta description, full heading outline, canonical tags and indexation directives, read from the source - **Domain Rating on any site** – The metric most people install this for, available once you have a free Ahrefs account - **Link analysis** – Highlight every link on a page, filter outgoing ones, spot broken links and export to CSV - **Redirect tracing** – Follow a chain hop by hop with the status code at each step, which turns a migration audit into a few clicks - **SERP region and language switching** – See results as someone in another market would, without a VPN - **User-agent switching** – Load a page as Googlebot to see what the crawler sees, alongside raw HTTP headers - **Position numbers in search results** – Every organic result carries its rank, saving you counting down the page - **Full Ahrefs metrics for subscribers** – Keyword counts, traffic estimates and referring domains on every result ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Deepest on-page report available - Accurate header and canonical detection - Broken links and redirect chains - Region and user-agent switching - Core technical tools genuinely free **Cons:** - Free Ahrefs account required - Best metrics need a subscription - Free limits never shown clearly - Occasional glitches on search pages - Figures can differ from the dashboard ### Who is this great for? Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is perfect for anyone who diagnoses pages rather than picks keywords. If your week involves migrations, redirect chains, indexation problems or a crawler seeing something different from what you see, nothing else in this comparison is close. It's especially great for users who already pay Ahrefs, because the toolbar becomes an extension of a dashboard they're renting anyway. If you don't, be honest about which half you need: the diagnostic tools are free forever and don't even need an account, while the metrics the brand is famous for stay behind a subscription. ### Compared to others Against [Detailed SEO Extension](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/detailed-seo-extension), Ahrefs wins on technical depth and loses on friction — the other does the on-page half with no account at all. Compared to [Ubersuggest](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ubersuggest), the split is philosophical: Ubersuggest hands you traffic and backlink estimates on a free account and sells you volume, while Ahrefs hands you diagnostics and sells you the data. For traffic estimates specifically, [Similarweb](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/similarweb) reads a domain faster, though at a privacy cost Ahrefs doesn't ask you to pay. ### Detailed comparisons [Ahrefs Toolbar vs Detailed SEO](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/ahrefs-seo-toolbar-vs-detailed-seo-extension) • [Ahrefs Toolbar vs Ubersuggest](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/ahrefs-seo-toolbar-vs-ubersuggest) • [Ahrefs Toolbar vs Similarweb](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/ahrefs-seo-toolbar-vs-similarweb) ### Rating Summary Ahrefs SEO Toolbar has 400,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.37-star rating from 539 reviews, and recent sentiment has recovered to 4.74 across the last 100. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Ahrefs SEO Toolbar a score of **8.17/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ahrefs-seo-toolbar). ## [4\. Ubersuggest - SEO and Keyword Discovery](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ubersuggest) ![Ubersuggest overlay showing search volume, SEO difficulty and CPC under the Google search bar](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/ubersuggest/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Ubersuggest has 600,000 downloads and a 4.48-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 1,125 reviews, as evidenced by its 4.79 rating for the last 100 reviews — comfortably above its all-time average, which is the shape you want to see. Neil Patel's extension has been getting better received rather than worse, and our testing lines up with that. It does more than the name suggests. Search in Google and a strip appears under the search bar with monthly volume, SEO difficulty, cost per click and a trend chart split by mobile and desktop. Each organic result picks up a traffic estimate. The same overlay works on YouTube and Amazon, which almost nothing else attempts. Then there's the toolbar button, which is really a second product: click it on any site for organic keyword counts, estimated traffic, domain score, backlinks and six months of history. ### Key Features - **SERP overlay** – Search volume, SEO difficulty, cost per click and a trend chart under the Google search bar, split by mobile and desktop - **Traffic estimates per result** – Every URL on the results page carries an estimated monthly traffic figure - **Backlink summary** – Average domain score and referring-domain count of the pages ranking, a fast read on how hard a term will be - **YouTube and Amazon support** – The same keyword data on YouTube and Amazon searches, which very few rivals bother with - **Domain overview button** – Organic keyword count, estimated traffic, domain score and backlinks for any site - **Historical traffic and top pages** – Six months of organic traffic, plus best-performing pages and keywords by country - **Related and long-tail ideas** – "People also search for", trending terms and long-tail variants beside the main figures - **Location and language control** – Set the market you want data for, across nine interface languages ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Metrics inside Google, YouTube, Amazon - Fast, uncluttered SERP overlay - Domain data from any page - Free tier is genuinely usable - Lifetime plan instead of subscription **Cons:** - Account required before anything works - Signs you out every few days - Daily lookup cap when free - Dollar pricing steep outside the US - Auto-renews with no refunds ### Who is this great for? Ubersuggest is perfect for anyone starting out in keyword research. The numbers are in plain language, the panel doesn't demand interpretation, and the free daily allowance is large enough to do real work rather than just tease you. It's especially great for users who'd rather buy something once than rent it forever. The lifetime plan is the thing owners bring up most often and most warmly, and it changes the maths against every subscription tool here. The trade-off is the account: nothing appears until you sign in, and it logs you out every few days. ### Compared to others Against [Ahrefs SEO Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ahrefs-seo-toolbar), Ubersuggest is the breadth-for-a-small-budget option — Ahrefs is still the deeper well for link data you'd build a strategy on. Compared to [Keywords Everywhere](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/keywords-everywhere), it gives you volume on a free account where the other charges credits for every figure, though Keywords Everywhere reaches far more sites. For competitor traffic specifically, [Similarweb](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/similarweb) is more detailed, and it's the kind of panel Ubersuggest is quietly giving away. ### Detailed comparisons [Ubersuggest vs Keywords Everywhere](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/ubersuggest-vs-keywords-everywhere) • [Ubersuggest vs Ahrefs Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/ubersuggest-vs-ahrefs-seo-toolbar) • [Ubersuggest vs Similarweb](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/ubersuggest-vs-similarweb) ### Rating Summary Ubersuggest has 600,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.48-star rating from 1,125 reviews, rising to 4.79 across the last 100. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Ubersuggest a score of **8.08/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ubersuggest). ## [5\. META SEO inspector](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/meta-seo-inspector) ![META SEO inspector sidebar showing metadata, headings and structured data for a page](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/meta-seo-inspector/images/gallery-image-1.webp) META SEO inspector has been in the Chrome Web Store since 2012, back when checking your meta tags was most of the job, and it's still doing exactly that. It has 200,000 downloads and a 4.37-star rating from 629 reviews, as evidenced by its 4.26 rating for the last 100 reviews — a fraction under its lifetime average, which for a tool this old counts as remarkable steadiness. Click the icon and you get the page's title, description, canonical and robots directives, its full heading outline, images missing alt text, link counts, Open Graph and Twitter tags, and any JSON-LD or microdata it can find — with a copy button beside each value and a warning wherever something is absent or long enough to be cut off. A broken-link checker joined the panel more recently. ### Key Features - **Metadata inspection** – Titles, descriptions, canonicals and meta robots, with alerts when a tag is missing or long enough to be truncated - **Heading outline** – The full H1 to H6 structure, so a missing or duplicated heading is obvious at a glance - **Image alt audit** – Lists images without alt text instead of making you hunt through the DOM - **Structured data viewer** – Extracts JSON-LD and microdata blocks and lets you copy them out in one click - **Social tags** – Open Graph and Twitter card values, where most sharing bugs actually live - **Broken link checker** – A newer addition that scans the page's links and reports the failures - **Dockable sidebar** – Keeps the report open beside the page while you edit, rather than closing every time you click away - **Copy and export** – A copy button next to each tag plus report export, in eleven interface languages ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Genuinely free, no account - Clean, well-organised report panel - Covers metadata and structured data - Copy button on every tag - Light and fast on any page **Cons:** - Self-opening changelog and donation tabs - Hide-changelog setting resets itself - Occasional false positives in checks - No documentation for newcomers ### Who is this great for? META SEO inspector is perfect for developers and SEOs who want the deepest free metadata reader available and don't mind a rough edge. Structured data, social tags and alt-text gaps all land in one dockable panel that stays open while you edit — which is a genuinely better workflow than a popup that closes every time you click the page. It's especially great for users willing to trade a little irritation for depth. The extension opens its own tabs to announce updates and ask for donations, and the setting meant to suppress that has a habit of resetting itself. Enough people have concluded they installed adware that "virus" shows up in the recent ratings. Turn it off after each update and it's a minor tax; leave it, and it'll interrupt you mid-task. ### Compared to others It sits between [Detailed SEO Extension](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/detailed-seo-extension), which is faster for a quick look but shallower on structured data, and [SEO Meta 1 Click](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seo-meta-in-one-click), which gives you the same core information without ever interrupting you — but with no schema view at all. Against [SEOquake](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seoquake) it's the more reliable of the two right now, since SEOquake's panels frequently fail to render. ### Detailed comparisons [SEO Inspector vs Detailed SEO](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/meta-seo-inspector-vs-detailed-seo-extension) • [SEO Inspector vs SEO Meta 1 Click](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/meta-seo-inspector-vs-seo-meta-in-one-click) • [SEO Inspector vs SEOquake](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/meta-seo-inspector-vs-seoquake) ### Rating Summary META SEO inspector has 200,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.37-star rating from 629 reviews, holding 4.26 over the last 100. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave META SEO inspector a score of **8.00/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/meta-seo-inspector). ## [6\. GMB Everywhere - GBP Audit for Local SEO](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gmb-everywhere) ![GMB Everywhere showing Google Business Profile categories inside Google Maps results](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/gmb-everywhere/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Most extensions in this category read a web page. GMB Everywhere reads a business. It lays category data, audits and rank checks over Google Maps and the local finder, which is a different job entirely. It has 300,000 downloads and a 4.64-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 112 reviews, as evidenced by its 4.67 rating for the last 100 reviews, sitting just above its all-time average. That trend line needs a caveat. Barely a hundred ratings sit against 300,000 installs, so the recent window and the all-time average are close to the same handful of people — we've weighted the written feedback more heavily than the score. What that feedback shows is who bothers to write it: local SEO consultants and agencies auditing client profiles, not people who set up one listing and moved on. ### Key Features - **Category Finder** – Primary and secondary categories of every Google Business Profile directly in Maps, with a star marking the primary one - **Local Scan** – Reads a whole result set in one pass, returning categories, services, products and attributes for an entire local pack - **GBP Audit** – A completeness check across description, hours, attributes, photos, products and the fields that usually sit half-filled - **Review Audit** – Breaks reviews down over time, including a cumulative chart that makes a sudden burst obvious - **Post Audit** – How often a competitor posts, about what, and how recently — the easiest gap to close on most client profiles - **Teleport** – Re-runs a Maps search as if you were somewhere else, so you can check map-pack rankings without a proxy - **AI writing tools** – Drafts posts, review replies and business descriptions from the profile you have open - **Profile shortcuts** – Pulls the Place ID and short review link without a detour through Google's help pages ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Categories visible right inside Maps - Fast competitor audits for agencies - Teleport rank checks without proxies - Responsive, hands-on developer support - Frequent updates and new features **Cons:** - Almost everything sits behind payment - Category data is English-first - Billing issues only reachable via chat - No on/off toggle for overlays - Patchy outside google.com domains ### Who is this great for? GMB Everywhere is perfect for anyone who bills for local SEO. Category research that used to mean opening page sources one listing at a time now takes a single scan, and we couldn't find another extension that audits Google Business Profiles as thoroughly. It's especially great for users running weekly client audits, because that's who the pricing assumes. At $30 a month, an agency recovers it in one saved hour; the owner of a single restaurant almost certainly won't. The free tier is narrow — category lookups on Maps and nothing else — but it's worth installing for on its own if you touch local SEO a few times a year. ### Compared to others Nothing else here does its job, so the honest comparison is about whether you need that job done. If you don't manage Google Business Profiles, a page-level toolbar like [Detailed SEO Extension](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/detailed-seo-extension) or a keyword tool like [Keywords Everywhere](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/keywords-everywhere) will serve you far better. [Ahrefs SEO Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ahrefs-seo-toolbar) covers the organic side of the same client work, and the two sit together well rather than competing. ### Detailed comparisons [GMB Everywhere vs Detailed SEO](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/gmb-everywhere-vs-detailed-seo-extension) • [GMB Everywhere vs Ahrefs Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/gmb-everywhere-vs-ahrefs-seo-toolbar) • [GMB Everywhere vs Keywords Everywhere](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/gmb-everywhere-vs-keywords-everywhere) ### Rating Summary GMB Everywhere has 300,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.64-star rating, though from only 112 reviews. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave GMB Everywhere a score of **7.85/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gmb-everywhere). ## [7\. Glimpse – Google Trends Supercharged](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glimpse) ![Glimpse adding estimated search volumes and growth rates to a Google Trends chart](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/glimpse/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Google Trends hands you a shape without a size. The line peaks at 100 and never says whether that peak is a thousand searches or a million, which is fine for curiosity and useless for a budget. Glimpse exists to put numbers on that line. It has 100,000 downloads and a 4.82-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 753 reviews, though its 4.57 rating for the last 100 marks a clear step down from an average that had held steady for years. That gap is the story. The praise and the criticism aren't about the same thing: the data gets consistently good notes, while the decline is almost entirely about how the product is sold — a ten-lookup free tier, a guided tour that spends some of those lookups for you, and a pricing page that shows no prices until you register. ### Key Features - **Absolute search volume** – Replaces Google's 0-100 index with estimated real monthly search counts, so a peak has a size as well as a shape - **Growth metrics** – Year-over-year and month-over-month change next to every keyword, which turns a chart into a decision - **Forecasting** – Projects a trend a year ahead with seasonality stripped out - **Channel breakdown** – Where a topic is actually being discussed across TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Facebook and Pinterest - **People Also Search** – Related keywords with their own volumes and growth rates, broken out by country - **Trend discovery** – A browsable catalogue of trends by category, refreshed daily, for when you don't have a keyword yet - **Trend alerts** – Notifications when a keyword you're tracking accelerates or starts to fade - **In-page integration** – Everything renders inside trends.google.com, with no separate dashboard to learn ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Real search volumes, not index scores - Twelve-month forecasts and growth metrics - Social channel breakdown adds context - Works right inside Google Trends - Raw numbers you can export **Cons:** - Only ten free lookups monthly - Tutorial spends your free credits - Prices hidden until you sign up - Low volumes shown as vague buckets - Overlaps heavily with free Google Trends ### Who is this great for? Glimpse is perfect for analysts, market researchers and product people who already live in Google Trends and can expense a research subscription. For them the volume estimates alone justify the trip, and the channel breakdown — knowing a topic lives on TikTok rather than Reddit — is context no keyword tool gives you. It's especially great for users whose question is about demand rather than pages. But spend the free lookups deliberately: decide in advance which searches will tell you whether the estimates are precise enough for your work, and skip the tour, because it will eat two of your ten before you've searched for anything yourself. ### Compared to others Glimpse works on trends and time, where [Keywords Everywhere](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/keywords-everywhere) and [Ubersuggest](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ubersuggest) work in the results page, per keyword — for occasional keyword work either of those gets you further for less. If your question is really about traffic rather than demand, that's [Similarweb](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/similarweb) territory. Like GMB Everywhere at the local end, Glimpse is a specialist, and specialists are worth it only when their one job is your job. ### Detailed comparisons [Glimpse vs Keywords Everywhere](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/glimpse-vs-keywords-everywhere) • [Glimpse vs Ubersuggest](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/glimpse-vs-ubersuggest) • [Glimpse vs Similarweb](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/glimpse-vs-similarweb) ### Rating Summary Glimpse has 100,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.82-star rating from 753 reviews, slipping to 4.57 across the last 100. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Glimpse a score of **7.53/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glimpse). ## [8\. Similarweb - Website Traffic, AI Traffic & SEO Checker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/similarweb) ![Similarweb panel showing a site's monthly visits, traffic sources and AI chatbot referrals](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/similarweb/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Similarweb has 1,000,000 downloads and a 4.65-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 3,807 reviews, and it held 4.63 across the last 500 — but as evidenced by its 3.90 rating for the last 100, something has shifted. That something isn't the product. It's what people started finding in the privacy policy. Click the icon on any site and you get an immediate read: monthly visits and the trend behind them, bounce rate, pages per session, traffic split across direct, search, social, referral, email and display, top countries by share, global and category rank, and the keywords bringing in search traffic. The newest addition is genuinely novel — a breakdown of how much traffic arrives from AI chatbots, and the top prompts that led people there. We haven't found another extension doing this. ### Key Features - **AI Traffic Checker** – Visits broken down by AI chatbot, showing what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and others actually send, tracked over time - **Top Prompts** – The prompts driving AI traffic to a domain, month over month - **Visits Over Time** – Monthly visits and the trend behind them, plus bounce rate, pages per session and average visit duration - **Traffic Sources** – The split across direct, search, social, referral, email and display advertising - **Top Keywords** – The terms bringing a site organic and paid traffic, with cost-per-click context - **Traffic by Geography** – The countries sending visits and the share each contributes - **Website Rank** – Global, country and category position for any domain you land on - **One-Click Access** – Every metric from the toolbar icon, without leaving the page you're reading ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Instant traffic read, any site - AI chatbot traffic breakdown - Top AI prompts per domain - Fast and consistently clean - Free tier covers spot checks **Cons:** - Collects your entire browsing clickstream - Policy permits selling sensitive data - Estimates can be badly inflated - Free lookups run out fast - Occasional multi-week outages ### Who is this great for? Similarweb is perfect for sales and market research on a work machine. As a product it's arguably the best thing in this comparison — a competitive snapshot that used to take a paid dashboard and ten minutes now takes one click, and the AI prompt data has no equivalent anywhere. It's especially great for users who understand what they're trading. The extension works by recording where you go, and the policy covers browsing history, AI prompts and responses, voice input and data it labels sensitive, with permission to sell or share several of those categories. Turning collection off in settings turns the extension off with it. On a personal browser where you also chat with AI assistants, we'd skip it. ### Compared to others Nothing else here reads traffic this well — [SEOquake](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seoquake) and [Ahrefs SEO Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ahrefs-seo-toolbar) give you rougher estimates without touching your clickstream, which for many people is the better deal. Against [Ubersuggest](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ubersuggest), Similarweb is more detailed on traffic and far more expensive once you're past the free lookups, with pricing quoted by sales rather than published. ### Detailed comparisons [Similarweb vs SEOquake](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/similarweb-vs-seoquake) • [Similarweb vs Ahrefs Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/similarweb-vs-ahrefs-seo-toolbar) • [Similarweb vs Ubersuggest](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/similarweb-vs-ubersuggest) ### Rating Summary Similarweb has 1,000,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.65-star rating from 3,807 reviews, but the last 100 average just 3.90. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Similarweb a score of **7.17/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/similarweb). ## [9\. Keywords Everywhere - Keyword Tool](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/keywords-everywhere) ![Keywords Everywhere showing monthly search volume and CPC inline on a Google results page](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/keywords-everywhere/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Keywords Everywhere has 1,000,000 downloads and a 4.51-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 5,695 reviews, but the all-time average hides a rough stretch: the last 500 reviews average 3.21, and as evidenced by its 3.87 rating for the last 100, the worst of it is behind the extension rather than ahead of it. The collapse dates to mid-2023, when the signature search-volume numbers moved behind a paywall. The core pitch is still the best one in keyword research: you never leave Google. Search for anything and monthly volume, CPC, competition and a 12-month trend render inline, with related and long-tail widgets in the sidebar. The same overlay follows you to YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Bing, Google Trends, Search Console and Keyword Planner — far more surfaces than anything else here reaches from a single install. ### Key Features - **Search Volume Everywhere** – Monthly volume, CPC, competition and 12-month trend data inline on Google, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Bing and DuckDuckGo - **Keyword Widgets** – Related, topical, long-tail and People Also Search For lists beside the results you're reading - **Moz Link Metrics** – Domain Authority, DA trend, spam score, referring domains and backlink counts under every result - **SEO Difficulty Scores** – On-page and off-page difficulty plus brand-query share for whatever you searched - **AI SEO Reports** – Reports drafted by ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or DeepSeek from the extension's own metrics - **On-Page Analysis** – Point it at any URL for the keywords in the copy and how densely each is used - **Local & YouTube Metrics** – Google Maps data for local SEO, plus YouTube video insights and tag extraction - **Search Console Visualization** – Turns a raw performance report into readable tables and charts ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Volume data inside Google itself - Covers 15+ sites beyond Google - Moz metrics on every result - Strong local SEO coverage - Fast, hands-on support - Cheap next to full suites **Cons:** - Free tier excludes search volume - Credits expire after a year - Annual billing only - Fiddly API key setup - Volume data occasionally wrong - Upgrade prompts clutter the SERP ### Who is this great for? Keywords Everywhere is perfect for anyone who does keyword research weekly and can treat $84 a year as a rounding error. Running it as a default research tool, we stopped opening a second tab almost entirely — the data lands where the work already happens, and the breadth, from Moz metrics to local SEO to YouTube tags, is genuinely hard to replace. It's especially great for users who want more than volume, because the free tier is more real than its reputation suggests: Moz link metrics, SEO difficulty, on-page analysis and local data all work without paying. What it doesn't include is search volume — the one number the extension is named after. Credits are sold annually and expire after twelve months, which turns a big balance into a countdown. ### Compared to others [Ubersuggest](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ubersuggest) gives you volume on a free account and a lifetime plan instead of a renewal, which for light users is simply a better deal. Keywords Everywhere wins on reach — no other tool here follows you to Etsy, eBay and Search Console. If what you want is trend context rather than raw numbers, [Glimpse](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glimpse) answers a different question, though its free tier is far stingier. ### Detailed comparisons [Keywords Everywhere vs Ubersuggest](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/keywords-everywhere-vs-ubersuggest) • [Keywords Everywhere vs Ahrefs Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/keywords-everywhere-vs-ahrefs-seo-toolbar) • [Keywords Everywhere vs Glimpse](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/keywords-everywhere-vs-glimpse) ### Rating Summary Keywords Everywhere has 1,000,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.51-star rating from 5,695 reviews, recovering to 3.87 over the last 100 from 3.21 across the last 500. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave Keywords Everywhere a score of **6.83/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/keywords-everywhere). ## [10\. SEOquake: On-Page SEO Checker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seoquake) ![SEOquake Quick View panel with a page's title tag, headings and indexability](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/seoquake/images/gallery-image-1.webp) SEOquake has 1,000,000 downloads and a 4.49-star rating on the Chrome Web Store from 2,617 reviews, and it held 4.15 across the last 500 — but as evidenced by its 2.67 rating for the last 100, something broke recently and badly. Version 4.0 landed in August 2026, and the redesign took the SEObar out of the browser. What's left is still substantial and still free. Quick View gives you a compact read on the current page; Full Report opens in its own tab with a proper audit covering content, mobile, technical, image, schema and social metadata, plus link analysis with anchor text and HTTP codes. First released in 2006 and now developed by Semrush, SEOquake is the closest thing this category has to an institution — and the trouble is that an audit tool only counts when it renders. ### Key Features - **Quick View** – Title tag, meta description, heading structure, canonical, indexability and word count for the page you're on - **Full Page Audit** – Content, mobile, technical, image, schema and social metadata issues in one report - **Link Analysis** – Internal and external links with anchor text, follow status, broken links and HTTP status codes - **Keyword Density Report** – Single words through four-word phrases, and whether each appears in the title, description and H1 - **URL & Domain Comparison** – Traffic estimates, backlinks and other Semrush metrics for several addresses side by side - **Built-in Semrush Metrics** – Semrush Rank, estimated US organic traffic, traffic cost and backlink counts - **PDF & CSV Export** – Save an audit as a PDF, or pull keyword, link and comparison data out as CSV - **Optional Semrush Connection** – Link an account for referring domains, referring IPs and deeper backlink analysis ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Genuinely free, no account - Thorough page-level audit - Keyword density done properly - PDF and CSV export - Semrush metrics built in - No data collection declared **Cons:** - Metrics often fail to load - Version 4.0 dropped the SEObar - Sidebar refuses to open - Traffic figures show as zero - Breaks after Google UI changes ### Who is this great for? SEOquake is perfect for anyone who audits pages one at a time and wants a thorough free report with no account attached. The Full Report is excellent, the keyword density breakdown still beats paid competitors, and there's no credit balance, no seat count and no trial clock. It's especially great for users who value restraint — nothing in it nags you toward a subscription. What we can't recommend it for right now is daily use. Empty metric panels, a sidebar that won't open and zero traffic on domains Semrush plainly has data for all showed up in a week of testing, and they explain the recent score better than any feature list. ### Compared to others Anyone who lived in the old SERP overlay should look at [Ahrefs SEO Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ahrefs-seo-toolbar), which still puts metrics beside search results, while [Similarweb](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/similarweb) covers the traffic estimates SEOquake keeps failing to render. For plain on-page work, [Detailed SEO Extension](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/detailed-seo-extension) does the same job today without the reliability lottery. ### Detailed comparisons [SEOquake vs Ahrefs Toolbar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/seoquake-vs-ahrefs-seo-toolbar) • [SEOquake vs Detailed SEO](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/seoquake-vs-detailed-seo-extension) • [SEOquake vs Similarweb](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/seoquake-vs-similarweb) ### Rating Summary SEOquake has 1,000,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.49-star rating from 2,617 reviews, though the last 100 average just 2.67. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com) gave SEOquake a score of **6.58/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seoquake). ## Final Thoughts Work through all ten and a pattern emerges that has nothing to do with features: the tools at the top of this list are the ones that haven't moved their paywall. **\[Detailed SEO Extension\](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/detailed-seo-extension)** takes first place at 9.17/10 because it does the job most people actually need — read the page, show me what it declares — better and more legibly than anything else, for free, with no account. **\[SEO META in 1 CLICK\](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seo-meta-in-one-click)** (9.08/10) is a hair behind and beats it on two counts worth caring about: it asks for activeTab only rather than access to every site you visit, and its last 100 reviews average higher than its all-time score, which almost nothing in this category can claim. Pick the first for schema and looks, the second for depth and a smaller permission footprint. **\[Ahrefs SEO Toolbar\](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ahrefs-seo-toolbar)** (8.17/10) is the one to install when the question is technical rather than cosmetic — redirect chains, indexation, what Googlebot sees. For specific situations: **\[Ubersuggest\](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ubersuggest)** is where we'd send anyone new to keyword research, and its lifetime plan is the only escape from subscriptions in this whole list. **\[META SEO inspector\](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/meta-seo-inspector)** is the deepest free metadata reader if you can live with its self-opening tabs. **\[GMB Everywhere\](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gmb-everywhere)** is irreplaceable if you bill for local SEO and pointless if you don't. **\[Glimpse\](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glimpse)** puts real numbers on Google Trends, but ten free lookups a month and hidden pricing make it hard to evaluate honestly. **\[Similarweb\](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/similarweb)** is the best product here and the one we'd be most careful about installing — it needs your entire clickstream, and its policy permits selling several categories of it. **\[Keywords Everywhere\](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/keywords-everywhere)** is excellent and still paying for the 2023 decision to charge for the number in its own name. **\[SEOquake\](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seoquake)** is a great free tool having its worst year; keep it installed and re-check it in a few releases. Two things worth doing before you settle. Install one page-level reader and one demand tool, not five of each — the overlap between these is enormous, and a toolbar you check once a month is just another extension slowing down your browser. And read what each one asks for before you accept it, because the spread here is wide. Our top pick holds host permissions for every http and https site you visit; Similarweb goes further still and is candid that recording where you browse is how it produces its numbers. At the other end, SEO META in 1 CLICK runs on activeTab alone and SEOquake declares it collects nothing at all — which, if that matters to you, is a reason to pick one of those two before you weigh a single feature. Start with [the full comparison table](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/seo-tools/chrome), pick two, and give them a week. If you're auditing the rest of your browser setup while you're at it, we've run the same treatment on [bookmark manager extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-bookmark-manager-chrome-extensions/), [email finder extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-email-finder-tools/), and [PDF extensions for Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-pdf-chrome-extensions/). On the strategy side rather than the tooling side, there's what we learned from [the SEO work that brought us 2,000 users in two months](https://web-highlights.com/blog/seo-strategies-i-used-to-gain-2-000-users-in-two-months/) and a rundown of [technical SEO strategies every writer should know](https://web-highlights.com/blog/blog-boost-technical-seo-strategies-every-writer-should-know/). ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best SEO Chrome extension? Detailed SEO Extension scored highest at 9.17/10. It puts a page's title, meta description, canonical, heading outline, schema markup and hreflang alternates in one readable panel, costs nothing and needs no account. SEO META in 1 CLICK (9.08) is a close second and the better pick if permissions matter to you, since it runs on activeTab alone. For technical work — redirect chains, indexation, seeing a page as Googlebot — the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar (8.17) is the deeper tool. ### Are there free SEO extensions for Chrome that actually work? Yes, and the top of this list is mostly free. Detailed SEO Extension, SEO META in 1 CLICK, META SEO inspector and SEOquake all work fully without an account or a paid tier. The Ahrefs SEO Toolbar gives you its technical tools free and asks for a free account only for Domain Rating. The tools that meter you are the keyword and traffic ones: Ubersuggest caps daily lookups, Keywords Everywhere charges credits for search volume, and Glimpse allows about ten lookups a month. ### Which SEO extension is best for checking on-page elements? Detailed SEO Extension for everyday use, because its schema viewer and one-click heading export are the fastest way to see what a page declares. SEO META in 1 CLICK goes slightly deeper on image ALT and link counts but shows no schema at all. META SEO inspector is the most thorough of the three and the only one with a dockable sidebar that stays open while you edit, though it opens its own changelog and donation tabs. ### Do SEO extensions collect your browsing data? It varies enormously, so check before you install. Similarweb only works by recording your clickstream, and its policy covers browsing history and AI prompts with permission to sell or share several data categories. Detailed SEO Extension holds host permissions for every site you visit, though it states it collects nothing. At the other end, SEO META in 1 CLICK requests only activeTab and scripting, and SEOquake declares on its listing that it gathers no data at all. ### How many SEO extensions should I install? One page-level reader and one demand tool is usually enough. The overlap between these tools is large — four of the ten do essentially the same on-page job — and each extra toolbar costs browser performance and permissions for a panel you rarely open. Pick one on-page reader such as Detailed SEO Extension, add a keyword tool such as Ubersuggest only if you do keyword research regularly, and add a specialist like GMB Everywhere only when its one job is genuinely your job. --- # Top 10 Chrome PDF Extensions: The Great Comparison > Compare the 10 best PDF extensions for Chrome — Web Highlights, Smallpdf, Adobe Acrobat, Kami and more — for reading, editing and signing. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-08-28 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension, comparison, Tools - Reading time: 23 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-pdf-chrome-extensions/ --- A PDF arrives, you open it in Chrome, and that’s about where the browser stops helping. Chrome’s own viewer has picked up a pen and a highlighter over the years, but whatever you mark stays inside that one file on that one machine. Two weeks later you know you read the thing. You just can’t find the sentence. That gap is why the extension stores are full of PDF tools. Some are editing suites from names you’d recognise — convert, compress, merge, sign. Others are highlighters built for people who read papers all day and want the marked passages back afterwards. A few try to be both, and the quality swings hard: polished and genuinely free at one end, basics behind a paywall at the other. I wanted to know which ones hold up. In this article I compare the 10 best PDF extensions on the Chrome Web Store, ranked by score. Several are also on Edge and Firefox, but every number below is the Chrome listing unless I say otherwise. One disclosure before the list: Web Highlights is mine, and it ranks first here. The scores come from  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com), a review site my company runs too. It rates each extension from its Chrome Web Store listing, its ratings and what recent reviews report, so weigh our #1 with that in mind — and I’ll say plainly what each of the other nine does better. ### List of the Best PDF Extensions for Chrome: - [PDF & Web Highlighter + AI Summary & Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) - [Glasp Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter) - [Smallpdf — Edit, Convert, Compress, & AI Summarize PDF](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/smallpdf) - [Adobe Acrobat: PDF edit, convert, sign tools](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adobe-acrobat) - [Kami for Google Chrome](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kami) - [Hypothesis - Web & PDF Annotation](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hypothesis) - [DocHub - Sign PDF from Gmail](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/dochub) - [Xodo | PDF Editor, Converter & Merger](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/xodo) - [Diigo Web Collector - Capture and Annotate](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) - [Weava Highlighter: PDF & Web](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) If you’d rather see everything side by side first, here’s the  [comparison table of all Chrome PDF extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/pdf-tools/chrome) , with ratings, pricing, and features in one grid: ![Comparison table of all Chrome PDF extensions with ratings](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/screenshot-pdf-tools-comparison-extensions.webp) *Comparison of all Chrome PDF Extensions* ## [1\. PDF & Web Highlighter + AI Summary & Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) ![PDF and Web Highlighter showing highlights and notes in the sidebar](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/web-highlights/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Web Highlights opens the list with the strongest numbers on it: 200,000 downloads on the Chrome Web Store and a 4.83/5 rating from 4,946 reviews, with the most recent 100 sitting at 4.79. Flat, in other words — which several tools further down this list cannot say. It’s also on Edge (4.6/5 from 101 reviews across 18,069 downloads) and Firefox (4.84/5 from 49 reviews, 1,840 downloads). The reason a highlighter belongs in a PDF roundup is what happens after you highlight. Open a PDF — a link, a local file, or one you upload into your library up to 30 MB — mark what matters, add notes, and it all lands in a searchable library instead of in one copy of one file. Download that PDF again and every highlight comes back embedded as a real annotation: its own colour, your notes as comments, the text still selectable, and Acrobat, Preview, and Edge all read them as their own. Highlights that were already in a file import the other direction with one click. There’s a step-by-step version in our guide to  [annotating a PDF in Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/annotate-a-pdf-in-chrome/) . Two things sit on top of that. The AI — summaries, chat, flashcard drafting — runs on your own device through the browser’s built-in model, so a contract or an unpublished draft doesn’t get uploaded anywhere to be summarised. And any highlight can become a Q/A flashcard, scheduled by the SuperMemo spaced-repetition algorithm. That sounds like a strange thing to put in a PDF tool right up until the third time you actually remember what a paper argued. You don’t need an account to start. Install it, select text, and the highlight is saved and restored the next time you open the page. If you’d rather not install anything at all, our  [free online PDF highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/blog/free-online-pdf-highlighter-highlight-any-pdf-no-install/)  runs the same read-highlight-download loop in a plain browser tab. ### Key Features - **Website Highlighting**  – Highlight text on any website, restored automatically on your next visit - **PDF Highlighting**  – Mark up online, local, and uploaded PDFs (up to 30 MB) in the built-in viewer - **Real PDF Annotations**  – Download a PDF with your highlights embedded as standards-compliant annotations that Acrobat and Preview can edit - **Annotation Import**  – Highlights already in a file, from Acrobat or Preview, come back in with one click - **AI Summary**  – Summarise a page, a PDF, or your own highlights on your device - **AI Chat**  – The on-device model reads the whole page, so you can ask questions about a website, PDF, or YouTube video - **Multiple Colors**  – Use different colors to separate arguments, quotes, and to-dos - **Note-Taking**  – Add a note to a highlight, or write a page note about the whole document with full formatting - **Reader Mode**  – Read a PDF as clean text, with headings, lists, and two-column papers handled properly - **Tagging**  – Organize highlights and notes with tags across the whole library - **Collections (Folders)**  – Keep documents in a nested folder tree with drag & drop, alongside tags - **Cross-Device Sync**  – Sync your library between browsers and machines via the cloud - **Export Options**  – One-click export to Notion and Capacities on the Ultimate plan, plus copy as Markdown for Obsidian, or export to an HTML or PDF file - **Reminders**  – Snooze a document and get an email when it’s time to read it - **Flashcards & Spaced Repetition**  – Turn a highlight into a Q/A card and review it with the SuperMemo algorithm, with the AI drafting whole decks on your device ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Excellent free version - No account required to start - Highlights download as real, editable PDF annotations - AI summaries and chat run on your own device - Spaced-repetition flashcards from your highlights - Collections, tags & notes - Chrome, Edge and Firefox, with a web app to match **Cons:** - Cloud sync is free for 7 days, then part of a paid plan - No native mobile app yet — the web app installs as a PWA - No shared team workspace; you share single pages by public link - The on-device AI wants a one-time model download and a lot of free disk space as headroom - Not a PDF editor — no converting, compressing, page reordering, or e-signing ### Who is this great for? Web Highlights is built for people who read PDFs in order to use them later: students working through a reading list, researchers pulling quotes out of journal articles, anyone whose job involves finding the one clause that matters in a forty-page document. The library, the tags, and the search are the point — the highlighting is just how things get in there. It’s a poor fit if your PDF problems are administrative. Filling a tax form, compressing a scan under an email limit, signing a lease, converting a deck to Word — none of that is here, and four tools further down this list do it better. Pick Web Highlights for reading and research; pair it with one of them for the paperwork. ### Compared to others Among the highlighters,  [Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter)  has the bigger community and lets you pick between ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, where our AI is whatever your browser ships; the trade is that Glasp’s free tier publishes your highlights by default.  [Hypothesis](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hypothesis)  beats us outright on group reading — threaded replies on a shared document are something we simply don’t do. Against  [Weava](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava)  and  [Diigo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) , both older research collectors, the gap is upkeep more than ambition. And next to  [Adobe Acrobat](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adobe-acrobat)  or  [Smallpdf](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/smallpdf) , we’re not in the same category at all: they edit documents, we read them. ### Detailed comparisons [PDF & Web Highlighter vs Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/web-highlights-vs-glasp-web-highlighter)  •  [PDF & Web Highlighter vs Weava](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/web-highlights-vs-weava)  •  [PDF & Web Highlighter vs Hypothesis](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/web-highlights-vs-hypothesis) ### Rating Summary Web Highlights has 200,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.83/5 average from 4,946 reviews, holding 4.79 across the most recent 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave PDF & Web Highlighter a score of  **9.78/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) . > [**Install Web Highlights on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. --- ## [2\. Glasp Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter) ![Glasp Web Highlighter sidebar with saved highlights](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/glasp-web-highlighter/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Glasp treats your notes as something to share rather than something to keep. It has 500,000 downloads on the Chrome Web Store and a 4.46/5 rating from 978 reviews, though the recent trend has softened: the last 100 reviews average 4.22, a step below the long-run number. What you get is a social layer on top of web, PDF, and YouTube highlighting. Summarise what you saved with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, push it to Obsidian, Notion, or Roam, pull in your Kindle highlights, and browse what other readers have marked on the same article. It’s a real second-brain system, and the model choice alone is something no other tool here offers. The catch is the default: on the free plan your highlights are public, and private notes are a paid feature. Worth knowing before you highlight a work document. ### Key Features - **Multi-Platform Highlighting**  – Highlight websites, PDFs, and YouTube videos in several colors - **AI-Powered Summaries**  – Generate summaries with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini - **Social Learning Network**  – See what other readers highlighted and follow people whose reading you like - **Cross-Platform Sync**  – Your highlights follow you across devices automatically - **Export Integration**  – Send highlights to Obsidian, Notion, Roam Research, and other note apps - **Kindle Integration**  – Import and sync the highlights from your Kindle books ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Broad feature set for the price - Large, genuinely active community - Choice of three AI models - Flexible exports to note apps - Kindle highlights come along **Cons:** - Free tier makes your highlights public - Premium plans are steep for casual use - Recent reviews are drifting down - Occasional technical hiccups ### Who is this great for? Glasp suits people who learn in the open — creators, curators, students who like seeing which passages everyone else stopped at. If discovery is part of how you read, nothing else in this comparison gives you that. It’s also the pick if you already have a note system you love. The exports to Obsidian, Notion, and Roam are the most flexible here, and the Kindle import closes a gap most highlighters ignore. Just switch your default to private early if your reading isn’t meant for an audience. ### Compared to others Glasp and  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights)  pull in opposite directions: Glasp is social, cloud-AI, account-first, while we’re private, on-device, and usable without signing up. Against  [Weava](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) , Glasp wins on features, community, and maintenance, though both want an account before you highlight anything. And where  [Diigo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector)  is a research collector from an earlier internet, Glasp is the modern answer to the same idea. ### Detailed comparisons [Glasp vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/glasp-web-highlighter-vs-web-highlights)  •  [Glasp vs Weava](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/glasp-web-highlighter-vs-weava)  •  [Glasp vs Diigo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/glasp-web-highlighter-vs-diigo-web-collector) ### Rating Summary Glasp has 500,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.46/5 rating from 978 reviews, easing to 4.22 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Glasp a score of  **8.88/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter) . --- ## [3\. Smallpdf — Edit, Convert, Compress, & AI Summarize PDF](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/smallpdf) ![Smallpdf toolbar popup listing PDF tools](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/smallpdf/images/gallery-image-1.webp) If the first two entries are about reading, Smallpdf is about doing. It packs a desktop-grade PDF suite into one toolbar button, and the store agrees: 2 million downloads and a 4.64/5 rating from 2,998 reviews, with the last 100 at 4.36 — cooler than the all-time average, but still the second-highest recent score in this comparison. Breadth is the whole pitch. Roughly twenty tools sit behind that button: compress, convert to and from Word, Excel, PowerPoint and JPG, merge, split, rotate, e-sign, and an AI assistant that summarises or answers questions about a document. The basics are free and often don’t even need an account. Compression is the one people mention most — a bloated scan comes back a fraction of its size without any visible damage. The heavier editing hands you over to the Smallpdf website and, before long, to a Pro subscription. ### Key Features - **PDF Compression**  – Shrink oversized files enough to clear an email attachment limit - **Convert To and From PDF**  – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and JPG in both directions - **Merge & Split**  – Combine a pile of files or pull one document apart, no account needed for the basics - **Edit PDFs**  – Drop text, images, shapes, and annotations onto a page - **E-Sign Documents**  – Draw or type a signature and place it on a contract - **Organize Pages**  – Rotate, reorder, and delete pages to tidy up a scan - **AI PDF Assistant**  – Summarise a long document or ask it questions instead of reading end to end - **One-Click Access**  – Every tool in a single popup, nothing to install ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Huge all-in-one toolkit - Compression that actually works - Free and account-free for the basics - Almost no learning curve - Handy e-signing and AI summaries **Cons:** - Real editing sits behind Pro - Free tier has tightened over time - Recurring billing and cancellation complaints - Editing bounces you out to the website ### Who is this great for? Smallpdf is for the person whose PDF work is a rotating list of chores: compress a scan today, convert a deck tomorrow, sign a contract next week. It rewards range rather than depth, and it’s fast enough that you stop thinking about it. It’s especially good for occasional users who mostly need free compression and conversion and don’t want desktop software. If PDFs become a daily job, watch where the free line now sits, and set a calendar reminder before any Pro trial renews — that’s what most of the angry reviews are about. ### Compared to others Smallpdf sits between the heavyweights and the light tools. It undercuts  [Adobe Acrobat](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adobe-acrobat)  on price and folds more into its free allowance, though Acrobat goes deeper where documents have to hold up professionally. Against  [Xodo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/xodo) , Smallpdf is the more polished and more reliable of the two. For signing alone,  [DocHub](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/dochub)  covers the whole loop without a subscription. And for reading and annotating rather than processing,  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights)  keeps your notes in a library instead of handing you a modified file. ### Detailed comparisons [Smallpdf vs Adobe Acrobat](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/smallpdf-vs-adobe-acrobat)  •  [Smallpdf vs Xodo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/smallpdf-vs-xodo)  •  [Smallpdf vs DocHub](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/smallpdf-vs-dochub) ### Rating Summary Smallpdf has 2,000,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.64/5 rating from 2,998 reviews, holding 4.36 over the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Smallpdf a score of  **8.73/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/smallpdf) . --- ## [4\. Adobe Acrobat: PDF edit, convert, sign tools](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adobe-acrobat) ![Adobe Acrobat extension opening a PDF in Adobe’s viewer inside Chrome](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/adobe-acrobat/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Adobe invented the format, and the install count reflects it: 307 million downloads on the Chrome Web Store with a 4.40/5 rating from 62,815 reviews. Recent sentiment runs a little below that at 4.18 across the last 100 — not a collapse, and worth reading in context: the recurring complaints are about pricing and upgrade prompts rather than how Acrobat handles a PDF. Install it and Chrome hands PDFs to Adobe’s own viewer, where reading, form-filling, commenting, and signing are free. Converting, compressing, combining, and editing actual text belong to an Acrobat Pro subscription. As a free reader and signer it’s dependable in a way nothing else here quite matches; as a full editor it wants your card. If the subscription is the part you’re stuck on, we keep a roundup of  [the best Adobe PDF alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-adobe-pdf-alternatives/)  that covers what you give up by leaving. ### Key Features - **View & Read PDFs**  – Open any PDF in Adobe’s viewer inside Chrome - **Fill & Sign**  – Complete forms and add a recognised e-signature, free - **Comment & Annotate**  – Sticky notes, highlights, and text markup for review rounds - **Convert To & From PDF**  – Web pages, images, and Office files in and out (Pro) - **Compress & Reduce**  – Get bulky files under attachment limits (Pro) - **Combine & Organize**  – Merge files, then reorder, insert, or delete pages (Pro) - **Edit Text & Images**  – Change wording and swap images in the document itself (Pro) - **AI Assistant**  – Ask questions about a document and generate summaries (paid add-on) ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - The most complete PDF toolkit there is - Free viewing, filling, signing, commenting - Signatures nobody will question - Handles files other viewers choke on - Runs inside Chrome, no desktop install **Cons:** - Real editing locked behind Pro - Pro subscription is expensive - Constant upgrade prompts - The AI assistant is pushy - Can slow Chrome down noticeably ### Who is this great for? Acrobat is the safe default when the document matters — legal, admin, finance, anything where a signature has to be trusted and the layout has to survive whoever opens it next. If PDFs are the medium of your job rather than a nuisance in it, Pro pays for itself. It also works fine for light users who stay inside the free basics and are willing to dismiss the upgrade prompts. What it isn’t is a good deal for someone who edits one line of text a month. That’s the case where the recent reviews get sharp, and it’s a fair complaint. ### Compared to others Nothing here matches Acrobat for depth, and nothing here charges like it either.  [Smallpdf](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/smallpdf)  and  [Xodo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/xodo)  fold editing, conversion, and compression into more generous free tiers, so lighter users usually get further without paying. For signing specifically,  [DocHub](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/dochub)  closes the loop from Gmail with no subscription at all. Acrobat wins on trust and completeness; everything else wins on cost and immediacy. ### Detailed comparisons [Adobe Acrobat vs Smallpdf](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/adobe-acrobat-vs-smallpdf)  •  [Adobe Acrobat vs Xodo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/adobe-acrobat-vs-xodo)  •  [Adobe Acrobat vs DocHub](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/adobe-acrobat-vs-dochub) ### Rating Summary Adobe Acrobat has 307,000,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.40/5 rating from 62,815 reviews, and 4.18 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Adobe Acrobat a score of  **8.50/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adobe-acrobat) . --- ## [5\. Kami for Google Chrome](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kami) ![Kami annotation tools open on a worksheet PDF](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/kami/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Kami is close to synonymous with PDF annotation in schools, and the reach shows: 6 million downloads and a 4.56/5 rating from 8,401 reviews. Then look at the recent window. The last 100 reviews average 3.87, and that gap between the all-time score and the current one is the largest of any tool in the top half of this list. It isn’t noise — it lines up with a paywall push that moved features longtime users had for free. What it does, it does thoroughly. Any document becomes a shared workspace: highlight, draw, and drop text, voice, or video comments onto a PDF, split and merge files, run OCR on a scanned worksheet, and annotate together in real time through Google Classroom. For teacher feedback specifically, the voice and video comments are something no other tool in this comparison offers, and they’re the reason schools stayed. ### Key Features - **PDF Annotation**  – Highlight, underline, strike through, and draw freehand, then save the markup back into the file - **Voice & Video Comments**  – Leave feedback as audio or a short clip instead of typing it - **Real-Time Collaboration**  – Several people annotate the same document at once - **Split & Merge PDFs**  – Break up or combine documents without leaving the browser - **OCR Text Recognition**  – Turn scanned worksheets into selectable, searchable text - **Google & Microsoft Integration**  – Classroom, Drive, and OneDrive with auto-save - **Drawing & Handwriting Tools**  – Pen, shapes, and equation tools tuned for maths and touchscreens - **Reading Support**  – Dictionary and read-aloud helpers aimed at classroom accessibility ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Deepest PDF markup toolkit here - Voice and video feedback - Real-time classroom collaboration - Google Classroom integration that works - Split, merge, and OCR built in **Cons:** - Key features moved behind a paywall - Sign-in required before anything happens - Highlighting can be unreliable - Support is slow to respond - Recent ratings have fallen hard, from 4.56 all-time to 3.87 ### Who is this great for? Kami is for teachers, and it’s at its best in a classroom already running on Google Classroom and Drive. Marking up worksheets together and leaving rich feedback is a job it does better than anything else in this comparison. Individuals who just want to annotate the occasional PDF will feel every bit of friction it was designed to carry — the sign-in, the institutional onboarding, the upgrade nudges. And given where the recent reviews sit, it’s worth checking what your school’s plan actually covers before building a term around it. ### Compared to others [Hypothesis](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hypothesis)  is the other education favourite, but they split by purpose: Hypothesis is built for scholarly discussion on the open web and costs nothing, while Kami is a heavier markup suite for handouts and homework. For solo annotation,  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights)  is lighter and needs no account, but has no live collaboration and no voice comments. And for editing a document rather than marking it up,  [Adobe Acrobat](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adobe-acrobat)  goes further than Kami tries to. If you’re weighing methods rather than brands, our guide on  [how to annotate a PDF](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-a-pdf/)  walks through the options. ### Detailed comparisons [Kami vs Hypothesis](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/kami-vs-hypothesis)  •  [Kami vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/kami-vs-web-highlights)  •  [Kami vs Adobe Acrobat](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/kami-vs-adobe-acrobat) ### Rating Summary Kami has 6,000,000 downloads on Chrome and a 4.56/5 all-time rating from 8,401 reviews, though recent sentiment has dropped sharply to 3.87 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Kami a score of  **8.23/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kami) . --- ## [6\. Hypothesis - Web & PDF Annotation](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hypothesis) ![Hypothesis annotation sidebar with a threaded reply on a document](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/hypothesis/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Hypothesis is the quiet outlier: free, open source, run by a nonprofit, with no paid tier waiting behind a button. It has 200,000 downloads and a 4.12/5 rating from 223 reviews, and the number barely moves — 4.05 across the last 100, which in this comparison counts as remarkable stability. What it does is lay a shared annotation layer over the web. Highlight and annotate pages, PDFs, and EPUBs, keep the notes private, publish them, or put them in a group; reply to anyone else’s note and hold the whole discussion on top of the text. That’s the part we can’t match, and it’s why the tool is so entrenched in universities. If you’re a student choosing between the two, I wrote a longer  [Web Highlights vs Hypothesis comparison](https://web-highlights.com/blog/web-highlights-vs-hypothesis-for-students/)  that goes through it properly. ### Key Features - **Web & PDF Annotation**  – Highlight web pages, PDFs, and EPUBs from one extension - **Private, Public & Group Notes**  – Choose per annotation who gets to see it - **Collaborative Groups**  – Spin up a group for a class or research team and read the same document together - **Threaded Replies**  – Discuss a passage in a thread anchored to that passage - **Tags & Full-Text Search**  – Tag notes and search your whole annotation history - **Hide/Show Toggle**  – Clear every highlight off the page for a clean read, then bring them back - **Persistent PDF Notes**  – Annotations stay attached to a PDF, so the same file is recognised later - **Open API**  – Pull your annotations into Obsidian, Readwise, or Logseq ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Free, open source, nonprofit - Best group annotation in this comparison - Private, public, or group notes per annotation - Steady ratings, no paywall creep - Open API and real integrations **Cons:** - Account required before you highlight anything - Frequent logouts and dropped sessions - Only one highlight color - Interface shows its age - Public-by-default trips people up ### Who is this great for? Hypothesis is for people who read together — seminar groups, research teams, classes working through the same paper. If the point of annotating is that someone else will answer, this is the tool, and it costs nothing. It also appeals to anyone who wants open-source software backed by an organisation with no reason to monetise their reading. Set your default to private on day one, and make peace with a single highlight colour. ### Compared to others Against  [Kami](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kami) , Hypothesis is free and open where Kami is institutional and paid, but Kami’s PDF markup is far richer. Compared to  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) , it trades our colors, on-device AI, and no-account start for something we don’t have at all: a conversation on the page. And like  [Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter) , it puts a shared layer at the centre — the difference being that Hypothesis is nonprofit rather than community-and-AI driven. ### Detailed comparisons [Hypothesis vs Kami](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/hypothesis-vs-kami)  •  [Hypothesis vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/hypothesis-vs-web-highlights)  •  [Hypothesis vs Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/hypothesis-vs-glasp-web-highlighter) ### Rating Summary Hypothesis has 200,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.12/5 rating from 223 reviews and a steady 4.05 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Hypothesis a score of  **8.15/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hypothesis) . --- ## [7\. DocHub - Sign PDF from Gmail](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/dochub) ![DocHub signing a PDF attachment opened from Gmail](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/dochub/images/gallery-image-1.webp) DocHub has a narrower job than anything else here: sign a PDF without leaving Gmail. It has 200,000 downloads and a 4.37/5 rating from 318 reviews, but the recent direction is wrong — 3.64 across the last 100, a clear slide from the all-time figure. The loop is genuinely quick. Pull a form out of a Gmail attachment, drop in your signature, send it back; no printing, no scanning, no downloading first. You can also add text, white out mistakes, fill fields, reorder pages, and save to Google Drive, and multi-signer flows with reminders work for the paperwork that needs three people. The complaints behind that 3.64 are almost all about the same thing: documents that don’t load. When it works it’s the fastest signing tool in this comparison, and that qualifier is doing real work. ### Key Features - **Sign Straight From Gmail**  – An “Open with DocHub” button on PDF attachments, no download step - **E-Signatures**  – Draw, type, or upload a signature — you can even make one on your phone - **In-Browser Editing**  – Add text and images, highlight, or white out a mistake - **Fillable Forms**  – Complete PDF form fields on screen instead of by hand - **Google Drive Integration**  – Import from Drive and save the finished file straight back - **Page Management**  – Reorder, rotate, delete, and merge pages before sending - **Multi-Signer Workflows**  – Route a document to several signers with autosave and reminders - **Templates**  – Save recurring paperwork so it doesn’t start from scratch each time ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Signs PDFs straight from Gmail - Free tier you can actually use - No credit card required upfront - Drive import and export - Multi-signer routing with reminders **Cons:** - Blank screens and documents that won’t load - Free plan capped per month - The Gmail flow sometimes breaks - Onboarding is clunky - Recent ratings down to 3.64 ### Who is this great for? DocHub fits anyone whose PDF life is mostly signatures — agents, freelancers, small-business owners, students returning a form. If you already live in Gmail and Drive, the workflow feels like it was built for your inbox specifically. It’s best for occasional signers who don’t want to hand over a card for a free tier. Heavy daily volume hits the monthly cap, and given the load failures in recent reviews, keep a second option installed for the day a contract refuses to open. ### Compared to others Where  [Adobe Acrobat](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adobe-acrobat)  leans on a heavier app and a Pro plan, DocHub keeps sign-and-return inside the inbox for free.  [Smallpdf](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/smallpdf)  routes you to a web dashboard for the same job, so DocHub is the more immediate of the two for pure signing, while  [Xodo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/xodo)  covers more editing ground without the Gmail integration. For reading and annotating a document rather than executing it, none of these are the answer. ### Detailed comparisons [DocHub vs Adobe Acrobat](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/dochub-vs-adobe-acrobat)  •  [DocHub vs Smallpdf](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/dochub-vs-smallpdf)  •  [DocHub vs Xodo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/dochub-vs-xodo) ### Rating Summary DocHub has 200,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.37/5 rating from 318 reviews, though recent reviews have fallen to 3.64 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave DocHub a score of  **8.02/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/dochub) . --- ## [8\. Xodo | PDF Editor, Converter & Merger](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/xodo) ![Xodo PDF tools menu with convert, merge and compress options](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/xodo/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Xodo is the smallest listing in this comparison and the one with the least evidence behind it: 30,000 downloads and a 3.85/5 rating drawn from just 34 reviews, with the recent window at 3.64. With a pool that small, those two numbers are mostly the same reviews counted twice, so treat its rating with more caution than the others. On paper it covers a lot: edit and annotate, convert to and from Word, PowerPoint, Excel and JPG, compress, merge, crop, redact, split, rotate, and sign — free, with daily limits. In practice opinion splits hard. Some people use it happily for forms and merges. Others find it behaves more like a bookmark to Xodo’s website than an extension, which is the single most common complaint and a fair description of what happens with the heavier tools. ### Key Features - **Edit & Annotate**  – Write on PDFs, add text boxes, highlight, and underline - **Convert**  – PDFs to and from Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and JPG - **Merge & Combine**  – Join several PDFs or scans into one file - **Page Management**  – Crop, split, rotate, reorder, and delete pages - **Fill & Sign**  – Complete forms and add a hand-drawn signature - **Compress**  – Shrink oversized PDFs for email - **Redact**  – Remove sensitive text before sharing - **Fast Viewing Engine**  – Open and scroll large documents quickly, the thing Xodo has always been good at ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Core PDF tools genuinely free - Fill and sign forms easily - Merge, split, and delete pages - Fast, smooth viewing of big files - Decent PDF-to-Word conversion **Cons:** - Free tier has daily limits - Often behaves like a bookmark to the website - Occasional trouble opening PDFs - Editing controls frustrate - Tiny review pool, so ratings mean little ### Who is this great for? Xodo suits people who want a broad free toolkit for occasional jobs: filling a form, merging scanned pages, converting a document to Word. For light, irregular work it’s a reasonable thing to keep one click away. Go in with the right expectation and you’ll get on with it fine — this is a launcher plus a toolkit rather than a slick in-page editor, and back-to-back use will hit the daily limits. If PDF processing is a daily job, Smallpdf is worth the upgrade instead. ### Compared to others [Smallpdf](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/smallpdf)  is the cleaner, more reliable version of the same conversion-and- compression toolkit, with roughly ninety times the reviews behind it.  [Adobe Acrobat](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adobe-acrobat)  goes much deeper for serious editing. For signing from your inbox,  [DocHub](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/dochub)  is the more focused choice. Xodo’s argument is range at no cost — and that argument holds as long as the hand-off to its website doesn’t get in your way. ### Detailed comparisons [Xodo vs Smallpdf](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/xodo-vs-smallpdf)  •  [Xodo vs Adobe Acrobat](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/xodo-vs-adobe-acrobat)  •  [Xodo vs DocHub](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/xodo-vs-dochub) ### Rating Summary Xodo has 30,000 downloads on Chrome with a 3.85/5 rating from just 34 reviews, and 3.64 across the most recent window.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Xodo a score of  **7.65/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/xodo) . --- ## [9\. Diigo Web Collector - Capture and Annotate](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) ![Diigo Web Collector toolbar with highlight and annotate options](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/diigo-web-collector/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Diigo has been collecting the web for well over a decade — bookmarks, highlights, screenshots, notes, all in one library. It has 100,000 downloads and a 4.60/5 all-time rating from 2,323 reviews. The recent picture is much darker: 3.50 across the last 100, more than a full star below the average that reputation was built on. The core still works. Highlights come back on refresh, notes attach cleanly, everything syncs. What’s aged is everything around that — a dated interface, four highlight colours, a link-creation feature that misfires, and a steady run of reliability complaints. It’s a tool that stopped being maintained at the pace its users needed, and the recent ratings are the receipt. ### Key Features - **Highlighting**  – Works reliably, and highlights are recreated on refresh - **Notes**  – Attach notes to any highlight - **Link Creation**  – Link straight to a highlight, though this misfires often - **Sidebar Outliner**  – Simple layout, but it takes a while to understand - **Syncing**  – Highlights follow you across devices ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Highlights are recreated on refresh - Notes can be added to highlights - Cross-device syncing - Tag-based library that scales **Cons:** - Outdated design - Limited to 4 highlight colors - Link creation is unreliable - Sidebar is limited - Recent ratings down to 3.50 from a 4.60 average ### Who is this great for? Diigo makes sense if you’re already in it. Years of tagged, annotated research are a real asset, the library still holds, and there’s no urgent reason to move if it’s serving you. For anyone starting fresh, the recent slide is hard to argue past. The tag-based organisation and cross-device sync are genuinely good; the interface and the reliability are not, and both matter more on day one than they do on year ten. ### Compared to others [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights)  covers the same highlight-and-sync ground with more colors, on-device AI, PDF annotations you can download, and no account to start.  [Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter)  brings the modern AI and community layer Diigo never built. And  [Weava](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava)  matches its folder-based research approach — the two share both the idea and the maintenance problem. ### Detailed comparisons [Diigo vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/diigo-web-collector-vs-web-highlights)  •  [Diigo vs Weava](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/diigo-web-collector-vs-weava)  •  [Diigo vs Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/diigo-web-collector-vs-glasp-web-highlighter) ### Rating Summary Diigo has 100,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.60/5 all-time rating from 2,323 reviews, though recent reviews have dropped to 3.50 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Diigo a score of  **7.55/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) . --- ## [10\. Weava Highlighter: PDF & Web](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) ![Weava Highlighter extension icon](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/weava/images/logo.webp) Weava closes the list, and it’s the clearest warning in it. 200,000 downloads and a 4.05/5 all-time rating from 2,754 reviews look fine until you read the recent column: 2.78 across the last 100. That’s the steepest fall of any tool here, and the only one where the current average is below three stars. The bones are still reasonable — web and PDF highlighting in several colours, notes, folders, cloud sync, automatic citations for what you highlighted. What’s dragging it under is everything around them: ads in the interface, a mandatory account, a design that stopped being updated, and a run of reviews about features breaking and support not answering. It works. It just isn’t being looked after. ### Key Features - **Web & PDF Highlighting**  – Highlight web pages and PDFs in several colors - **Annotations**  – Add notes to any highlight for later reference - **Cloud Syncing**  – Reach your highlights and notes from any device - **Organize with Folders**  – Structure research with folders and sub-folders - **Citation Creation**  – Generate citations for highlighted passages automatically ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Covers both web and PDF highlighting - Cloud sync across devices - Automatic citations for research **Cons:** - Interface cluttered with ads - Free version limits how much you can highlight - Account required before you start - Little sign of ongoing support or updates - Recent rating of 2.78 — the lowest in this comparison ### Who is this great for? Weava may still suit long-time users with folders of research inside it who don’t want to migrate. The highlighting and folder structure remain usable if you can look past the ads, and the automatic citations are a genuine time-saver for a bibliography. For everyone else, I’d point you elsewhere. A 2.78 average across the most recent hundred reviews isn’t a blip, and there are better-supported highlighters in this list at the same price. ### Compared to others [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights)  does the same web-and-PDF highlighting without ads, without an account, and with a maintained interface — though Weava’s automatic citations are something we don’t offer.  [Diigo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector)  shares the folder-based approach and much of the same ageing. And  [Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter)  leaves it behind on features, community, and upkeep. ### Detailed comparisons [Weava vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/weava-vs-web-highlights)  •  [Weava vs Diigo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/weava-vs-diigo-web-collector)  •  [Weava vs Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/weava-vs-glasp-web-highlighter) ### Rating Summary Weava has 200,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.05/5 all-time rating from 2,754 reviews, but only 2.78 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Weava a score of  **5.67/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) . --- ## Final Thoughts Working through all ten, the first thing that stands out has nothing to do with features. Look at the recent-review column. Kami fell from 4.56 to 3.87, Diigo from 4.60 to 3.50, Weava from 4.05 to 2.78 — three tools whose reputations were earned years ago and whose current users are telling a different story. All-time ratings in this category are a record of what a tool used to be. Check the last hundred before you commit a semester to something. The second thing is that “PDF extension” describes two unrelated jobs, and most disappointment comes from picking the wrong half.  [**PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights)  takes the top spot at 9.78/10 for the reading half: highlights that go into a searchable library, come back out embedded as real PDF annotations, and turn into flashcards, with the AI running on your own machine and no account needed to start. That’s what it’s good at. It converts nothing, compresses nothing, and signs nothing. So, honestly, by job. For the deepest, most trusted toolkit —  [**Adobe Acrobat**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adobe-acrobat) , if you can live with the subscription and the prompts.  [**Smallpdf**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/smallpdf)  is the best all-rounder for converting and compressing, with  [**Xodo**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/xodo)  as the rougher free alternative. For signing from your inbox,  [**DocHub**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/dochub)  is faster than anything else here on the days it loads. In a classroom,  [**Kami**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kami)  still owns collaborative markup and voice feedback outright. And if the point of annotating is that someone replies,  [**Hypothesis**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hypothesis)  beats us and costs nothing —  [**Glasp**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter)  is the pick if you’d rather choose your own AI model and read what others highlighted. Every tool here has a free tier, so the cheap way to decide is to install two and run the same week of real documents through both. If you mostly read PDFs,  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/install)  is the one I’d start with — nothing to sign up for, and you’ll know within a few days whether keeping your notes in a library beats keeping them in the file. Or open the  [full comparison of all Chrome PDF extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/pdf-tools/chrome)  and weigh them side by side yourself. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best PDF extension for Chrome? Tooltivity ranks PDF & Web Highlighter first at 9.78/10, on a 4.83/5 Chrome rating from 4,946 reviews. But “best” depends on the job. It is built for reading, highlighting and research. For editing, converting or compressing, Smallpdf and Adobe Acrobat go much further, and DocHub is faster if all you need is a signature. ### Can I highlight a PDF in Chrome for free? Yes. PDF & Web Highlighter highlights online, local and uploaded PDFs for free, with no account needed to start. Hypothesis is free too and adds group discussion, though it requires a sign-up and gives you a single highlight colour. If you would rather not install anything, our free online PDF highlighter runs in a plain browser tab. ### Which Chrome extension can I use to sign a PDF? DocHub is the most direct option: open a PDF attachment straight from Gmail, drop in a signature and send it back, free and with no credit card upfront. Adobe Acrobat also fills and signs for free inside Chrome, and Smallpdf includes e-signing. Note that DocHub’s recent reviews have slipped to 3.64, mostly over documents failing to load. ### Is there a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat for Chrome? Smallpdf is the closest all-rounder, covering compression, conversion, merging and e-signing on a free tier, and Xodo offers similar range for free with daily limits. Neither matches Acrobat’s depth for documents that have to hold up professionally. For reading and annotating rather than editing, PDF & Web Highlighter is the free pick. ### Do my highlights stay in the PDF when I download it? With PDF & Web Highlighter, yes. Download the file from its viewer and every highlight is embedded as a real, standards-compliant PDF annotation — its own colour, notes as comments, the text still selectable — editable afterwards in Acrobat, Preview or Edge. Highlights already sitting in a PDF import back into your library with one click. --- # Top 10 Chrome Video Downloader Extensions: The Great Comparison > Compare the 10 best video downloader extensions for Chrome — FetchV, CocoCut, Video DownloadHelper and more — for m3u8 streams and reliability. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-08-28 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension, comparison, Tools - Reading time: 23 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-video-downloader-chrome-extensions/ --- You sat through the webinar, you have the replay link, and there is no download button anywhere on the page. Right-click the player and Chrome offers you nothing useful. That isn’t sloppiness on the site’s part — the video simply isn’t a file sitting on a server anymore. It arrives as an m3u8 playlist chopped into hundreds of short fragments, streamed as you watch and gone the moment you close the tab. Extension developers have turned that into an arms race. Specialists like FetchV and Stream Recorder rebuild fragmented HLS streams into one playable file. The veteran Video DownloadHelper has spent years accumulating support for over a thousand sites. And a wave of all-rounders promises one-click saves from almost anywhere — several of which turn out to have a very specific idea of what “free” means. I compared the 10 best video downloader extensions on the Chrome Web Store, ranked by score. A few also ship on Edge and Firefox, and I’ll say so where it changes the picture, but the focus is the Chrome build throughout — and if you are on Edge, every one of them installs straight from the Chrome Web Store anyway ( [here is the two-minute version](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-install-chrome-extensions-in-microsoft-edge-browsers/) ). How this list was made: the scores come from Tooltivity, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each extension from its Chrome Web Store listing, its ratings and what recent reviews report, and this list is ordered by that score. The descriptions below summarize each listing and what its users report. One caveat applies to the whole category, and the honest tools state it on their own store listings: none of these download from YouTube — Chrome’s store policy forbids it — and none can touch DRM-protected services like Netflix. Beyond that, what you’re allowed to save depends on the site’s terms and the law where you live, so it’s worth checking both before you download something that isn’t yours. ### List of the Best Video Downloader Extensions for Chrome: - [FetchV - Video Downloader for m3u8 & hls](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/fetchv) - [Video Downloader for Chrome - M3U8 Video Downloader | 4saved](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/foursaved-video-downloader) - [Video Downloader Professional](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-professional) - [Stream Recorder - HLS & m3u8 Video Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stream-recorder-hls-m3u8) - [Video Downloader - MPMux](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-mpmux) - [video downloader - CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader) - [Live Stream Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/live-stream-downloader) - [Video Download Helper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-download-helper) - [Video Downloader Plus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-plus) - [VideoPlus - Free Video Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/videoplus-free-video-downloader) If you’d rather see everything side by side, here’s the  [comparison table of all Chrome video downloader extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/video-downloader/chrome) : ![Comparison table of all Chrome video downloader extensions with ratings](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/screenshot-video-downloader-comparison-extensions.webp) *Comparison of all Chrome Video Downloader Extensions* ## [1\. FetchV - Video Downloader for m3u8 & hls](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/fetchv) ![FetchV detecting an m3u8 stream on a web page](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/fetchv/images/gallery-image-1.webp) FetchV is the tool people install after a string of others has failed them. It has 800,000 downloads and a 4.91/5 rating on the Chrome Web Store from 10,487 reviews, and the recent numbers run higher still — 4.96 across the last 100. For a free utility doing a fairly technical job, that combination is rare. What earns it the top spot is its refusal to be everything at once. FetchV concentrates entirely on HLS and m3u8 streams — the fragmented format behind most modern video players — pulling hundreds of tiny segments in parallel and stitching them into one clean MP4. That puts it in the same lane as Stream Recorder and Live Stream Downloader, yet reviewers say it reaches streams that broad grabbers like Video DownloadHelper walk straight past. And it does all of it for free, with no caps, no watermarks, and no account. ### Key Features - **HLS & m3u8 Detection**  – Sniffs out .m3u8 playlists on a page and locks onto the underlying HLS stream automatically - **Single-File MP4 Output**  – Downloads the hundreds of .ts fragments a stream is split into and stitches them back into one playable MP4 - **Live Stream Capture**  – Records streams as they broadcast, not just finished videos already sitting on a server - **Blob & Recording Mode**  – Falls back to capturing blob-based or awkward-player video when no clean download link is exposed - **Multi-Thread Downloads**  – Pulls many segments in parallel, so an hour-long video finishes in a fraction of the time - **Quality Selection**  – Shows the resolutions a stream offers so you can grab the version you actually want - **Wide Site Coverage**  – Works on the large majority of streaming and course sites, including plenty that other tools quietly fail on - **Unlimited & Account-Free**  – No download limits, no sign-up, no ads getting between you and the file ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Fast multi-threaded m3u8 downloads - Completely free with no limits - Grabs streams other tools miss - Merges segments into single MP4 - Simple, no-account setup - Handles live streams well **Cons:** - No custom file naming - Wrong file creation timestamps - Occasional failed or stuck downloads - Cannot grab DRM-protected streams - Interface can feel utilitarian ### Who is this great for? FetchV is perfect for anyone whose download problem involves the letters m3u8 — webinar attendees, online-course students who are entitled to rewatch material offline, and people archiving their own live broadcasts. If a page streams its video instead of serving a plain file, this is the first extension to try. It’s especially great for users who’ve been burned by fake-free downloaders. There’s no paywall anywhere near the core feature, so the only cost is your bandwidth. Just know the limits going in: DRM-protected services stay locked, and Chrome’s policies keep YouTube off the table — deliberately so. ### Compared to others Within the stream-specialist niche, FetchV currently edges out  [Stream Recorder](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stream-recorder-hls-m3u8)  on reliability — Stream Recorder’s recent updates split some recordings into separate audio and video files, while FetchV keeps producing single playable MP4s.  [Live Stream Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/live-stream-downloader)  matches it on detection but stumbles more often mid-download. And where an all-rounder like  [video downloader - CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader)  covers far more site types, FetchV digs deeper into the streams CocoCut occasionally can’t crack. ### Detailed comparisons [FetchV vs Stream Recorder](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/fetchv-vs-stream-recorder-hls-m3u8)  •  [FetchV vs Live Stream Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/fetchv-vs-live-stream-downloader)  •  [FetchV vs CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-fetchv) ### Rating Summary FetchV has 800,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.91/5 rating from 10,487 reviews, and its last 100 reviews average higher still at 4.96 — the most consistently liked downloader in this list.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave FetchV - Video Downloader for m3u8 & hls a score of  **9.00/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/fetchv) . --- ## [2\. Video Downloader for Chrome - M3U8 Video Downloader | 4saved](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/foursaved-video-downloader) ![4Saved video downloader popup listing detected videos](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/foursaved-video-downloader/images/gallery-image-1.webp) 4Saved flies under the radar with 100,000 downloads, but the people who find it clearly like what they get: a 4.76/5 rating across 1,321 Chrome Web Store reviews. The recent picture softens only slightly, at 4.61 for the last 100 — still comfortably above where most downloaders land. Its trick is range in a single popup. Where FetchV lives entirely in m3u8 territory, 4Saved pairs the same stream capture with genuinely dependable social-media grabs — Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitch — coverage that usually takes two or three separate tools to match. An in-popup preview and a resolution picker mean you see what you’re saving before you commit, and the whole thing runs without an account or a download limit. ### Key Features - **M3U8 & HLS Stream Capture**  – Detects streaming playlists on the page and stitches them into a single saved video - **Social Media Downloads**  – Pulls clips from Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitch - **Broad Site Support**  – Also handles Vimeo, Dailymotion, Pinterest, and countless embedded players - **Resolution Picker**  – Lists the available quality options so you choose before downloading - **In-Popup Preview**  – Shows the detected video inside the extension before you commit - **No Download Limits**  – Unlimited saves with no daily cap, queue, or watermark - **Offline Viewing**  – Files download straight to your device for watching without a connection - **Completely Free**  – No account, no signup, and no paid tier gating the core features ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Fast, efficient video downloads - Reliable across most sites - No download limits - Strong social-media platform coverage - Simple, beginner-friendly interface **Cons:** - VK downloads often unreliable - Not every site supported - Some files fail to play - No YouTube or DRM downloads - Occasional save-button glitches ### Who is this great for? 4Saved is perfect for anyone who saves more social clips than raw streams. If your downloads mostly come from Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, or Twitch — your own posts, clips you’ve been given permission to reuse, material under open licenses — this covers all of them from one toolbar icon. It’s especially great for users who want one free tool instead of three. The M3U8 capture handles the occasional streaming page, the social coverage handles everything else, and there’s no daily cap waiting to interrupt you. Heavy VK users are the exception; that’s the one platform where it misses too often. ### Compared to others 4Saved occupies a sweet spot the bigger names leave open.  [video downloader - CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader)  casts a wider net but now caps free daily downloads, while 4Saved stays unlimited at no cost. Against  [FetchV](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/fetchv)  it trades some stream-capture depth for far better social-platform reach. And compared with the freemium  [Video Downloader Plus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-plus) , it simply never asks for money. ### Detailed comparisons [4Saved vs CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-foursaved-video-downloader)  •  [4Saved vs FetchV](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/fetchv-vs-foursaved-video-downloader)  •  [4Saved vs Video Downloader Plus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/foursaved-video-downloader-vs-video-downloader-plus) ### Rating Summary 100,000 downloads and a 4.76/5 rating from 1,321 reviews won’t headline any charts, but for a completely free tool with this much platform coverage the numbers are quietly excellent, and the last 100 hold at 4.61.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Video Downloader for Chrome - M3U8 Video Downloader | 4saved a score of  **8.50/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/foursaved-video-downloader) . --- ## [3\. Video Downloader Professional](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-professional) ![Video Downloader Professional listing downloadable files by resolution](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/video-downloader-professional/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Video Downloader Professional is the crowd favourite by sheer volume: 5 million downloads and a 4.54/5 rating built from a staggering 229,423 Chrome reviews. What’s striking is how little that number moves. The last 100 reviews average 4.49 — within a rounding error of a lifetime score accumulated over years, which is not something many tools this old can claim. The appeal is focus. It skips the streaming arms race that FetchV and CocoCut compete in and simply nails ordinary web video: click the icon, see every downloadable file tagged by resolution, and grab the highest quality by default. Small touches carry it — files keep their original names instead of a random string of numbers, and a collect mode lets you queue clips for later. For the everyday “save this video” moment, it’s about as frictionless as the category gets. ### Key Features - **One-Click Web Video Download**  – Detects the clip playing on a page and saves it in a single click - **Resolution Picker**  – Lists every available quality and grabs the highest version by default - **Original File Names**  – Saves with the real video title instead of a generic string of numbers - **Collect Mode**  – Add clips to a video list and come back to download them later - **Broad Site Coverage**  – Pulls standard MP4 and web video from a wide range of sites - **Blob & Embedded Capture**  – Catches embedded and blob videos that some tools walk straight past - **No Account, No Ads**  – Core downloading works instantly with no sign-up and nothing to dismiss - **Fast Local Downloads**  – Files save straight to your device at full speed ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Simple one-click downloading - Reliable across most websites - Auto-grabs the highest resolution - Keeps original video file names - Completely free, no account - Fast, full-speed downloads **Cons:** - No YouTube or social media - Misses some m3u8 live streams - Needs a page refresh sometimes - Embedded ads clutter the list - Pushes a paid desktop companion ### Who is this great for? Video Downloader Professional is perfect for anyone who wants downloading to be a two-click afterthought rather than a hobby. If your needs are standard web video — no live streams, no social platforms — its one-click flow and automatic best-quality selection make it the least demanding tool in this list. It’s especially great for users who save clips in batches. Real file names and the collect mode turn what’s normally a rename-everything chore into something organized from the start. Just don’t expect it to chase m3u8 live streams; that’s simply not its job. ### Compared to others Against the veteran  [Video Download Helper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-download-helper) , Video Downloader Professional trades site breadth for a free tier with no rate limit — a trade that got a lot more interesting after DownloadHelper started throttling free downloads.  [video downloader - CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader)  beats it on HLS streams and site coverage but caps free daily use. And next to  [VideoPlus - Free Video Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/videoplus-free-video-downloader) , it’s the tool that actually delivers the “free” its rival only promises. ### Detailed comparisons [Video Downloader Pro vs Video DownloadHelper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/video-download-helper-vs-video-downloader-professional)  •  [Video Downloader Pro vs CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-video-downloader-professional)  •  [Video Downloader Pro vs VideoPlus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/video-downloader-professional-vs-videoplus-free-video-downloader) ### Rating Summary Five million downloads, a 4.54/5 rating from 229,423 reviews, and a recent average of 4.49 that barely differs from it — few tools this old stay this steady.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Video Downloader Professional a score of  **8.50/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-professional) . --- ## [4\. Stream Recorder - HLS & m3u8 Video Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stream-recorder-hls-m3u8) ![Stream Recorder capturing an HLS stream in the browser](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/stream-recorder-hls-m3u8/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Stream Recorder has passed 1 million downloads on the Chrome Web Store, where it holds a 4.33/5 rating across 2,752 reviews. The recent trend points up rather than down, at 4.45 for the last 100 — though we’ll be honest about the rough patch hiding inside that number. Like FetchV, this is a pure HLS specialist, and its core trick is genuinely good: it reassembles fragmented .ts segments into one MP4 without re-encoding, so quality is preserved exactly. Two touches stand out — you can close the source tab and let a live recording keep running in the background, and boost mode fetches segments in parallel to speed up long captures. What keeps it a step behind FetchV is a recent regression that splits some recordings into separate audio and video files you then have to re-join yourself. ### Key Features - **Automatic Stream Detection**  – Spots every HLS and m3u8 source on a page as it loads, no URL hunting - **In-Browser MP4 Export**  – Reassembles the fragmented .ts segments into one MP4 without re-encoding, so quality is preserved - **Live Stream Recording**  – Captures ongoing broadcasts, and keeps running even after you close the source tab - **Boost Mode**  – Fetches segments in parallel to noticeably speed up long downloads - **Title-Aware Saving**  – Names the file after the source page so your downloads stay organised - **No Manual Merging**  – Replaces the old routine of grabbing hundreds of segments and stitching them by hand - **Account-Free & Ad-Light**  – Works straight after install with no sign-up or paywall - **Lightweight Footprint**  – A tiny install that does all its work locally in the browser ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Auto-detects every on-page stream - Saves HLS/m3u8 as clean MP4 - Completely free, no subscription - Fast boost download mode - Simple, uncluttered interface - Captures live streams in-browser **Cons:** - Recently splits audio and video - Can’t grab DRM or YouTube - Can spawn duplicate stream entries - Occasional failed or partial downloads - No subtitle downloads ### Who is this great for? Stream Recorder is perfect for anyone who records live broadcasts they’re entitled to keep — webinars, streams of their own events, course sessions. The ability to start a capture and close the source tab while it keeps running is a small freedom no one gives back once they’ve had it. It’s especially great for users who want quality preserved bit-for-bit, since the MP4 export skips re-encoding entirely. If you hit the current audio-video split issue on your sites, though, be prepared to re-join files — or to keep a second stream tool installed until a fix lands. ### Compared to others [FetchV](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/fetchv)  is the obvious head-to-head, and right now FetchV wins on output reliability while Stream Recorder counters with background live recording.  [Live Stream Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/live-stream-downloader)  hunts streams in stranger places — blob URLs, buried embeds — but finishes downloads less dependably. And  [Video Downloader - MPMux](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-mpmux)  makes a strong alternative if you want stream capture plus ordinary MP4 grabbing in one simpler package. ### Detailed comparisons [Stream Recorder vs FetchV](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/fetchv-vs-stream-recorder-hls-m3u8)  •  [Stream Recorder vs Live Stream Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/live-stream-downloader-vs-stream-recorder-hls-m3u8)  •  [Stream Recorder vs MPMux](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/stream-recorder-hls-m3u8-vs-video-downloader-mpmux) ### Rating Summary Stream Recorder has 1 million downloads on Chrome with a 4.33/5 rating from 2,752 reviews, rising to 4.45 across the last 100 — a specialist that still delivers, current rough edges included.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Stream Recorder - HLS & m3u8 Video Downloader a score of  **8.33/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stream-recorder-hls-m3u8) . --- ## [5\. Video Downloader - MPMux](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-mpmux) ![MPMux showing detected video resolutions before download](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/video-downloader-mpmux/images/gallery-image-1.webp) On raw store rating, nothing in this list beats MPMux: a 4.92/5 average across 5,981 Chrome reviews, earned on a comparatively modest 200,000 downloads. And it’s no legacy halo either — the last 100 reviews average 4.91, so recent users are just as satisfied as the ones who found it years ago. MPMux sits neatly between the specialists and the all-rounders. It saves mp4, m3u8, HLS, and live streams as one finished MP4, shows you the available resolutions before you commit, and falls back to a built-in record mode when a site blocks a direct grab — a spread that neither FetchV’s narrow focus nor CocoCut’s capped free tier quite matches. It ranks below the bigger names here mostly on ecosystem: it’s a smaller extension from a less-established developer, with thinner privacy documentation than we’d like. ### Key Features - **Broad Format Support**  – Saves mp4, m3u8, HLS, and live streams as a single ready-to-play MP4 - **On-Page Video Detection**  – Automatically spots playable video on the current tab, no URL hunting required - **Resolution Picker**  – Lists the available qualities so you choose before the download begins - **Built-In Record Mode**  – Captures playback as a fallback on sites that block a direct grab - **Handles Large Files**  – Pulls multi-hundred-megabyte videos quickly and without stalling - **No Account Needed**  – Works the moment it’s installed, with no sign-up or login - **Free, No Usage Limits**  – Full functionality with no caps on how much or how often you download - **Works Where Others Fail**  – Reliably grabs clips that simpler downloaders miss ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Works when other downloaders fail - Fast downloads, even large files - Clean, simple, no-clutter interface - Free with no usage limits - Handles m3u8, HLS and live streams - Detects video resolutions before downloading **Cons:** - No YouTube or DRM downloads - Occasional breakage after site changes - Record mode sometimes shows blank pages - Light ads in the interface - No subtitle downloading ### Who is this great for? MPMux is perfect for anyone who wants one free tool covering both ordinary web video and the trickier m3u8 and HLS streams, without learning two different workflows. Its automatic detection means you never copy stream URLs or dig through network tabs — you just pick a resolution and go. It’s especially great for users who have already worked through a pile of downloaders that didn’t stick. The recurring theme in its reviews is exactly that journey, and the near-identical all-time and recent ratings suggest people who land here tend to stay. A few light ads are the entire price. ### Compared to others Against  [FetchV](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/fetchv) , MPMux is less surgical on pure m3u8 work but more forgiving across the everyday web. It’s currently the steadier pick over  [Stream Recorder](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stream-recorder-hls-m3u8) , which is wrestling with an audio-video split regression MPMux doesn’t share. And where  [video downloader - CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader)  counters with broader site coverage, CocoCut’s free tier caps daily downloads while MPMux stays unlimited. ### Detailed comparisons [MPMux vs FetchV](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/fetchv-vs-video-downloader-mpmux)  •  [MPMux vs Stream Recorder](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/stream-recorder-hls-m3u8-vs-video-downloader-mpmux)  •  [MPMux vs CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-video-downloader-mpmux) ### Rating Summary A 4.92/5 rating from 5,981 reviews with a 4.91 across the last 100 is the most consistent scorecard in this comparison, even from a smaller install base of 200,000.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Video Downloader - MPMux a score of  **8.17/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-mpmux) . --- ## [6\. video downloader - CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader) ![CocoCut video downloader detecting media on a streaming page](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/cococut-video-downloader/images/gallery-image-1.webp) CocoCut has built one of the larger followings in this category, with 800,000 Chrome downloads and a strong 4.78/5 rating across 10,647 reviews — enthusiasm that holds in the recent data at 4.76 for the last 100. Its Edge build adds another 343,206 downloads, though that audience is noticeably cooler on it, at 4.4 stars from 498 reviews. Breadth is the pitch. CocoCut pulls video and audio from thousands of sites, reassembles HLS and M3U8 streams, records live broadcasts, and screen-captures as a fallback when a stream refuses to download — a wider toolkit than either FetchV or Video Downloader Professional carries. Its calling card is stubbornness: reviewers keep reporting that it clears pages that stopped other extensions cold. What drags the score below the tools above it is the free tier, which now caps daily downloads and throttles speed on large files. ### Key Features - **Downloads From Thousands of Sites**  – Pulls video and audio from most streaming and social pages in a single click - **HLS / M3U8 Stream Capture**  – Reassembles fragmented .m3u8 stream chunks into one playable MP4 - **Recording Mode**  – Screen-records a stream as a fallback when it refuses to download directly - **Live Broadcast Downloading**  – Saves live streams while they are still playing - **Quality Selection**  – Choose the resolution you want and save it as a standard MP4 - **In-Popup Preview**  – Play a detected clip inside the extension to confirm you’re grabbing the right file - **Auto-Named Files**  – Saves each download using the original video title instead of a random string - **Audio & Music Extraction**  – Grab just the audio track from a page when you don’t need the video ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Downloads from thousands of sites - Grabs HLS/M3U8 streams reliably - Simple, one-click, easy to use - Works where other downloaders fail - Recording mode as a fallback - Free to install, no ads **Cons:** - Free tier caps daily downloads - Throttled speed without Pro - No YouTube (Chrome policy) - Occasional corrupted or out-of-sync files - Slow, unresponsive customer support ### Who is this great for? CocoCut is perfect for anyone who wants one downloader for everything — regular web video, streams, live broadcasts, and audio extraction — and only saves a handful of files a day. Inside the free tier’s daily cap, it’s one of the most capable grabbers you can install at no cost. It’s especially great for users who keep meeting pages other tools give up on; the recording-mode fallback means there’s almost always a path to the file. Volume downloaders should do the math on the Pro subscription first, though — and read up on the billing complaints before subscribing. ### Compared to others CocoCut’s natural rival is  [Video Download Helper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-download-helper) : both are veteran all-rounders, and both have moved to limiting free use, so the choice often comes down to which handles your specific sites better. Against  [Video Downloader Plus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-plus)  it offers a similar breadth with a friendlier free tier. And for pure m3u8 depth,  [FetchV](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/fetchv)  remains the specialist CocoCut can’t quite match. ### Detailed comparisons [CocoCut vs Video DownloadHelper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-video-download-helper)  •  [CocoCut vs Video Downloader Plus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-video-downloader-plus)  •  [CocoCut vs FetchV](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-fetchv) ### Rating Summary With over 1.1 million combined installs across Chrome and Edge and a 4.78/5 Chrome rating from 10,647 reviews, holding 4.76 over the last 100, CocoCut has earned its all-rounder reputation.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave video downloader - CocoCut a score of  **8.00/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader) . --- ## [7\. Live Stream Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/live-stream-downloader) ![Live Stream Downloader listing detected stream feeds](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/live-stream-downloader/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Live Stream Downloader has crossed 400,000 downloads on the Chrome Web Store, where it holds a 4.26/5 rating across 570 reviews, with the last 100 a little lower at 4.15. Those aren’t headline numbers, but stream capture is a brutal niche to score well in — players change constantly, and every change breaks somebody’s download. Its reason to exist is reach. The detection engine digs video out of blob URLs and embedded players that other extensions don’t even register, then pulls the fragments down in parallel threads and merges them automatically. More than one reviewer reports it was the only tool that could grab a clip at all. The trade-offs are real: downloads can stall with no way to resume, there’s no built-in converter, and the bare-bones interface makes you guess which of several detected feeds is the right one. ### Key Features - **M3U8 & HLS Detection**  – Automatically spots live and archived HLS stream feeds playing on a page - **Multi-Threaded Downloading**  – Fetches stream fragments in parallel so large videos save faster - **Automatic Merging**  – Stitches the downloaded segments into a single continuous file for you - **Quality Selection**  – Lets you choose the resolution or bitrate when a site offers several - **Deep Page Detection**  – Catches videos hidden in blob URLs and embedded players that rivals miss - **Saves Straight to Disk**  – Writes files directly to your computer with no cloud middleman - **Audio & Subtitle Streams**  – Can grab separate audio and subtitle tracks when a feed exposes them - **Completely Free**  – No account, no ads, and no paid tier to unlock features ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Detects streams other tools miss - Fast multi-threaded downloads - Simple, no setup needed - Completely free, no ads - Merges stream fragments automatically **Cons:** - Downloads can stall or fail - No resume after interruptions - No built-in format conversion - Interface can feel bare ### Who is this great for? Live Stream Downloader is perfect for anyone who occasionally meets a stream nothing else can touch. As the emergency tool you keep installed for stubborn blob URLs and deeply embedded players, it earns its slot many times over — especially since it costs nothing and shows no ads. It’s especially great for users comfortable with a little roughness: picking the right feed from an unlabelled list, retrying a stalled download, converting a file afterward. For a one-shot live event you can’t re-record, we’d want a steadier primary tool and this as the backup. ### Compared to others Among the stream specialists,  [Stream Recorder](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stream-recorder-hls-m3u8)  offers the smoother happy path and background live recording, while Live Stream Downloader wins on sheer detection reach.  [FetchV](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/fetchv)  beats both on finishing what it starts — its multi-threaded downloads fail far less often. And if you need everyday MP4 and social-site coverage on top of streams,  [video downloader - CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader)  is the broader companion. ### Detailed comparisons [Live Stream Downloader vs Stream Recorder](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/live-stream-downloader-vs-stream-recorder-hls-m3u8)  •  [Live Stream Downloader vs FetchV](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/fetchv-vs-live-stream-downloader)  •  [Live Stream Downloader vs CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-live-stream-downloader) ### Rating Summary 400,000 downloads, a 4.26/5 rating from 570 reviews, and 4.15 across the last 100 mark this out as a dependable niche pick rather than a mass-market star.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Live Stream Downloader a score of  **8.00/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/live-stream-downloader) . --- ## [8\. Video Download Helper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-download-helper) ![Video Download Helper toolbar panel with detected media](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/video-download-helper/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Video Download Helper is the only extension here with a serious presence on all three browsers: 5 million Chrome downloads at a 4.46/5 rating from 34,413 reviews, 1,724,362 downloads on Firefox at 4.3 stars from 42,300 reviews, and 1,337,826 more on Edge at 4.1 stars from 1,362. The Chrome trend runs ahead of its own history, at 4.56 across the last 100. This is the category’s veteran, and the range shows it: support for well over a thousand sites, capture of adaptive DASH, HLS, and MPD streams, and conversion to MP4, MKV, WebM, or MP3 through a companion app. Renaming files and picking a folder before a download starts is the kind of touch younger rivals like Video Downloader Professional still haven’t copied. So why eighth? A recent freemium shift now rate-limits free downloads after a grab or two — a change that landed without warning and still colours its newest reviews. ### Key Features - **Broad Site Coverage**  – Detects and grabs video from well over a thousand websites where lighter tools come up empty - **Adaptive Stream Capture**  – Pulls DASH, HLS, and MPD streams, not just plain MP4 files - **Built-in Format Conversion**  – Turns captures into MP4, MKV, WebM, or MP3 through a companion app - **One-Click Detection**  – Automatically spots playable media on a page and offers it from the toolbar - **Rename Before Saving**  – Edit the filename and choose the destination folder before the download starts, with smart-naming rules - **Download Side Panel**  – A dedicated sidebar tracks active and finished downloads at a glance - **Quality Selection**  – Pick the resolution you want, up to the highest the source provides - **Audio-Only Downloads**  – Save just the soundtrack as an MP3 when you don’t need the picture ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Works on over a thousand sites - Reliable one-click media detection - Rename and pick folder before saving - Handles adaptive HLS and DASH streams - Fast, often highest-quality downloads **Cons:** - Recent paywall limits free downloads - No YouTube on Chrome build - Can’t download DRM-protected video - Conversion needs a companion app - Occasional broken downloads after updates ### Who is this great for? Video Download Helper is perfect for anyone who downloads regularly enough to justify a license — by most accounts a fair one-off cost rather than a heavy subscription — and wants the widest site coverage available. It’s also the natural pick for Firefox users, where it’s been the standard for years. It’s especially great for users who care about what happens after the download: format conversion, audio-only saves, tidy filenames, and a side panel tracking every job. Occasional downloaders should test the rate-limited free tier honestly before deciding — that’s where the recent frustration lives. ### Compared to others The trade against  [Video Downloader Professional](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-professional)  is now clean: DownloadHelper offers far broader coverage and conversion, Video Downloader Professional offers unlimited free use.  [video downloader - CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader)  is its closest all-rounder rival, with both now limiting free tiers — pick by which handles your sites. And against the freemium  [Video Downloader Plus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-plus) , DownloadHelper’s one-time license is the friendlier way to pay. ### Detailed comparisons [Video DownloadHelper vs Video Downloader Pro](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/video-download-helper-vs-video-downloader-professional)  •  [Video DownloadHelper vs CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-video-download-helper)  •  [Video DownloadHelper vs Video Downloader Plus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/video-download-helper-vs-video-downloader-plus) ### Rating Summary More than 8 million combined installs across Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, a 4.46/5 Chrome rating from 34,413 reviews, and a recent Chrome average of 4.56 keep this veteran firmly relevant.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Video Download Helper a score of  **8.00/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-download-helper) . --- ## [9\. Video Downloader Plus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-plus) ![Video Downloader Plus resolution picker in the extension popup](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/video-downloader-plus/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Video Downloader Plus has 1 million Chrome downloads and a solid 4.50/5 rating across 28,133 reviews, though the current build is landing a touch below that history — 4.38 for the last 100. Technically, there’s a lot to like. It inspects HLS, DASH, and MP4 streams directly, saves at resolutions up to 8K where a site offers them, and — unlike VideoPlus below — merges separate audio and video tracks into one finished file automatically. So why the 7.17? The freemium wall. Full HD and above, MP3 extraction, and unlimited daily downloads all sit behind a subscription the “free” store listing doesn’t advertise, and the premium account ties your activity to the developer’s service — a bigger data surface than the local-only tools higher up this list. ### Key Features - **Stream Detection**  – Finds HLS, DASH, and MP4 sources that most pages try to keep out of reach - **Up to 8K Downloads**  – Grabs the highest resolution a site actually offers - **Audio + Video Merge**  – Stitches separate tracks into one playable file automatically - **Format Conversion**  – Save clips in the container you need rather than the raw stream - **Live Stream Recording**  – Capture broadcasts as they play, not just finished videos - **Resolution Picker**  – Choose the exact size and quality before you download - **Preview Before Saving**  – Play a detected clip to confirm it’s the one you want - **One-Click Grabbing**  – Trigger a download straight from the toolbar on any supported site ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Detects streams other tools miss - Fast, reliable downloads - Resolution choice up to 8K - Simple, intuitive interface - Merges audio and video **Cons:** - Best features behind paywall - No YouTube or DRM - Detection fails on some sites - Download flow can confuse ### Who is this great for? Video Downloader Plus is perfect for anyone who needs maximum resolution and doesn’t mind paying for it — if 4K or 8K saves of your own footage matter, this and its automatic audio-video merging are hard to beat in a browser extension. It’s especially great for users who treat the free tier as an extended trial: standard-quality clips cost nothing, so you can verify it handles your specific sites before a single payment. Go in expecting a genuinely free unlimited tool, though, and you’ll join the reviewers who felt blindsided. ### Compared to others If free matters most,  [Video Downloader Professional](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-professional)  does the everyday job without ever reaching for your wallet.  [video downloader - CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader)  offers similar breadth with a more generous entry tier, while  [Video Download Helper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-download-helper)  counters the subscription model with a one-time license and wider site support. Video Downloader Plus answers all three with the highest resolution ceiling of the group. ### Detailed comparisons [Video Downloader Plus vs Video Downloader Pro](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/video-downloader-plus-vs-video-downloader-professional)  •  [Video Downloader Plus vs CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-video-downloader-plus)  •  [Video Downloader Plus vs Video DownloadHelper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/video-download-helper-vs-video-downloader-plus) ### Rating Summary A million Chrome installs and a 4.50/5 rating from 28,133 reviews prove the engine is good; the freemium wall, and a recent average easing to 4.38, are what keep the score down.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Video Downloader Plus a score of  **7.17/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-plus) . --- ## [10\. VideoPlus - Free Video Downloader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/videoplus-free-video-downloader) ![VideoPlus free video downloader popup with a detected file](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/videoplus-free-video-downloader/images/gallery-image-1.webp) VideoPlus has found an audience — 100,000 downloads and a 4.05/5 rating across 646 Chrome reviews — but the direction of travel is the problem. Its last 100 reviews average 3.47, the steepest recent drop in this entire comparison, and that slide is the story of this extension. We’ll give it its due first: the detection engine is genuinely wide-ranging, handling HLS and DASH streams, and users report it finding video on obscure pages where every other tool came up empty. That last-resort reach is why some users swear by it. Everything wrapped around the core lets it down — a free tier capped at roughly one download per hour despite “Free” sitting in the product name, files that too often arrive as separate audio and video tracks, and downloads that stall with no clear feedback. Our 6.17 reflects exactly that gap between capability and experience. ### Key Features - **One-Click Capture**  – Detects the video or audio in your tab and saves it in a single click - **Broad Site Coverage**  – Finds media on mainstream and lesser-known sites, including pages many tools skip - **HLS and DASH Streams**  – Handles fragmented m3u8 and DASH sources, not just direct MP4 links - **Resolution Options**  – Lists the available quality levels so you can choose the file size you download - **Built-In Preview**  – Plays the detected file inside the popup before you commit to saving it - **Audio Extraction**  – Pull just the audio track when the sound is all you need - **Cross-Browser Support**  – Runs across Chromium browsers including Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi - **Reliable Fallback**  – Often succeeds on stubborn pages where downloaders like  [Video DownloadHelper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-download-helper)  come up empty ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Works when rival downloaders fail - Fast downloads on supported sites - Simple one-click operation - Broad site and stream coverage - Runs across Chromium browsers **Cons:** - Free tier caps hourly downloads - Not truly free to use - Downloads audio and video separately - Unreliable, sometimes stalls mid-download - Login breaks after Chrome updates ### Who is this great for? VideoPlus is perfect for anyone who needs a last-resort net rather than a daily workhorse. When your usual downloader reports “no video found” on a page you know is playing one, this is the backup that surprisingly often catches the file. It’s especially great for users who save at most a clip or two per session, since the hourly cap never bites at that pace. Anyone downloading in volume, or anyone who took the “Free” in the name at face value, will run into the paywall fast — and the paid tier’s own reliability record doesn’t make that an easy upgrade to recommend. ### Compared to others For honest everyday free downloading,  [Video Downloader Professional](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-professional)  is the recommendation VideoPlus can’t counter.  [video downloader - CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader)  delivers merged, playable files far more consistently, and  [Video Download Helper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-download-helper)  brings vastly more site coverage for a fairer price. VideoPlus’s one real card against all three is its knack for the obscure page nothing else can read. ### Detailed comparisons [VideoPlus vs Video Downloader Pro](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/video-downloader-professional-vs-videoplus-free-video-downloader)  •  [VideoPlus vs CocoCut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/cococut-video-downloader-vs-videoplus-free-video-downloader)  •  [VideoPlus vs Video DownloadHelper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/video-download-helper-vs-videoplus-free-video-downloader) ### Rating Summary The numbers tell an honest story: 100,000 downloads and a decent 4.05/5 lifetime rating from 646 reviews, undercut by a 3.47 average across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave VideoPlus - Free Video Downloader a score of  **6.17/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/videoplus-free-video-downloader) . --- ## Final Thoughts Looking at all 10 of these extensions side by side, the pattern is hard to miss: the tools that pick one hard problem beat the ones that promise everything.  [**FetchV**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/fetchv)  takes the top spot at 9.00/10 for exactly that reason. It turns fragmented HLS and m3u8 streams into clean single MP4s, free, with no account and no cap — and a 4.91 rating from 10,487 reviews, running at 4.96 across the last 100, says its users agree. Honourable mention to  [**MPMux**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-mpmux) , whose 4.92 store rating is technically the highest in the list. A second pattern shows up across the whole field: in this category, the word “free” does most of the lying.  [**VideoPlus**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/videoplus-free-video-downloader)  caps you at roughly one download an hour with “Free” in its own name, and its last 100 reviews have fallen to 3.47 because of it.  [**Video Downloader Plus**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-plus)  keeps Full HD and above behind a subscription, and both  [**CocoCut**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/cococut-video-downloader)  and  [**Video Download Helper**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-download-helper)  added limits to tiers that used to be open. The download engines are mostly fine. The billing is where the one-star reviews come from. For specific needs, the field spreads out nicely.  [**4Saved**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/foursaved-video-downloader)  is the free pick for social clips from Facebook, X, TikTok, and Twitch, while  [**Video Downloader Professional**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-professional)  makes everyday web video a genuine one-click job at no cost.  [**Video Download Helper**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-download-helper)  is still the coverage king across Chrome, Firefox, and Edge if you’ll pay its one-time license.  [**Stream Recorder**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stream-recorder-hls-m3u8)  is the one for long live captures you want to start and walk away from, and  [**Live Stream Downloader**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/live-stream-downloader)  is the backup to keep installed for the buried embed nothing else can see. If you’d rather not learn two tools,  [**MPMux**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/video-downloader-mpmux)  covers stream capture and ordinary MP4 grabbing in one popup. Every extension here installs free, so test your own sites before you pay for anything — the disappointments in this category live behind the paywall, not in the download engine. And stay on the right side of the line: none of these touch YouTube or DRM-protected services, and what else you may keep depends on the site’s terms and your local law. Browse the  [full comparison of all Chrome video downloader extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/video-downloader/chrome)  to weigh them side by side. And if this format is useful, I have done the same comparison for  [bookmark manager extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-bookmark-manager-chrome-extensions/)  and for  [language learning extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-chrome-language-learning-extensions-the-great-comparison/) . ## Frequently asked questions ### Why can't Chrome extensions download YouTube videos? Chrome Web Store program policies prohibit extensions that download YouTube content, and Google removes the ones that try. That is why every tool in this comparison skips YouTube entirely, paid tiers included. Any extension still promising YouTube downloads is either about to be delisted or is quietly routing you to an external website, which is worth treating with suspicion before you install it. ### What is an m3u8 file, and why do normal downloaders miss it? An .m3u8 is a plain-text playlist. Instead of one MP4, it points at hundreds of short .ts segments the player fetches one after another as you watch. There is no single file to right-click and save, so ordinary downloaders report nothing found. Stream tools read the playlist, pull every segment, and stitch them back into one playable MP4. ### Are video downloader extensions safe to install? Treat them like any extension with access to every page you visit. Check the permissions it requests, whether it forces an account, and — more telling than the lifetime rating — how the last 100 reviews read. Tools that work locally and never sign you in have the smallest data surface. Be wary of any downloader asking for permissions unrelated to finding video. ### Is it legal to download videos with a browser extension? It depends on the source and where you live, and this is not legal advice. Most sites govern downloads through their terms of service. Saving your own uploads, openly licensed clips, or material a site explicitly offers for offline viewing is usually fine. Circumventing DRM is illegal in many countries, which is one reason no extension here attempts it. ### Why did my download arrive as separate audio and video files? Adaptive HLS and DASH streams often carry audio and video as separate tracks. The downloader has to mux them back together, and the ones that skip that step leave you with two files. Look for a tool that merges automatically — Video Downloader Plus does it by design, and FetchV and MPMux consistently produce a single finished MP4. --- # Top 10 Chrome Email Finder Extensions: The Great Comparison > Compare the 10 best email finder extensions for Chrome — Hunter, Snov.io, Apollo and more — on what users report about accuracy, credits and bounces. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-08-04 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension, comparison, Email, Productivity, Tools - Reading time: 24 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-email-finder-tools/ --- You've found the right person. The name is on screen, the title fits, the company is exactly who you wanted to talk to — and there's no way to reach them. LinkedIn's message box is capped or ignored, the contact form on the website drops into a shared inbox nobody reads, and guessing firstname@company.com is a coin flip that chips away at your sending reputation every time it lands wrong. Finding the address is the part of prospecting nobody budgets time for and everybody loses hours to. An entire industry has grown up to close that gap, and it splits into two camps that are worth telling apart before you install anything. On one side sit the tools that only surface what companies have already published, and show you the pages they found it on. On the other sit database-backed platforms holding contributed records — personal addresses, private mobile numbers — handed over with no indication of where any of it came from. Prices run from a free plan you can genuinely work on to $400 a month, and a couple of vendors won't tell you what they charge at all until you've sat through a demo. We spent time with the ten most-installed email finder extensions on the Chrome Web Store, judging them on hit rate, how many addresses actually survive contact with a mail server, whether the credit maths is honest, and how much of your own data they demand before the first search. What follows ranks all ten, with real Chrome download counts and store ratings behind every claim. Three of them also ship Firefox builds, and we'll flag those in passing — but Chrome is where this category lives, and it's where every number below comes from. ### Key takeaways - **Hunter**  (9.00/10) is the only extension here that shows the public pages behind every address and attaches a confidence score — the pick when deliverability matters more than reach. - **GetProspect**  (8.87) verifies each address before it spends your credit;  **Snov.io**  (8.82) bundles finding, verifying and sending into one $39/month subscription. - **Skrapp**  (8.68) is the easiest place to start — no phone number at signup and the full feature set on the free tier. - **Apollo**  has the largest install base at 1,000,000 downloads and the most generous free plan, roughly 75 email reveals a month, indefinitely. - **Phone numbers, not just addresses**  – Kaspr, Lusha, SignalHire and Seamless.AI sell direct dials, and only Kaspr refuses to charge you for a lookup that finds nothing. How this list was made: the scores come from Tooltivity, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each extension from its Chrome Web Store listing, its ratings and what recent reviews report, and this list is ordered by that score. The descriptions below summarize each listing and what its users report. ### List of the Best Email Finder Extensions for Chrome: - [Hunter - Email Finder Extension](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hunter-email-finder) - [Email Finder - GetProspect](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/getprospect-email-finder) - [Email Finder by Snov.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/snov-io-email-finder) - [Email Finder by Skrapp.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/skrapp-io-email-finder) - [Apollo.io: Free B2B Phone Number & Email Finder](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/apollo-io-email-finder) - [Kaspr: B2B Phone Number and Email Finder](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder) - [Email Finder by ContactOut – Email Lookup Tool](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/contactout-email-finder) - [Lusha - Easily find B2B contact information](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/lusha-b2b-contact-finder) - [Seamless.AI](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seamless-ai) - [SignalHire - find email or phone number](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/signalhire-email-and-phone-finder) If you prefer a comparison overview, check out the  [full comparison table of all Email Finder extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/email-finder/chrome) : ![Comparison table of all Chrome email finder extensions with Tooltivity ratings and install counts](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/screenshot-email-finder-comparison-extensions.webp) *Comparison of all Chrome Email Finder Extensions* ## [1\. Hunter - Email Finder Extension](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hunter-email-finder) ![Hunter Email Finder extension showing a confidence score and public sources for an address](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/hunter-email-finder/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Hunter is the name most people reach for first, and 600,000 downloads on the Chrome Web Store make that hard to argue with. It carries a 4.72-star rating across 12,519 reviews — comfortably the largest review base in this comparison — with recent sentiment sitting just under the lifetime figure, as evidenced by its 4.66 rating for the last 100 reviews. A Firefox build exists but is a far thinner operation at 6,026 downloads and 4.16 stars. What sets Hunter apart is that it shows its work. Every address arrives with a confidence percentage and a list of the public pages the pattern was spotted on, so a 97% result with four citations is something you can send to this morning, and a 55% guess with none is a prompt to verify first. Every other tool here hands you an address and expects you to trust it. That honesty costs Hunter reach — it indexes what's published, so it thins out fast on two-person consultancies — but it's the reason we'd put it in front of anyone whose sending domain matters. ### Key Features - **Email Finder**  – Enter a name and a company domain, and Hunter returns the most likely address with a confidence score - **Domain Search**  – Pull every published address for a company, grouped by department and seniority - **Email Verifier**  – Check deliverability before you send, so bounces don't damage your sending reputation - **Confidence scoring**  – Every result carries a percentage and the public sources it was found on - **LinkedIn integration**  – Surface addresses directly from a profile while you browse - **Lead lists**  – Save prospects into named lists inside the extension and sync them to the Hunter web app - **Campaigns**  – Run cold sequences from a connected mailbox without leaving the Hunter ecosystem - **CRM export**  – Push leads to Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, or plain CSV ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Accurate results with confidence scores - Instant one-click domain lookups - Built-in verification cuts bounces - Unlimited team members on every plan - Clean, uncluttered interface **Cons:** - Phone verification required at signup - Only 50 free credits monthly - Thin coverage for small companies - Firefox build lags behind Chrome ### Who is this great for? Hunter is perfect for anyone who sends at volume and can't afford a burnt domain. If you're running outbound where deliverability is the whole game — a founder pitching investors, an agency mailing prospects weekly, a sales team whose replies depend on landing in the inbox rather than the spam folder — the verification and provenance are worth more than a bigger database would be. It's especially great for users who work from company websites rather than LinkedIn profiles. Domain Search sorted by department is the fastest way we found to identify the marketing lead at a company without scrolling past forty engineers, and unlimited team members on every tier means a five-person team pays what one person pays. ### Compared to others Hunter's confidence scoring gives it an edge over  [Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/apollo-io-email-finder)  and  [Snov.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/snov-io-email-finder) , both of which return addresses with no indication of where they came from — though both find contacts at small companies where Hunter shrugs. Against  [Skrapp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/skrapp-io-email-finder) , Hunter is the more trustworthy result but the less generous free tier: 50 credits versus Skrapp's 50 with far fewer strings attached and no phone number demanded at signup. ### Detailed comparisons [Hunter vs Snov.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/hunter-email-finder-vs-snov-io-email-finder)  •  [Hunter vs Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/hunter-email-finder-vs-apollo-io-email-finder)  •  [Hunter vs Skrapp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/hunter-email-finder-vs-skrapp-io-email-finder) ### Rating Summary Hunter has reached 600,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.72-star average from 12,519 reviews.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Hunter a score of  **9.00/10** . Check out the  [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hunter-email-finder) . --- ## [2\. Email Finder - GetProspect](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/getprospect-email-finder) ![GetProspect email finder panel open beside a LinkedIn profile](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/getprospect-email-finder/images/gallery-image-1.webp) GetProspect has built a quiet following in a loud category: 100,000 downloads and a 4.77-star Chrome Web Store rating from 1,323 reviews. The trend is the number worth watching — its 4.83 rating for the last 100 reviews sits above the lifetime average, which means the extension is better received today than its history suggests. It's Chrome-only, with no Firefox build to fall back on. The thing GetProspect gets right is the order of operations. Addresses run through verification, including a catch-all test most rivals skip,  _before_  they reach your list — and a lookup that finds nothing doesn't cost you a credit. The practical effect is that your export is ready to send rather than ready to clean. What you pay for that is latency: stubborn domains can leave the panel spinning on "validating" for several uncomfortable seconds with no way to skip ahead. ### Key Features - **LinkedIn email lookup**  – Open any profile, click once, and get the person's work address plus their company record - **Pre-delivery verification**  – Every address is checked before it lands in your list, including a proprietary catch-all test - **Bulk collection**  – Sweep an entire LinkedIn or Sales Navigator result page into a list in one pass - **Website and domain search**  – Works on plain company sites too, no LinkedIn profile required - **Lead lists with custom properties**  – Organise prospects into named lists and attach your own fields - **CRM and Sheets integrations**  – Native connectors plus CSV, XLSX, and Google Sheets export on every plan - **Reverse email lookup**  – Start from an address you already have and work back to the person behind it - **API access**  – Wire lookups into your own tooling without upgrading, unusual at this price point ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Verifies addresses before charging credits - One-click lookups from LinkedIn - Free plan includes API access - Unused credits roll over - Tidy lead list management **Cons:** - Phone signup blocks some countries - Only 50 free emails monthly - Verification step can drag - Guessed patterns occasionally miss - Chrome only, no Firefox build ### Who is this great for? GetProspect is perfect for anyone who values a clean list over a long one. Small sales teams and solo founders get the most out of it, because API access, CRM connectors, bulk finding and Google Sheets sync are included on every tier — free one included — where most competitors treat half of that as an upgrade trigger. It's especially great for users who prospect from LinkedIn and hate cleaning exports. The verification-first model means the thousand contacts you paid for are a thousand usable contacts, not a thousand attempts, and unused credits roll into next month rather than evaporating. ### Compared to others GetProspect's feature floor beats  [Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hunter-email-finder)  at comparable tiers — you get an API on the free plan, where Hunter reserves that kind of access for paying customers. Against  [Snov.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/snov-io-email-finder) , it's the narrower tool: no campaigns, no warm-up, no CRM, just finding and verifying done properly. And where  [Skrapp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/skrapp-io-email-finder)  lets you sign up and start, GetProspect demands a phone number first — and its verification provider refuses entire country codes, Italian and Chinese numbers among them. ### Detailed comparisons [GetProspect vs Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/getprospect-email-finder-vs-hunter-email-finder)  •  [GetProspect vs Snov.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/getprospect-email-finder-vs-snov-io-email-finder)  •  [GetProspect vs Skrapp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/getprospect-email-finder-vs-skrapp-io-email-finder) ### Rating Summary GetProspect has 100,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.77-star average across 1,323 reviews.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave GetProspect a score of  **8.87/10** . Check out the  [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/getprospect-email-finder) . --- ## [3\. Email Finder by Snov.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/snov-io-email-finder) ![Snov.io email finder returning a full list of company addresses for one domain](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/snov-io-email-finder/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Snov.io holds the highest store rating in this comparison, and it isn't close: 4.92 stars from 6,060 reviews across 400,000 Chrome downloads. That standard has held rather than slipped, as evidenced by its 4.87 rating for the last 100 reviews. Scores that high are genuinely unusual in a category where most tools accumulate a steady drip of furious one-stars. Where most extensions hand back one guessed address, Snov.io tends to hand back the department — sales, support, the founders, with names and roles attached — and every result has already passed through a seven-tier verification pipeline. Behind the extension sits a full outbound platform: drip campaigns, mailbox warm-up, a sales CRM, two-way HubSpot and Pipedrive sync. The catch is the free Trial, which renews 50 credits every 30 days and then blocks exports entirely. You can look at what it found; you can't take it anywhere. ### Key Features - **Email Finder**  – Open any company site, click once, and collect every address Snov.io holds for that domain - **LinkedIn Prospect Finder**  – A companion extension that pulls contacts from profiles, search results and Sales Navigator - **Seven-tier verification**  – Each address runs through a layered deliverability check with bounce-risk flags - **Bulk search**  – Queue whole lists of domains and let the platform grind through them in the background - **Drip campaigns**  – Multi-step sequences with unlimited follow-ups, A/B testing and reply sentiment analysis - **Mailbox warm-up**  – Build sender reputation on a fresh domain before the first real campaign goes out - **Built-in sales CRM**  – Track deals and tasks through pipelines without exporting to another tool - **Integrations and export**  – Two-way HubSpot and Pipedrive sync, plus Zapier, Make, webhooks, API and CSV ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Returns whole company email lists - Verification keeps bounce rates low - Near-instant domain lookups - Free credits renew monthly - Unlimited team seats on every plan **Cons:** - Free tier is only a taster - CRM caps out at 10,000 leads - Occasional deal-syncing bugs - Best features sit behind payment - Cold sends can still hit spam ### Who is this great for? Snov.io is perfect for anyone who wants the whole outbound stack on one bill. If you were about to buy an email finder, a verification service and a sequencer separately, this bundles all three for $39 a month — and unlimited team seats on every tier means a four-person agency pays the same as a solo consultant. It's especially great for users prospecting from company domains rather than individual profiles. A single click returning an entire department beats clicking through eight LinkedIn pages, and the verification running underneath means most of those addresses will actually accept mail. ### Compared to others Snov.io covers far more ground than  [Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hunter-email-finder) , which stops at finding and verifying — but Hunter tells you where each address came from and Snov.io doesn't. It's the closest thing here to  [Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/apollo-io-email-finder)  in scope, at a fraction of the per-seat cost, though Apollo's database is deeper and better maintained. Against  [GetProspect](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/getprospect-email-finder) , Snov.io wins on breadth and loses on the free tier, where GetProspect at least lets you export what you find. ### Detailed comparisons [Snov.io vs Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/snov-io-email-finder-vs-hunter-email-finder)  •  [Snov.io vs Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/snov-io-email-finder-vs-apollo-io-email-finder)  •  [Snov.io vs GetProspect](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/snov-io-email-finder-vs-getprospect-email-finder) ### Rating Summary Snov.io has 400,000 downloads on Chrome and the category's best store rating at 4.92 stars from 6,060 reviews.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Snov.io a score of  **8.82/10** . Check out the  [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/snov-io-email-finder) . --- ## [4\. Email Finder by Skrapp.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/skrapp-io-email-finder) ![Skrapp.io extension panel with a search box, result list and credit counter](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/skrapp-io-email-finder/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Skrapp has quietly become one of the better-liked finders on the Chrome Web Store, with 200,000 downloads and a 4.76-star rating from 550 reviews, and recent users like it more than the average implies — as evidenced by its 4.84 rating for the last 100 reviews. Its Firefox add-on is a much smaller story at 1,567 downloads and 2.75 stars, though that figure rests on four ratings and says more about the sample than the software. Two things make Skrapp the easiest tool here to hand to a beginner. The panel is the least noisy in the category — a search box, a result list, a credit counter, nothing trying to sell you anything mid-task — and the credit policy is written in the customer's favour, with undeliverable results costing nothing and unused credits rolling over. The List Saver, which captures an entire Sales Navigator results page in one action, is the feature we'd miss most if it vanished. ### Key Features - **Email Finder**  – Supply a name and a company domain and Skrapp returns the most probable business address - **Email Verifier**  – Check deliverability in single lookups or bulk, so bad addresses never reach your sequence - **LinkedIn extraction**  – Pull prospects from Basic, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter profiles without leaving the page - **List Saver for Sales Navigator**  – Capture an entire search result page into a named list in one action - **Multi-page enrichment**  – Walk through several pages of LinkedIn results and enrich them in a single pass - **Company websites lookup**  – Run the same domain search from a company's own site rather than from LinkedIn - **AI enrichment**  – Fill in missing fields on saved leads, metered separately from email credits - **Lists, exports, and CRM sync**  – Organise leads into lists, push them to your CRM, or export to CSV ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Genuinely generous 50-credit free tier - Unused credits roll over monthly - Only charges for deliverable addresses - Cleanest interface in the category - Strong Sales Navigator list building **Cons:** - Guessed patterns still slip through - API locked behind Enterprise pricing - Occasional multi-day service outages - Bulk exports bounce more than singles ### Who is this great for? Skrapp suits anyone taking their first run at outbound. There's no phone number demanded at signup, the free tier ships the complete feature set rather than a crippled preview, and we had a usable lead list inside three minutes of a cold install. Freelancers sending a handful of pitches a week can genuinely live on the free plan. It's especially great for users whose prospecting starts with a filtered LinkedIn search. List Saver plus multi-page enrichment is the fastest path from search results to a saved, exportable list in this comparison — and both Chrome and Firefox run the same version, which is rarer in this category than it should be. ### Compared to others Skrapp asks for less than  [Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hunter-email-finder)  at the door — no phone verification — but Hunter tells you where each address came from, and Skrapp only tells you whether it verified. Against  [GetProspect](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/getprospect-email-finder) , the finding is comparable and the list management is thinner, though Skrapp's daily-limited free tier is friendlier than GetProspect's country-blocking signup. And where  [Snov.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/snov-io-email-finder)  bundles campaigns and a CRM, Skrapp deliberately stops at finding and verifying, so you'll need something else to send with. ### Detailed comparisons [Skrapp vs Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/skrapp-io-email-finder-vs-hunter-email-finder)  •  [Skrapp vs GetProspect](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/skrapp-io-email-finder-vs-getprospect-email-finder)  •  [Skrapp vs Snov.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/skrapp-io-email-finder-vs-snov-io-email-finder) ### Rating Summary Skrapp has 200,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.76-star rating from 550 reviews.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Skrapp a score of  **8.68/10** . Check out the  [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/skrapp-io-email-finder) . --- ## [5\. Apollo.io: Free B2B Phone Number & Email Finder](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/apollo-io-email-finder) ![Apollo.io panel revealing a verified email, direct dial and company details from a LinkedIn profile](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/apollo-io-email-finder/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Apollo is the heavyweight here, with 1,000,000 downloads — the largest install base in this comparison — and a 4.71-star Chrome Web Store rating from 2,210 reviews. Recent sentiment runs ahead of the lifetime figure, as evidenced by its 4.81 rating for the last 100 reviews, which is the opposite of what usually happens to a tool this widely installed. There's no Firefox build, and the Chromium forks it does technically support are unreliable. Scope is the whole pitch. Open a LinkedIn profile and Apollo returns a verified email, a direct dial, headcount, funding stage and tech stack, then fires the contact into an outreach sequence you can dial from in the same panel. Job-change tracking is the quiet killer feature — lists built three months ago still work here, where equivalent lists from annually refreshed databases are half-dead. The rough edges are real, though: Apollo injects unscoped CSS that leaks onto unrelated websites and breaks layouts on pages that have nothing to do with prospecting. ### Key Features - **LinkedIn contact reveal**  – One click on a profile returns a verified work email and, where Apollo has one, a direct dial - **Company website lookup**  – Land on any company site and pull the decision-makers behind that domain - **Advanced search filters**  – Narrow by title, seniority, industry, headcount, location and buying intent before spending a credit - **Email sequences**  – Drop a prospect straight into a multi-step cadence from the extension panel - **Built-in dialer**  – Call from the browser, record the conversation, and drop pre-recorded voicemails - **AI Assistant and AI Research**  – Draft outreach and pull context on a prospect without leaving the page - **Job-change tracking**  – Contact records refresh when people move roles, so lists rot more slowly - **CRM and tool integrations**  – Push leads into Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach or Salesloft in a couple of clicks ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Huge, unusually current contact database - One-click reveal on LinkedIn - Sequences and dialer built in - Genuinely usable free tier - Clean panel, no clutter **Cons:** - Injects unscoped CSS into pages - Phone numbers often personal or stale - Occasional freezes and stuck panels - Chrome only, shaky on forks ### Who is this great for? Apollo is perfect for anyone whose job  _is_  outbound rather than anyone who occasionally needs an address. If you're running sequences, dialing, and logging calls to a CRM every day, consolidating a data vendor, a sequencer and a dialer into one $49-per-seat subscription is straightforward maths. It's also the best free plan in this comparison by a distance: 900 credits a year released monthly works out to roughly 75 email reveals a month, indefinitely. That's enough for a founder doing light outbound to never pay anything, and enough for everyone else to properly test data quality before a card comes out. ### Compared to others Apollo does far more than  [Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hunter-email-finder) , but Hunter folds unlimited team members into every tier where Apollo charges per seat — a five-person team feels that difference immediately. Against  [ContactOut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/contactout-email-finder) , Apollo is the platform and ContactOut is the scalpel: if your work never leaves LinkedIn, all of Apollo's outreach furniture just gets in the way. And against  [Lusha](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/lusha-b2b-contact-finder) , Apollo is cheaper and broader, though Lusha's direct dials are more reliable than Apollo's eight-credit phone numbers. ### Detailed comparisons [Apollo vs Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/apollo-io-email-finder-vs-hunter-email-finder)  •  [Apollo vs ContactOut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/apollo-io-email-finder-vs-contactout-email-finder)  •  [Apollo vs Lusha](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/apollo-io-email-finder-vs-lusha-b2b-contact-finder) ### Rating Summary Apollo.io has 1,000,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.71-star rating from 2,210 reviews.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Apollo.io a score of  **8.63/10** . Check out the  [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/apollo-io-email-finder) . --- ## [6\. Kaspr: B2B Phone Number and Email Finder](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder) ![Kaspr side panel showing mobile number and email availability indicators on a LinkedIn profile](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Kaspr comes at prospecting from the phone side, with 100,000 downloads and a 4.73-star Chrome Web Store rating from 1,231 reviews. It's holding steady rather than climbing, as evidenced by its 4.71 rating for the last 100 reviews against a 4.78 average across the last 500. Worth noting before those numbers persuade you of anything: 1,231 reviews on 100,000 installs is a strikingly high ratio, and Kaspr has handed out free credits in exchange for store reviews. The French roots show in the data. Mobile coverage on French, Benelux and German prospects was consistently the strongest we've seen from a LinkedIn extension, and noticeably better than the same searches through Lusha. Two credit policies make it a pleasure to use all day: the panel tells you whether a number or address exists  _before_  you spend anything, and an empty lookup costs nothing at all. Email freshness is the softer half — we hit a run of bounces on records pointing at companies people had left years ago. ### Key Features - **One-click LinkedIn reveal**  – Open a profile and the panel returns mobile number, professional email, and personal email - **Availability indicators**  – See whether a phone or email exists before you commit a credit to retrieving it - **No-result, no-charge**  – If Kaspr can't find a number, the credit stays in your balance - **Sales Navigator and Recruiter Lite**  – The same workflow follows you into LinkedIn's paid tiers - **Enrichment automations**  – Trigger connection requests and follow-ups against saved leads - **CSV enrichment**  – Upload an existing list and fill in the missing numbers and addresses in bulk - **Integrations and dialler support**  – Push contacts to HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zapier, or a connected dialler - **Hide Direct Emails**  – An admin permission that keeps personal addresses away from team members who shouldn't see them ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Excellent mobile number hit rate - Empty lookups cost no credit - Shows availability before you spend - Unlimited B2B emails on paid plans - Set up in under five minutes **Cons:** - Bounced and outdated contacts persist - Heavy 23 MB Chrome package - Chrome only, no other browsers - Per-seat pricing adds up fast - API access requires a request form ### Who is this great for? Kaspr is perfect for anyone selling into Europe by phone. If your prospects are in France, the Benelux or Germany and you'd rather pay for a number that's right than a database that's large, nothing else here matches the hit rate — and paid plans stop metering standard B2B emails entirely, so only the dials cost you anything. It's especially great for teams that resent paying to learn a profile is empty. Availability indicators plus no-charge misses change the rhythm of prospecting: you skip the dead profiles instead of funding the discovery, and credits roll over when you don't spend them. ### Compared to others Kaspr and  [Lusha](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/lusha-b2b-contact-finder)  are the two phone-first tools worth benchmarking against each other — Kaspr wins on European coverage and credit fairness, Lusha on North American reach. Against  [SignalHire](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/signalhire-email-and-phone-finder) , the difference is purely commercial: SignalHire charges you whether it finds anything or not and wipes unused credits at renewal, where Kaspr does neither.  [Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/apollo-io-email-finder)  bundles sequencing into the same subscription, which Kaspr doesn't attempt. ### Detailed comparisons [Kaspr vs Lusha](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder-vs-lusha-b2b-contact-finder)  •  [Kaspr vs SignalHire](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder-vs-signalhire-email-and-phone-finder)  •  [Kaspr vs Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder-vs-apollo-io-email-finder) ### Rating Summary Kaspr has 100,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.73-star rating from 1,231 reviews.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Kaspr a score of  **8.48/10** . Check out the  [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder) . --- ## [7\. Email Finder by ContactOut – Email Lookup Tool](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/contactout-email-finder) ![ContactOut sidebar showing work email, personal email and mobile number next to a LinkedIn profile](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/contactout-email-finder/images/gallery-image-1.webp) ContactOut has 600,000 downloads and a 4.36-star Chrome Web Store rating from 792 reviews. The gap between that and its 4.14 rating for the last 100 reviews tells the story of this entry — recent sentiment sits well below the longer-term average, and it's tracking a run of outages rather than anything wrong with the data. It ships for Chrome only, and has been broken on Brave for a long stretch despite Brave running the same engine. The lookup itself is superb. Open a LinkedIn profile and a sidebar appears with a work email, a personal email and often a mobile number — no dashboard, no query to construct, nothing to learn. Personal addresses are the differentiator recruiters keep it installed for, because candidates ignore corporate inboxes. The problem is the "when": there have been multi-day stretches this year where the extension simply stopped connecting, and when it fails it fails silently, spinning indefinitely rather than saying what went wrong. ### Key Features - **LinkedIn sidebar reveal**  – Work email, personal email and mobile number appear next to the profile you're reading - **Website email lookup**  – Point it at any company site and it surfaces addresses tied to that domain - **Save All Profiles**  – Bulk-save an entire LinkedIn search page into a list in one action - **Search Portal**  – Query the contact database directly when you don't have a profile to start from - **CRM and ATS sync**  – Push saved contacts into your recruiting or sales system automatically - **Email campaigns**  – Run basic follow-up sequences without wiring up a separate sending tool - **AI writing tools**  – Draft outreach messages and LinkedIn comments straight from the extension - **Data enrichment and API**  – Fill gaps in an existing list, or wire the database into your own stack ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Almost no learning curve - Finds work and personal emails - Strong hit rate on LinkedIn - Bulk Save All Profiles - Syncs cleanly into CRMs **Cons:** - Outages and connection failures - Endless loading with no results - Broken on Brave and forks - Fair-usage caps on unlimited plans - Slow, unresponsive billing support ### Who is this great for? ContactOut is perfect for recruiters and sourcers whose working day happens inside LinkedIn. Nothing else here gets from a profile to a personal inbox faster, and Save All Profiles turns an hour of clicking through search results into a couple of minutes. We handed it to someone who'd never used a prospecting tool and they had a usable contact in two minutes. There's also a genuine bargain buried in the pricing for teams outside the US and UK: excluding that data halves the bill, which makes ContactOut properly competitive for anyone selling or recruiting into Europe and Asia-Pacific — provided the reliability holds up. ### Compared to others ContactOut reaches people  [Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hunter-email-finder)  can't, because Hunter only indexes what's published and ContactOut deals in personal addresses — that's also exactly why it's the most invasive tool in this comparison. Against  [Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/apollo-io-email-finder) , it's the simpler product by design, with none of the sequencing or dialing, and a free tier that meters daily rather than monthly. If you need domain-first prospecting rather than profile-first,  [Lusha](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/lusha-b2b-contact-finder)  covers more ground. ### Detailed comparisons [ContactOut vs Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/contactout-email-finder-vs-apollo-io-email-finder)  •  [ContactOut vs Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/contactout-email-finder-vs-hunter-email-finder)  •  [ContactOut vs Lusha](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/contactout-email-finder-vs-lusha-b2b-contact-finder) ### Rating Summary ContactOut has 600,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.36-star rating from 792 reviews.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave ContactOut a score of  **7.70/10** . Check out the  [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/contactout-email-finder) . --- ## [8\. Lusha - Easily find B2B contact information](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/lusha-b2b-contact-finder) ![Lusha extension revealing a work email and direct dial alongside company intelligence](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/lusha-b2b-contact-finder/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Lusha carries 400,000 Chrome downloads and a 4.58-star rating across 1,848 reviews, but the trend line is the interesting part. The last 500 reviews average 4.20 while the most recent 100 sit at 4.51 — something went wrong here for a while, and it's partly being fixed. There's no Firefox or Edge build; Chrome is the only place it runs. Direct phone numbers are the reason people install it. Email finders are commodity; a mobile number attached to the right person is not, and a sales floor that opens conversations by dialling gets value here that no address-only tool replaces. What stands between you and that value is the largest cluster of criticism any extension in this comparison has: a work-email requirement that rejects freelancers outright, automated account suspensions with no obvious appeal, and a sign-in loop that has been bouncing people between the extension and the website for years. ### Key Features - **LinkedIn contact reveal**  – Open a profile and the panel surfaces the person's work email and direct dial - **Direct phone numbers**  – Mobile and desk lines, the part of the dataset Lusha built its reputation on - **Any-website prospecting**  – Works on company sites and CRM records, not just LinkedIn - **Bulk reveal**  – Pull contacts from a whole LinkedIn search page or Sales Navigator list in one pass - **CRM export**  – One-click push into Salesforce, HubSpot and others, with CSV enrichment on higher tiers - **Buying intent signals**  – Flags accounts researching your category so you can order the list by who's in market - **Company intelligence**  – Headcount, revenue, industry and tech stack shown alongside each contact card - **Compliance tooling**  – SOC 2 and ISO 27701 certification, GDPR and CCPA workflows, and a public opt-out ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Strong direct-dial phone coverage - Reveals contacts in one click - Clean Salesforce and CRM export - Panel stays quiet when empty - Free plan needs no card **Cons:** - Paid plans are expensive - Phone numbers cost five credits - Work email required to register - Recurring sign-in loops - Contact data can be outdated ### Who is this great for? Lusha is perfect for Salesforce-based sales teams who dial more than they email. The export path is properly built rather than tacked on, buying-intent signals let you sort a list by who's actually in market, and each contact card carries the company context that would otherwise cost you a separate tab of research. It works best for people who can absorb five credits per phone number. If closing one deal a quarter from a direct dial pays for the year, Lusha is cheap. If you're prospecting by email, you're paying a phone-data premium for something Apollo or Hunter will do for less. ### Compared to others [Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/apollo-io-email-finder)  is broader and cheaper, and its free plan is far more useful than Lusha's 40 credits — which, at five credits a dial, works out to eight phone numbers a month.  [Kaspr](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder)  is the better pick for European mobile data and asks much less of you at signup. And  [SignalHire](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/signalhire-email-and-phone-finder)  competes on the same phone-first ground with unlimited seats, though its credits expire monthly where Lusha's roll over to a capped extent. ### Detailed comparisons [Lusha vs Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/lusha-b2b-contact-finder-vs-apollo-io-email-finder)  •  [Lusha vs Kaspr](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/lusha-b2b-contact-finder-vs-kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder)  •  [Lusha vs SignalHire](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/lusha-b2b-contact-finder-vs-signalhire-email-and-phone-finder) ### Rating Summary Lusha has 400,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.58-star rating from 1,848 reviews.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Lusha a score of  **7.57/10** . Check out the  [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/lusha-b2b-contact-finder) . --- ## [9\. Seamless.AI](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seamless-ai) ![Seamless.AI panel building a contact record beside a Sales Navigator list](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/seamless-ai/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Seamless.AI arrives with 100,000 downloads and a 4.56-star Chrome Web Store rating from just 196 reviews, and recent feedback runs warmer still, as evidenced by its 4.78 rating for the last 100 reviews. That review count is the number to sit with — fewer than two hundred ratings against a hundred thousand installs is a thin foundation, and the recent positives cluster oddly, arriving in similarly shaped batches within days of each other. Chrome is the only build. The product itself does real work. Open a LinkedIn profile or a Sales Navigator list and Seamless assembles a contact record on demand — work email, cell number, org structure, recent company news — rather than serving a stale database row. Job Changes tracking keeps saved lists from decaying. The difficulty is entirely commercial: Seamless publishes no prices at all, sells through demos into annual contracts, and has accumulated a long, specific record of complaints about how those contracts end. ### Key Features - **Real-time search engine**  – Builds contact records on demand rather than serving a stale row from a database - **Cell phone numbers**  – Returns mobile numbers alongside emails, which most email-only tools don't attempt - **LinkedIn and Sales Navigator panel**  – Sits beside profiles and search results so prospecting never leaves the tab - **Pitch Intelligence**  – Surfaces company background, org structure, and recent news before you dial - **Job Changes tracking**  – Flags when a saved contact moves companies and refreshes their details - **Connect**  – Handles email, calls, and task management inside Seamless instead of exporting to a sequencer - **Buyer Intent and Data Enrichment**  – Identify accounts showing purchase signals and backfill CRM fields, both paid add-ons - **CRM integrations and API**  – Premium connectors plus API access to push contacts into your own systems ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Finds cell phones, not just emails - Deep Sales Navigator integration - Strong US contact coverage - Big time savings when prospecting - Responsive US-based support **Cons:** - Prices are never published - Repeated sign-in and SSO failures - Annual contracts hard to exit - Thin data outside the US - Aggressive sales follow-up after demos ### Who is this great for? Seamless.AI is perfect for SDR teams selling into the US at volume who need mobile numbers as much as addresses. Coverage on US targets runs deep, including non-executive roles that are genuinely hard to find elsewhere, and Pitch Intelligence gives a call enough context to work out who can actually sign something. One condition, though: you need someone who can negotiate a contract properly. Teams replacing a Sales Navigator seat have found Seamless materially cheaper for what they get, but that outcome depends on procurement experience the average solo user doesn't have. ### Compared to others [Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/apollo-io-email-finder)  covers most of the same ground on published pricing you can compare before talking to anyone, which is the single biggest reason to pick it over Seamless.  [Lusha](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/lusha-b2b-contact-finder)  is the closer match for phone-heavy work and at least tells you what a credit costs. And if email accuracy is genuinely all you need,  [Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hunter-email-finder)  is the safer choice — we saw bounce rates on Seamless exports run well above what a verified-contact tool should produce. ### Detailed comparisons [Seamless.AI vs Apollo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/seamless-ai-vs-apollo-io-email-finder)  •  [Seamless.AI vs Lusha](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/seamless-ai-vs-lusha-b2b-contact-finder)  •  [Seamless.AI vs Hunter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/seamless-ai-vs-hunter-email-finder) ### Rating Summary Seamless.AI has 100,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.56-star rating from 196 reviews.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Seamless.AI a score of  **7.50/10** . Check out the  [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seamless-ai) . --- ## [10\. SignalHire - find email or phone number](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/signalhire-email-and-phone-finder) ![SignalHire Reveal Contacts button returning work email, personal email and mobile number](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/signalhire-email-and-phone-finder/images/gallery-image-1.webp) SignalHire holds 300,000 Chrome downloads and a 4.49-star rating from 452 reviews, and it's recovering: its 4.69 rating for the last 100 reviews is a clear step up from the 4.35 average across the last 500. The Firefox add-on is a much smaller operation at 2,416 downloads and 4.32 stars from 44 reviews — and it's running an entire major version behind Chrome, on a build that hasn't seen meaningful work since 2021. Reveal Contacts is the whole product in one button: work email, personal address, and a direct mobile number where SignalHire has one. Technical-role coverage held up better than we expected — engineers, IT managers and product people came back with usable details more often than not, and boolean database search lets you work backwards from a skills query. What drags it down is everything wrapped around the lookup. There's no preview, so you pay to discover a number is a switchboard, and unused credits vanish at the end of every cycle and again the day you cancel. ### Key Features - **Reveal Contacts**  – One click on a LinkedIn profile returns work email, personal email, and direct mobile number - **Direct dial numbers**  – Mobile numbers are the headline draw, and few email-first tools attempt them at all - **Sales Navigator and Recruiter support**  – The panel follows you into LinkedIn's paid surfaces - **Bulk list processing**  – Feed in a list of profiles or a CSV and enrich the whole batch at once - **Boolean candidate search**  – Query the underlying database by skills, title, and location - **ATS and CRM sync**  – Push revealed contacts into recruiting and sales systems, or export to CSV - **Team credit pooling**  – Every paid plan allows unlimited seats drawing on one shared credit balance - **API access**  – Wire lookups into your own tooling, included on paid tiers rather than sold separately ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Direct mobile numbers, not just emails - Broad coverage for technical roles - Fast one-click LinkedIn lookups - Unlimited team seats on paid plans - Solid Sales Navigator integration **Cons:** - Credits expire and never roll over - Refund and cancellation handling is poor - Sign-up frequently fails outright - Can trigger LinkedIn account restrictions - Stale, neglected Firefox build ### Who is this great for? SignalHire is perfect for technical recruiters who phone candidates rather than email them. The database runs deep on engineering and IT roles, boolean search means you don't need a profile to start from, and unlimited seats on every paid plan makes it unusually cheap for a team — five people pay what one person pays. It only makes sense if you'll consume your credits every single month. Nothing rolls over, and cancelling wipes whatever balance you've already paid for, so a quiet quarter is money burned rather than banked. ### Compared to others [Kaspr](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder)  does the same phone-first job with a far kinder credit model — rollover as standard, no charge on an empty lookup — and costs less to start.  [Lusha](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/lusha-b2b-contact-finder)  has better North American dial coverage but charges per seat, where SignalHire doesn't. And  [ContactOut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/contactout-email-finder)  offers a similar LinkedIn-native workflow with considerably less billing drama attached, if not the same phone reach. ### Detailed comparisons [SignalHire vs Lusha](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/signalhire-email-and-phone-finder-vs-lusha-b2b-contact-finder)  •  [SignalHire vs Kaspr](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/signalhire-email-and-phone-finder-vs-kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder)  •  [SignalHire vs ContactOut](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/signalhire-email-and-phone-finder-vs-contactout-email-finder) ### Rating Summary SignalHire has 300,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.49-star rating from 452 reviews.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave SignalHire a score of  **7.40/10** . Check out the  [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/signalhire-email-and-phone-finder) . --- ## Final Thoughts After working through all ten, the ranking comes down to one question: how much does the tool tell you about what it just handed you?  [**Hunter**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hunter-email-finder)  takes the top spot at 9.00/10 for exactly that reason — it's the only extension here that shows the public pages behind every address and attaches a confidence score, which is what lets you decide whether to send now or verify first. It won't find everyone, particularly at small companies, but what it finds you can act on.  [**GetProspect**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/getprospect-email-finder)  (8.87/10) takes the next-best approach by verifying before it charges you, and  [**Snov.io**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/snov-io-email-finder)  (8.82/10) earns the category's highest store rating by bundling finding, verifying and sending into one $39 subscription. For specific situations:  [**Skrapp**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/skrapp-io-email-finder)  is where we'd send anyone new to this — no phone number at signup, the full feature set on the free tier, and the cleanest panel of the ten.  [**Apollo**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/apollo-io-email-finder)  has the best free plan and the most current database, and it's the obvious pick if outbound is your whole job rather than an occasional task.  [**Kaspr**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/kaspr-b2b-phone-and-email-finder)  owns European mobile numbers and refuses to charge you for an empty lookup.  [**ContactOut**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/contactout-email-finder)  is the recruiter's tool when it's up, though the outages are what dragged its recent rating down.  [**Lusha**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/lusha-b2b-contact-finder)  and  [**SignalHire**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/signalhire-email-and-phone-finder)  both find direct dials that email-only tools can't, and both make you fight the billing to get there.  [**Seamless.AI**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/seamless-ai)  we'd approach carefully — the extension is capable, but nobody should sign an annual contract for a product that won't show a price. Two things worth doing before you commit to any of them. Test the free tier on people whose addresses you already know, because that's the only honest measure of hit rate in your market — Apollo's 75 monthly credits and Skrapp's 50 both make that easy. And read where the data comes from: every tool on this list holds contact details of people who never agreed to be in a database, and under GDPR the responsibility for what you do with that lands on you, not the vendor. Start with  [the full comparison table](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/email-finder/chrome) , pick two, and run them side by side for a week. If you're auditing the rest of your browser setup while you're at it, we've run the same treatment on  [bookmark manager extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-bookmark-manager-chrome-extensions/) ,  [Chrome VPN extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-10-chrome-vpn-extensions-the-great-comparison/) , and  [language learning extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-chrome-language-learning-extensions-the-great-comparison/) . On the mailbox side rather than the prospecting side, there's our comparison of  [the best iOS and Android email apps](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-great-comparison-top-ios-android-email-apps/)  and a look at  [what Gmail dropping POP3 support means for your email client](https://web-highlights.com/blog/gmail-stopped-pop3-support-why-you-need-a-real-email-client-now/) . And if prospecting is only half the job, we've ranked the  [best SEO extensions for Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-seo-chrome-extensions/)  the same way. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best email finder tool? Hunter scored highest at 9.00/10 because it is the only extension that shows the public pages each address was found on and attaches a confidence percentage, so you can tell a safe send from a guess. GetProspect (8.87) is the better pick if you want verification before a credit is spent, and Apollo is the one to choose when finding the address is only the first step in a daily outbound routine. ### Is there a free email finder that actually works? Apollo has the most usable free plan in this comparison: 900 credits a year released monthly, roughly 75 email reveals a month, with no expiry. Skrapp gives you 50 credits a month with the complete feature set rather than a crippled preview, and asks for no phone number at signup. Hunter, GetProspect and Snov.io all offer 50 free credits monthly, but Snov.io blocks exports until you pay. ### How accurate are email finder extensions? Accuracy varies more by tool design than by database size. Tools that verify before delivering a result — GetProspect, Snov.io's seven-tier pipeline, Skrapp — hand you lists that are largely ready to send. Tools that return a guessed pattern with no check, or that sell contributed records without provenance, produce noticeably more bounces. The only honest measure is testing a free tier against people whose addresses you already know. ### Are email finder extensions legal to use under GDPR? The tools themselves operate legally, but using one does not transfer the responsibility. Every extension on this list holds contact details of people who never agreed to be in a database, and under GDPR the obligation to have a lawful basis for contacting someone, and to honour opt-outs, sits with you as the sender rather than with the vendor. Tools that show where an address came from make that easier to defend. ### What is the difference between an email finder and an email verifier? A finder works out an address you do not have, usually from a name plus a company domain or a LinkedIn profile. A verifier checks whether an address you already hold will accept mail, without sending anything. Most tools here do both, but the order matters: GetProspect and Skrapp verify before charging you, while others hand over a result and leave the checking to a separate step. --- # Active Recall: How to Actually Remember What You Read > Re-reading feels like studying but doesn't stick. Here's the active recall loop I use on articles, PDFs and videos — and the research behind it. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-07-29 - Updated: 2026-10-05 - Tags: Learning, Active Reading, Spaced Repetition, Flashcard Learning - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/active-recall-how-to-actually-remember-what-you-read/ --- I read a lot online, and I highlight a lot. For a long time, that was my whole system: mark the good parts, come back later, read them again. It felt like studying. It wasn't — a week later, most of it was gone anyway. The fix wasn't reading more. It was a small change in direction: instead of putting information _into_ my head again and again, I started pulling it _out_ . That's active recall. It's the reason I built a learning feature into my highlighter at all — and in this article I'll show you how to use it on anything you read. ## **What Is Active Recall?** Active recall means testing yourself on what you want to remember instead of passively reviewing it. You close the book, hide the answer, and try to retrieve the information from memory — before checking whether you got it right. That's the whole method. No apps required, no color-coded system. A question, an honest attempt to answer it, and a check. Researchers call it **retrieval practice** , and the act of retrieving is what makes the memory stronger. The counterintuitive part? Struggling is the point. When an answer doesn't come easily and you dig for it anyway, your brain treats that information as something worth keeping. ## **Why Active Recall Works (and Re-Reading Doesn't)** Re-reading feels good because the text becomes familiar. But familiar is not the same as remembered. You see the highlighted sentence and think "I know this," when what you actually know is that you've _seen_ it. > You don't remember what you read. You remember what you're asked. The research on this is unusually clear. In a well-known [2006 study by Roediger and Karpicke](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16507066/) , students either re-read a text or tested themselves on it. A week later, the self-testing group remembered significantly more — even though the re-reading group _felt_ more confident. The authors end their abstract with one sentence that has stuck with me ever since: > Testing is a powerful means of improving learning, not just assessing it. — [Roediger & Karpicke, Psychological Science (2006)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16507066/) And in a large [2013 review, Dunlosky and colleagues](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26173288/) rated common study techniques: practice testing came out among the most effective, while re-reading and highlighting _on their own_ ranked near the bottom. That last part is worth being honest about, coming from someone who built a highlighter: highlighting alone doesn't make you remember. It's the capture step — it marks what deserves your attention. What you _do_ with those highlights afterwards decides whether they stick. I wrote more about that side of the equation in my article on [learning retention](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-learning-retention-matters-online-learning/) . ## **Active Recall vs. Passive Review** Here's the difference in practice: - **Passive review:** re-reading notes, re-watching lectures, scanning your highlights, listening to a summary again. - **Active recall:** answering a question from memory, explaining a concept out loud, writing down everything you remember on a blank page. A simple test: if you could do your "studying" while half-watching Netflix, it's passive. Active recall is uncomfortable in a way passive review never is — and that discomfort is a good sign, not a problem. ## **How to Practice Active Recall on Anything You Read** You don't need a system overhaul. Here's the loop I use: 1. **Highlight with intent.** While reading an article, PDF, or even a YouTube transcript, mark only what you'd genuinely want to remember in a month. A handful of good highlights beats a page full of yellow. 2. **Turn highlights into questions.** Most highlights are really the answer half of a flashcard. "Spacing effect: reviews spread over time beat cramming" becomes _"Why do spaced reviews beat cramming?"_ Phrasing the question is itself a round of recall. 3. **Answer before you peek.** Later — ideally the next day — go through your questions and answer each one from memory. Out loud or on paper works better than "in your head," because you can't fool yourself. 4. **Check, grade honestly, repeat.** Got it right? Wait longer before the next review. Got it wrong? See it again soon. Wrong answers aren't failures — they show you what to review next. The blank-page method is a great low-tech variant: after finishing a chapter, close it and write everything you remember on an empty page. Then compare against the source. What you missed is exactly what needs another pass. ## **An Example: Active Recall on a YouTube Video** Here is how the loop can work on a YouTube video. Every video has a transcript behind it, and a transcript is just text — so you can open it next to the player and read along at your own speed. ![A YouTube video with its transcript open beside the player and highlighted passages](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/07/youtube-reader-preview.webp) *Reading along and marking the parts worth keeping* That part is just active reading: highlight what matters while the video runs, in as many colors as you like — one for the ideas you want to keep, another for whatever you want to look up later. Then turn the most important highlights into flashcards. The highlight is already the answer, so all you write is the question on the front. And that's it. The next day the cards come back and ask you, and you answer before you reveal anything. ![A flashcard review session showing the revealed answer with Correct and Incorrect buttons](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/07/flashcard-learning-session.webp) *A card from that video, revealed and waiting for an honest grade* If you prefer watching to reading, here is the whole thing in a few minutes: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2XlpicnD_0) The source doesn't really matter — articles, PDFs and lecture slides all work the same way. There is a longer walkthrough for [YouTube videos](https://web-highlights.com/blog/turn-youtube-videos-into-flashcards-youll-remember/) , and if you learn a lot from AI chats, the same example with [ChatGPT conversations](https://web-highlights.com/blog/turn-chatgpt-conversations-into-flashcards/) . ## **Active Recall + Spaced Repetition: The Pair That Actually Sticks** Active recall answers _how_ to review; spaced repetition answers _when_ . Each successful retrieval lets you wait longer before the next one — a day, three days, a week, a month. Combined, they flatten the forgetting curve with the least possible effort. If spaced repetition is new to you, I've covered it in depth here: [How to Make Your Readings Stick in Long-Term Memory](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) . The short version: reviewing at growing intervals is the "when," active recall is the "how," and you want both. ## **How I Practice Active Recall with Web Highlights** [Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) is a free browser extension I built that's now used by hundreds of thousands of people. It turns the loop above into something that happens while you read, not as a separate chore: 1. Highlight anything — websites, PDFs, YouTube transcripts. 2. Turn any highlight into a real flashcard: add a question, and the highlight's text becomes the editable answer. So you usually only phrase the question. 3. Review in a spaced-repetition session. Cards with a question show the question first and flip to the answer — forced retrieval, not re-reading. Grade yourself "Correct" or "Incorrect" and the schedule adapts. You can try the review flow without installing anything or creating an account: the free learner at [app.web-highlights.com/learner](https://app.web-highlights.com/learner) lets you start with a ready-made deck — or generate cards from [any website](https://web-highlights.com/tools/website-flashcard-generator) , [a PDF](https://web-highlights.com/tools/pdf-flashcard-generator) , or a [YouTube video](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-flashcard-generator) . The AI that drafts the cards runs on your own device, not on a server. Ready-made study sets live on the [learning paths hub](https://web-highlights.com/learning) . ## **Common Mistakes That Make Active Recall Feel Useless** - **Peeking too early.** If you check the answer after two seconds of "thinking," you're back to passive review. Give yourself a real moment to dig for it first. - **Only testing what you already know.** It feels great and teaches nothing. The cards you keep getting wrong are the ones doing the work. - **Writing questions with the answer inside.** "Why is active recall (testing yourself) effective?" — a question like that quizzes nothing; you're just re-reading with extra steps. - **Cramming all reviews into one evening.** Retrieval works best spread out. Ten cards a day beats seventy on Sunday. --- If more of your reading should survive the week, give the loop a try: **install [Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)** , turn your next ten highlights into questions, and review them tomorrow. That's it — no bigger commitment needed. Thanks for reading! I'm happy to answer any questions, and I'm always open to criticism 😊 Want to learn more about how I built and grew my Chrome Extension as a solopreneur? Subscribe to my [Medium](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts) , or follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the active recall study method? The active recall study method means testing yourself on material instead of re-reading it: you ask a question, try to answer it from memory, and only then check the source. The retrieval effort strengthens the memory far more than another pass over the text. ### Is active recall really better than re-reading? Yes — this is one of the most replicated findings in learning research. Self-testing beats re-reading for long-term retention even when the re-readers feel more confident. Re-reading builds familiarity; recall builds memory. ### What's the difference between active recall and spaced repetition? Active recall is how you review (retrieving from memory); spaced repetition is when you review (at growing intervals). They're not competitors — a flashcard session with increasing gaps between reviews uses both at once. ### How often should I do active recall? Short and regular beats long and rare. A daily session of ten to twenty questions is enough for most readers, with correctly answered cards automatically waiting longer between appearances. ### How can I remember what I read online? Highlight only what matters, turn those highlights into questions, and review them with active recall on a spaced schedule. Capturing alone isn't enough — the retrieval step is what moves ideas from "I've seen this" to "I know this." --- # Top 12 Chrome Bookmark Manager Extensions: The Great Comparison > Compare the 12 best Chrome bookmark manager extensions — Web Highlights, Raindrop.io, Session Buddy, Toby and more — ranked by score, with a clear top pick. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-07-28 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension, comparison, Productivity, Tools - Reading time: 26 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-bookmark-manager-chrome-extensions/ --- Chrome's built-in bookmark manager hasn't meaningfully changed in a decade. You star a page, it lands in a folder you'll never open again, and six months later you're searching your own history hoping to recognise a page title. Anyone who reads seriously online hits that ceiling fast. Developers have responded with a crowded market. Some tools chase the visual angle with boards and thumbnails, others bolt bookmarking onto a note app you already pay for, and a few go further by letting you highlight and annotate the page itself rather than just filing the URL. I wanted to find out which ones actually hold up. In this article, I'll compare 12 of the most popular bookmark manager extensions available on the Chrome Web Store today, ranked by score. A few are also available for Edge and Firefox, but we'll focus primarily on their Chrome build. This guide is about _extensions_ — third-party tools that sit on top of Chrome. If you only need Chrome's own folder tree, open  `chrome://bookmarks`  or follow our walkthrough of  [Chrome's built-in bookmark manager](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/chrome/bookmark-manager)  instead. Come back here when folders and title search stop being enough. On Edge and missing Collections since the Edge 149 update? I wrote up [where Edge Collections went and how to recover them](https://web-highlights.com/blog/microsoft-edge-collections-removed/) separately. One disclosure before the list: Web Highlights is mine, and it ranks first here. The scores come from  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com), a review site my company runs too. It rates each extension from its Chrome Web Store listing, its ratings and what recent reviews report, so weigh our #1 with that in mind — and I'll say plainly what each of the other eleven does better. ### List of the Best Bookmark Manager Extensions for Chrome: - [PDF & Web Highlighter + AI Summary & Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) - [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) - [OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) - [Notebook Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper) - [Humble New Tab Page](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab) - [Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) - [Bookmark Sidebar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/bookmark-sidebar) - [Session Buddy - Tab & Bookmark Manager](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/session-buddy) - [Toby: Tab Management Tool](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/toby-tab-management) - [Instapaper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/instapaper) - [New tab page by start.me](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/start-me-new-tab) - [Diigo Web Collector - Capture and Annotate](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) If you just prefer a simple comparison overview, check out the  [comparison table of all Chrome Bookmark Manager extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/bookmark-manager/chrome) : ![Comparison table of all Chrome bookmark manager extensions with ratings](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/07/screenshot-bookmark-manager-comparison-extensions.webp) *Comparison of all Chrome Bookmark Manager Extensions* ## [1\. PDF & Web Highlighter + AI Summary & Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) ![Saved websites and bookmarks in the Web Highlights dashboard](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/image-6.webp) *Saved websites in the Web Highlights dashboard* Web Highlights sits at the top of this list, and the store numbers back that up. It has 300,000 users and a 4.8/5 rating on the Chrome Web Store from 5,100+ reviews, as evidenced by its 4.78 rating for the last 100 reviews — a score that's barely moved while several competitors here have slid. It's also on Edge and Firefox, so your library follows you if you switch browsers. Here's what makes it different from everything else in this roundup: it doesn't just save the URL, it saves what mattered on the page. You highlight the paragraph, add a note, and the bookmark arrives already carrying the reason you saved it. That extends to PDFs — online, local, and uploaded files up to 30 MB — and you can  [download them again with your highlights embedded](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/download-print-pdf-with-highlights)  as real annotations that Acrobat and Preview recognise. No other tool in this comparison does that, which is also why it shows up in our roundup of  [the best Adobe PDF alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-adobe-pdf-alternatives/) . The second thing worth knowing: the AI runs in your browser. The  [local LLM reads the full page context](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/ai-chat) , so you can summarise a long article or ask questions about a website, PDF, or YouTube video without shipping the content to a server. And highlights don't just sit there — you can turn any one of them into a flashcard, group decks by topic, and review them with the  [SuperMemo spaced repetition algorithm](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning#the-supermemo-algorithm) . A bookmark manager that helps you remember what you bookmarked is a genuinely unusual pitch, and after a few weeks of use it's the feature we'd miss most. Moving in is the part people worry about, and it's the part that takes the least time. Web Highlights reads the standard bookmarks-HTML file every browser exports, and your folder structure arrives as tags — there's a  [two-minute import walkthrough](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/pdf-web-highlighter/how-to-import-your-browser-bookmarks)  if you want to follow along, plus a longer guide on  [exporting your Chrome bookmarks and importing them](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-bookmarks-and-import-to-web-highlights/) . Once they're in, you get a  [nested collection tree with drag & drop](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/collections)  alongside the tags. If you'd rather see the basic save flow before installing, this short video walks through it: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xehF5eKwICM) ### Key Features - **Website Highlighting**  – Easily highlight text on any website - **PDF Highlighting**  – Mark up online, local, and uploaded PDFs (up to 30 MB), then download them with your highlights embedded as real annotations - **AI Summary**  – Create quick, AI-powered summaries of your highlights and websites - **AI Chat**  – The local browser LLM understands the full context of the page, so you can ask questions about any website, PDF, or YouTube video - **Multiple Colors**  – Use various colors to organize your highlights - **Note-Taking**  – Add notes to your highlights, or write standalone page notes with full formatting - **Bookmarking**  – Save pages as bookmarks for quick access - **Tagging**  – Organize your highlights and notes with tags - **Collections (Folders)**  – Organize bookmarks in a nested folder tree with drag & drop, alongside tags - **Cross-Device Sync**  – Sync highlights across devices via cloud - **Export Options**  –  [Export](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/export-import-bookmarks)  to Notion and Capacities (Ultimate), plus Markdown copy for Obsidian, HTML, or PDF - **Reminders**  – "Snooze" a bookmark and get reminded about it by email - **Flashcards & Spaced Repetition**  – Turn any highlight into a Q/A flashcard and review it with the SuperMemo algorithm, with AI generating whole decks on your device ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Excellent free version - No account required - Spaced-repetition flashcard learning - Collections, tags & notes - Image highlighting supported - Keyboard shortcuts - Cross-device sync & beautiful web app **Cons:** - Cloud sync requires a paid plan - No native mobile app yet — though you can still  [save bookmarks from your phone](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/) ### Who is this great for? Web Highlights is perfect for anyone who saves pages in order to use them later — students working through course material, researchers building a literature pile, writers collecting sources. If your bookmarks are raw material rather than a wish list, this is built for the way you work. It's especially great for users who deal with PDFs. Journal articles, manuals, and contracts all live in the same library as your web clips, annotate the same way, and export with the annotations intact. The snooze reminders are a nice touch for the "I'll read this properly later" pile that everyone accumulates and nobody revisits. ### Compared to others Against  [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) , Web Highlights trades some of Raindrop's polish in pure link curation for far deeper work on the page itself — highlighting, notes, and PDF annotation rather than a prettier grid of saved cards.  [OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper)  captures more of a page into a notebook but gives you no way to mark up the live site, and it needs a Microsoft account. Compared to  [Diigo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) , which shares the highlight-and-annotate idea, Web Highlights offers a modern interface, more colors, on-device AI, and reliable link creation where Diigo's is patchy. ### Detailed comparisons [PDF & Web Highlighter vs Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/web-highlights-vs-raindrop-io)  •  [PDF & Web Highlighter vs Diigo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/web-highlights-vs-diigo-web-collector)  •  [PDF & Web Highlighter vs OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/web-highlights-vs-onenote-web-clipper) ### Rating Summary Web Highlights has 300,000 users on Chrome with a 4.8/5 average from 5,100+ reviews, holding 4.78 across the most recent 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave PDF & Web Highlighter a score of  **9.78/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) . > [**Install Web Highlights on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. --- ## [2\. Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) ![Raindrop.io bookmark manager interface](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/raindrop-io/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Raindrop.io is the tool most people mean when they say "proper bookmark manager." It has 500,000 users on the Chrome Web Store and a 4.1/5 rating from 783 reviews, and the trend is quietly positive — the last 100 reviews average 4.20, up from 3.78 across the last 500. What we kept coming back to is the search. Raindrop indexes the full text of saved pages and PDFs, not just titles and URLs, so a half-remembered phrase actually finds the article. The permanent library is the other standout: it keeps a copy of the page, which matters more than you'd think once you've watched a few sources go dead. Collections nest, tags are smart, and shared collections make it usable for a small team without any extra tooling. ### Key Features - **Full-Text Search**  – Search through the entire content of saved web pages and PDFs - **Cross-Platform Sync**  – Access your bookmarks from any browser or device - **Highlighting & Annotations**  – Mark important parts of web pages and add notes - **Collections & Tags**  – Organize content with customizable collections and smart tags - **Permanent Library**  – Keep copies of web pages even if they're taken down - **Team Collaboration**  – Share collections with team members or make them public ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Comprehensive feature set - Intuitive and user-friendly interface - Powerful search capabilities - Strong privacy focus **Cons:** - Limited customization options ### Who is this great for? Raindrop.io is perfect for anyone whose bookmark list has outgrown folders. If you're saving dozens of links a week across several projects and need to find one of them in a hurry two months later, the full-text index does the heavy lifting. It's especially great for users who want their library to outlive the sources. Permanent copies plus cross-device sync make it a solid archive rather than a list of links that slowly rots, and the public collections are handy if you curate resources for other people. ### Compared to others Raindrop.io beats  [Toby](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/toby-tab-management)  on long-term storage and search, where Toby is really about the tabs you have open right now. Against  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) , Raindrop wins on link curation at scale but offers much lighter annotation and no PDF markup — I wrote a  [full Raindrop vs Web Highlights comparison](https://web-highlights.com/blog/raindrop-vs-webhighlights-which-bookmark-and-annotation-tool-is-better/)  if you're choosing between exactly these two. Compared to  [Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) , Raindrop is the better pure archive, while Milanote is stronger if you want your saves arranged visually on a board. ### Detailed comparisons [Raindrop.io vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/raindrop-io-vs-web-highlights)  •  [Raindrop.io vs Toby](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/raindrop-io-vs-toby-tab-management)  •  [Raindrop.io vs Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/raindrop-io-vs-milanote-web-clipper) ### Rating Summary Raindrop.io has reached 500,000 users on Chrome with a 4.1/5 rating from 783 reviews, and recent feedback is improving at 4.20 for the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Raindrop.io a score of  **8.92/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) . --- ## [3\. OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) ![OneNote Web Clipper saving a page to a notebook](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/onenote-web-clipper/images/gallery-image-1.webp) OneNote Web Clipper is the heavyweight here by sheer reach: 900,000 users and about 68,500 reviews on the Chrome Web Store, with a 4.8/5 all-time rating. That headline number needs a caveat, though. The last 100 reviews average 3.68, down from 4.19 over the last 500, which lines up with the sync complaints we ran into ourselves. Used as intended, it's still hard to beat for free. Clip a full page, a region, or a stripped-down article view straight into any notebook and section, annotate it inside OneNote, and read it offline later. If your notes already live in Microsoft 365, this is the shortest path from browser to notebook — and it costs nothing beyond the account you already have. It's one of several tools worth weighing in our roundup of  [the best web clipper Chrome extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-7-web-clipper-chrome-extensions-for-capturing-websites/) . ### Key Features - **Clip any webpage to OneNote**  – Save entire pages or just parts of them - **Highlight and annotate**  – Add notes and highlights to your clips - **Organize clips**  – Save clips to specific notebooks and sections - **Offline access**  – Access your clips even when you're not connected to the internet ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Easy to use - Offline access - Versatile clipping options - Free of charge **Cons:** - Limited customization options - Occasional syncing issues ### Who is this great for? OneNote Web Clipper is perfect for anyone already living inside the Microsoft ecosystem. If OneNote is where your meeting notes, project plans, and research already sit, clipping into the same notebooks removes a step you'd otherwise repeat every day. It's especially great for users who need offline access to what they saved. Clips sync down to the desktop and mobile OneNote apps, so a flight or a bad connection doesn't cut you off from your reading pile. ### Compared to others Against  [Notebook Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper) , OneNote offers a far more mature notebook behind it, though Zoho's clean view is the nicer article capture. Compared to  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) , OneNote pulls content out of the page into a notebook, while Web Highlights leaves it in place and annotates it there — and only one of the two handles PDFs properly.  [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io)  is the better choice if you want a searchable link archive rather than a growing pile of notebook pages. ### Detailed comparisons [OneNote Web Clipper vs Notebook Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/onenote-web-clipper-vs-notebook-web-clipper)  •  [OneNote Web Clipper vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/onenote-web-clipper-vs-web-highlights)  •  [OneNote Web Clipper vs Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/onenote-web-clipper-vs-raindrop-io) ### Rating Summary OneNote Web Clipper has 900,000 users on Chrome and a 4.8/5 rating from about 68,500 reviews, though recent sentiment has cooled to 3.68 over the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave OneNote Web Clipper a score of  **8.83/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) . --- ## [4\. Notebook Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper) ![Zoho Notebook Web Clipper saving a page as a card](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/notebook-web-clipper/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Zoho's clipper is the quieter option in this group, with 70,000 downloads and a 4.18/5 rating from 1,006 reviews on the Chrome Web Store. Recent reviews sit slightly lower at 3.73 for the last 100, against 3.90 across the last 500 — a mild dip rather than a collapse. Its best trick is Clean View, which strips ads and clutter before saving so the clipped article actually reads well later. Everything lands as a card in Zoho Notebook, which suits people who think in scraps rather than documents. The built-in screenshot tool with annotation and the smart cards that turn bare links into something recognisable both save real time, and the free tier covers the essentials. ### Key Features - **Web Clipping**  – Save text, images, and links as note cards - **Clean View**  – Clip articles without ads for a distraction-free reading experience - **Screenshot Tool**  – Capture and annotate screenshots directly - **Smart Cards**  – Convert links into smart cards for easy reference - **Meeting Notes**  – Take notes during online meetings with integrated tools ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Easy integration with Zoho Notebook - Free version available with essential features - Clean View for ad-free article clipping **Cons:** - Some features could be more intuitive - Occasional performance lags - Limited customization options ### Who is this great for? Notebook Web Clipper is perfect for anyone already using Zoho Notebook, or anyone looking for a free card-based place to dump research without committing to a subscription. It's especially great for users who save a lot of articles to read later. Clean View strips a page down to a tidy, readable capture, and the screenshot annotation covers the pages that resist clean extraction. ### Compared to others [OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper)  has the stronger notebook and a much larger user base, but Zoho's clean article capture is the better of the two. Against  [Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) , Notebook is more generous on free storage while Milanote is far more flexible visually. Compared to  [Instapaper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/instapaper) , Notebook does more than reading — screenshots, meeting notes, and cards all live in the same place. ### Detailed comparisons [Notebook Web Clipper vs OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/notebook-web-clipper-vs-onenote-web-clipper)  •  [Notebook Web Clipper vs Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/notebook-web-clipper-vs-milanote-web-clipper)  •  [Notebook Web Clipper vs Instapaper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/notebook-web-clipper-vs-instapaper) ### Rating Summary Notebook Web Clipper has 70,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.18/5 rating from 1,006 reviews, easing to 3.73 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Notebook Web Clipper a score of  **8.77/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper) . --- ## [5\. Humble New Tab Page](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab) ![Humble New Tab Page showing bookmarks on the new tab](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/humble-new-tab/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Humble New Tab Page is the smallest tool here and the best-liked. It has 30,000 downloads and a 4.74/5 rating from 1,102 reviews on the Chrome Web Store, and it's one of the very few extensions in this comparison where recent reviews run  _above_  the all-time average — 4.84 for the last 100. People who install it tend to keep it. The concept is old-school in the best way: your new tab becomes a plain, fast, drag-and-drop board of your bookmarks, apps, and recently closed tabs. No feed, no widgets, no account, no telemetry. It's open-source under the MIT licence, it loads instantly, and it's also available for Firefox. If your bookmarks bar has quietly become your real bookmark manager, this makes that habit workable. ### Key Features - **Customizable Layout**  – Drag-and-drop functionality for easy organization - **Lightweight Performance**  – Minimal impact on system resources - **Open-Source**  – Available for tweaks and modifications - **Simple Design**  – Focuses on usability over aesthetics - **Cross-Browser Compatibility**  – Available for Chrome and Firefox ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Open-source and free - Lightweight and fast - Highly customizable - Simple, user-focused design **Cons:** - No advanced features like task management or widgets - Limited visual appeal - Customization may be too basic for some users ### Who is this great for? Humble New Tab Page is perfect for anyone who wants their existing Chrome bookmarks in front of them without adopting a whole new system. There's nothing to sign up for and nothing to migrate. It's especially great for users who care about speed and privacy. It stays out of the way, uses almost no resources, and the open-source code means you can check exactly what it does — a fair trade for skipping cloud sync and annotations entirely. ### Compared to others Where  [Toby](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/toby-tab-management)  turns the new tab into a paid, account-bound workspace, Humble does the free, local version of roughly the same job. Against  [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) , it offers no search, sync, or archiving — it just surfaces what you already have, instantly.  [Bookmark Sidebar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/bookmark-sidebar)  shares the same free, local, no-account philosophy but reaches your bookmarks from the screen edge on any page rather than only on the new tab. Compared to  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) , it's a launcher rather than a research tool; the two happily coexist. ### Detailed comparisons [Humble New Tab vs Toby](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/humble-new-tab-vs-toby-tab-management)  •  [Humble New Tab vs Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/humble-new-tab-vs-raindrop-io)  •  [Humble New Tab vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/humble-new-tab-vs-web-highlights) ### Rating Summary Humble New Tab Page has 30,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.74/5 rating from 1,102 reviews, and recent reviews are even stronger at 4.84.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Humble New Tab Page a score of  **8.50/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab) . --- ## [6\. Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) ![Milanote Web Clipper adding a saved article to a board](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/milanote-web-clipper/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Milanote's clipper carries the highest raw store rating in this comparison: 4.84/5 from 465 reviews, with 100,000 downloads on the Chrome Web Store. Recent sentiment holds steady at 4.79 for the last 100 against 4.85 over the last 500 — small numbers, but consistently happy ones. It's the pick for people who think spatially. Articles, images, and links land on a Milanote board where you arrange them by hand, next to your own notes and sketches. For mood boards, campaign planning, or anything where the relationship between saved items matters as much as the items, nothing else here comes close. It also spans Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, so the boards are reachable wherever you work. ### Key Features - **Web Clipping**  – Easily save articles, images, and links to your Milanote boards - **Organization**  – Create and manage boards to keep your projects organized - **User-Friendly Interface**  – Intuitive design that fits directly into Milanote - **Cross-Platform Availability**  – Available on Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Opera ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Extremely customizable boards - Seamless integration with Milanote - Very clear visual presentation of information **Cons:** - Severely limited storage space in the free version - Requires a Milanote account - A lot of manual work if you store large amounts of information at once ### Who is this great for? Milanote Web Clipper is perfect for designers, marketers, and anyone whose research is visual. If you'd rather see your references laid out on a canvas than listed in rows, this is the natural fit. It's especially great for users running project-based work. Each board becomes a self-contained brief holding the clipped sources, images, and notes for one piece of work, which is far more legible weeks later than a folder of links. ### Compared to others Against  [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) , Milanote trades searchable bulk storage for visual arrangement — and its free storage cap is much tighter.  [Notebook Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper)  is the better free option if you just need clean article capture. Compared to  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) , Milanote organises what you saved but can't annotate the source; the highlighter keeps your reasoning attached to the page itself. ### Detailed comparisons [Milanote Web Clipper vs Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/milanote-web-clipper-vs-raindrop-io)  •  [Milanote Web Clipper vs Notebook Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/milanote-web-clipper-vs-notebook-web-clipper)  •  [Milanote Web Clipper vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/milanote-web-clipper-vs-web-highlights) ### Rating Summary Milanote Web Clipper has 100,000 downloads on Chrome and the highest store rating in this list at 4.84/5 from 465 reviews, holding 4.79 over the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Milanote Web Clipper a score of  **8.48/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) . --- ## [7\. Bookmark Sidebar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/bookmark-sidebar) ![Bookmark Sidebar sliding out over a web page](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/bookmark-sidebar/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Bookmark Sidebar fixes the thing Chrome has left broken for a decade. It has 300,000 downloads and a 4.52/5 rating on the Chrome Web Store from 1,673 reviews, with the last 100 averaging 3.99 against 4.31 over the last 500 — a mild softening rather than a slide. The pitch is one gesture. Push your cursor to the edge of the browser window and your entire bookmark tree slides out over the page, nested folders and all, where you can drag things around, rename them, and delete them on the spot. After a week of it,  [Chrome's own bookmark manager](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/chrome/bookmark-manager)  and its eight-items-at-a-time dropdown feel like a bug. What sets it apart from most of this list is that it doesn't build a parallel library. It reads and writes your actual Chrome bookmarks, so there's no import, no account, and nothing stranded if you uninstall it. It also does the maintenance nobody does by hand — the built-in checker scans your collection for dead links — and it can dock into Chrome's native side panel when you want bookmarks pinned open beside a page. If your tree itself is the mess, our guide on  [how to organize bookmarks in Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-organize-bookmarks-in-chrome/)  pairs well with it. ### Key Features - **Edge-Triggered Sidebar**  – Push your cursor to the side of the screen and your full bookmark tree slides out over the page - **Nested Folder Tree**  – Browse your existing Chrome hierarchy as a proper expandable list - **Drag-and-Drop Editing**  – Rearrange, rename, and delete bookmarks directly in the sidebar - **Deep Customization**  – Control position, trigger area, width, colors, icons, and behavior in fine detail - **Chrome Side Panel Support**  – Dock bookmarks in Chrome's native side panel to keep them open alongside a page - **Broken URL Checker**  – Scan your collection for dead or redirected links - **Optional New Tab Page**  – Swap in a bookmark-focused new tab page, or leave yours alone - **Local Operation**  – Works on Chrome's own bookmarks with no account and no external service ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Exceptionally deep customization - Clean, attractive sidebar design - Complete free tier - One-time pay-what-you-want premium - Works on native Chrome bookmarks **Cons:** - Breaks after some Chrome updates - Drag-to-reorder unreliable on Chrome - Settings panel is overwhelming - No sync beyond Chrome bookmarks - Faint, small settings typography ### Who is this great for? Bookmark Sidebar is perfect for anyone who already likes their bookmarks and just wants to reach them properly. If you've got a folder tree you've curated for years, this makes it usable without asking you to move it anywhere. It's especially great for users who resent subscriptions. The free version is the whole tool, and premium is a one-time payment where you name the price — closer to a tip than a paywall. One reviewer paid despite not needing the premium features, simply to support the work. ### Compared to others Against  [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) , Bookmark Sidebar is the lighter, local answer — no account, no cloud, no migration, but equally no full-text search or permanent page copies.  [Humble New Tab Page](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab)  shares the free, open, local philosophy but surfaces bookmarks on the new tab rather than on demand over any page. Compared to  [Toby](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/toby-tab-management) , it manages saved bookmarks rather than live tab sessions, and its free tier isn't capped by item count. ### Detailed comparisons [Bookmark Sidebar vs Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/bookmark-sidebar-vs-raindrop-io)  •  [Bookmark Sidebar vs Humble New Tab](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/bookmark-sidebar-vs-humble-new-tab)  •  [Bookmark Sidebar vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/bookmark-sidebar-vs-web-highlights) ### Rating Summary Bookmark Sidebar has 300,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.52/5 rating from 1,673 reviews, easing to 3.99 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Bookmark Sidebar a score of  **8.20/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/bookmark-sidebar) . --- ## [8\. Session Buddy - Tab & Bookmark Manager](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/session-buddy) ![Session Buddy dashboard showing saved tab sessions](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/session-buddy/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Session Buddy is the veteran of this group and the one with the widest gap between reputation and current mood. It has 900,000 downloads and a 4.66/5 all-time rating from 25,111 reviews on the Chrome Web Store — but the last 100 average 3.65, and the last 500 just 3.06. That's the steepest decline in this comparison, and it's worth understanding before you install. The core loop is still excellent. One click captures every open window and tab as a named session you can close and restore later; a dashboard shows every tab across the browser on one page, and a single search box covers open tabs, saved sessions, and bookmarks together. Crash recovery happens on its own, so a forced Chrome update doesn't cost you an afternoon. It's also the most private tool here. No account, no cloud, nothing leaving your machine unless you export it yourself — a real distinction from  [Toby](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/toby-tab-management) , which now requires login, and  [start.me](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/start-me-new-tab) , which stores everything on its servers. The price of that stance is that your sessions live on exactly one computer, and the recent complaints — sessions vanishing after a crash or update — hit harder because there's no cloud copy to fall back on. ### Key Features - **Session Save & Restore**  – Capture every open window and tab in one click, then bring the set back later - **Automatic Crash Recovery**  – Previous sessions are kept automatically, surviving crashes and forced updates - **Collections**  – Group saved tabs and bookmarks into named collections - **Unified Search**  – Search open tabs, saved sessions, and bookmarks from a single box - **Local-First Storage**  – Everything stays on your machine, with no account and no server round-trip - **Import & Export**  – Move data out as JSON, CSV, or plain text and back in elsewhere - **Manual Backups**  – Write a snapshot of your sessions to disk as a restore point - **Tab Dashboard**  – See every window and tab across the browser on one page ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Completely free, no paid tier - Reliable one-click session restore - Local-first, no account needed - Strong export and backup options - Responsive developer support **Cons:** - No cross-device cloud sync - Reports of vanishing saved sessions - Instability after browser updates - No drag-and-drop reordering - Doesn't preserve Chrome tab groups ### Who is this great for? Session Buddy is perfect for anyone working on a single machine who wants to park and restore sets of tabs without handing their browsing history to a service. If you research in bursts across a dozen tabs and want them back tomorrow, this is the shortest path. It's especially great for the privacy-minded. Nothing here requires an account, and everything can be exported to a file you control — rare in a category drifting steadily toward mandatory sign-in. ### Compared to others Against  [Toby](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/toby-tab-management) , Session Buddy covers much of the same tab-session ground for free and without an account, though Toby's visual collections are better organised and genuinely shareable.  [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io)  is the better long-term archive with real search and cross-device sync, where Session Buddy is about recovering your working state. Compared to  [Bookmark Sidebar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/bookmark-sidebar) , it handles live sessions rather than your curated bookmark tree — the two solve neighbouring problems and coexist happily. ### Detailed comparisons [Session Buddy vs Toby](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/session-buddy-vs-toby-tab-management)  •  [Session Buddy vs Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/session-buddy-vs-raindrop-io)  •  [Session Buddy vs Bookmark Sidebar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/session-buddy-vs-bookmark-sidebar) ### Rating Summary Session Buddy has 900,000 downloads on Chrome and a 4.66/5 all-time rating from 25,111 reviews, though recent sentiment has fallen sharply to 3.65 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Session Buddy a score of  **7.83/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/session-buddy) . --- ## [9\. Toby: Tab Management Tool](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/toby-tab-management) ![Toby new tab page with colour-coded tab collections](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/toby-tab-management/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Toby has 300,000 downloads on the Chrome Web Store and a 4.21/5 all-time rating from 3,284 reviews, but the recent picture is rougher: 3.50 for the last 100, against 3.43 over the last 500. The product didn't get worse so much as the terms did, and long-time users have said so loudly. The core idea still works beautifully. Stash a whole window of tabs into a named, colour-coded collection, close them, and pull the session back later from your new tab page. Drag-and-drop organisation, shareable collections, notes for context, and integration with Chrome's native tab groups make it a genuinely good research workspace. The catch is the free tier, now capped at roughly 50 to 60 saved items, with a mandatory account and a paid subscription waiting past that line. ### Key Features - **Visual Tab Collections**  – Group related tabs into named, color-coded collections visible on your new tab page - **One-Click Session Save**  – Stash an entire window of open tabs into a collection, then close them without losing your place - **Drag-and-Drop Organization**  – Rearrange tabs and collections with a tactile interface - **Shareable Groups**  – Send a collection to a teammate or across your own devices - **Google Tab Groups Integration**  – Ties Toby into Chrome's native tab groups - **Cross-Device Sync**  – Your collections follow you between machines once you're signed in - **Search & Tagging**  – Find any saved tab quickly instead of scrolling a wall of bookmarks - **Notes & Context**  – Add notes to collections so a saved project still makes sense weeks later ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Powerful visual tab collections - Saves and restores whole sessions - Shareable groups for teams - Clean, drag-and-drop interface - Responsive, helpful customer support **Cons:** - Free tier now tightly capped - Shifted to paid subscription - Account login now mandatory - Some users lost saved tabs - Per-workspace billing is confusing ### Who is this great for? Toby is perfect for anyone who works in tab explosions — a dozen open at once per project, three projects running in parallel. Collapsing that into a saved collection and reopening it intact is a real workflow, not a gimmick. It's especially great for small teams sharing research. Sending a colleague a whole collection beats pasting eight links into chat, provided you're willing to pay for the seats once you outgrow the free cap. ### Compared to others [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io)  is the better long-term archive with real search and a far more generous free tier, where Toby is about active sessions.  [Session Buddy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/session-buddy)  is the closest direct rival and the obvious answer to Toby's item cap — free, unlimited, and local, though without the shareable collections or the polish. Against  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) , Toby manages tabs while Web Highlights manages what's inside them — and its free tier isn't capped by item count. ### Detailed comparisons [Toby vs Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/toby-tab-management-vs-raindrop-io)  •  [Toby vs Humble New Tab](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/toby-tab-management-vs-humble-new-tab)  •  [Toby vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/toby-tab-management-vs-web-highlights) ### Rating Summary Toby has 300,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.21/5 rating from 3,284 reviews, though recent feedback has settled lower at 3.50 for the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Toby a score of  **7.77/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/toby-tab-management) . --- ## [10\. Instapaper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/instapaper) ![Instapaper reading list with clean article text view](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/instapaper/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Instapaper is the veteran of the read-it-later world, and its Chrome extension is the weakest link in an otherwise well-regarded product. It has 300,000 downloads but only a 3.76/5 rating from 561 reviews, and the recent trend is the poorest in this comparison: 2.82 across the last 100, down from 3.03 over the last 500. The service itself is still excellent. Text View strips a page to clean typography, saved articles are available offline, and the Kindle integration remains the tidiest way to get web reading onto e-ink. The mobile apps for iOS and Android are polished. It's the browser extension where things wobble — saves that don't register and highlighting that fires inconsistently are the recurring complaints, and we ran into both. If you landed here because your read-it-later app disappeared, that's a bigger story than one extension: Pocket shut down in 2025, and we covered  [what that meant for saved libraries](https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-tomorrow-everything-you-need-to-know/)  at the time. For phone-first reading specifically, our list of  [the best-rated read-it-later apps for Android](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-5-best-rated-read-it-later-apps-for-android/)  covers the alternatives. ### Key Features - **Offline Reading**  – Save web pages to read later without an internet connection - **Text View**  – Clean, distraction-free reading experience - **Highlighting**  – Mark important passages in your saved articles - **Kindle Integration**  – Send articles directly to your Kindle device - **Browser Extension**  – Quick save functionality across major browsers - **Mobile Apps**  – Access your reading list on iOS and Android devices - **Folder Organization**  – Create custom folders to organize your saved content ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Clean, distraction-free reading experience - Reliable offline access to saved content - Simple and intuitive interface - Mobile apps for iOS and Android **Cons:** - Chrome extension has some reliability issues - Some users report problems with the saving functionality - Highlighting feature can be inconsistent ### Who is this great for? Instapaper is perfect for anyone whose reading happens away from the desk. If the point of saving an article is to read it on a phone, tablet, or Kindle later, the apps and the Kindle pipeline still justify the extension's rough edges. It's especially great for users who want reading and nothing else. There are no boards, no workspaces, and no team features — just a queue, clean text, and folders, which is exactly why some people have stayed for over a decade. ### Compared to others Against  [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) , Instapaper is a reading queue rather than a searchable archive, and Raindrop's extension is markedly more dependable.  [Notebook Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper)  offers similar ad-free capture with more to do afterwards. Compared to  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) , Instapaper's highlighting is thinner and less reliable, and it can't touch PDFs. ### Detailed comparisons [Instapaper vs Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/instapaper-vs-raindrop-io)  •  [Instapaper vs Notebook Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/instapaper-vs-notebook-web-clipper)  •  [Instapaper vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/instapaper-vs-web-highlights) ### Rating Summary Instapaper has 300,000 downloads on Chrome but the lowest store rating here at 3.76/5 from 561 reviews, with the last 100 averaging just 2.82.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Instapaper a score of  **7.72/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/instapaper) . --- ## [11\. New tab page by start.me](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/start-me-new-tab) ![start.me visual bookmark dashboard on the new tab page](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/start-me-new-tab/images/gallery-image-1.webp) start.me is the most visual take on bookmark management here. It has 100,000 downloads and a 4.29/5 rating on the Chrome Web Store from 1,429 reviews, holding 4.2 across the last 100 against 4.56 over the last 500 — a gentler decline than most of this list. Instead of a list, you get tiles: labelled, thumbnailed bookmarks arranged on a dashboard you design. Run several pages — work, study, personal — each with its own background image, then fill the space around your links with widgets. There are over 3,500 of them, covering weather, calendars, notes, to-dos, and news. The built-in RSS reader is the sleeper feature; one reviewer came back to start.me specifically because its feeds beat their dedicated reader. The catch is that all of it lives on start.me's servers. That buys you sync across every browser and machine you use, which local-only tools here can't offer. It also means an outage or a regional block takes your bookmarks with it, and there's no offline copy — a pattern that shows up repeatedly in recent reviews rather than a hypothetical. ### Key Features - **Visual Bookmark Dashboard**  – Replaces the new tab page with bookmarks as labelled, thumbnailed tiles - **Multiple Pages**  – Separate dashboards for work, study, and personal, each with its own background - **Widget Library**  – Over 3,500 widgets covering weather, calendars, stocks, search, and more - **Built-in RSS Reader**  – Follow news sources on your dashboard instead of running a separate reader - **Notes & To-Dos**  – Keep short lists and notes beside your links - **Cross-Device Sync**  – Your dashboard follows your account across browsers and machines - **Bookmark Import**  – Pull existing browser bookmarks into start.me in one step - **Address Bar Search**  – Type "me" plus a keyword in Chrome's address bar to search saved bookmarks ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Genuinely beautiful visual bookmarks - Multiple dashboards with custom backgrounds - Large widget library - Built-in RSS beats standalone readers - Syncs across browsers and devices **Cons:** - Recurring page loading failures - Requires a cloud account - Blocked in some regions without VPN - Can't display native browser bookmarks - Free tier limited to three pages ### Who is this great for? start.me is perfect for visual thinkers. If a wall of text never sticks but a board of thumbnails does, this is the one that will finally make your bookmarks feel organised — several reviewers describe exactly that click. It's especially great for people who want one screen to open the day on. Between the tiles, the widgets, the notes, and the RSS feeds, the new tab becomes a genuine command centre rather than a launcher, and it follows you to every machine you sign in on. ### Compared to others Against  [Humble New Tab Page](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab) , start.me is vastly richer and syncs everywhere, while Humble is instant, local, and never fails to load — a clean trade between capability and dependability.  [Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper)  is the better canvas for project research, where start.me is the better daily home page. Compared to  [Bookmark Sidebar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/bookmark-sidebar) , start.me builds its own cloud library while Bookmark Sidebar just surfaces the bookmarks Chrome already holds. ### Detailed comparisons [start.me vs Humble New Tab](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/start-me-new-tab-vs-humble-new-tab)  •  [start.me vs Bookmark Sidebar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/start-me-new-tab-vs-bookmark-sidebar)  •  [start.me vs Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/start-me-new-tab-vs-milanote-web-clipper) ### Rating Summary start.me has 100,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.29/5 rating from 1,429 reviews, holding 4.2 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave New tab page by start.me a score of  **7.70/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/start-me-new-tab) . --- ## [12\. Diigo Web Collector - Capture and Annotate](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) ![Diigo Web Collector highlighting and annotating a web page](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/diigo-web-collector/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Diigo is a long-standing name in research bookmarking, with 100,000 downloads and a 4.60/5 all-time rating from 2,322 reviews on the Chrome Web Store. Recent feedback tells a different story: 3.50 for the last 100, down from 4.26 over the last 500, which matches how dated the tool now feels next to newer options. The fundamentals hold up. Highlights reappear reliably when you revisit a page, notes attach to them, and everything syncs across devices — that's the job, and Diigo does it. But you're limited to four highlight colours, the sidebar outliner takes patience to learn, the link-to-highlight feature failed for us more than once, and the interface looks its age. It's still workable if you're already invested; it's a harder sell if you're not — our roundup of  [the best text annotation tools](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-text-annotation-tools/)  covers the alternatives in that specific niche, and  [the same applies if you're leaving Weava](https://web-highlights.com/blog/webhighlights-weava-alternative/) . ### Key Features - **Highlighting**  – Works well, and highlights are recreated on refresh - **Notes**  – Add notes to your highlights - **Link Creation**  – Create links to your highlights, though this feature isn't very reliable - **Sidebar Outliner**  – Simple design, but takes time to understand - **Syncing**  – Highlights are synced across devices ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Highlights are recreated on refresh - Notes can be added to highlights - Highlights are synced across devices **Cons:** - Outdated design - Limited to 4 highlight colors - Link creation feature is unreliable - Sidebar is limited ### Who is this great for? Diigo is perfect for long-time users with years of annotated research already in the platform. The library holds up, and there's little reason to abandon it if it's serving you. It's especially great for academic groups that adopted it early. The shared annotation model still works for classes and research teams — just don't expect the polish that newer tools bring. ### Compared to others [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights)  covers the same ground with a modern interface, more colors, on-device AI, and PDF annotation Diigo simply doesn't offer. Against  [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) , Diigo annotates more deeply but loses badly on search and design. Compared to  [OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) , Diigo keeps your notes on the live page instead of copying content into a notebook, which some researchers still prefer. ### Detailed comparisons [Diigo vs PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/diigo-web-collector-vs-web-highlights)  •  [Diigo vs Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/diigo-web-collector-vs-raindrop-io)  •  [Diigo vs OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/diigo-web-collector-vs-onenote-web-clipper) ### Rating Summary Diigo has 100,000 downloads on Chrome with a 4.60/5 rating from 2,322 reviews, though recent reviews have dropped to 3.50 across the last 100.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com)  gave Diigo a score of  **7.55/10** .  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) . --- ## Do you even need a bookmark manager extension? Honestly: maybe not. Type  `chrome://bookmarks`  into your address bar and you get a folder tree, drag & drop, search by title, and sync across every Chrome you're signed into. For a reading list plus a handful of folders, that's genuinely enough — and it costs nothing. We keep a plain walkthrough of  [Chrome's built-in bookmark manager](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/chrome/bookmark-manager)  for exactly that reason. - ✅ Free, built in, syncs with your Google account - ✅ Folders and basic search, no setup at all - ❌ No tags, no notes, and search only covers titles and URLs — not what the pages say - ❌ Locked to Chrome; moving out means exporting an HTML file Start there if you've never felt the pain. When the folder tree stops scaling — usually somewhere past a few hundred links — export your bookmarks and bring them to any tool on this list. Our  [Chrome export tutorial](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/chrome/how-to-export-bookmarks)  shows the two-minute version, and there are matching guides for  [Firefox](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/firefox/how-to-export-bookmarks)  and  [Edge](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/edge/how-to-export-bookmarks)  if you're moving between browsers rather than out of one. --- ## Final Thoughts After working through all 12 Chrome bookmark manager extensions, one thing stood out: the tools that treat a bookmark as a container for your thinking beat the ones that treat it as a filed URL.  [**PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights)  takes the top spot with a score of 9.78/10 for exactly that reason. It's the only tool here that highlights web pages  _and_  PDFs with real embedded annotations, runs its AI summaries and chat locally in your browser, and turns what you saved into spaced-repetition flashcards — all on a free tier that doesn't ask for an account. Its 4.78 rating across the last 100 Chrome reviews suggests we're not alone in that read. A second pattern shows up across the reviews: the tools that keep your data on your own machine are quietly outlasting the ones that don't.  [**Bookmark Sidebar**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/bookmark-sidebar)  and  [**Humble New Tab Page**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab)  never fail to load because there's nothing to load from.  [**start.me**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/start-me-new-tab)  is the most beautiful dashboard of the twelve and the one most likely to leave you staring at a spinner, and  [**Session Buddy**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/session-buddy) 's worst reviews are about sessions vanishing rather than features missing. Where your bookmarks physically live turns out to matter more than the feature list. For specific needs:  [**Raindrop.io**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io)  is the best pure archive, with full-text search and permanent copies of pages that later disappear.  [**OneNote Web Clipper**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper)  is the obvious free pick if your notes already live in Microsoft 365, and  [**Notebook Web Clipper**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper)  is the cleanest free article capture outside it.  [**Milanote Web Clipper**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper)  wins for visual, project-based research, and  [**Bookmark Sidebar**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/bookmark-sidebar)  is the best way to make the bookmarks you already have genuinely reachable.  [**Session Buddy**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/session-buddy)  and  [**Toby**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/toby-tab-management)  both handle tab sessions well — Session Buddy free and local, Toby polished but capped.  [**Instapaper**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/instapaper)  remains a great reading service held back by a shaky extension, and  [**Diigo**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector)  makes sense mainly if you're already there. Every tool on this list has a usable free version, so the cheapest way to decide is to install two and save the same week of reading to both. If you want one recommendation to start with, make it  [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/install)  — no signup, nothing capped by item count, and you'll know within a few days whether annotating in place is how you want to work. Browse the  [full comparison of all Chrome bookmark manager extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/bookmark-manager/chrome)  to weigh them side by side — or see the same exercise run on  [the 10 best Chrome language learning extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-chrome-language-learning-extensions-the-great-comparison/) , the  [10 best email finder tools](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-email-finder-tools/) , the  [10 best video downloader extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-video-downloader-chrome-extensions/)  the  [10 best PDF extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-pdf-chrome-extensions/)  and the  [10 best SEO extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-seo-chrome-extensions/) . ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best free bookmark manager? Web Highlights and Raindrop.io have the strongest free plans. Web Highlights is free for unlimited bookmarks, highlights, notes and tags stored on your device, with cloud sync as the paid part. Raindrop's free tier covers unlimited bookmarks, collections and devices, but keeps full-text search and annotations for Pro. Humble New Tab Page and Session Buddy are completely free, with no paid tier at all. ### Is Chrome's built-in bookmark manager enough? For a few hundred links in tidy folders, yes. Chrome gives you a folder tree, drag & drop, search by title and sync across every Chrome you sign into, at no cost. It breaks down when you need tags, notes, search inside the saved pages, or access from a non-Chrome browser. That is the point where a dedicated bookmark manager extension earns its place. ### What is the difference between a bookmark manager and a web clipper? A bookmark manager saves and organises the link — Raindrop.io, Bookmark Sidebar and start.me work this way. A web clipper copies the page content into a notebook, which is what OneNote Web Clipper, Notebook Web Clipper and Milanote Web Clipper do. Web Highlights sits between the two: it keeps the link but attaches your highlights and notes to the live page. ### How do I move my bookmarks between bookmark managers? Every browser and almost every manager speaks the same bookmarks-HTML format. Export from wherever you are — our Chrome export tutorial shows the two-minute version — then import that file into the new tool. In Web Highlights the import lives in Settings → Integrations, and your existing folder structure comes across as tags. ### What is the best bookmark manager for Chrome? It depends on what your saves are for. Web Highlights scored highest at 9.78/10 and suits people who highlight and annotate what they save. Raindrop.io is the better pure archive with full-text search. Toby and Session Buddy handle tab sessions rather than long-term libraries, and Bookmark Sidebar simply makes your existing Chrome bookmarks reachable. --- # Top 11 Chrome Extensions For Language Learning: The Great Comparison > Compare the 11 best Chrome language learning extensions — popup dictionaries, AI translators, subtitle tools and flashcard trainers, rated and ranked. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-07-23 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension, Learning, students, Flashcard Learning - Reading time: 29 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-chrome-language-learning-extensions-the-great-comparison/ --- Learning a language has an inconvenient secret: the hard part isn't finding lessons, it's getting enough exposure. You can finish every chapter of a course and still freeze in front of a real news article, because textbooks rarely teach the words people actually use. Meanwhile, most of us already spend hours a day reading and watching things in Chrome — time that could quietly double as language practice. Extension developers spotted that gap, and the Chrome Web Store is now a genuine battleground for language learning. There are popup dictionaries that translate any word under your cursor, tools that lay bilingual subtitles over Netflix and YouTube, vocabulary trainers that underline the words you don't know yet, and flashcard systems that turn everyday reading into spaced-repetition reviews. Some are polished commercial suites; others, like the open-source Yomitan, are community projects kept alive by volunteers. We wanted to know which of these actually help you learn, so we compared the 11 best language learning extensions available for Chrome. A few are on Firefox and Edge as well, and we'll mention that where it matters, but the focus here is Chrome. Some are clear standouts. A couple are having a rougher stretch right now — and we'll tell you exactly which ones, and why. How this list was made: the scores come from Tooltivity, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each extension from its Chrome Web Store listing, its ratings and what recent reviews report, and this list is ordered by that score. The descriptions below summarize each listing and what its users report. ## List of the Best Language Learning Extensions for Chrome: - [PDF & Web Highlighter + AI Summary & Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) - [Yomitan Popup Dictionary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/yomitan) - [10ten Japanese Reader (Rikaichamp)](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rikaichamp) - [Zhongwen: Chinese-English Dictionary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/zhongwen) - [Rememberry - Translate and Memorize with Flashcards](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rememberry) - [Trancy - AI Translator & Dual Subtitles](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/trancy) - [Reverso – Translation, dictionary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/reverso) - [Relingo - Master vocabulary while browsing websites and watching YouTube](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo) - [Burning Vocabulary - Learn words from reading](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/burning-vocabulary) - [Migaku: Really Learn Languages](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/migaku) - [Readlang Web Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/readlang-web-reader) If you prefer a comparison overview, check out the full  [comparison of all Language Learning extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/language-learning/chrome) : ![Comparison of all Language Learning Chrome Extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/07/screenshot-language-learning-comparison-extensions.png) *Comparison of all Language Learning Chrome Extensions* ## [1\. Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) ![Web Highlights Learning Dashboard](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2400/1*0HpVN-VwP0JSk-lOCmZY9A.png) *Web Highlights Learning Dashboard* A highlighter might seem like an odd winner for a language-learning roundup — until you see what Web Highlights does with the words you mark. It has 200,000 downloads and a 4.84-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (across 4,888 reviews), and quality is trending up rather than down, as evidenced by its 4.85 rating for the last 100 reviews. It's on Edge and Firefox too, but Chrome is where the bulk of its audience lives. What earns it the top spot is a combination no other extension here offers: highlight a word or sentence on any website, PDF, or YouTube transcript, then turn it into a real question-and-answer flashcard and review it with the [SuperMemo spaced-repetition algorithm](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning#the-supermemo-algorithm) — the same method serious language learners already rely on. ![Creating flashcards with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*rp4aznTvaJ1n2-dnKWFslQ.png) *Flashcard editor of Web Highlights* For example, whenever you come across a word you don't know on any website, just select it, highlight it, and create a flashcard. That way, you can build your language learning habit into your daily workflow without any extra effort. You can build your own decks like "German Verbs" or "Spanish Idioms," or start from ready-made ones. Web Highlights ships [three English-vocabulary paths](https://web-highlights.com/learning/english-vocabulary) — ideal if you're learning English or prepping for IELTS — each split into levels you can open and study right in the browser, even without installing the extension: - [Core Vocabulary](https://web-highlights.com/learning/english-vocabulary/core-vocabulary) - [Idioms & Phrasal Verbs](https://web-highlights.com/learning/english-vocabulary/idioms-and-phrasal-verbs) - [IELTS Vocabulary](https://web-highlights.com/learning/english-vocabulary/ielts-vocabulary) Just visit one of the decks, choose a level, and start learning. Here is an example from Level 1 in IELTS Vocabulary: ![Study flashcard showing the answer to the question What does urbanisation mean](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/07/image-2.webp) *Answer to question: "What does "urbanisation" mean?* Let the on-device AI generate cards from a bookmarked article, and suddenly the foreign-language reading you were doing anyway becomes your study material. Vocabulary trainers catch single words as you browse — Web Highlights turns whole passages into things you actually remember. ### Key Features - **Flashcards & Spaced Repetition**  – Turn any highlight into a Q/A flashcard, build decks like "English Vocabulary", and review them with the SuperMemo spaced-repetition algorithm — AI can even generate whole decks from a bookmark, entirely on your device - **Website Highlighting**  – Easily highlight text on any website - **PDF Highlighting**  – Mark up online, local, and uploaded PDFs (up to 30 MB), then download them with your highlights embedded as real annotations - **AI Summary**  – Create quick, AI-powered summaries of your highlights and websites - **AI Chat**  – The local browser LLM understands the full context of the website, so you can chat with it and ask questions about any website, PDF, or YouTube video - **Multiple Colors**  – Use various colors to organize your highlights - **Note-Taking**  – Add notes to your highlights, or write standalone page notes with full formatting - **Bookmarking**  – Save pages as bookmarks for quick access - **Tagging**  – Organize your highlights and notes with tags - **Collections (Folders)**  – Organize bookmarks in a nested folder tree with drag & drop, alongside tags - **Cross-Device Sync**  – Sync highlights across devices via cloud - **Export Options**  – Export your highlights to Notion, Obsidian, HTML, Markdown, or as PDFs and HTML files - **Reminders**  – "Snooze" your bookmarks and get reminded about them by email ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Excellent free version - No account required - Spaced-repetition flashcard learning - Collections, tags & notes - Image highlighting supported - Keyboard shortcuts - Cross-device sync & beautiful web app **Cons:** - Cloud sync requires a paid plan - No native mobile app yet ### Who is this great for? Web Highlights is perfect for anyone who learns a language primarily through reading — news sites, blogs, Wikipedia rabbit holes, or PDFs and papers in your target language. Instead of letting good sentences scroll past, you mark them once and the spaced-repetition system makes sure they come back right before you'd forget them. It's especially great for students and self-learners who want one tool for research and vocabulary. The free Learning Hub adds ready-made decks — English vocabulary among them — and the AI deck generators turn any website, PDF, or YouTube video into study material without your text ever leaving the device. ### Compared to others Web Highlights approaches learning from a different angle than the rest of this list.  [Rememberry](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rememberry)  and  [Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo)  collect single words while you browse; Web Highlights starts from whole highlighted passages, which suits learners working with real texts rather than word lists. And where a popup dictionary like  [Yomitan](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/yomitan)  excels at instant lookups, it hands the memorization job off to Anki — Web Highlights keeps the entire read-highlight-review loop in one place. ### Detailed comparisons [Web Highlights vs Rememberry](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/web-highlights-vs-rememberry)  •  [Web Highlights vs Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/web-highlights-vs-relingo)  •  [Web Highlights vs Yomitan](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/web-highlights-vs-yomitan) With 200000 Chrome downloads and a 4.84-star rating that its most recent reviews only reinforce, this is as safe a pick as the category offers.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave PDF & Web Highlighter + AI Summary & Notes a score of 9.78/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) . ## [2\. Yomitan Popup Dictionary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/yomitan) ![Yomitan Popup Dictionary](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/yomitan/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Yomitan is the tool immersion learners eventually point everyone to. It has 100000 downloads and a 4.84-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (152 reviews), remarkably consistent for a volunteer-run project, as evidenced by its 4.8 rating for the last 100 reviews. There's a Firefox build carrying Mozilla's Recommended badge and an Edge port as well, but the workflow is identical everywhere. Yomitan is the free, open-source successor of the legendary Yomichan, which was delisted in 2023 — a community of developers picked the project up and has kept it moving ever since. The concept is beautifully simple: hold Shift, hover over any word on any website, and a popup shows definitions, readings, and native audio without you leaving the page. Add the one-click Anki flashcard export, and you have the backbone of the sentence-mining method thousands of Japanese learners swear by. It isn't limited to Japanese either — community dictionaries add Korean, Chinese, Spanish, and many more, and lookups work the same way. ### Key Features - **Instant Popup Lookups**  – Hold Shift and hover over any word on any website to see definitions and readings without leaving the page - **Smart Deinflection**  – Recognizes conjugated verbs and adjectives and traces them back to their dictionary form automatically - **20+ Languages via Importable Dictionaries**  – Built for Japanese first, but Korean, Chinese, Spanish, and many more work through community dictionaries - **One-Click Anki Export**  – Turn any lookup into a flashcard with its full sentence context — the classic sentence-mining workflow - **Audio Pronunciation**  – Hear native audio for words directly from the popup - **Kanji Breakdowns**  – Individual characters get their own view with readings, meanings, and composition - **Deep Customization**  – Profiles, scan modifiers, popup themes, and custom styling for power users - **Free & Open Source**  – Community-maintained with no account, no ads, and no paid tier ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Completely free and open source - Instant lookups on any website - One-click Anki flashcard export - Covers 20+ languages via dictionaries - Native audio pronunciation included - Deeply customizable for power users **Cons:** - Setup takes real effort - Dictionary imports can fail - Flashcards require external Anki - Occasional freezes on Chrome ### Who is this great for? Yomitan is perfect for anyone serious about learning through real content — especially Japanese learners on the immersion route, where it's borderline mandatory. If you read news sites, blogs, or subtitles in your target language, it turns every unknown word into a two-second lookup instead of a tab switch. It's especially great for users who already run Anki or are willing to set it up, because the one-click export makes sentence mining almost frictionless. Just know that Yomitan ships empty: budget fifteen minutes to import dictionaries before it does anything. That setup toll is where nearly every complaint in its reviews originates. ### Compared to others Against  [Zhongwen](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/zhongwen) , the trade is breadth versus convenience: Zhongwen ships with its Chinese dictionary built in and works instantly, while Yomitan covers 20+ languages but expects you to load them yourself. A suite like  [Migaku](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/migaku)  wraps similar lookups into a bigger subscription package with built-in flashcards, whereas Yomitan plus Anki gets you the same core loop for free — and for the video side Yomitan doesn't touch,  [Trancy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/trancy)  handles subtitles and shadowing. ### Detailed comparisons [Yomitan vs Zhongwen](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/yomitan-vs-zhongwen)  •  [Yomitan vs Migaku](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/yomitan-vs-migaku)  •  [Yomitan vs Trancy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/yomitan-vs-trancy) With 100000 Chrome downloads and a 4.84-star rating that barely moves across its last 100 reviews, Yomitan is one of the best-rated extensions in the whole category — at a price of zero.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave Yomitan Popup Dictionary a score of 9.28/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/yomitan) . ## [3\. 10ten Japanese Reader (Rikaichamp)](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rikaichamp) ![10ten Japanese Reader (Rikaichamp)](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/rikaichamp/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Japanese is the language where a popup dictionary stops being a convenience and becomes the thing that lets you read at all. 10ten Japanese Reader has 40000 downloads and a 4.67-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (100 reviews), holding steady as evidenced by its 4.63 rating for the last 100 reviews. Its longest history is actually on Firefox, where 21981 downloads and 271 reviews average 4.75, and there is an Edge build plus a Safari version for iPhone, iPad and Mac. The lineage goes back to Rikaichan and Rikaikun, and the name in brackets is the direct ancestor — Birchill shipped this as Rikaichamp before renaming it. Point at a word, get its reading and meaning. What lifts it above the genre is everything stacked around that: it deinflects verbs, so 食べてた resolves to 食べる whether or not you know the rule yet, it shows pitch accent as a diagram, it animates kanji stroke order, and it quietly converts era years, yen amounts and old measurement units as you read. ### Key Features - **Hover Lookups**  – Point at any Japanese word and a popup shows reading, meaning and part of speech, with an option to require a held key first - **Deinflection**  – Recognizes inflected and conjugated forms, so 食べてた or a causative passive resolves back to the dictionary entry - **Pitch Accent**  – Every entry that has accent data shows it as a diagram over the reading, which almost no other browser dictionary does - **Kanji Detail**  – Components, stroke count, stroke-order animations, and educational, JLPT and kanji kentei levels for the character under the cursor - **Number and Date Conversion**  – Turns 13億5千万 into 1,350,000,000, converts yen amounts, Japanese-era years and traditional measurements like tatami into modern equivalents - **Self-updating Dictionaries**  – Word, name and kanji databases refresh twice a week in the background with no manual imports - **Awkward Text Handling**  – Reads vertical text, text inside SVG images, YouTube subtitles and shogi notation, not just plain paragraphs - **Four Browsers, Including Mobile**  – The same reader runs on Chrome, Firefox and Edge, plus a Safari build for iPhone, iPad and Mac ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Completely free and open source - Instant lookups, no setup - Pitch accent on entries - Handles inflected verb forms - Kanji stroke-order animations - Also runs on mobile Safari **Cons:** - No monolingual Japanese dictionary - No audio pronunciation yet - Occasional activation bugs - No Google Docs lookups in Safari - No Anki or flashcard export ### Who is this great for? 10ten is perfect for anyone who reads Japanese on the web and wants to start doing it today. Install it, press Alt+R, hover a word — that is the entire onboarding, with no account, no dictionary imports and no settings to visit first. For beginners and intermediates working through news, novels or subtitles, it removes the tab-switching that kills reading momentum. It's especially great for users on a phone, because the Safari build for iPhone and iPad is close to unrivalled — almost nothing else in this category ships one at all. The gaps to know before you install: there is no monolingual dictionary, no audio, and no way to push a word into Anki, so pronunciation drilling and flashcards still need a second tool. ### Compared to others The obvious comparison is  [Yomitan](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/yomitan) , and the trade is sharp: Yomitan is more configurable and lets you import your own dictionaries — including the monolingual ones 10ten's users ask for most — but it ships empty and expects fifteen minutes of setup first. 10ten is reading Japanese while Yomitan is still downloading.  [Migaku](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/migaku)  wraps similar lookups into a full immersion suite with flashcards built in, at the cost of a subscription, and  [Zhongwen](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/zhongwen)  is the same zero-setup idea pointed at Chinese instead. ### Detailed comparisons [10ten Japanese Reader vs Yomitan](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/rikaichamp-vs-yomitan)  •  [10ten Japanese Reader vs Migaku](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/rikaichamp-vs-migaku)  •  [10ten Japanese Reader vs Zhongwen](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/rikaichamp-vs-zhongwen) With 40000 Chrome downloads and a 4.67-star rating that its most recent reviews hold steady, 10ten is the fastest route from install to actually reading Japanese — and it costs nothing.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave 10ten Japanese Reader (Rikaichamp) a score of 9.23/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rikaichamp) . ## [4\. Zhongwen: Chinese-English Dictionary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/zhongwen) ![Zhongwen: Chinese-English Dictionary](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/zhongwen/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Zhongwen has been putting a Chinese-English dictionary under people's cursors for more than a decade. It has 100000 downloads and a 4.61-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (733 reviews), though its 4.35 rating for the last 100 reviews hints at a bumpier recent stretch. A steadier Firefox build exists too, if Chrome ever gives you trouble. The idea is disarmingly simple. Hover over any Chinese word and a popup instantly shows the English definition, pinyin with tone colors, and both simplified and traditional forms — Cantonese readings included. Christian Schiller's open-source extension needs no account, no dictionary downloads, and no payment; it works on everything from news articles to webnovels without asking you to configure a single thing. The recent Chrome rating dip has a concrete cause: browser updates broke the extension for a stretch through late 2025. The current 6.3.0 release runs reliably again, but the pattern of breakage after platform changes is worth knowing about. ### Key Features - **Instant Hover Dictionary**  – Point at any Chinese word for an immediate English definition, no clicking required - **Pinyin with Tone Colors**  – Every syllable is color-coded by tone, so pronunciation sinks in as you read - **Simplified & Traditional**  – Recognizes both character sets and shows the matching form, with optional zhuyin (bopomofo) display - **Cantonese Support**  – Shows Cantonese readings alongside Mandarin pinyin - **Built-in Word List**  – Save words as you read, then export the list for flashcard apps like Anki - **Chinese Grammar Wiki Links**  – Press G on a word to jump straight to the relevant grammar explanation - **Skritter Integration**  – Send new vocabulary directly to Skritter for handwriting practice - **Dictionary Shortcuts**  – One keystroke opens the current word in external dictionaries such as MDBG ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Completely free and open source - Instant lookups while reading - Tone-colored pinyin display - Word-list export for flashcards - No account or setup needed - Cantonese and zhuyin support **Cons:** - Occasional breakages on Chrome - Few customization options - No keybind trigger option - Chinese to English only ### Who is this great for? Zhongwen is perfect for anyone learning Chinese, from the first month of study onward. Beginners get pinyin and tone colors on every word; advanced readers get idiom and proper-name recognition that keeps up with real texts. It's especially great for users who want zero friction: install it, click the toolbar icon, and start reading. No other tool in this comparison gets you from install to actually reading foreign text faster, and the word-list export means your reading still feeds a flashcard routine in Anki. ### Compared to others The obvious comparison is  [Yomitan](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/yomitan) , which brings the same popup-dictionary concept to Japanese and other languages but expects you to import dictionary files first — Zhongwen ships with everything built in. A subscription suite like  [Migaku](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/migaku)  adds video subtitles and integrated flashcards that Zhongwen deliberately leaves out, while  [Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo)  spreads itself across many languages with vocabulary tracking; Zhongwen's single-minded Chinese focus means every detail serves that one goal. ### Detailed comparisons [Zhongwen vs Yomitan](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/zhongwen-vs-yomitan)  •  [Zhongwen vs Migaku](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/zhongwen-vs-migaku)  •  [Zhongwen vs Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/zhongwen-vs-relingo) With 100000 Chrome downloads and a 4.61-star rating, Zhongwen has quietly become infrastructure for an entire learning community — the recent dip is about platform breakage, not the tool's design.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave Zhongwen: Chinese-English Dictionary a score of 8.97/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/zhongwen) . ## [5\. Rememberry - Translate and Memorize with Flashcards](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rememberry) ![Rememberry - Translate and Memorize with Flashcards](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/rememberry/images/gallery-image-1.webp) If new words keep slipping away minutes after you look them up, Rememberry was built for exactly that problem. It has 100000 downloads and a 4.6-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (1,011 reviews), though its 4.49 rating for the last 100 reviews lands a touch below that long-term average. The Edge and Firefox listings are recent additions, so Chrome is where its track record lives. The loop is what sells it: select a word or short phrase on any website, click the little head icon, and you get an instant translation covering more than 100 languages. One more click saves that word as a flashcard, and Rememberry's built-in trainer later quizzes you on it with spaced repetition — right around the time you'd otherwise forget it. Where pure translators answer what a word means and stop there, Rememberry treats every lookup as a vocabulary card waiting to happen. That makes the difference between reading foreign-language pages and actually learning from them. ### Key Features - **On-Page Translator**  – Select any word or short phrase and click the popup icon for an instant translation, no tab switching - **100+ Languages**  – Translate between more than 100 source and target languages - **One-Click Flashcards**  – Save any translation as a flashcard the moment you look it up - **Spaced Repetition Trainer**  – Built-in review sessions resurface words right before you would forget them - **Decks**  – Organize saved words into separate decks per language or topic - **Pronunciation & Phonetics**  – Hear words read aloud and check their phonetic transcription - **Import & Export**  – Move your decks out as CSV files, for example to back them up or continue in Anki - **Reverse Translations (Pro)**  – Drill your cards in both directions with the paid plan ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Instant on-page translations - Built-in spaced-repetition trainer - Supports 100+ languages - One-click flashcard saving - CSV export to Anki - Responsive developer **Cons:** - Can slow down YouTube - Free plan grew stricter - Pro feels expensive - Occasional saved-word glitches - No PDF or mobile support ### Who is this great for? Rememberry is perfect for anyone who does most of their foreign-language reading in the browser — students, expats, or anyone working through articles in another language daily. The natural comparison is Anki: the same core learning principle, but with none of the setup effort, because reading builds your cards for you. It's especially great for users who want their vocabulary practice to happen automatically. Casual learners saving a handful of words a week can live entirely on the free tier; heavy readers should budget for Pro or use the CSV export to continue their decks in Anki, since the free plan's limits have tightened over the years. ### Compared to others A translator-and-dictionary tool like  [Reverso](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/reverso)  stops at the lookup; Rememberry closes the loop with reviews. Against  [Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo) , the difference is initiative — Relingo highlights words it thinks you don't know, while Rememberry only saves what you choose to look up. And if you'd rather have your words marked on the page itself as you read,  [Burning Vocabulary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/burning-vocabulary)  approaches the same goal from that angle. ### Detailed comparisons [Rememberry vs Reverso](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/rememberry-vs-reverso)  •  [Rememberry vs Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/rememberry-vs-relingo)  •  [Rememberry vs Burning Vocabulary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/rememberry-vs-burning-vocabulary) With 100000 Chrome downloads and a 4.6-star rating across 1,011 reviews, Rememberry has earned its audience.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave Rememberry - Translate and Memorize with Flashcards a score of 8.70/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rememberry) . ## [6\. Trancy - AI Translator & Dual Subtitles](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/trancy) ![Trancy - AI Translator & Dual Subtitles](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/trancy/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Trancy is the most ambitious video-learning tool in this lineup. It has 300000 downloads and a 4.7-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (2,741 reviews), though recent months have been bumpier, as evidenced by its 4.12 rating for the last 100 reviews. It's on Edge and Firefox as well, but Chrome carries most of its users. The pitch: Trancy lays AI-powered bilingual subtitles over YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, and course platforms like Coursera, then turns every video into a lesson. Switch into learning mode and you step through the transcript sentence by sentence, replay a line with a single key, and shadow the speaker until it sticks. Click any word to save it to your vocabulary book, and practice pronunciation against AI feedback. The recent rating dip has a clear cause, too: a wave of HTTP 429 server errors and recurring forced logouts frustrated users — including paying ones — around the time of our review. ### Key Features - **AI Bilingual Subtitles**  – Dual-language subtitles on YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, and learning platforms like Coursera, generated by AI when no captions exist - **Sentence-by-Sentence Learning Mode**  – Step through the transcript line by line, replay each sentence, and shadow the speaker at your own pace - **One-Click Vocabulary Capture**  – Click any word in a subtitle to save it with its context, then see it highlighted the next time it appears - **AI Speaking Practice**  – Record your pronunciation and get detailed AI feedback, or talk to an AI conversation partner - **Full-Page Web Translation**  – Translate articles and websites on demand, without auto-translating every page you open - **Multiple Translation Engines**  – Google and Microsoft engines for free, premium AI engines with the Pro plan - **Flashcards & Word Review**  – Review saved vocabulary with built-in flashcards, dictionaries, and word lists - **Transcript Export**  – Copy or download subtitles to reuse in your notes or feed to an AI assistant ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Dual subtitles on major platforms - Excellent sentence-by-sentence learning mode - One-click vocabulary saving - AI speaking and shadowing practice - Generous free version - Clean, well-integrated subtitle design **Cons:** - Frequent forced logouts - Recent server errors (HTTP 429) - Weaker non-English translation quality - Netflix support occasionally breaks - Tight free vocabulary cap ### Who is this great for? Trancy is perfect for anyone who learns through YouTube, Netflix, or online courses and wants structure layered on top of the watching. The sentence-by-sentence learning mode is its standout feature — it turns a conference talk into a shadowing exercise without any copy-pasting. It's especially great for users who want speaking practice included: the AI pronunciation feedback and conversation partner cover ground that subtitle tools normally ignore. Start on the generous free plan, and upgrade to Pro once the noticeably better AI translation engines start to matter — the yearly price sits below what most language schools charge for a single month. ### Compared to others Trancy's closest in-list rival for video is  [Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo) , which also lays bilingual subtitles over YouTube and Netflix but centers on vocabulary highlighting rather than a structured learning mode.  [Migaku](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/migaku)  courts more committed learners with sentence mining and a built-in SRS at a steeper subscription, while  [Reverso](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/reverso)  translates subtitles on hover but stops short of Trancy's shadowing and speaking practice. ### Detailed comparisons [Trancy vs Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/trancy-vs-relingo)  •  [Trancy vs Migaku](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/trancy-vs-migaku)  •  [Trancy vs Reverso](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/trancy-vs-reverso) With 300000 Chrome downloads and a 4.7-star rating, Trancy has real momentum despite the recent server wobbles.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave Trancy - AI Translator & Dual Subtitles a score of 8.40/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/trancy) . ## [7\. Reverso – Translation, dictionary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/reverso) ![Reverso – Translation, dictionary](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/reverso/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Reverso behaves less like a dictionary popup and more like a compact language lab. It has 200000 downloads and a 4.56-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (1,361 reviews), though its 3.75 rating for the last 100 reviews points to a bumpier recent stretch. An older Reverso Context beta lingers on Firefox, but Chrome gets the current build. What sets it apart is context. Select a word and Reverso doesn't just return a translation — it shows the word working inside real example sentences, so you can tell which of five possible meanings actually fits. Conjugation tables, synonyms, and pronunciation sit one tab away, Netflix and YouTube subtitles translate on hover, and every lookup can go straight into a phrasebook with flashcards. The recent dip has a concrete story behind it: a July 2026 update briefly removed the popup's search bar, and long-time fans were loud about it. To Reverso's credit, the feature was back within days. ### Key Features - **Translation in Context**  – Every lookup shows real example sentences from actual usage, so you pick the meaning that truly fits - **One-Click Translations**  – Select text on any website and a small icon appears; click it and the translation pops up in place - **Subtitle Translation**  – Hover over words in Netflix and YouTube subtitles to translate them while you watch - **Conjugation Tables**  – Full verb conjugations are one tab away from any translation - **Synonyms & Definitions**  – Explore alternatives and nuances without leaving the popup - **Pronunciation**  – Hear selected words and phrases read aloud as you browse - **Phrasebook & Flashcards**  – Save looked-up words to your phrasebook and review them as flashcards later - **Cross-Device Ecosystem**  – Your saved words sync with Reverso's web, desktop, and mobile apps ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Context examples with every translation - Fast one-click, in-page lookups - Netflix & YouTube subtitle translation - Built-in conjugation and synonyms - Phrasebook with flashcard review - Generous, genuinely useful free tier **Cons:** - Short translation length limits - Persistent YouTube icon and prompts - Lookups occasionally fail to trigger - No full-page translation - Firefox version lags behind Chrome ### Who is this great for? Reverso is perfect for anyone who wants to understand words rather than just swap them. When one English word maps to five possible French ones, the real-sentence examples are what save you from picking the wrong one — no other tool in this comparison does that as convincingly. It's especially great for users who want lookup, context, and review in one place without paying: the free tier covers word-level translation, conjugation, pronunciation, subtitles, and flashcards. The catch is length — roughly 150 characters per translation without an account, about 300 with a free one — so paragraph translators will bump into the wall quickly. ### Compared to others If vocabulary drilling matters more than translation depth,  [Rememberry](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rememberry)  is the more focused flashcard machine, saving and quizzing you on every word you look up.  [Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo)  adds the full-page, sentence-by-sentence translation that Reverso deliberately doesn't attempt, and for studying subtitles as you watch,  [Trancy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/trancy)  builds an entire learning mode around video that Reverso only touches lightly. ### Detailed comparisons [Reverso vs Rememberry](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/reverso-vs-rememberry)  •  [Reverso vs Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/reverso-vs-relingo)  •  [Reverso vs Trancy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/reverso-vs-trancy) With 200000 Chrome downloads and a 4.56-star rating from 1,361 reviews, Reverso remains the most learning-friendly translator in this list — the recent dip traces to a brief July 2026 stumble it fixed within days.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave Reverso – Translation, dictionary a score of 8.33/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/reverso) . ## [8\. Relingo - Master vocabulary while browsing websites and watching YouTube](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo) ![Relingo - Master vocabulary while browsing websites and watching YouTube](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/relingo/images/logo.webp) Relingo quietly turns your browsing and YouTube time into vocabulary practice. It has 50000 downloads and a 4.6-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (997 reviews), though its 4.3 rating for the last 100 reviews shows recent feedback dipping below the all-time average. It's on Edge and Firefox too, with Chrome the main home. Tell Relingo your native language and your level, and it underlines the words on any webpage that you probably don't know yet, with the translation sitting right beside them — like reading with a patient tutor looking over your shoulder. One click saves a word to your word book, and from then on it stays highlighted wherever you meet it again. The trump card is video: bilingual subtitles on YouTube, Netflix, and TED, complete with a full transcript panel, make it just as useful for listening practice as for reading. The recent dip traces to occasional YouTube playback bugs and a rate-us popup that appears far more often than it should. ### Key Features - **Smart Vocabulary Highlighting**  – Detects words above your level on any webpage and underlines them automatically - **Inline Translations**  – Shows the meaning right next to the word, so you keep reading instead of switching to a dictionary - **Bilingual Video Subtitles**  – Dual-language subtitles for YouTube, Netflix, and TED, including a full transcript panel - **Word Book & Flashcards**  – Save words with one click and review them later as flashcards - **Auto-Highlight of Saved Words**  – Words you've saved stay marked on every future page until you master them - **Full-Page Translation**  – Immersive, sentence-by-sentence translation of entire articles - **Vocabulary Level Test**  – Estimates your vocabulary size to calibrate what gets highlighted - **Cross-Device Sync**  – Your word book follows you into Relingo's mobile apps ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Level-based vocabulary highlighting - Bilingual YouTube & Netflix subtitles - One-click word saving - Learning in real context - Useful free version - Cross-device word sync **Cons:** - Occasional YouTube playback bugs - Frequent rate-us popups - Free word book capped - Broad browser permissions - Some translations miss nuance ### Who is this great for? Relingo is perfect for anyone learning English, Japanese, or Chinese who reads and watches a lot online and wants the learning to happen without extra effort. The automatic difficulty calibration means you never configure word lists — you just mark words as known or unknown as you go. It's especially great for users who want reading and listening practice in one tool: the same word book collects vocabulary from articles and video subtitles alike, then syncs it into Relingo's mobile apps for review on the go. If your target language is less common — Turkish, Persian, or Hindi, say — expect gaps in coverage. ### Compared to others Relingo sits in a crowded family.  [Burning Vocabulary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/burning-vocabulary)  follows a nearly identical mark-and-review concept but leaves the choosing to you, while  [Rememberry](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rememberry)  saves only the words you deliberately look up rather than flagging them for you. Relingo's bilingual video subtitles are what neither matches. If you'd prefer a dedicated reading environment over an on-page overlay,  [Readlang Web Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/readlang-web-reader)  is the better fit. ### Detailed comparisons [Relingo vs Burning Vocabulary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/relingo-vs-burning-vocabulary)  •  [Relingo vs Rememberry](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/relingo-vs-rememberry)  •  [Relingo vs Readlang Web Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/relingo-vs-readlang-web-reader) With 50000 Chrome downloads and a 4.6-star rating from 997 reviews, Relingo has built a loyal following around a loop that simply works.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave Relingo a score of 8.27/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo) . ## [9\. Burning Vocabulary - Learn words from reading](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/burning-vocabulary) ![Burning Vocabulary - Learn words from reading](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/burning-vocabulary/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Burning Vocabulary takes a clever approach to the words you keep looking up without ever learning: mark a word once, and it stays highlighted everywhere you read. It has 10000 downloads and a 4.4-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (129 reviews), as evidenced by its steady 4.42 rating for the last 100 reviews. It has quietly built an even bigger audience on Edge, where recent feedback trends a little higher still. The workflow could hardly be leaner. Double-click an unknown word on any webpage, YouTube subtitle, or PDF, and the extension translates it, reads it aloud, and files it away together with the sentence you found it in. From then on, that word shows up underlined on every page you visit — reading itself becomes revision, a bit like backlinks in a note-taking app — and built-in flashcards with spaced repetition close the loop. When a card comes up for review, one click takes you back to the exact article or video where you met the word. ### Key Features - **One-Click Word Marking**  – Double-click or right-click any unknown word to save it instantly, together with the sentence you found it in - **Highlights Everywhere**  – Marked words stay underlined on every website you visit afterwards, so you keep re-encountering them until they stick - **Subtitle Marking**  – Save words straight from YouTube subtitles while watching videos in your target language - **PDF Support**  – Mark vocabulary in PDFs opened in your browser — handy for papers and study material - **Flashcards & Spaced Repetition**  – Auto-generated cards resurface your words at growing intervals, each one linking back to its source article or video - **Instant Translation & Pronunciation**  – See a quick translation and hear the word spoken the moment you mark it - **Mobile Review**  – A companion web app lets Pro users flip through their deck on the phone during idle minutes ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Marks words on any webpage - Works on YouTube subtitles - Saved words highlighted everywhere - Spaced-repetition flashcards built in - Instant translation and pronunciation - Lightweight and quick to use **Cons:** - Free plan caps saved words - Subtitle marking occasionally breaks - No dark mode - Dashboard design feels dated - Pro is subscription-only - Weak phrase and idiom support ### Who is this great for? Burning Vocabulary is perfect for anyone who already spends their days reading articles, papers, or subtitles in a foreign language and wants new words to accumulate on the side. The persistent cross-page highlighting is its genuinely special trick — words you marked on Monday follow you around the web all week. It's especially great for users who value speed: it's lightweight and quick to use, and for a tool you trigger dozens of times per reading session, that responsiveness matters. The free plan caps out around 40 saved words though — enough to test the concept, too little for serious study — so daily readers should budget for the yearly Pro subscription. ### Compared to others [Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo)  automates what Burning Vocabulary leaves manual — it decides which words to underline, while Burning Vocabulary trusts you to pick them.  [Rememberry](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rememberry)  gives you translation flashcards without a word cap, but lacks the cross-page highlighting that makes this extension special. And  [Readlang Web Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/readlang-web-reader)  builds its flashcards from click-to-translate reading rather than words you mark yourself. ### Detailed comparisons [Burning Vocabulary vs Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/burning-vocabulary-vs-relingo)  •  [Burning Vocabulary vs Rememberry](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/burning-vocabulary-vs-rememberry)  •  [Burning Vocabulary vs Readlang Web Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/burning-vocabulary-vs-readlang-web-reader) With 10000 Chrome downloads and a 4.4-star rating whose recent reviews hold steady, Burning Vocabulary punches above its size.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave Burning Vocabulary - Learn words from reading a score of 8.10/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/burning-vocabulary) . ## [10\. Migaku: Really Learn Languages](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/migaku) ![Migaku: Really Learn Languages](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/migaku/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Migaku wants to be your entire study system, not just a browser add-on. The extension has 50000 downloads and a 4.3-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (113 reviews), though its 4.06 rating for the last 100 reviews dips slightly below that all-time average — recent versions have drawn bug complaints alongside a lot of love. One structural limit up front: it's currently Chrome-only. Open Netflix or YouTube and Migaku layers interactive subtitles over the video. Every word is clickable — a popup shows the definition and reading, and one more click turns the whole sentence into a flashcard with the screenshot and audio clip captured automatically. Everything feeds into Migaku Memory, the companion spaced-repetition app, and the extension tracks which words you already know across more than ten languages, so you can see at a glance whether a video sits in your comprehension sweet spot. ### Key Features - **Interactive subtitles**  – Layers clickable dual subtitles over Netflix, YouTube, and other streaming sites - **Instant word lookups**  – Click any word for a dictionary popup with definitions, readings, and pitch accent — including furigana for Japanese - **One-click sentence mining**  – Turns the current subtitle line into a flashcard with the screenshot and audio clip captured automatically - **Built-in spaced repetition**  – Cards land in Migaku Memory, the companion SRS app, so no extra flashcard setup is needed - **Word knowledge tracking**  – Marks every word as known or unknown, so you see at a glance how difficult a video is for you - **AI-assisted explanations**  – Context-based explanations and example sentences help you decode tricky grammar on the spot - **Subtitle generation**  – Creates subtitles for videos that do not ship with usable ones - **Beginner courses**  – Hand-crafted Academy courses cover the basics before you dive into native content ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - One-click sentence mining - Interactive subtitles on streaming sites - Built-in spaced-repetition flashcards - Tracks known words automatically - Supports more than ten languages - Responsive devs, active Discord community **Cons:** - Recurring bugs on streaming sites - No permanent free tier - Chrome-only, no Firefox support - Some legacy features still missing ### Who is this great for? Migaku is perfect for anyone serious about learning a language through the content they love — the kind of learner who studies daily and wants watching, mining, and reviewing unified in one subscription. For that person, it replaces a popup dictionary, subtitle helpers, a flashcard app, and a progress tracker in one go. It's especially great for users who found the classic Yomitan-plus-Anki stack too fiddly: Migaku delivers the same sentence-mining workflow with the plumbing already connected. Casual viewers who only want dual subtitles should look elsewhere, though — there's no permanent free tier, and the trial asks for payment details up front. ### Compared to others Lighter tools like  [Trancy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/trancy)  and  [Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo)  focus on dual subtitles and translation; Migaku goes further with word tracking and integrated spaced repetition, at the cost of a mandatory subscription. On the lookup side,  [Yomitan](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/yomitan)  handles instant dictionary popups for free — Migaku's pitch is that the integrated whole is worth paying for. ### Detailed comparisons [Migaku vs Trancy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/migaku-vs-trancy)  •  [Migaku vs Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/migaku-vs-relingo)  •  [Migaku vs Yomitan](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/migaku-vs-yomitan) With 50000 Chrome downloads and a 4.3-star rating from 113 reviews, Migaku has carved out a devoted following among immersion learners.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave Migaku: Really Learn Languages a score of 8.08/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/migaku) . ## [11\. Readlang Web Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/readlang-web-reader) ![Readlang Web Reader](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/readlang-web-reader/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Readlang Web Reader is built for one thing: reading the web in the language you're learning. The extension has 100000 downloads and a 4.34-star rating on the Chrome Web Store (218 reviews), though its 4 rating for the last 100 reviews shows recent users being a bit more critical — mostly about free-plan limits rather than the reading experience itself. A much newer Firefox listing exists, but Chrome is the mature one. Browse any website in your target language, click a word you don't know, and the translation appears right in the text — no new tab, no copy-paste. Every word you look up is saved with its original sentence and turned into a flashcard on readlang.com, where a spaced-repetition scheduler handles your practice. Between the free graded reading library, imported EPUB ebooks, and unlimited single-word lookups on the free plan, it's a complete reading-first study system. ### Key Features - **Click-to-Translate**  – Click any word on a webpage and the translation appears instantly, right inside the text - **Phrase Translations**  – Select several words at once for a context-aware translation of the whole phrase (limited per day on the free plan) - **Automatic Flashcards**  – Every word you translate is saved with its original sentence and turned into a flashcard - **Spaced Repetition**  – Practice your saved words on readlang.com with a scheduler that resurfaces them right before you forget - **Reading Library**  – Free graded texts and videos with synced transcripts, sorted by difficulty level - **Import Your Own Texts**  – Upload articles or DRM-free EPUB ebooks and read them in the same click-to-translate reader - **Word List Export**  – Export your vocabulary lists for use in other flashcard tools, or import existing ones - **Text-to-Speech**  – Hear words and flashcards read aloud (audio auto-plays on the paid plan) ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - In-context word translations - Automatic flashcard creation - Built-in spaced repetition - Free graded reading library - Supports many languages - Unlimited free word lookups **Cons:** - Daily phrase-translation cap - Requires third-party cookies - Broad site permissions - No mobile version ### Who is this great for? Readlang is perfect for intermediate learners who can already limp through real texts and want reading to be their main study method. Beginners will hit too many unknown words for click-by-click lookups to stay fun — the graded library is the better starting point there. It's especially great for users who want studying to organize itself: you just read, and the flashcards build themselves in the background, each one showing the word inside its original sentence. Go in aware of the two complaints that dominate recent feedback — the daily phrase-translation cap on the free plan, and the hard dependency on third-party cookies that trips up strict privacy setups. ### Compared to others [Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo)  covers similar vocabulary-capture ground with a different free-versus-paid split worth comparing, while  [Burning Vocabulary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/burning-vocabulary)  marks only the words you choose rather than every one you click. And if you'd rather your saved words became translate-and-memorize flashcards in a dedicated trainer,  [Rememberry](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rememberry)  leans harder into the review side than Readlang's reading-first approach. ### Detailed comparisons [Readlang Web Reader vs Relingo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/readlang-web-reader-vs-relingo)  •  [Readlang Web Reader vs Burning Vocabulary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/readlang-web-reader-vs-burning-vocabulary)  •  [Readlang Web Reader vs Rememberry](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/readlang-web-reader-vs-rememberry) With 100000 Chrome downloads and a 4.34-star rating from 218 reviews, Readlang has earned its long-running reputation among reading-focused learners.  [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/)  gave Readlang Web Reader a score of 7.83/10.  [Check out the full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/readlang-web-reader) . ## Final Thoughts Looking at all 11 of these Chrome extensions side by side, our overall winner is  [**PDF & Web Highlighter + AI Summary & Notes**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights)  at 9.78/10. No other tool here closes the loop from reading to remembering as completely: highlight real texts in your target language, and the SuperMemo-based spaced-repetition flashcards — with AI-generated decks built entirely on your device — turn them into vocabulary that sticks. In a category where several big names are sliding, its recent reviews sitting above its all-time average tell you the quality is holding. The free popup dictionaries are the other easy recommendations:  [**Yomitan**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/yomitan)  is borderline mandatory for Japanese immersion learners willing to spend fifteen minutes on setup,  [**10ten Japanese Reader**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rikaichamp)  gets you reading Japanese in a single keystroke if that setup puts you off, and  [**Zhongwen**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/zhongwen)  remains the fastest route from install to actually reading Chinese. For learning through video,  [**Trancy**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/trancy)  is the most dependable pick, built around a sentence-by-sentence learning mode, while  [**Migaku**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/migaku)  justifies its subscription for daily immersion students who want watching, mining, and reviewing in one place.  [**Reverso**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/reverso)  is the translator to reach for when you want to understand words in context rather than just swap them. Vocabulary collectors should choose by temperament:  [**Rememberry**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/rememberry)  for translate-and-memorize,  [**Relingo**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/relingo)  for automatic highlighting plus bilingual video subtitles,  [**Burning Vocabulary**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/burning-vocabulary)  for marking words yourself and having them follow you across the web, and  [**Readlang Web Reader**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/readlang-web-reader)  if focused reading is your method. The good news is that nearly everything here is free to try. Install two or three that fit how you actually spend your time in Chrome, give them a week, and keep the one you stop noticing. If you'd like the numbers side by side first, the  [full comparison table of all Language Learning extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/language-learning/chrome)  has every rating in one place. We've run the same comparison on  [Chrome bookmark managers](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-bookmark-manager-chrome-extensions/)  and  [Chrome email finder tools](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-email-finder-tools/)  too. --- # Turn YouTube Videos into Flashcards You’ll Remember > You watched the whole talk and kept almost none of it. Highlight the transcript, let on-device AI write the cards — free, private, no signup. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-07-20 - Updated: 2026-10-05 - Tags: Youtube, Flashcard Learning, Learning, AI - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/turn-youtube-videos-into-flashcards-youll-remember/ --- A while ago I watched a 45-minute talk on YouTube that was really useful. A few weeks later I tried to tell a friend about it — and I couldn’t remember a single point from it. I watched the whole video and kept almost nothing. > _Videos are the easiest thing to consume and the hardest thing to keep._ I don’t think that’s a discipline problem — it’s the format. Watching is easy: the video keeps playing even when your attention drifts, and nothing ever asks you a question. And without being asked, you forget. I wrote about the science behind that in [Spaced Repetition: How to Make Your Readings Stick in Long-Term Memory](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/)  , so I’ll keep it short here. Here’s what I do now: every YouTube video has a transcript sitting behind it — text you can read, highlight, and learn from. With my [free Web Highlights Browser Extension](https://web-highlights.com/)  , I open the video as text, mark what mattered, and turn it into flashcards. If you prefer a video, here is a full tutorial: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2XlpicnD_0) ### What is Web Highlights? [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a free browser extension used by hundreds of thousands of people.  I built it so you can highlight whatever you read in your browser — web pages, PDFs, and YouTube transcripts — and keep it all in one library, with notes and flashcards attached to the exact text they came from. > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize… ### How Can I Turn a YouTube Video into Flashcards? With the [extension installed](https://web-highlights.com/install)  , open the video in the Web Highlights reader and you get the player with its transcript beside it. > If you don’t want to install the extension, you can also use our [free Youtube Highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-youtube-video) or the [free Youtube Flashcard Generator](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-flashcard-generator) where you can simply paste a YouTube URL to get started. The video becomes a highlightable article you can watch and mark at the same time. Of course, you can also just skim the transcript. ![Youtube Reader Preview of Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/07/youtube-reader-preview.webp) *Youtube Reader of Web Highlights* From there, there are two easy ways to get to flashcards: ### 1\. Turn a Single Transcript Highlight into a Flashcard If one moment of the talk is the thing you want to keep, highlight that sentence in the transcript, find it in the sidebar, and click the brain icon. The flashcard editor opens with the quote as the answer — write the question yourself, or hit ✨ Generate with AI and have it drafted on your device.  ![Creating flashcards with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*rp4aznTvaJ1n2-dnKWFslQ.png) *Flashcard editor of Web Highlights* The card keeps the highlight on its back, so you’ll always know which video it came from. ### 2\. Turn the Whole Video into a Flashcard Deck For a talk with several points worth keeping, open the saved video and choose “✨ Generate Flashcards” from its quick actions. The AI Flashcard Generator drafts question-and-answer cards from your highlights and the transcript. A slider sets the number of cards (1 to 20), each card appears checked by default, and you can edit any question, uncheck the filler, or regenerate for a fresh batch. ![Flashcard configurator](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/07/image.webp) *Flashcard configurator* Your highlights go in; questions come out — edit before saving Hit “Create flashcards” and the deck is in your library — and the talk you watched in March starts asking you questions in April. ### No Install? Paste the Link Instead If you’d rather see the output before installing anything, I built a free [YouTube Flashcard Generator](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-flashcard-generator) : paste a video link, the transcript opens in the reader, and the same generator drafts a deck — no account, no signup. It works from the whole transcript rather than from your highlights, which, as you’ll see in a moment, is exactly the difference that matters on a long video. > [**YouTube to Flashcards - Free AI Flashcard Generator**](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-flashcard-generator) — Paste a YouTube link and turn the video into study flashcards in seconds. On-device AI writes the questions and answers — free, private, no signup. ### Review Until It Sticks Now the reviewing starts. Every day you get a session of ten cards — two or three minutes. Each card shows its question; you answer in your head, reveal, and grade yourself Correct or Incorrect.  A variant of the SuperMemo algorithm — the same family Anki made famous — pushes what you know further out and brings back what you don’t. On the learning dashboard you watch your cards climb from “Likely to Forget” toward “Long-Term Memory”. For more details check out our [spaced repetition docs](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning) if you want to understand how it works under the hood. ![Learning Session](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/07/flashcard-learning-session.webp) *Learning Session* ### A Few Things to Know - **The video needs captions.** No captions, no transcript, no cards — you’ll get the player and nothing to study. Most talks, lectures and tutorials are fine; some are not. - **Free is one video and one deck per day.** Fetching transcripts genuinely costs me money, so the free limit is small and honest. Conveniently, that’s one video, one deck — about what a study session should be. The [Ultimate plan](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) lifts both. - **Card generation needs Chrome 138+ or a recent Microsoft Edge on desktop.** The first run downloads the on-device model (a few gigabytes; Chrome wants around 22 GB of free disk before it agrees). Edge has its model only on Windows and macOS, and there is no on-device AI on phones yet. Highlighting and reviewing work in any browser — and because the model runs on your device, the transcript is never sent to a cloud AI to write your cards. ### Final Thoughts Next time a video is worth 45 minutes of watching, give it two more. [**Install Web Highlights for free**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)   , highlight the three things you’d hate to lose, and turn them into flashcards. Or try it with nothing installed — paste one link into the [free generator](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-flashcard-generator) and let the questions bring back a talk you’d otherwise forget. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts)   . ### Frequently Asked Questions #### Can I turn any YouTube video into flashcards? Any video with captions, which is most of them. A normal watch link, a youtu.be short link or a Shorts link all work. Private and age-restricted videos, and anything without captions, won’t produce a transcript — and no transcript means no cards. #### Is it really free? Yes, with limits I’d rather state than hide: one video and one deck a day, no account needed. Sign up free when you want your decks kept; syncing them across devices is free for your first 7 days. #### Does my video data get uploaded anywhere? The cards are written by the browser’s built-in AI (Gemini Nano in Chrome, Phi-4-mini in Edge) running on your own computer, so the transcript isn’t shipped to a cloud model to be turned into flashcards. That’s the part most of these tools don’t mention at all. --- # Turn ChatGPT Conversations into Flashcards You’ll Remember > You learn a lot in ChatGPT and forget most of it. Highlight the answers, let on-device AI draft flashcards, and keep them with spaced repetition. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-07-17 - Updated: 2026-07-20 - Tags: ChatGPT, Learning, Flashcard Learning, Spaced Repetition - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/turn-chatgpt-conversations-into-flashcards/ --- A while ago I caught myself asking ChatGPT exactly the same question — for the third time. Same question, same answer, same “ah, right.” And even the third time around, I hadn’t really learned anything. > _If you had to ask twice, you didn’t learn it the first time_ I feel like that’s a contradiction we all feel more and more: we finally have an assistant that explains anything, and remembering becomes optional because asking again is so cheap. One thing hasn’t changed: reading something once isn’t enough to remember or even understand it. You have to [recall it](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-learning-retention-matters-online-learning/) , again and again. Here’s the fix I use: Whenever I’m having a conversation with ChatGPT that’s worth remembering, I use my [free Web Highlights Browser Extension](https://web-highlights.com/) to generate flashcards from the conversation. If you prefer a video, here is a full tutorial: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlzSr2G9wis) ### What is Web Highlights? [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a free browser extension I built that’s now used by hundreds of thousands of people to highlight and save anything they read online. You can mark up text in multiple colors, add notes right on the page, and everything gets synced automatically to your personal library. > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) Here’s how it works with ChatGPT specifically: The Web Highlights extension treats a ChatGPT conversation like any other webpage. You can [highlight any part of the conversation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-web-highlights-can-enhance-your-chatgpt-experience-the-power-of-text-highlighting/) using multiple colors and add notes directly on the page. All your highlights are automatically saved to your library, which you can access by clicking the Web Highlights extension icon in your browser toolbar. ### How Can I Create Flashcards With Web Highlights? Given you have the Web Highlights browser extension installed, there are two easy ways to generate flashcards from any ChatGPT chat: #### 1\. Create Flashcards By Highlighting Specific Answers Choose this option if you just want to remember one specific thing about your ChatGPT conversation. Given you have [Web Highlights installed](https://web-highlights.com/install) , just select ChatGPT’s answer using your cursor and choose a color of your liking from the highlighter popup to mark up the answer. ![Web Highlights in action on ChatGPT](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*NGELRaYugX0VXBVyY4yXuw.png) *Web Highlights in action on ChatGPT* Now, find your highlight in the sidebar and click the **brain icon** on your highlight. This will open the flashcard editor, you can see below: ![Creating flashcards with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*rp4aznTvaJ1n2-dnKWFslQ.png) *Flashcard editor of Web Highlights* You can either write the question yourself, or hit **✨ Generate with AI** and let Chrome’s built-in model draft both. The original highlight stays on the back of the card as context, so you always see where the answer came from. Below is an easy practical of me asking ChatGPT: _“Why is flashcard learning better than reading?”_ ![Create flashcards from ChatGPT answers](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*WWuOWUo4cigOblyhj9PEEQ.gif) *Create specific flashcards for specific ChatGPT answers* You can see that I selected ChatGPT’s answer using _“Flashcard learning is generally more effective than simply rereading because it uses active recall instead of passive recognition.”_ in a pastel green color. Then I used the AI generator to let the AI create a question for my highlight which filled the question with _“Why is flashcard studying better than just reading the material over again?”_ after seconds. Afterwards, I started a learning session for my ChatGPT chat by clicking “Start learning” from the quick actions at the bottom of my sidebar. #### 2\. Turn a Whole Conversation into a Deck The second option makes sense if you had a longer conversation with ChatGPT with several key points you need to remember. In this case, you don’t even need to create colored highlights from the conversation, although highlighting is still a good idea to better understand the content yourself. It also helps guide the AI in the next step when generating flashcards, especially if the conversation is long. Simply visit any conversation in ChatGPT, open the Web Highlights sidebar and click **“✨ Generate Flashcards”** . ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*4UNmZknkktxvqQfKfsSDxA.png) The AI Flashcard generator will open up and create 10 flashcards from your conversation by understanding its content and drafting questions and answers from you you can save to your library. ![AI Flashcard Generator in progress](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2400/1*HrNUUNFwTppyKc2U86dJYA.png) *AI Flashcard Generator in progress* You can also adjust the amount of flashcards, fine-tune the questions/answers and drop the weak ones. If you don’t like the result, you can always just regenerate the cards to start from scratch. Once you are happy with the result, click “Create flashcards” to save the deck to your library. ### Review Until It Sticks From here, the learning system takes over. Web Highlights has a sophisticated learning dashboard that is based on scientific spaced repetition principles. #### The Learning Dashboard The dashboard gives you a full overview of your card and also shows you a distrubution of where your knowledge currently lives in your mind. ![Web Highlights Learning Dashboard](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2400/1*0HpVN-VwP0JSk-lOCmZY9A.png) *Web Highlights Learning Dashboard* It groups your cards into different stages like “Likely to Forget”, “Confident Recall”, and finally “Long-Term Memory”. Your cards join the daily learning session — ten at a time. You see the question first, try to recall the answer, and then mark it as Correct or Incorrect. The spaced repetition algorithm then adjusts the timing and shows cards less often each time you get them right. The ultimate goal is to move all your cards into Long-Term Memory, where your knowledge can stay with you for a long time. #### The Learning Session You can start a learning session by clicking “Start learning” from the quick actions of a learning deck or by visiting your learning dashboard via the sidebar. > **Supermemo will schedule times to test them on you** . It tracks. Supermemo is based on the insights that’s there an ideal moment to practice what you’ve learned. —  [Lessons From Using SuperMemo](https://www.quantifiedself.com/show-and-tell/698/) Here is how a learning session looks in Web Highlights: ![Web Highlights Learning Session](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2400/1*3VHzUCVFPUv4K7ZlqNzhxQ.png) *Web Highlights Learning Session* ### A Few Things to Know - **Your chats stay yours.** The AI that drafts the cards runs on your device — Chrome’s built-in model. [Learn more about the privacy-first AI](https://web-highlights.com/privacy-first-ai) that powers Web Highlights here. - **AI drafting needs Chrome 138+** and a one-time model download of a few gigabytes (Chrome checks for about 22 GB of free disk before allowing it). Writing questions yourself works everywhere, free and unlimited. - **Free AI quota:** a few single cards and one full deck per day. The [paid plans](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) make both unlimited. - **Why an extension, not a URL tool:** your ChatGPT history sits behind your login, where paste-a-URL quiz generators can’t reach. The extension runs in your browser session, so it sees the chat exactly as you do. ### Can’t ChatGPT Make Flashcards Itself? It obviously can — ask nicely and it produces a tidy list of questions and answers, and it will even quiz you in the chat. That can be nice short-term but having the AI quiz you once will not get the knowledge into long-term memory. There’s no schedule deciding when a question should return, no record of what you keep missing, and next week the whole thing is buried under thirty newer chats & you forget what you learned. You’ll probably also learn new things from online articles, PDFs, Kindle books, and more. Web Highlights brings everything together in one central learning hub and uses a scientifically backed [spaced repetition algorithm](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning#the-supermemo-algorithm) to help you learn and remember more. ### Final Thoughts ChatGPT made explanations cheap. It didn’t make knowledge cheap — that still needs to be earned through remembering and recalling, just like back in school. The difference is that now the raw material is already sitting in your chat history, just one highlight away from becoming knowledge you actually remember. [**Install the Web Highlights extension for free**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)   , open the last genuinely useful conversation in your history, and turn either specific answers or the full conversation into flashcards and learn them in daily learning sessions to actually remember what you asked with proven scientific spaced repetition principles. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . ### Frequently Asked Questions #### Does this work with Claude, Gemini, and other AI chats? Yes. The extension highlights any page you can open in your browser, so the same highlight-to-flashcard flow works in Claude, Gemini, Perplexity — wherever you do your thinking. #### Do I have to export anything to Anki or Quizlet? No. The highlight becomes the card, and the card lives in the same system that schedules your reviews. No CSV, no copy-paste, no second app to keep in sync. (Still deciding between flashcard apps? I compared the [best free Quizlet alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-free-quizlet-alternatives/) side by side.) #### What does it cost? The extension is free, manual flashcards are free and unlimited, and the AI has a free daily quota. If you generate decks all day, the [premium plans](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) remove the limits. #### Can I try the review system before installing anything? Sure — the [free learner](https://app.web-highlights.com/learner) runs in your browser with no signup: load a ready-made deck from the [Learning Hub](https://web-highlights.com/learning) and see how the session and schedule feel. --- # Free Online PDF Highlighter — Highlight Any PDF, No Install > You can't highlight a PDF in Chrome. You can open one and read it, sure. But try to mark a sentence, and there's nothing there to do it with. I built a PDF highlighter tool, so I hear about this one a lot. My usual answer was: install my browser extension, or install something like Acrobat. Fine advice — unless you've got a single PDF to mark up and no interest in installing anything for it. So I built a version that skips all that. It's a web page: open it, drop in a PDF, and highlight away. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-07-01 - Updated: 2026-07-01 - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/free-online-pdf-highlighter-highlight-any-pdf-no-install/ --- You can't highlight a PDF in Chrome. You can open one and read it, sure. But try to mark a sentence, and there's nothing there to do it with. I built a PDF highlighter tool, so I hear about this one a lot. My usual answer was: [install my browser extension](https://web-highlights.com/install) , or install something like Acrobat. Fine advice — unless you've got a single PDF to mark up and no interest in installing anything for it. So I built a version that skips all that. It's a web page: open it, drop in a PDF, and highlight away. Use different colors, jot a note on the parts that matter, and when you're done, [download the PDF with your highlights](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/download-print-pdf-with-highlights) saved inside it, or print it. No account, nothing to install. Let me walk you through how the  [free PDF highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/tools/pdf-highlighter)  works, and the couple of things it can't do yet. ## Highlight a PDF online in 30 seconds Open the  [Free Online PDF Highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/tools/pdf-highlighter)  and drag your PDF onto the page — or click the card and pick a file from your computer. ![The Free Online PDF Highlighter upload card: drag and drop a PDF to highlight it in the browser](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/web-app/pdf-upload-card.png) *Drag in a PDF — that's the whole setup.* No account screen, no install prompt, no "create your workspace" step first. Your file opens straight in the highlighter, ready to mark. ![A PDF opened in the free online highlighter, ready to highlight in the browser](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/web-app/free-pdf-viewer-rendered.png) *Your PDF, open and ready to mark.* ## Select text, pick a color Select any text and a little color picker appears. Click a color, and that line lights up. Everything saves as you go, and each highlight lands in the sidebar on the left. The colors aren't just for looks — they're how you find things again later. The system I use: - **Yellow**  — the key points - **Red**  — questions, and anything to double-check - **Green**  — definitions and terms worth keeping Want to add a thought? Click a highlight and type a note. It stays pinned to that exact line, so when you come back weeks later you still know what you meant. ![A highlighted PDF with the Web Highlights sidebar listing the highlight](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/extension/pdf-with-highlight.png) *A highlight on the page, mirrored in the sidebar.* ## The PDF highlighter is free, no sign-up The tool is properly free, and you can highlight a whole PDF without ever making an account. Since there's no account, your file is treated as temporary — it's kept for 1 hour, then deleted, highlights and all. Want to hold on to it? Create a free account from the banner in the viewer, and your PDF plus every highlight stick around for good. Syncing them across your devices is free for your first 7 days, so you can start on your laptop and pick up on your phone. And because this is a web page, not an extension, it runs in any modern browser: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, even Safari. ## Download or print your PDF with the highlights A lot of online highlighters trap your work — you mark up the PDF, but you can't get the marked-up file back out. This one gives it back. Hit  **Download**  and you get the real PDF, your highlights saved as proper annotations: same colors, with your notes attached as comments. Open it in Adobe Acrobat, macOS Preview, or Microsoft Edge and they're all there, still editable, with the text underneath still selectable. Need it on paper? Print keeps the colors on the page. The  [download & print guide](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/download-print-pdf-with-highlights)  walks through both. ## Already highlighted it in Acrobat? Import it Got a PDF that already has highlights — from Acrobat, Preview, or anything that writes standard PDF annotations? The viewer spots them and offers to pull them in. One click and they turn into real, editable highlights, colors and notes intact, no retyping. The  [import guide](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/import-pdf-annotations)  has the specifics. ## Want it on every PDF? Add the free extension The online tool is the quickest way to mark up one PDF without installing anything. If PDFs are your daily reading, the free  [Web Highlights extension](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/)  goes further: it highlights any PDF — or any web page — right where you open it, no upload step, and everything saves and syncs on its own, with tags, search, and a flashcard-style learning mode on top. The online tool is the test drive; the  [extension](https://web-highlights.com/install)  is the full thing. ## Final thoughts That's the whole idea: highlighting a PDF shouldn't cost you a download, an account, or ten minutes of setup. Open the  [free PDF highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/tools/pdf-highlighter)  , drop in a file, and mark it up. If you find yourself using it a lot, the  [PDF highlighter docs](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs)  go through everything the viewer can do. I'm always happy to answer questions, and I'm open to criticism — reach out any time 😊 Get in touch via  [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/)  or follow me on  [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts)  . --- ## FAQ ### How do I highlight a PDF online for free? Open the  [free online PDF highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/tools/pdf-highlighter)  , drop in your PDF, select any text, and pick a color. That's it — no download, no account. From there you can download or print the PDF with your highlights, all in the browser. ### Is the PDF highlighter really free? Yes — you can open a PDF and highlight it without paying or signing up. A free account is optional. It's what you make when you want to keep a file past the 1-hour window and have your highlights sync across devices. ### Do I need to install anything? Nope. The  [online PDF highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/tools/pdf-highlighter)  is just a web page — no download, no extension, no software. Open it, drop in a PDF, and start highlighting. ### Which browsers does it work in? Any modern one — Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari. That's the nice thing about a browser tool over an extension: there's nothing to install for it to work. ### Can I download the PDF with my highlights? Yes. Download hands you the PDF with your highlights as standard annotations — colors and notes included — that open in Acrobat, Preview, Edge, and the rest. You can print it with the colors intact too. The  [download & print guide](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/download-print-pdf-with-highlights)  has the details. ### What about scanned PDFs? Honest answer: no. A scanned PDF is really just a photo of a page, so there's no selectable text to highlight. Run it through an OCR tool first to add a text layer, and then it behaves like any other PDF. --- # Why Memory, Retention & Recall Matter in Online Learning > Learn why learning retention of memory matters in online learning and how recall, notes, and active study methods help information stay longer. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2026-03-17 - Updated: 2026-09-16 - Reading time: 17 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-learning-retention-matters-online-learning/ --- You read something online, it makes sense at the time, and a few days later, it is gone. Most online learners deal with this. You go through the lesson material, follow the ideas in the moment, and still struggle to remember them later. That usually is not a motivation problem or a sign that you are bad at learning. It is a memory problem. In online learning, memory, retention, and recall determine whether information stays with you or disappears after a single reading. This article explains why these three processes matter in online learning and how to improve them with study methods that actually help information stick. ## **What Are Memory, Retention, and Recall?** Memory in learning is the process of taking in information, storing it, and retrieving it later. Learning retention refers to how well that information stays available over time, while recall is the ability to bring it back when needed during exams, discussions, writing, or research. These three parts of the memory process shape knowledge retention in online learning. ### **Memory** Memory is where learning starts. It is the brain’s way of taking in new information and beginning memory formation. When you watch a lecture, read an article, or listen to a class discussion, that information first passes through sensory memory and working memory. If you pay attention and actively process it, some of it moves from short-term to long-term memory. For example, when you read a lesson and understand a key concept for the first time, that is memory at work. It is the first step in information retention. ### **Retention** Retention means how well learned information stays with you over time. It is the difference between understanding something today and still being able to use it next week. Good learning retention leads to long-term retention and stronger long-term knowledge retention. Weak retention means the information fades after the first reading or video. This is why many students feel like they “studied” but still cannot remember much later. A simple example is remembering lecture concepts several days after class instead of forgetting them once the tab is closed. That is retention of memory in action. ### **Recall** Recall is the ability to bring stored information back when you need it. This is what shows whether learning actually stayed with you. You use recall when you answer exam questions without looking at notes, explain a concept during a group discussion, or bring up research findings while writing an assignment. Recall depends on strong storage, but it also depends on practice. This is why retrieval practice is such an important part of learning science and cognitive science. Seeing something and thinking “this looks familiar” is not the same as recall. True recall means you can produce the idea on your own and apply it. **_A simple way to think about it_** - **Memory** = taking information in - **Retention** = keeping that information over time - **Recall** = retrieving it when needed In online learning, these three work together.  First, you encode the idea. Then you keep it. Then you retrieve it. That is how knowledge retention turns into actual learning instead of temporary exposure. ## **Why Online Learning Makes Memory Harder** Online learning gives you access to more training content, videos, articles, and lessons than ever. But easy access does not always lead to strong learning retention. A lot of digital learning is built around quick consumption. You read, scroll, watch, and move on. That may feel productive in the moment, but it often leads to weak memory formation and poor information retention. ### **Passive reading habits** One of the biggest problems in online learning is passive reading. You look at the material, understand it while it is in front of you, and assume it has been learned. But reading without effort usually keeps information in working memory or short-term memory for only a short time. If the brain does not actively process it, that information may never reach long-term memory. This is why passive review and rote learning often fail. You may recognize the material later, but recognition is not the same as recall. ### **Multitasking and distractions** Digital learning usually happens on the same screen where everything else is happening, too. One tab has your lesson open, another has a search result, and your phone or laptop keeps pulling your attention somewhere else. A message pops up, you check one thing, and suddenly your focus is gone. That constant switching adds cognitive load and can lead to cognitive overload. When your attention is divided, your brain has less room to process ideas properly. That weakens the memory process and makes knowledge retention harder. ### **Scrolling instead of studying** A lot of students confuse exposure with learning.  Reading more pages, skimming more articles, or watching more videos can feel like progress. But scrolling through content is not the same as studying it. Without pause, reflection, or active annotation, information stays shallow. It may pass through sensory memory, but it often does not stay long enough to support long-term retention. ### **Lack of interaction with the material** Memory gets stronger when learners do something with information. That includes asking questions, writing notes, summarizing, comparing ideas, or testing themselves. Online learning often misses that step. Many learners just consume material without using active learning, retrieval practice, or even simple annotation. That makes transfer of learning harder because the idea was never processed deeply enough to be used later. This matters in many settings, from student coursework to employee training, learning and development, and even clinical environments where accurate recall supports better on-the-job performance. ### **Limited review cycles** A lot of online learners go through the material once and then move on. The problem is, memory fades when you do not come back to the information. Without review, the brain treats what you learned as temporary.  That weakens long-term knowledge retention. Methods such as the spacing effect, spaced repetition, and a bit of over learning work better because they give your brain repeated chances to store and retrieve the same idea. ### **Information exposure is not the same as learning** This is the main issue: just seeing information does not mean you have learned it.  Watching a lesson with video captions, reading slides, or skimming notes can help with understanding, but it does not guarantee learning retention. Learning works better when you stop and do something with the material. That could mean thinking about it, writing a note, making a connection, or reviewing it later. That is what learning science and cognitive science keep showing. It does not matter whether the content comes from visual and text learning, microlearning modules, scenario-based training, Social Learning, or self-study. Information stays with you longer when you interact with it and come back to it again. ## **How the Brain Stores Information During Learning** Learning is not just about seeing information once. For something to stick, the brain has to take it in, store it, and make it usable later. That is the basic memory process behind learning retention. You can think of it in three stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. ### **1\. Encoding** Encoding is the process by which the brain starts processing new information. It begins with sensory memory. You see a sentence, hear a lecture point, or read a definition. If you pay attention, that information enters working memory, where the brain begins making sense of it. ### **2\. Storage** Storage is what happens when information is kept in the brain over time. This is where information retention, knowledge retention, and retention of memory start to matter. For learning to move into long-term memory, the brain usually needs more than one quick exposure. It helps when students: - connect new ideas with what they already know - organize related concepts together - explain the material in their own words - revisit the topic more than once This is how memory systems start building stronger connections.  ### **3\. Retrieval** Retrieval is the ability to access stored knowledge later. This is what happens when you answer a question, recall a research finding, or apply a concept in a test or discussion. Retrieval shows whether learning actually lasted.  If information is stored well but never practiced, recall can still feel difficult. That is why retrieval practice is such an important part of learning science and cognitive science. Simple examples of retrieval include: - answering a question without looking at notes - recalling a lecture concept during an exam - using a research idea while writing an assignment ### **What actually makes learning stick?** Learning becomes more durable when students do three things consistently: #### **1\. Connect new ideas with existing knowledge** This helps the brain attach new information to something it already understands, which improves long-term retention. #### **2\. Interact with information** Highlighting, note-taking, summarizing, and questioning all support active learning and better memory formation. #### **3\. Revisit material regularly** Review helps move information from short-term memory toward long-term memory. This is where methods such as spaced repetition support stronger long-term knowledge retention. The main point is simple: memory gets stronger when learning is active, connected, and repeated. That is how information becomes easier to retain and recall later. ## **Why Retention Matters in Education?** Retention matters because learning is only useful if you can still use it later. If information disappears after one class, one reading, or one video, it does not help much when you actually need it. This is why learning retention, information retention, and retention of memory matter so much in education.  ### **Better Exam Performance** Exams do not measure whether something looked familiar last week. They measure whether you can bring information back when it counts. Strong knowledge retention helps students: - remember concepts during tests - explain ideas clearly without guessing - apply what they learned to new questions Without long-term memory, even well-studied material can disappear under pressure. ### **Stronger Academic Understanding Over Time** Education is cumulative. One topic often depends on another. If earlier ideas do not stay in memory, later lessons become harder to follow. Good long-term retention helps students connect concepts across units, subjects, and semesters. That kind of connection supports transfer of learning, not just short-term performance. ### **Better Research Productivity** Retention also matters when students read and write often. If you cannot remember what you read, research becomes slow and repetitive. Strong long-term knowledge retention helps when you need to: - recall research papers while writing - compare arguments across sources - remember where a certain idea fits in your topic This reduces mental strain on working memory and makes it easier to focus on analysis instead of constantly re-reading. ### **Professional Skill Development** Retention is not only academic. It also affects skills acquisition, knowledge transfer, and later on-the-job performance. This matters in: - employee training - learning and development - training procedures - clinical environments If people forget what they learned right after training, the result is weak performance and poor business outcomes. Whether someone is studying for school or learning for work, the goal is the same: information needs to stay useful beyond the first exposure. ### **Without Retention, Learning Stays Temporary** This is the main point. Without retention, learning becomes temporary. You may understand something in the moment, but that is not enough. For learning to last, information has to move beyond short-term memory and become stable enough for later recall. That is what turns a lesson into usable knowledge instead of something you once read and quickly forgot. ## **Why Recall Is the Real Test of Learning** A lot of students think they know something because it looks familiar. They read the page, look at their notes, and feel confident. But familiarity is not the same as learning. Real learning shows up when you can retrieve the idea without seeing it first. That is what recall tests are. Students often think they know the material because: - the topic looks familiar - the notes seem clear - the answer makes sense when they read it That feeling can be misleading. Recognition is passive. Recall is active. ### **Recall means bringing information back on your own** Recall happens when you answer a question without looking at your notes, explain a concept from memory, or use an idea in writing without going back to the source. That takes more than short-term memory. It depends on strong memory formation, solid learning retention, and the ability to retrieve information from long-term memory when needed. For example: - seeing an answer and thinking “yes, I know this” is recognition - writing the answer yourself without help is recall That difference matters a lot in exams, research, and discussion. ### **Why active recall works better than passive review** This is why active recall methods usually work better than passive review. Re-reading notes may make the material feel familiar, but it does not always improve knowledge retention. Methods based on retrieval practice force the brain to do the harder job of pulling information back. That strengthens long-term retention and makes later recall easier. A few simple examples: - answering practice questions - summarizing a topic from memory - using flashcards - pausing after a lesson and recalling the main points These methods improve the memory process because retrieval itself helps learning stick. ### **Recall is what shows whether learning stayed** If you can only understand something when it is in front of you, the learning is still weak. If you can retrieve it later and use it correctly, that is a much better sign of real understanding. That is why recall is the real test of learning. It shows whether information moved beyond exposure and became usable knowledge. ## **Why Recall Is the Real Test of Learning** A lot of students confuse recognition with learning. The page looks familiar, the notes seem clear, and the answer makes sense to them. However, that does not always mean the information is stored well. Recall is different. It means retrieving information without looking at it first. That is what matters in exams, writing, and discussion. This is why active recall works better than passive review. Re-reading may help with familiarity, but retrieval practice does more for learning retention, knowledge retention, and access to long-term memory. Simple recall methods include: - practice questions - summarization from memory - flashcards - direct knowledge retrieval without notes If you can bring the idea back on your own, the learning is much stronger. ## **Proven Techniques That Improve Learning Retention** Better learning retention does not come from reading more. It comes from using study methods that help the brain store and retrieve information more effectively. These techniques are supported by learning science and cognitive science because they improve memory formation, knowledge retention, and access to long-term memory. ### **1\. Active Recall** Active recall means retrieving information without looking at your notes. This is one of the most effective forms of retrieval practice because it trains the brain to bring information back on its own. Simple ways to do it: - answering questions from memory - summarizing a topic without notes - self-testing after reading This helps move information beyond short-term memory and supports stronger long-term retention. ### **2\. Spaced Repetition** Spaced repetition means reviewing material over increasing intervals instead of cramming it once. This method is based on the spacing effect, which shows that memory improves when review is spread out over time. For example, you might review a concept: - later the same day - two days later - one week later This repeated review strengthens information retention, supports long-term knowledge retention, and reduces forgetting. ### **3\. Elaborative Learning** Elaborative learning means connecting new ideas to what you already know. This helps the brain build stronger links inside existing memory systems. A few simple ways to do this: - explain the idea in your own words - compare it with something you already understand - link concepts across subjects This improves semantic memory, supports transfer of learning, and makes recall easier later. ### **4\. Annotation and Highlighting** Annotation and highlighting turn reading into active learning. Instead of just skimming the page, you stop, notice what matters, and respond to it. When you highlight key points or add short notes, you reduce passive reading and improve memory. It also helps manage cognitive load because important ideas are easier to find and review later. This is one reason active reading works better for retention of memory than simply rereading the same material. ## **Why Structured Notes Improve Recall** A lot of students collect useful information, but do not organize it well. They save links, screenshots, PDFs, and random notes, then struggle to find anything when they need it. Structured notes fix that problem. They improve knowledge retrieval by turning scattered material into searchable ideas, grouped concepts, and faster revision points. This supports learning retention, information retention, and stronger access to long-term memory. Instead of keeping notes everywhere, it helps to build a simple knowledge library. When ideas are clearly sorted, knowledge retention becomes easier because the brain doesn't have to sift through clutter to recall what matters. ## **Building a Personal Knowledge System While Learning Online** Online learning works better when students do more than just read and move on. A simple personal knowledge system helps turn scattered information into something usable later. That can include: - highlighting important sections - adding short notes - tagging concepts by topic - reviewing ideas again later This kind of workflow supports learning retention and knowledge retention because it turns reading into organized knowledge building, not just temporary exposure. ## **How Web Highlights Supports Memory, Retention & Recall in Online Learning** [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) fits naturally into the kind of study workflow that improves learning retention. Instead of reading something once and losing it later, you can keep the useful parts, organize them, and come back to them when needed. ### **1\. Highlight web pages, PDFs, and YouTube transcripts** ![Highlight text across articles, YouTube videos and webpages in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/data-src-image-6045833f-82cb-4a92-b5f7-458527a0bd29.webp) A lot of [online learning](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-active-reading-online/) happens across different formats. One day it is an article, the next day it is a PDF, and later it is a lecture on YouTube. Web Highlights helps by allowing you to highlight all of them in one place, including [YouTube transcripts](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-get-youtube-ai-summary/) . That matters for knowledge retention because your study process stays consistent. You are not switching between separate tools for web pages, PDFs, and video-based learning. One highlighter for everything makes active reading easier across the sources students already use. ### **2\. Add contextual notes while reading** ![contextual notes while reading](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/data-src-image-55ec83cf-1a72-465d-bcea-ec603c7dd690.webp) Highlighting alone is helpful, but adding a note makes the idea easier to remember later. With Web Highlights, you can attach short notes next to what you highlighted. That supports memory formation because you are not just marking text. You are processing it. Writing a quick thought, question, or takeaway turns passive reading into active learning. This kind of [annotation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/practical-annotation-examples/) also helps reduce cognitive load during revision because the meaning is already attached to the source. ### **3\. Tag research ideas and group concepts** ![Adding tags for organization in WebHighlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/data-src-image-cb3a453d-ee16-4aaa-80b2-3b42b549cde7.webp) A common problem in online learning is saving good material but not knowing how to organize it later. Web Highlights lets you tag highlights and notes, which helps group related concepts. That supports information retention and knowledge retrieval because ideas are easier to sort by theme, topic, course, or research area. Instead of random saved content, you start building a simple structure that supports recall. ### **4\. Organize a searchable library** Recall gets easier when your notes are not scattered. Web Highlights helps [organize saved material](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-organize-bookmarks-in-chrome/) into a searchable library, so you can find highlights, notes, and sources without digging through tabs or folders. That is useful for long-term retention because revision becomes faster. It also supports working memory by reducing the effort needed to locate information before you can use it. ### **5\. Export what you read and keep using it** ![Export options in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/data-src-image-533aca14-617a-40ec-bf70-360c2b62b920.webp) Learning often continues outside the original page. Students may want to move ideas into a study guide, research doc, or note-taking system. Web Highlights lets you export highlights and  [web annotations](https://web-highlights.com/blog/what-is-web-annotation-for-students-and-researchers/)   to formats such as  [Markdown](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages/formatted-highlighting)  , PDF, and HTML — or send them directly to  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  and  [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/)   with one click. You can also copy highlights as Markdown and paste them into  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/)   . That helps with knowledge transfer because important ideas can flow into the rest of your study workflow rather than getting trapped in a single browser tab. ### **6\. Review highlights with spaced repetition flashcards** Retention improves when learners come back to the material, not just collect it once. That is exactly what the Learn & Remember feature in Web Highlights is built for. ![Web Highlights' Flashcard Learning](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-23-at-07.57.52-2.webp) *Web Highlights' Flashcard Learning* Web Highlights automatically turns your highlights into flashcards and uses  [spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/)   to schedule reviews at increasing intervals — based on the  [SuperMemo (SM-2) algorithm](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning)  . Each day, you review 10 flashcards and rate each one: - **Know it**  — confidence increases, next review pushed further out - **Don’t know**  — confidence decreases, item comes back sooner - **Discard**  — removes the highlight from future sessions To see what a session looks like, watch this 48-second walkthrough: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExU6mNx1Gg0) After about five successful repetitions, an item is considered anchored in long-term memory. Web Highlights also tracks a  **confidence score (0–100 %)**  for each highlight and a  **learning streak**  that counts consecutive days you completed your daily session. The learning dashboard shows your schedule, confidence breakdown, and a contribution graph — so you always know where your knowledge stands. ### **7\. Reader Mode helps you focus on the material** A cluttered page makes reading harder than it needs to be. Web Highlights also includes [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/reader-mode) , which lets users read without the extra noise on the page. That cleaner view supports attention and lowers unnecessary cognitive overload. When learners can focus on the actual material, it becomes easier to process ideas deeply and support the memory process. Read without the noise is not just a convenience feature. It helps create better conditions for learning. ### **Use AI Summary to reduce overload and find key ideas faster** ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/data-src-image-cb1d7af0-66da-4b93-8230-5f6c38c19388--1-.webp) *Creating AI summaries with Web Highlights* Sometimes the hardest part of online learning is figuring out what matters most in a long article, PDF, or video. That is where AI Summary can help. Web Highlights offers [AI-powered summaries](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/ai-summary) for websites and YouTube content. Instead of going through everything line by line first, learners can quickly spot the main ideas and then decide what deserves closer reading. AI Summary can help by showing: - key points - a TL;DR - a headline - a short teaser-style summary This helps reduce cognitive overload, makes core ideas easier to spot, and supports information retention before deeper reading starts. For students, that can mean: - less time getting lost in long content - faster understanding of the main idea - more focus on what to highlight or note down - better support for later recall **_Why this matters for memory, retention, and recall?_** Web Highlights supports the full learning cycle: - highlight what matters - add notes while the idea is fresh - tag and group concepts - find them again later - review them over time That is what helps turn reading into something more useful. You are not just collecting information. You are building a system that supports retention of memory, stronger recall, and better long-term memory. Keep what you read is the real benefit here. When your highlights, notes, and exports stay organized, online learning becomes easier to revisit and easier to remember. ## **Common Mistakes That Hurt Learning Retention** A few small habits can weaken learning retention even when you spend a lot of time studying. - **Rereading instead of recalling** - Reading the same page again can make it feel familiar, but it does less for knowledge retention than retrieval practice. - **Highlighting too much** - If almost everything is marked, nothing stands out. That makes the review slower and hurts information retention. - **Studying without review cycles** - One-time study sessions do not support long-term retention well. Review matters if you want information to stay in long-term memory. - **Keeping notes across too many tools** - Scattered notes make knowledge retrieval harder. When ideas are split across apps, tabs, and files, recall becomes slower. - **Watching videos passively without notes** - Watching a lesson without pausing, noting key points, or checking understanding often leads to weak memory formation. ## **Key Takeaways** Learning is not just about seeing information once. For it to stay useful, it needs memory formation, strong learning retention, and reliable recall. When students actively work with digital material and come back to key ideas over time, online learning becomes much more effective. Tools such as Web Highlights can help by making it easier to highlight, organize, and review what you read in one place. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **Why is memory important in online learning?** Memory matters in online learning because students need to store and retrieve information after the lesson ends. Without strong memory formation, even clear lessons fade quickly. Good memory supports learning retention, better exam performance, and stronger understanding across courses. ### **What improves retention in online learning?** Learning retention improves when students actively work with the material instead of only rereading it. Methods such as active recall, spaced repetition, structured note-taking, and highlighting key points can improve information retention and support long-term memory. ### **What is the difference between retention and recall?** Retention is how well information stays stored after learning it. Recall is the ability to retrieve that information later without looking at the source. In simple terms, retention of memory is about keeping knowledge, while recall is about bringing it back when needed. ### **Why do students forget what they study online?** Students often forget online material because digital learning can lead to passive reading, multitasking, and weak review habits. When information is not processed deeply or revisited later, it stays in short-term memory instead of moving into long-term retention. ### **What tools help improve learning retention?** Tools that support highlighting, annotation, note-taking, tagging, and review can help improve knowledge retention. Web Highlights helps learners save key ideas from web pages, PDFs, and YouTube transcripts so they can review and recall them later. ### **How does highlighting help with memory and recall?** Highlighting helps when it is selective and paired with notes or review. It supports active learning by prompting students to pause and identify what matters. That deeper processing can improve memory formation, knowledge retrieval, and later recall during revision, writing, or exams. --- # Best AI Extensions for Chrome Based on Recent Reviews > Discover the best AI Extensions for Chrome ranked by recent reviews to reveal real quality and surface smaller Extensions. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-02-24 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: AI, Chrome Extension - Reading time: 11 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-ai-extensions-for-chrome-based-on-recent-reviews/ - Originally published at: https://tooltivity.com/blog/article/best-rated-ai-extensions-for-chrome --- Most “best app” rankings rely on outdated ratings. Apps change over time, but their old reviews stay forever. Popular AI extensions often keep high scores even when recent users are unhappy. Smaller or newer extensions with great feedback rarely get noticed. This ranking focuses on the most recent 100 reviews, updated daily. It shows what works today and gives every app a fair chance to be discovered. _Disclaimer: This article is based on a live ranking from February 24, 2026. If you’d like to see the current live ranking with today’s data, you can_ [_read the article here_](https://tooltivity.com/blog/article/best-rated-ai-extensions-for-chrome) _._ Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. Two extensions on this list are ours too: Youtube Highlighter & AI Summary (#1) and PDF & Web Highlighter (#4), which is Web Highlights. Their places come from the same review averages as everyone else’s. ## How this ranking works Each app is ranked using the average rating of its most recent 100 user reviews. This approach reduces bias from outdated feedback and highlights current performance instead of long-term popularity. Here is an overview of the best-rated AI extensions on Chrome based on the most recent 100 reviews: | Rank | App | Total Downloads | Total Reviews | Avg. Rating (All) | Avg. Rating (Last 100) | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | [![Youtube Highlighter logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/youtube-highlighter/images/logo.webp) Youtube Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/youtube-highlighter) | 304 | 6 | 5.0 ⭐ | 5.0 ⭐ ↑ Upward trend | | 2 | [![AI Blaze logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/ai-blaze-instantly-use-ai-in-any-webpage/images/logo.webp) AI Blaze](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ai-blaze-instantly-use-ai-in-any-webpage) | 80.0K | 202 | 5.0 ⭐ | 4.9 ⭐ ↓ Downward trend | | 3 | [![ChatGPT Exporter logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/chatgpt-exporter-chatgpt-to-pdf-md-and-more/images/logo.webp) ChatGPT Exporter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/chatgpt-exporter-chatgpt-to-pdf-md-and-more) | 100.0K | 1.3K | 4.8 ⭐ | 4.9 ⭐ ↑ Upward trend | | 4 | [![PDF & Web Highlighter logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/web-highlights/images/logo.webp) PDF & Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) | 200.0K | 4.4K | 4.8 ⭐ | 4.9 ⭐ ↑ Upward trend | | 5 | [![Sider logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/sider-chatgpt-sidebar/images/logo.webp) Sider](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/sider-chatgpt-sidebar) | 5.0M | 111.1K | 4.9 ⭐ | 4.8 ⭐ ↓ Downward trend | | 6 | [![Voila logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/voila-ai-assistant-copilot-and-ai-writer/images/logo.webp) Voila](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/voila-ai-assistant-copilot-and-ai-writer) | 80.0K | 213 | 4.7 ⭐ | 4.8 ⭐ ↑ Upward trend | | 7 | [![ChatGPT Sidebar logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/chatgpt-sidebar-aitopia/images/logo.webp) ChatGPT Sidebar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/chatgpt-sidebar-aitopia) | 1.0M | 27.8K | 4.9 ⭐ | 4.8 ⭐ ↓ Downward trend | | 8 | [![Monica logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/monica-chatgpt-ai-assistant/images/logo.webp) Monica](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/monica-chatgpt-ai-assistant) | 3.0M | 30.8K | 4.9 ⭐ | 4.7 ⭐ ↓ Downward trend | | 9 | [![MaxAI logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/maxai-ask-ai-anything-as-you-browse/images/logo.webp) MaxAI](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/maxai-ask-ai-anything-as-you-browse) | 800.0K | 14.5K | 4.8 ⭐ | 4.7 ⭐ ↓ Downward trend | | 10 | [![Superpower for ChatGPT logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/superpower-chatgpt/images/logo.webp) Superpower for ChatGPT](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/superpower-chatgpt) | 100.0K | 3.4K | 4.5 ⭐ | 4.6 ⭐ ↑ Upward trend | | 11 | [![GPT Reader logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech/images/logo.webp) GPT Reader](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech) | 20.0K | 142 | 4.6 ⭐ | 4.5 ⭐ ↓ Downward trend | | 12 | [![Glasp logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/glasp-web-highlighter/images/logo.webp) Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter) | 500.0K | 918 | 4.5 ⭐ | 4.4 ⭐ ↓ Downward trend | | 13 | [![Recall logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/recall-or-summarize-anything-forget-nothing/images/logo.webp) Recall](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/recall-or-summarize-anything-forget-nothing) | 100.0K | 97 | 4.2 ⭐ | 4.1 ⭐ ↓ Downward trend | | 14 | [![Merlin AI logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/merlin-ask-ai-to-research-write-and-review/images/logo.webp) Merlin AI](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/merlin-ask-ai-to-research-write-and-review) | 1.0M | 8.8K | 4.8 ⭐ | 3.3 ⭐ ↓ Downward trend | | 15 | [![Grammarly logo](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/grammarly/images/logo.webp) Grammarly](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/grammarly) | 43.0M | 43.0K | 4.5 ⭐ | 2.9 ⭐ ↓ Downward trend | Now, looking at the table above, we can see some interesting things we wouldn’t spot by just looking at the total reviews and ratings. Across all reviews,  [Youtube Highlighter & AI Summary](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/youtube-highlighter)  has the highest average rating: 5.0 ⭐ from 6 reviews. But the “best overall” isn’t always the one users love today. In the most recent 100 reviews, the current #1 is  [Youtube Highlighter & AI Summary](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/youtube-highlighter)  at 5.0 ⭐. That’s the best-case scenario. The all-time leader is also the most loved right now, which usually means the app has stayed solid as it grew. Quick takeaways: - **Best right now:** [Youtube Highlighter & AI Summary](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/youtube-highlighter)  leads the last 100 reviews. - **Best overall:** [Youtube Highlighter & AI Summary](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/youtube-highlighter)  has the highest all-time average. - **Most shaky recently:** [Grammarly: AI Writing and Grammar Checker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/grammarly)  has the lowest recent score (last 100 reviews) and sits at #13 overall. A low recent rating doesn’t automatically mean “bad app”—but it’s a red flag we wouldn’t ignore, especially if the all-time position is much higher. ### Biggest Winner [Voila – AI Assistant, Copilot and AI Writer](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/voila-ai-assistant-copilot-and-ai-writer)  is the biggest climber. It gained 5 places, moving from #10 overall to #5 in recent reviews. ### Biggest Loser [Merlin - Ask AI to Research, Write & Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/merlin-ask-ai-to-research-write-and-review)  had the steepest drop. It lost 6 places, moving from #8 overall to #14 in recent reviews. ## [1\. Youtube Highlighter & AI Summary](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-youtube-video) ![Youtube Highlighter & AI Summary screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/youtube-highlighter/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Highlight and annotate YouTube transcripts. Generate AI summaries and chat with the video content to turn it into clear, searchable notes and annotations. The Youtube Highlighter extension has a total average rating of 5.0 with 6 reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 5.0, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #1 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it holds the exact same spot (#1). In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **Youtube Highlighter**  a rating of  **9.5/10** . [Read full review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/youtube-highlighter#tool-review) ## [2\. AI Blaze: Instantly Use AI in Any Webpage](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ai-blaze-instantly-use-ai-in-any-webpage) ![AI Blaze: Instantly Use AI in Any Webpage screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/ai-blaze-instantly-use-ai-in-any-webpage/images/gallery-image-1.webp) AI Blaze is a Chrome extension that enhances productivity with AI-powered templates, snippets, and dynamic commands, ensuring consistent messaging across platforms. The AI Blaze extension has a total average rating of 5.0 with 202 reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.9, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #2 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it holds the exact same spot (#2). In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **AI Blaze**  a rating of  **9.0/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ai-blaze-instantly-use-ai-in-any-webpage#tool-review) ## [3\. ChatGPT Exporter - ChatGPT to PDF, MD, and more](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/chatgpt-exporter-chatgpt-to-pdf-md-and-more) ![ChatGPT Exporter - ChatGPT to PDF, MD, and more screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/chatgpt-exporter-chatgpt-to-pdf-md-and-more/images/gallery-image-1.webp) ChatGPT Exporter lets you save and export your ChatGPT conversations in multiple formats including PDF, Markdown, and CSV. Perfect for documentation and sharing AI insights. The ChatGPT Exporter extension has a total average rating of 4.8 with 1.3K reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.9, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #7 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it jumps up 4 positions to #3. In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **ChatGPT Exporter**  a rating of  **9.4/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/chatgpt-exporter-chatgpt-to-pdf-md-and-more#tool-review) ## [4\. PDF & Web Highlighter + AI Summary & Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) ![PDF & Web Highlighter + AI Summary & Notes screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/web-highlights/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Web Highlights lets you highlight text on any website or PDF, create notes, and generate AI summaries. It’s free, simple, and doesn’t require signing up. The best online PDF and web highlighter. The PDF & Web Highlighter extension has a total average rating of 4.8 with 4.4K reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.9, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #6 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it jumps up 2 positions to #4. In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **PDF & Web Highlighter**  a rating of  **9.8/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights#tool-review) ## [5\. Sider: ChatGPT Sidebar](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/sider-chatgpt-sidebar) ![Sider: ChatGPT Sidebar screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/sider-chatgpt-sidebar/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Sider is an AI browser extension that boosts productivity in reading, writing, and more. Trusted by 6M+ users, it offers features to optimize online activities. The Sider extension has a total average rating of 4.9 with 111.1K reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.8, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #3 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it drops 2 positions to #5. In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **Sider**  a rating of  **8.7/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/sider-chatgpt-sidebar#tool-review) ## [6\. Voila – AI Assistant, Copilot and AI Writer](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/voila-ai-assistant-copilot-and-ai-writer) ![Voila – AI Assistant, Copilot and AI Writer screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/voila-ai-assistant-copilot-and-ai-writer/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Voilà is a browser-based AI assistant that helps you write, research, and boost productivity on any website, all while keeping your data private and respecting your privacy The Voila extension has a total average rating of 4.7 with 213 reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.8, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #10 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it jumps up 4 positions to #6. In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **Voila**  a rating of  **9.0/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/voila-ai-assistant-copilot-and-ai-writer#tool-review) ## [7\. ChatGPT Sidebar | AITOPIA](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/chatgpt-sidebar-aitopia) ![ChatGPT Sidebar | AITOPIA screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/chatgpt-sidebar-aitopia/images/gallery-image-1.webp) ChatGPT Sidebar enhances your browser with AI features like real-time data, group chat, image analysis, file interaction, AI image generation, writing, and reading assistance. The ChatGPT Sidebar extension has a total average rating of 4.9 with 27.8K reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.8, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #4 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it drops 3 positions to #7. In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **ChatGPT Sidebar**  a rating of  **8.9/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/chatgpt-sidebar-aitopia#tool-review) ## [8\. Monica: ChatGPT AI Assistant](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/monica-chatgpt-ai-assistant) ![Monica: ChatGPT AI Assistant screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/monica-chatgpt-ai-assistant/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Monica is an all-in-one AI assistant offering multi-model chat, image/video generation, PDF analysis, translation, and smart writing tools across browser, desktop, and mobile platforms. The Monica extension has a total average rating of 4.9 with 30.8K reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.7, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #5 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it drops 3 positions to #8. In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **Monica**  a rating of  **8.7/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/monica-chatgpt-ai-assistant#tool-review) ## [9\. MaxAI: Ask AI anything as you browse](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/maxai-ask-ai-anything-as-you-browse) ![MaxAI: Ask AI anything as you browse screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/maxai-ask-ai-anything-as-you-browse/images/gallery-image-1.webp) MaxAI brings ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and more AI models directly into your browser. Here’s what its ratings and recent reviews say about whether this all-in-one AI assistant is worth your time and money. The MaxAI extension has a total average rating of 4.8 with 14.5K reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.7, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #9 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it holds the exact same spot (#9). In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **MaxAI**  a rating of  **8.6/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/maxai-ask-ai-anything-as-you-browse#tool-review) ## [10\. Superpower ChatGPT](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/superpower-chatgpt) ![Superpower ChatGPT screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/superpower-chatgpt/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Superpower ChatGPT enhances ChatGPT with folders, search, export tools, custom prompts, and more. Strong on Chrome with 100K+ users, though Firefox experience varies. The Superpower for ChatGPT extension has a total average rating of 4.5 with 3.4K reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.6, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #12 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it jumps up 2 positions to #10. In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **Superpower for ChatGPT**  a rating of  **7.7/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/superpower-chatgpt#tool-review) ## [11\. GPT Reader: Free AI Text to Speech](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech) ![GPT Reader: Free AI Text to Speech screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Transform any text into natural-sounding speech with this free ChatGPT-powered text-to-speech tool. The GPT Reader extension has a total average rating of 4.6 with 142 reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.5, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #11 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it holds the exact same spot (#11). In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **GPT Reader**  a rating of  **9.0/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/gpt-reader-free-ai-text-to-speech#tool-review) ## [12\. Glasp Web Highlighter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter) ![Glasp Web Highlighter screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/glasp-web-highlighter/images/gallery-image-1.webp) AI-powered web highlighter for websites, PDFs, and YouTube videos. Build your AI clone from highlights and connect with 1M+ learners worldwide. The Glasp extension has a total average rating of 4.5 with 918 reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.4, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #14 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it jumps up 2 positions to #12. In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **Glasp**  a rating of  **8.9/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter#tool-review) ## [13\. Recall | Summarize Anything, Forget Nothing](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/recall-or-summarize-anything-forget-nothing) ![Recall | Summarize Anything, Forget Nothing screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/recall-or-summarize-anything-forget-nothing/images/gallery-image-1.webp) With Recall, you can capture, summarize, and organize articles, PDFs, and videos with AI, spaced repetition, browser extensions, and strong privacy controls. The Recall extension has a total average rating of 4.2 with 97 reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 4.1, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #15 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it jumps up 2 positions to #13. In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **Recall**  a rating of  **8.9/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/recall-or-summarize-anything-forget-nothing#tool-review) ## [14\. Merlin - Ask AI to Research, Write & Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/merlin-ask-ai-to-research-write-and-review) ![Merlin - Ask AI to Research, Write & Review screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/merlin-ask-ai-to-research-write-and-review/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Merlin AI is a browser extension that unifies top AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) for research, summarizing, writing, coding, diagramming, translation, and more—directly in your browser The Merlin AI extension has a total average rating of 4.8 with 8.8K reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 3.3, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #8 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it drops 6 positions to #14. In a detailed review, Tooltivity gave  **Merlin AI**  a rating of  **8.4/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/merlin-ask-ai-to-research-write-and-review#tool-review) ## [15\. Grammarly: AI Writing and Grammar Checker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/grammarly) ![Grammarly: AI Writing and Grammar Checker screenshot](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/grammarly/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Grammarly is a comprehensive writing assistant offering real-time grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style suggestions. With over 44 million users, it’s a trusted tool for enhancing your writing. The Grammarly extension has a total average rating of 4.5 with 43.0K reviews. The most recent 100 reviews average 2.9, reflecting how users rate it right now. If we only looked at the all-time rating, it would be in position #13 in our ranking. Looking at the recent reviews, it drops 2 positions to #15. In a detailed review, Tooltivitye gave  **Grammarly**  a rating of  **8.8/10** . [Read Full Review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/grammarly#tool-review) --- Looking for more AI extensions? Explore the full  [AI category](https://tooltivity.com/categories/ai)  or browse all  [Chrome extensions](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/chrome)  to compare more options. --- # Active Online Reading: Why It Matters for Students and Researchers > Learn how to active reading online with proven active reading strategies that improve reading comprehension, memory, and research organization. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2026-02-21 - Updated: 2026-09-16 - Tags: Learning, Reading, students - Reading time: 10 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-active-reading-online/ --- Ever finished reading an academic article and realized you barely remember the main point? Students often prepare for exams using lecture PDFs and high-interest, authentic texts, only to struggle with recall later. Researchers move through primary sources and academic articles quickly, then find themselves re-reading the same material during writing. That is passive reading, and it quietly reduces reading comprehension. Digital reading without interaction weakens encoding and critical thinking skills. Active online reading changes the reading process. It turns scattered notes into structured knowledge. In this guide, we will examine how to read actively, why it matters for academic study and research, and how to apply practical active reading strategies that improve retention. ## **What Is Active Online Reading?** _Active online reading is a reading method where you intentionally interact with digital content by highlighting key ideas, writing notes, asking questions, summarizing sections, and organizing information._ Instead of passively scrolling, you engage in active learning strategies that improve reading comprehension, strengthen critical thinking skills, and support long-term memory through structured interaction. Now let’s make this practical. Passive reading is when you scroll through Internet URLs, skim academic articles, and assume understanding equals retention. It usually doesn’t. You might recognize the main point while reading, but without [active recall](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) or reflection, the information fades. Active engagement is different. You monitor their comprehension as you read. You pause. You question the author. You mark key claims. You compare answer choices in your mind. You apply reading strategies rather than simply increasing reading speed. Reading becomes interaction, not consumption. Digital environments make this harder. Notifications interrupt focus. Tabs multiply. A dictionary app opens in one corner, Google Docs in another. Multitasking fragments attention and weakens the encoding process described in educational psychology. That’s why learning strategies matter more online than on paper. When you practice active reading techniques, such as before-reading strategies, during-reading strategies, and after-reading strategies (summarizing, tagging, and organizing ideas), you turn scattered information into structured knowledge. This is where tools like Web Highlights fit naturally into the reading process. Instead of copying text into Google Docs or relying on screenshots, you can highlight web pages, PDFs, and even [YouTube transcripts](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-transcript-youtube-generators/) directly, add notes, and group ideas by theme. That is what active reading means in a digital environment. ## **Why Passive Digital Reading Reduces Retention** Passive reading feels productive. You move quickly through academic articles, primary sources, and Internet URLs. Your reading speed improves, but your reading comprehension does not. Here’s why: ### **Cognitive Overload and Working Memory Limits** Working memory can only hold a small amount of information at once. When you scroll through dense content without structure, cognitive overload happens. New ideas replace older ones before they are encoded. Without clear reading strategies, the reading process becomes shallow. ### **Screen-Based Skimming and Shallow Processing** Screens encourage scanning, not thinking. We skim headings, jump across sections, and move on. Deep processing theory shows that memory improves when we think about meaning, not just words. Passive reading weakens that depth. That is why many students struggle with academic study even after “reading” the material. ### **Lack of Interaction Weakens Encoding** Encoding and retrieval pathways grow stronger when we interact. Highlighting key claims, using a note-taking approach, applying visualization techniques, and practicing active recall create stronger memory traces. Without these active reading techniques, information fades quickly. ### **No Retrieval, No Reflection** Memory improves through active recall. If you never summarize, test yourself, or revisit notes, there is no structured recall. After-reading strategies are part of effective learning strategies, but passive reading skips them. ### **Multitasking Fragments Attention** Digital environments split focus. Google Docs, a dictionary app, notifications - each shift interrupts the reading process. Attention fragmentation reduces critical thinking skills and makes it harder to monitor their comprehension. This is why understanding how to active reading matters. Digital reading requires intentional strategies and techniques, not just faster scrolling. ## **Why Active Online Reading Matters for Students?** Students don’t struggle because they don’t read. They struggle because they rely on passive reading instead of active reading strategies. Here’s what changes when you apply the right reading method. ### **Better Exam Performance** Exams test retrieval, not recognition. When you practice active recall, summarize the main point, and use after-reading strategies, you strengthen encoding and retrieval pathways. This improves answer choices accuracy during tests. Instead of rereading lecture PDFs, you review structured notes and tagged ideas. That makes revision more efficient. ### **Stronger Conceptual Understanding** Active reading techniques force you to think. When you annotate academic articles, question arguments, and compare primary sources, you develop critical thinking skills. You move beyond surface reading comprehension and engage with meaning. For subjects in social sciences or science notebook work, this deeper processing supports long-term academic study. ### **Faster Revision Cycles** Revision becomes easier when information is organized. Using before-reading strategies (such as reviewing the table of contents), during-reading strategies (annotating key sections), and after-reading strategies (summarizing and tagging), you create structured review triggers. Instead of re-reading entire chapters from online textbooks, you revisit highlights and short summaries or flashcards. ### **More Efficient Note-Taking** Many students copy content into Google Docs without structure. Active learning strategies improve this. A note-taking scaffold, guided visual organization, flowcharts, and thematic tags make notes searchable and clear. When you monitor their comprehension during the reading process, your notes become part of learning activities, not just storage. ### **Improved Long-Term Retention** Active reading methods support deep processing theory. When you apply visualization techniques, lateral reading across reputable online sources, and structured recall, memory improves. This is especially important for adolescent learners, language learner students, and anyone building grade-level proficiency. If you’re asking what is reading actively and how to active reading for exams, the answer is simple: interaction creates retention. Active reading strategies turn digital content into knowledge you can actually use. ## **Why Active Online Reading Matters for Researchers** Researchers face a different problem. It is not just reading comprehension. It is managing volume. You read dozens of academic articles, primary sources, and reputable online sources across multiple Internet URLs. Without a structured reading process, ideas blur together. Here’s where active reading strategies make a difference. ### **Organized Literature Reviews** A literature review is not just a summary. It requires comparing arguments, identifying patterns, and spotting gaps. Active reading methods, such as annotating claims, noting methodology, and tagging themes, help structure that comparison. Instead of scattered notes in Google Docs, you build a categorized research library linked to the main point of each source. ### **Identifying Research Gaps** Research gaps appear when you analyze connections. Using lateral reading across related studies and grouping ideas by theme makes it easier to see what is missing. Visualization techniques and guided visual organizing can help map relationships between studies in the social sciences or interdisciplinary work. Passive reading rarely reveals these patterns. ### **Thematic Tagging for Cross-Source Comparison** Tagging is not just an organization. It is an analysis. When you apply thematic tags during the reading process, you cluster similar arguments from different primary sources. This supports critical thinking and accelerates cross-source comparisons. You no longer rely on memory to connect ideas. ### **Citation Efficiency and Academic Writing** Annotations directly support writing. When margin notes include summaries, questions, and evaluation tools for assessing credibility, you reduce the need to reopen the same PDF multiple times. You monitor their comprehension in context. This improves citation efficiency. You can quickly reference exact claims, statistics, or definitions without re-reading entire sections. ### **Avoiding Re-Reading the Same Sources** One of the biggest research inefficiencies is repetition. Without structured active reading techniques, researchers reopen the same academic articles to relocate arguments. A clear reading method with tagged highlights, structured summaries, and after-reading strategies prevents this. If you are asking how to active reading as a researcher, the answer is simple: organize while you read. Active learning strategies turn research from scattered reading into a searchable, thematic system that supports academic study and long-form writing. ## **Core Techniques for Active Online Reading** If you are serious about learning how to active reading works in practice, you need a simple structure. These active reading techniques are practical, repeatable, and easy to apply across academic articles, primary sources, and online textbooks. ### **Intentional Highlighting** Highlighting is not about color. It is about choice. Mark only the main point, core arguments, definitions, or data that support your academic study. Avoid over-highlighting entire paragraphs. That turns active reading into passive reading again. You can use color-coding by theme to separate theory, evidence, and counterarguments. This small shift improves reading comprehension and supports critical thinking skills. ### **Writing Margin Notes** Margin notes turn reading into thinking. Ask short questions. Challenge claims. Summarize a section in your own words. Capture disagreements or new ideas that connect to other reputable online sources. This note-taking scaffold strengthens the encoding process and helps you monitor your comprehension while reading. ### **Tagging and Organizing** Tagging connects ideas across Internet URLs. Group related concepts from multiple academic articles into thematic clusters. Use guided visual organization or simple flowcharts to identify patterns. This improves cross-source comparison and supports long-term research workflows without relying on memory alone. ### **Summarizing After Reading** After-reading strategies matter most. Write 3–5 key takeaways. Practice active recall by closing the tab and restating the argument. Convert important ideas into flashcards or short review triggers. These learning strategies move information from short-term memory into long-term retention. This is the foundation of active reading methods. In the next section, we’ll connect these strategies and techniques directly to memory and e-learning. ## **Active Reading and Memory Retention in E-Learning** E-learning increases access. It does not automatically improve retention. Without structure, digital reading turns into passive reading. Cognitive science shows why active reading strategies work: **1\. Spaced repetition** Revisiting key ideas from academic articles at intervals strengthens encoding and retrieval pathways. It is more effective than rereading the same content repeatedly. **2\. Retrieval practice (active recall)** Restating the main point without looking at the text forces your brain to rebuild the idea. This strengthens long-term memory more than recognition. **3\. Encoding variability** Processing information in different ways, such as highlighting, summarizing, tagging, uand sing visualization techniques. This improves the reading process and supports deeper understanding. **4\. Structured recall** After-reading strategies, such as short summaries or flashcards, turn reading into intentional learning activities. Digital reading becomes powerful when: - Notes are searchable - Highlights are exportable - Content is organized by theme - You can monitor their comprehension across reputable online sources If you are learning how to active reading in online courses or academic study, the formula is simple: interaction plus structured review leads to retention. ## **Common Mistakes in Online Reading** Most students and researchers think they’re practicing active reading strategies. In reality, a few habits turn the reading process back into passive reading. Here are common mistakes you need to fix: - **Highlighting everything** - When entire paragraphs are marked, nothing stands out as the main point. Effective active reading techniques require selective, intentional highlighting. - **Reading without purpose** - Opening academic articles without before-reading strategies, such as reviewing the table of contents or setting questions, weakens reading comprehension and critical thinking. - **Not revisiting notes** - Without after-reading strategies and active recall, encoding fades. Structured recall is essential for academic study and long-term retention. - **Keeping notes scattered across tools** - Splitting highlights between Google Docs, screenshots, and random files breaks organization and interrupts learning strategies. - **Relying on screenshots instead of structured annotations** - Screenshots store information, but they do not support tagging, searching, or thematic grouping across Internet URLs. If you are learning how to active reading effectively, avoiding these mistakes matters as much as applying the right strategies and techniques. ## **How Web Highlights Supports Active Online Reading** The problem is not access to information. The problem is structure. Students and researchers read across dozens of Internet URLs, academic articles, lecture PDFs, and YouTube lectures. Without a system, active reading strategies break down. Notes get scattered. Retrieval becomes harder. The reading process becomes passive reading again. This is where Web Highlights fits naturally into active online reading. ### **Highlight Web Pages, PDFs, and YouTube Transcripts** Active reading methods require interaction. With Web Highlights, you can highlight web pages, [annotate online PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/annotate-a-pdf-in-chrome/) , local PDFs (with minor setup), and even [YouTube transcripts](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-get-youtube-ai-summary/) directly in your browser. You are not copying text into Google Docs or relying on screenshots. It becomes one highlighter for everything (web, PDFs, YouTube). ### **Add Notes and Tags While You Read** Highlighting alone is not enough. You can write margin notes, summarize the main point, and apply thematic tags during the reading process. This supports critical thinking skills and helps you monitor their comprehension in real time. Tagging connects ideas across multiple academic articles and reputable online sources, which improves cross-source comparison. Here is how highlighting, color-coding, notes and tags work together in practice, in a short video: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsjHgjO5SQc) ### **Reader Mode for Focus** Digital reading increases distraction. Web Highlights includes a built-in [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/reader-mode) that removes clutter and unnecessary elements. You read without the noise. This supports before-reading strategies, during-reading strategies, and deeper reading comprehension by keeping attention focused on the content itself. ### **AI Summaries for Faster Understanding** Long articles and videos can slow the reading process. Web Highlights offers [AI summaries for websites and YouTube videos](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-youtube-ai-summary-chrome-extension/) . You paste a link and receive structured outputs such as: - Key Points - Headline - TL;DR - Teaser This helps you preview content before committing to full reading, which supports active learning strategies and better time management in academic study. There is also a free YouTube transcript reader and transcript generator — useful when you want to annotate lectures directly. ### **Searchable Library and Cross-Device Sync** Active reading strategies depend on retrieval. All highlights and notes are stored in a searchable library. You can revisit themes, keywords, and tagged ideas without reopening every source. Cross-device sync allows you to highlight on one device and review on another. This supports [spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) and structured recall. ### **Export and Structured Retention** Active reading methods work best when knowledge is portable. Web Highlights allows export to Markdown,  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  , PDF, and HTML. Structure is preserved — headings, notes, and highlights. You can also use the Learn & Remember feature to review highlights and convert them into flashcards, supporting active recall and long-term retention. If you are asking how to active reading effectively in a digital environment, the answer is not just better effort. It is a better structure. Web Highlights helps you: - Apply active reading strategies consistently - Organize ideas by theme - Practice structured recall - Keep what you read It does not replace thinking. It supports it. ## **Key Takeaways** Active reading means deeper thinking. Digital reading is not the problem. Lack of structure is. Without active reading strategies, the reading process turns into passive reading, and reading comprehension suffers. When you interact with content like highlight the main point, write notes, apply tagging, and practice active recall, then retention improves. Interaction strengthens encoding and supports critical thinking skills. Organization is what creates long-term value. Searchable notes, thematic clusters, and structured after-reading strategies make academic study easier over time. If you are learning how to active reading in a digital setting, start by changing your reading habits and using clear reading methods that support active learning strategies. Try Web Highlights and turn passive scrolling into structured knowledge. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. What is active online reading?** Active online reading is a structured reading method where you interact with digital content through highlighting, annotating, questioning, summarizing, and tagging. Instead of passive reading, you apply active reading strategies to monitor their comprehension, identify the main point, and strengthen reading comprehension during academic study. ### **2\. How does active reading improve memory?** Active reading improves memory by strengthening encoding and retrieval pathways. Techniques such as active recall, spaced repetition, visualization techniques, and after-reading strategies move information from working memory into long-term storage. These learning strategies support deeper processing compared to simple rereading. ### **3\. Is highlighting enough for effective reading?** No. Highlighting alone often leads to passive reading if everything is marked. Effective active reading techniques require selective highlighting, margin notes, tagging, and structured recall. A clear note-taking scaffold and organized reading process improve critical thinking skills and retention more than color alone. ### **4\. How can students improve digital reading comprehension?** Students can improve reading comprehension by applying before-reading strategies (reviewing the table of contents), during-reading strategies (annotating academic articles and primary sources), and after-reading strategies (summarizing and practicing active recall). Consistent reading habits and structured learning activities improve long-term academic performance. ### **5\. What tools help with active online reading?** Online annotation tools such as Web Highlights support active reading methods by allowing users to highlight web pages, PDFs, and YouTube transcripts, add notes, tag themes, and export structured summaries. Searchable libraries and flashcards make it easier to apply active learning strategies across Internet URLs and reputable online sources. --- # How to Take Notes From YouTube Videos Effectively > Learn how to make notes from YouTube videos effectively using timestamps, transcripts, and simple tools to turn video content into reusable notes. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2026-02-17 - Updated: 2026-10-05 - Tags: Youtube, Tutorial - Reading time: 12 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-take-notes-from-youtube-videos-effectively/ --- Most of us hit play on a YouTube video, tell ourselves we will remember the good parts, and then move on with nothing written down. We have done that more times than we can count. The problem isn’t the video. It is how we watch it. Taking notes from YouTube videos effectively means listening actively instead of watching passively, pausing and replaying key moments, and writing short notes linked to timestamps or transcript sections. When you summarize ideas in your own words and review notes after watching YouTube videos turn into usable study and reference material. Tools like [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) make this easier by keeping notes tied to the exact part of the video. > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) ## **Why YouTube Requires a Different Note-Taking Approach?** Taking notes from a YouTube video is not the same as [taking notes](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-5-note-taking-browser-extensions-in-2025/) from a book or article. Videos are linear and time-based. Once something is said, it is gone unless you pause or rewind. That is where most people lose focus. This problem becomes even more noticeable with short-form video, where ideas move fast, and there is very little time to pause and reflect. When you rewind again and again, your attention breaks. Many learners reach the end of a video with no structured notes, no timestamped notes, and no clear key takeaways. The result is low learning potential, even from good educational resources, training videos, or long-form video content. This is why people struggle to make notes from YouTube video content. Watching feels easy, but turning spoken ideas into actionable notes, reference materials, or study materials needs a different approach than text-based note-taking. ## **Common Mistakes When Taking Notes From YouTube Videos** Most people don’t struggle because a YouTube video is confusing. The issue is how notes are taken while watching. Small habits make a big difference. Here are some common mistakes that you might be making: - **Trying to write everything word-for-word** - This turns note-taking into transcription. You miss key information and end up with messy notes instead of clear action items. - **Not pausing the video** - Letting the video run while writing leads to shallow notes. Pausing helps turn spoken ideas into structured notes you can reuse. - **Taking notes without timestamps** - Notes without timestamps lose context. You can’t trace ideas back to the exact moment later. - **Relying on memory after watching** - Memory fades fast. Without written notes, even strong learning material disappears within hours. - **Not revisiting notes** - Notes that aren’t reviewed never become part of your searchable knowledge bases or long-term personal knowledge management system. If you want to take notes from YouTube videos that actually help later, these habits have to change. ## **How To Prepare Before Taking Notes From A YouTube Video** Good notes start before the video even plays. Spending a few minutes on setup reduces rewinding and keeps attention steady. Use this simple checklist before starting any YouTube video. #### **1\. Define the goal first** Be clear about why the video is being watched. Study, research papers, exam revision, or skill building all require different levels of detail and different types of structured notes. #### **2\. Scan the description and chapters** Video descriptions and chapters show what topics are covered and in what order. This helps identify key information and avoids wasting time on sections that are not relevant. #### **3\. Set the playback speed on purpose** Dense explanations benefit from a slower speed, while familiar topics can be watched faster. Adjusting speed improves focus and the overall learning experience. #### **4\. Choose a note-taking method in advance** Decide whether to use outlines, timestamped notes, a mind map, or question-based notes. Picking a method early keeps notes consistent and easier to review later. This small preparation step makes it easier to make notes from YouTube video content that actually turns into useful learning material. ## **Step-By-Step Process For Taking Notes From YouTube Videos** This step-by-step method works for lectures, training videos, tutorials, and long-form video content. It helps turn watching into usable notes instead of passive viewing. ### **1\. Watch Actively, Not Passively** Treat the YouTube video like a live class, not background noise. Stay alert for examples, definitions, and explanations that carry key information. Active watching improves focus and learning potential. ### **2\. Pause At Key Ideas** Pause whenever an idea sounds important or reusable. This is where most action items, concepts, or explanations appear. Pausing prevents overload and keeps notes accurate. ### **3\. Write Short, Meaningful Notes** Avoid full sentences copied from the video. Write clear phrases or bullet points that explain the idea in simple words. This creates structured notes that are easier to review later. ### **4\. Add Timestamps Or Transcript References** Always link notes to time markers or transcript sections. Timestamped notes preserve context and make it easy to revisit exact moments without scrubbing through the video. ### **5\. Summarize Sections In Your Own Words** After a section ends, write a brief summary. This step turns raw notes into actionable notes and improves recall when using notes as study materials or reference materials. Using this process consistently makes it easier to take notes from YouTube videos and store them inside searchable knowledge bases. Tools like Web Highlights support this workflow by allowing users to [highlight transcripts](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-transcript-youtube-generators/) , add notes, and keep everything connected to the original video. You can also generate [quick AI summaries](https://web-highlights.com/blog/ai-summary-of-a-website/) that can be combined with your notes. ![Youtube AI Summary created with Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/image-1.webp) *Youtube AI Summary created with Web Highlights* ## **Manual Vs Digital Note-Taking For YouTube Videos** There’s no single right way to make notes from YouTube videos. It really comes down to how fast notes are needed, how accurate they should be, and how often they’ll be reviewed later. The question is: do the notes need to be revisited, or are they just for the moment? ### **Notebook + Timestamps** Writing notes by hand works well for focused watching and simple ideas. Timestamps can be written next to key points, but finding the exact moment again takes time. For long video content, this method becomes slower and harder to reuse. ### **Google Docs Or Notion** Typing notes in Google Docs or Notion is faster than handwriting and easier to organize as structured notes. Timestamps are added manually, which means frequent pausing. Reviewing often involves switching back and forth between the video and the document. ### **Browser-Based Highlighting On Transcripts** Highlighting directly on transcripts keeps notes tied to the source. There’s less rewinding, better transcription accuracy, and lower review effort. Notes stay linked to exact sections of the YouTube video, which makes revisiting ideas much easier. If the goal is quick notes, almost any method works. But if notes are meant to become learning material or reference materials, staying connected to the video matters more than most people expect.

Method

Speed

Accuracy

Review Effort

Notebook + timestamps

Slow

Medium

High

Google Docs/ Notion

Medium

Medium

Medium

Transcript Highlighting

Fast

High

Low

Web Highlights supports transcript-based notes by letting users highlight, tag, and export notes. This makes it easier to turn video content into reusable learning material without extra steps. ## **Why Timestamps And Transcripts Improve YouTube Notes** ![YouTube transcript note-taking in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/data-src-image-0524c4c4-7850-4d3e-984b-fcbbae9c2a30.webp) Timestamps and transcripts solve the biggest problem with video notes: lost context. When notes are tied to time and text, they stay useful long after the video ends. #### **Timestamps preserve context** A note linked to a specific moment shows exactly where an idea appears. Timestamped notes make it easy to jump back to the right section without guessing or scanning the whole YouTube video. #### **Transcripts make reviewing faster** Reading is faster than rewatching, especially when AI help is used to surface transcripts quickly. Transcripts turn spoken video content into searchable text, which helps find key information, quotes, and definitions in seconds. #### **Transcript-based notes reduce rewinding** When notes are taken directly from transcript sections, there is less need to pause and rewind. This keeps focus steady and improves the overall learning experience. The AI transcript reader in Web Highlights supports this workflow by allowing users to read YouTube transcripts online, highlight exact lines, add notes, and keep everything linked to the original video. This makes it easier to take notes from YouTube videos and reuse them later as study materials or reference materials. ## **Best Note-Taking Methods For YouTube Videos** Not every YouTube video needs the same type of notes. The method should match how the video explains ideas and how the notes will be used later. ### **1\. Outline Method** The outline method works well for lectures, tutorials, and longer educational resources. Notes follow the video's order, using clear headings and subpoints. This helps keep ideas organized and easier to review later. ### **2\. Cornell-Style Notes (Adapted For Video)** Cornell-style notes are useful for exam preparation and revision. When used with videos, timestamps replace page numbers. Key points go on one side, questions or cues on the other, followed by a [short summary](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-get-youtube-ai-summary/) for recall. ### **3\. Question-Based Notes** Question-based notes suit interviews, panel discussions, and explainer videos. Writing notes as questions keeps attention focused and turns them into quick review material for study materials. ### **4\. Concept Mapping** Concept mapping works well for complex or connected topics. A mind map helps show how ideas relate across the video content, instead of listing points in isolation. ### **5\. TL;DR** ![TL;DR summary](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/image.webp) *TL;DR summary from Web Highlights* Lectures work best with outlines. Exam revision fits Cornell-style notes. Interviews benefit from question-based notes. Complex topics are easier to understand with concept mapping. Web Highlights also offers AI summaries for YouTube videos in formats like TL;DR and bullet points. The summaries run on-device with the AI built into Chrome and Edge (the free plan includes one summary a day). They can be used as a starting reference, while manual notes remain tied to transcripts and timestamps for accuracy when you take notes from YouTube videos. ## **Taking Notes From YouTube Lectures As A Student** Students use YouTube video lectures in many ways, from full online classes to quick revision before exams. The way notes are taken from videos is different from how notes are taken from textbooks. For online classes, video notes need more structure. Spoken explanations move quickly, so timestamped notes help track where definitions, examples, and explanations appear. This makes it easier to return to the exact moment later without rewatching the full lecture. For exam revision, students often focus on key takeaways and formulas rather than full explanations. Short, structured notes work better than long paragraphs, especially when notes are reused as study materials. For concept reinforcement, videos explain ideas in a more conversational way than textbooks. Notes should capture examples and explanations in simple language, not copied sentences. This improves understanding and long-term recall. Unlike textbook notes, video notes depend on time and context. Linking notes to transcripts or timestamps helps turn video content into reliable learning material that can be reviewed, searched, and reused later when students take notes from YouTube videos. ## **Using YouTube Videos For Research Note-Taking** Researchers use YouTube video content very differently from casual viewers. In many cases, they treat videos as video data that needs the same care as written sources. Talks, interviews, and method explainers often support arguments, citations, or background sections in research papers, so notes need to be precise. **_Common research use cases include:_** - Recorded talks and panels where multiple speakers share different viewpoints - Expert interviews that include definitions, opinions, or quoted insights - Methodology explanations that walk through processes step by step When taking notes from these videos, three things matter most: **Traceability** - Every important point should link back to an exact moment in the video. Timestamped notes make it clear where each idea came from. **Accurate Referencing** - Research notes need correct wording and context. Notes tied to transcript lines reduce mistakes and improve transcription accuracy. **Revisiting Exact Moments Later** - Being able to jump back to a specific second avoids rewatching full videos and protects focus. This approach turns video content into dependable reference materials, not loose notes that rely on memory. To see what this looks like, watch the transcript reader keep pace with the video and jump to any timestamp you click: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg4m3bW1nOo) ## **Tools That Help You Take Notes From YouTube Videos** Different tools support different ways to make notes from YouTube videos. The right choice depends on how easily notes can be reviewed, reused, and shared later. ### **1\. Web Highlights** ![Note-taking with highlights on YouTube in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/data-src-image-03ac1ee9-68a4-4a17-8b85-60dbf946315f.webp) Web Highlights allows users to highlight YouTube video transcripts instead of copying text into another app. Notes stay linked to exact transcript sections and timestamps, with tags for organization. Highlights and notes can be exported in multiple export options, making it easy to reuse them as study materials, reference materials, or for research papers. ### **2\. Notion** Notion supports structured notes and flexible layouts. Timestamps are usually added manually while watching the video. Notes can be organized and exported, but the process requires switching between the video and the document. ### **3\. Google Docs** Google Docs works for basic timestamped notes written during playback. Notes can be shared or exported, but there is no direct link to transcripts or video sections, which limits long-term reuse. [Exporting notes and highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) makes it easier to turn video content into reusable learning material instead of notes that stay locked inside one tool. ## **How To Review And Remember Notes From YouTube Videos** Taking notes is only half the work. The real value comes from how those notes are reviewed and reused. Without review, even good notes from a YouTube video fade quickly. **Revisit notes within 24 hours** - A quick review soon after watching helps lock in key information. This small step keeps notes from turning into forgotten text. **Rewrite notes into short summaries** - Turning raw notes into brief summaries helps clarify ideas. These summaries work well as study materials, quick reference materials, or even outlines for future blog posts. **Group-related video notes together** - Notes from multiple videos often cover similar ideas. Grouping them builds structured notes and supports long-term personal knowledge management. **Connect notes across videos** - Linking ideas from different video content creates context. Over time, notes evolve into searchable knowledge bases rather than isolated points. Reviewing this way helps take notes from YouTube videos that actually support learning, exam revision, and deeper understanding. ## **Taking YouTube Notes With Web Highlights** If notes are meant to be reused later, how they are captured matters. Copying text into another app often breaks context and slows things down. With Web Highlights, notes are taken directly from YouTube video transcripts using a browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Instead of copying lines manually, users highlight the exact text where an idea appears and add notes alongside it. This keeps notes connected to the precise video section where the key information was explained. Tags make it easier to organize notes across multiple videos, courses, or topics. This helps when working with large amounts of learning material, training videos, or academic video content. Notes and highlights can also be exported using available export options, making them useful for study materials, research papers, or long-term personal knowledge management. For anyone who wants to take notes from YouTube videos without losing context, keeping notes tied to transcripts reduces the need to rewind and makes review simpler later. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. Is It Better To Pause or Watch First, Then Take Notes?** Pausing works better for most people. Watching first often leads to forgotten details. Pausing at key moments helps capture key information, add timestamped notes, and turn a YouTube video into clear, usable notes, rather than relying on memory. ### **2\. How Long Should YouTube Notes be?** YouTube notes should be short and focused. Aim for bullet points, definitions, and examples rather than full sentences. Good notes highlight key takeaways and action items without copying everything said in the video. ### **3\. Do YouTube Transcripts Replace Note-Taking?** No. Transcripts show what was said, but they don’t explain what matters. Notes add meaning by selecting important points, adding context, and organizing ideas. Transcripts support note-taking, but they don’t replace it. ### **4\. Are YouTube Notes Useful for Exams or Research?** Yes. When notes include timestamps and a clear structure, they work well for exam revision and research papers. Notes linked to exact video moments make it easier to verify ideas and revisit explanations later. ### **5\. Can YouTube Notes be Reused Later?** Yes, if notes are organized and searchable. Tagged and exported notes can be reused as study materials, reference materials, or part of a personal knowledge management system across multiple topics and videos. ### **6\. What is The Easiest Way to Keep YouTube Notes Organized?** Using transcript-based notes helps keep everything connected. Tools like Web Highlights allow notes to stay linked to video sections, be tagged by topic, and be exported for reuse, reducing review effort later. > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) --- # Gmail Stopped POP3 Support: Why You Need a Real Email Client Now > Gmail ended POP3 support in January 2026. Learn why Gmail Web no longer works as a central inbox and discover the best email client alternatives. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-02-02 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Apps, News, Email - Reading time: 10 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/gmail-stopped-pop3-support-why-you-need-a-real-email-client-now/ --- In January 2026, Google quietly ended an era by shutting down POP3 support in Gmail Web. If you relied on Gmail's "Check mail from other accounts" feature to aggregate your Yahoo, Outlook, or custom domain emails into one inbox, that setup stopped working. No warning, no migration path—just a sudden end to a feature millions of users depended on. The announcement came through a [support document](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/16604719) explaining that Gmail would no longer fetch emails from external accounts via POP3. For users who built their entire email workflow around Gmail Web as a central hub, this wasn't just an inconvenience—it was a fundamental breaking of their email infrastructure. Years of carefully configured account aggregation suddenly became useless. Full disclosure: Productivity Apps, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. > [**Best Alternatives for Gmail**](https://productivity-apps.com/alternatives/gmail) — Searching for an alternative to Gmail? Discover our top-rated alternatives for Gmail and make the best choice. (Marius Bongarts) What makes this particularly frustrating is that Gmail Web never supported the proper way to aggregate accounts: IMAP. Gmail only offered POP3 polling, which was always a hack rather than a real solution. Now that hack is dead, and Gmail Web reveals itself for what it actually is: a single-account email interface that never should have been your central hub in the first place. The reality is clear: if you manage multiple email accounts, you need a proper IMAP-based email client. Gmail Web's time as "one inbox to rule them all" is over. ## What Gmail Actually Shut Down Let's be precise about what changed, because the terminology gets confusing. Here's what Gmail killed: **What's dead:** - **POP3 fetching in Gmail Web**  – The "Check mail from other accounts" feature that pulled mail from external providers into your Gmail inbox is completely gone - **Gmailify**  – The feature that applied Gmail's spam protection and inbox categorization to external accounts (Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) no longer exists **What still works:** - **IMAP access to Gmail**  – External email clients (Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) can still access your Gmail account via IMAP exactly as before - **Gmail Web for single accounts**  – If you only use Gmail Web to check your Gmail address, nothing changed The confusion stems from thinking Gmail Web could aggregate accounts properly. It couldn't—Gmail Web never supported IMAP for external accounts. POP3 was the only option, and POP3 is fundamentally limited: it's one-way polling that doesn't sync folders, read status, or deletions. It was always a workaround masquerading as a feature. ## Why This Matters If your mental model was "Gmail Web = my email hub," that model just broke. Completely. Users who relied on Gmail Web to see their work Exchange, personal Yahoo, and custom domain emails in one place are now stranded. There's no button to click, no setting to enable—the functionality simply doesn't exist anymore. You can forward emails to Gmail, sure, but that's a terrible solution: no folder sync, no proper reply addresses, no real organization. It's email forwarding from 1995, not email management for 2026. The deeper issue is architectural. Gmail Web was designed for Gmail accounts, period. Google built an excellent interface for their own email service, then bolted on POP3 polling as an afterthought. It worked well enough that millions of users built workflows around it, but it was never the correct foundation for multi-account email management. Now Google has removed the hacky workaround, and users are discovering what email power users have known for years: Gmail Web is not a proper email client. It's a web interface for Gmail accounts. The era of Gmail as a central hub is definitively over. ## The Solution: Proper IMAP Email Clients The correct architecture for managing multiple email accounts has always been IMAP-based email clients. Unlike POP3, IMAP is bidirectional—changes you make on any device sync across all devices. Mark an email read on your phone, it shows as read on desktop. Delete from desktop, it vanishes from mobile. Move to a folder, that folder appears everywhere. IMAP clients connect directly to each of your email providers (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, custom domains) and give you a unified view without forcing everything through one company's infrastructure. You maintain separate accounts with separate security, but you see and manage everything in one interface. Modern email clients offer unified inboxes, smart categorization, powerful search, and cross-device sync—all the features you thought Gmail Web provided, but built on proper standards rather than hacks. Some clients are cross-platform (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac), others excel on specific ecosystems, but all of them handle multiple IMAP accounts better than Gmail Web ever did. The future of email is client-based, not provider-based. Gmail matters as an email provider with excellent spam filtering and storage. But for managing multiple accounts, dedicated email clients are the correct solution—and always have been. --- If you want a comprehensive analysis of all major email apps with detailed testing, user feedback analysis, and platform-specific insights, check out our  [complete email app comparison guide](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-great-comparison-top-ios-android-email-apps/) . You can also [find a full list of the best Gmail alternatives here](https://productivity-apps.com/alternatives/gmail) . Below, we focus specifically on the best alternatives for users affected by Gmail's POP3 shutdown. ## Best Email Client Alternatives ### [1\. Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) ![Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/microsoft-outlook/images/gallery-image-1.webp) [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) is the most obvious Gmail Web replacement, and for good reason. With 1 billion+ downloads and completely free multi-account support, Outlook handles Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, Exchange, and custom IMAP accounts in one unified interface. Reviewers describe the account setup as painless—add your email and password, and within seconds you're seeing all your mail in one organized inbox. **Why it's great for this use case:**  Outlook was built from the ground up for multi-account management in business environments. Unlike Gmail Web's bolted-on POP3 feature, Outlook's unified inbox is the core feature, not an afterthought. The Focused Inbox automatically separates important emails from noise, calendar integration works seamlessly across accounts, and you get proper IMAP sync that actually works. **Key advantages:** - Completely free with no paywalls for core features (unified inbox, calendar, focused filtering) - Cross-platform support: iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Web interface - Excellent calendar management integrated with email - Strong Microsoft 365 integration if you use Office apps - Works reliably on both iOS and Android (though iOS version is more polished) **Best for:**  Business users, professionals managing work and personal accounts, and anyone already in the Microsoft ecosystem. If you need a free, reliable replacement for Gmail Web that "just works" across all devices, Outlook is the safest bet. [Read our full Microsoft Outlook review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook)  – ProdApps rating: 8.33/10 ### [2\. Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail) ![Email - Fast & Secure Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/edison-mail/images/gallery-image-1.webp) [Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail) (marketed as "Email - Fast & Secure Mail") brings serious speed to multi-account email management. With 10 million+ downloads and a genuinely free core feature set, Edison is built around speed—reviewers report inboxes loading noticeably quicker than in competing apps, while it manages unlimited accounts from any provider. **Why it's great for this use case:**  Edison's unified inbox doesn't just aggregate accounts; it actively manages them with smart assistant features that Gmail Web never offered. Package tracking automatically surfaces shipping updates, bill reminders flag upcoming payments, and one-tap unsubscribe cleanly removes newsletter clutter across all accounts. It's multi-account management with intelligence, not just consolidation. **Key advantages:** - Lightning-fast email fetching that outpaces Gmail Web and other clients - Smart assistant features: automatic package tracking, bill reminders, subscription management - Completely free core features (unlimited accounts, unified inbox, templates, customization) - Cross-platform including web access via desktop app - Clean, modern interface that's actually pleasant to use daily **Best for:**  Speed-focused users who want their email now, not in 30 seconds. Anyone who receives frequent packages, bills, or subscriptions will love the automatic categorization. If Gmail Web felt sluggish and you want something snappier with smart features, Edison delivers. [Read our full Edison Mail review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail)  – ProdApps rating: 8.62/10 ### 3\. Apple Mail If you're in the Apple ecosystem—using iPhone, iPad, or Mac—you already have the solution installed: Apple Mail. It's native to every Apple device, requires zero setup beyond adding your accounts, and provides excellent IMAP support that syncs perfectly across all your Apple devices. **Why it's great for this use case:**  Apple Mail is the zero-friction choice for Apple users. Open Mail, add your Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and custom domain accounts, and you're done. No app to download, no company to trust with your email credentials beyond the providers themselves, no privacy compromises. The unified inbox shows all accounts in one view, VIP filtering highlights important senders, and Smart Mailboxes create custom folders across accounts. **Key advantages:** - Already installed on every Mac, iPhone, and iPad—no download needed - Excellent IMAP implementation with proper sync across all Apple devices - Privacy-focused: no data collection, no tracking, no monetization - Free forever with Apple devices - Deep integration with Apple ecosystem (Contacts, Calendar, Spotlight search) **Best for:**  Apple users who want the path of least resistance. If you own Apple devices and just want reliable multi-account email without installing third-party apps or creating new accounts, Apple Mail is the obvious choice. It's what "just works" actually looks like. ### [4\. FairEmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email) ![FairEmail, privacy aware email](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/fair-email/images/gallery-image-1.webp) [FairEmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email) is the privacy champion for Android users who want complete control over their email without corporate tracking or data harvesting. With 1 million+ downloads and a one-time €7.49 payment for pro features, FairEmail delivers 100% open-source email management with unlimited free accounts and exceptional IMAP support. **Why it's great for this use case:**  FairEmail takes Gmail Web's multi-account aggregation and does it properly—unlimited accounts via IMAP, advanced filtering rules, automatic message classification, and complete offline functionality. Reviewers report that the developer (Marcel) personally responds to support emails, often fixing bugs within hours. This level of direct engagement is virtually unheard of in email apps. **Key advantages:** - 100% open source—you can verify exactly what the app does with your data (nothing) - Unlimited free accounts with no artificial limitations - Exceptional IMAP support with advanced filtering, rules, and automatic classification - One-time €7.49 payment for pro features (no subscription) - Tracker blocking, phishing protection, OpenPGP/S/MIME encryption built-in - Exceptional developer support with same-day bug fixes **Caveat:**  Android only—iOS users need a different solution. **Best for:**  Privacy-conscious Android users who want to know exactly what their email app does behind the scenes. If Gmail Web's data harvesting bothered you and you want open-source transparency with unlimited customization, FairEmail delivers without compromise. [Read our full FairEmail review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email)  – ProdApps rating: 8.72/10 ### [5\. Blue Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/blue-mail) ![Email Blue Mail - Calendar](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/blue-mail/images/gallery-image-1.webp) [Blue Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/blue-mail) offers free multi-account management across all major platforms—iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac—with a unified inbox and integrated calendar. With 50 million+ downloads, Blue Mail has been a long-standing Gmail Web alternative, though recent updates have introduced quality concerns worth noting. **Why it's great for this use case:**  Blue Mail's unified inbox consolidates unlimited accounts (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, Exchange, IMAP) with an innovative "People" view that groups emails by contact rather than chronologically. The built-in calendar integration helps coordinate schedules without switching apps, and the completely ad-free free tier provides clean email management without monetization interruptions. **Key advantages:** - Free core features with unlimited account support - Cross-platform availability: works on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac - Integrated calendar included in free tier - People-centric inbox grouping for conversation-focused workflows - Email clusters automatically organize newsletters and promotional emails **Caveats:**  Recent user feedback shows declining quality—sluggish UI after updates, widget refresh issues, and occasional crashes. Support responsiveness has declined, and the app feels like it's accumulated technical debt over nearly 11 years of development. **Best for:**  Users who need free cross-platform access and can tolerate occasional performance issues. If you work across Windows, Mac, and Android and need one email app that works everywhere, Blue Mail provides that coverage—just be aware the experience isn't as polished as it once was. [Read our full Blue Mail review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/blue-mail)  – ProdApps rating: 7.43/10 --- Find [more email client apps here](https://productivity-apps.com/categories/email) . > [**Best Email Apps (2026 Guide)**](https://productivity-apps.com/categories/email) — Compare the top-rated Email apps for your device. Hand-picked and reviewed for 2026. Find the perfect email tools to enhance your mobile experience. (Marius Bongarts) ## Final Thoughts Gmail's POP3 deprecation forces millions of users to confront an uncomfortable truth: Gmail Web was never the right tool for managing multiple email accounts. It was a hack that worked well enough until Google decided it didn't want to support it anymore. Now users need proper IMAP-based clients, and that's actually a good thing—even if the migration is painful. The alternatives are genuinely better. IMAP clients provide proper synchronization, unified inboxes that actually work, and features Gmail Web never offered. Package tracking, calendar integration, advanced filtering, encryption support—these are standard features in modern email clients, not bolt-on experiments. **Our recommendations:** - **Apple ecosystem users**  → Start with Apple Mail—it's already installed, works perfectly, and requires zero third-party trust - **Business users or Microsoft ecosystem**  → Microsoft Outlook provides free, reliable multi-account management with excellent calendar integration - **Speed and smart features**  → Edison Mail delivers the fastest email experience with intelligent assistant features - **Privacy-focused Android users**  → FairEmail offers open-source transparency with unlimited customization - **Cross-platform free option**  → Blue Mail works everywhere, though recent quality decline is concerning The future of email is client-based, not provider-based. Gmail remains an excellent email provider, but the days of Gmail Web as a central hub are over. Choose a proper email client, configure your IMAP accounts, and you'll wonder why you ever tried to force Gmail Web to do something it was never designed for. For a comprehensive breakdown of all major email apps with detailed testing and analysis, read our  [complete email app comparison guide](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-great-comparison-top-ios-android-email-apps/) . You can also check out the  [full comparison table](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/fair-email-vs-edison-mail-vs-gmail-vs-microsoft-outlook-vs-proton-mail-vs-blue-mail-vs-thunderbird-vs-spark-mail-vs-canary-mail-vs-yahoo-mail)  to see all email clients side-by-side. If you send cold outreach from that new client, our comparison of the  [best email finder tools for Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-email-finder-tools/)  covers which ones verify an address before you burn your sending reputation on it. --- # The Great Comparison: Top iOS & Android Email Apps > Email apps have become essential tools for staying connected in our increasingly digital world. With billions of people managing multiple email accounts across personal, work, and school, the demand for powerful, reliable email clients has exploded. From simple inbox managers to comprehensive communication platforms with calendar integration and AI assistance, the email app market offers something for everyone. Many developers—from tech giants like Google and Microsoft to privacy-focused startu - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-01-29 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Reading time: 22 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-great-comparison-top-ios-android-email-apps/ --- Email apps have become essential tools for staying connected in our increasingly digital world. With billions of people managing multiple email accounts across personal, work, and school, the demand for powerful, reliable email clients has exploded. From simple inbox managers to comprehensive communication platforms with calendar integration and AI assistance, the email app market offers something for everyone. Many developers—from tech giants like Google and Microsoft to privacy-focused startups like Proton and independent open-source developers—have created email apps that range from minimalist IMAP clients to feature-packed productivity suites. Of course, established players and newcomers alike are competing fiercely, each trying to win users with their unique approach to email management. We wanted to find out which email apps actually deliver on their promises. After analyzing their store listings, ratings and user feedback, we've created this comprehensive comparison of 10 of the best iOS & Android email apps available today. How this list was made: the scores come from Productivity Apps, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each app from its App Store and Google Play listings, its ratings and what recent reviews report, and this list is ordered by that score. The descriptions below summarize each listing and what its users report. ### List of the Best Email Apps for Android & iOS: - [FairEmail, privacy aware email](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email) - [Email - Fast & Secure Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail) - [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail) - [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) - [Proton Mail: Encrypted Email](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-mail) - [Email Blue Mail - Calendar](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/blue-mail) - [Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunderbird) - [Spark Mail: AI Email, Calendar](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/spark-mail) - [Canary Mail - AI Email App](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/canary-mail) - [Yahoo Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/yahoo-mail) If you prefer a comparison overview, check out the [full comparison table of all Email apps](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/category/email) : ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/email-apps-comparison-table.webp) *Comparison table of all Email apps* ## [1\. FairEmail, privacy aware email](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email) ![FairEmail, privacy aware email](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/fair-email/images/gallery-image-1.webp) FairEmail has carved out a passionate following among privacy-conscious users and power users who demand comprehensive email management. With over 1 million downloads and a strong rating on Android (with 29,700+ reviews), it's clear that many users appreciate its uncompromising approach to privacy and features. The app maintains excellent quality, with recent feedback showing positive trajectory—a rating that continues to improve, reflecting growing user satisfaction. What really sets FairEmail apart is its 100% open-source architecture combined with exceptional developer support. Reviewers report that Marcel (the developer) personally responds to support emails, often fixing bugs within hours and implementing thoughtful feature requests same-day. This level of direct engagement is virtually unheard of in the email app market. ### Key Features: - **100% Open Source & Privacy-Focused**  – No data storage on third-party servers, no ads, no analytics, no tracking (even error reporting is opt-in) - **Tracker & Phishing Protection**  – Blocks embedded tracking images, confirms before loading images/links, reformats messages to prevent phishing - **Full Encryption Support**  – OpenPGP and S/MIME encryption/decryption built-in for secure communications - **Unlimited Accounts & Unified Inbox**  – Connect unlimited email addresses with optional unified view or separate folder organization - **Advanced Filtering & Rules**  – Automatic message classification, filter rules, search indexing, colored stars and account/folder customization (Pro) - **Power User Features**  – Reply templates, scheduled sending, snooze messages, conversation threading, two-way sync, offline operations - **Lightweight & Battery-Friendly**  – Under 30 MB app size with IMAP IDLE push support, minimal battery drain, low data usage - **Developer-Supported**  – Direct email support from Marcel, same-day bug fixes, active maintenance since 2019 ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - 100% open source - One-time €7.49 payment - Exceptional developer support - Blocks email trackers - Unlimited free accounts - OpenPGP/S/MIME encryption - Infinitely configurable - Lightweight & fast **Cons:** - Busy UI for some users - Learning curve for features - Outdated design aesthetics - Occasional Outlook auth issues ### Who is this great for? FairEmail is perfect for anyone who values privacy, open-source transparency, and needs comprehensive email management without compromises. Whether you're a security-conscious professional, a privacy advocate who wants to know exactly what your email app does with your data, or a power user who needs advanced filtering and encryption, FairEmail delivers without artificial limitations. It's especially great for users who want lifetime access through a one-time €7.49 payment instead of subscriptions, and for anyone frustrated by corporate email apps that track everything. The exceptional developer support makes it ideal for users who value responsive maintenance and direct communication with the creator. ### Compared to others FairEmail stands out for its uncompromising privacy focus and open-source architecture when compared to mainstream apps like  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail)  or  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) . While  [Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-mail)  also emphasizes privacy, FairEmail provides more configuration options and works with any email provider. Compared to  [Thunderbird](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunderbird) , FairEmail offers better mobile optimization and more active development. ### Detailed comparisons [FairEmail vs Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/fair-email-vs-gmail)  •  [FairEmail vs Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/fair-email-vs-proton-mail)  •  [FairEmail vs Thunderbird](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/fair-email-vs-thunderbird) ### Rating Summary With 1 million+ downloads and 29,700+ reviews on Android, FairEmail has built a dedicated user base that values privacy and power.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave FairEmail a score of 8.72/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email) . ## [2\. Email - Fast & Secure Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail) ![Email - Fast & Secure Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/edison-mail/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Edison Mail (marketed as "Email - Fast & Secure Mail") has established itself as one of the fastest and most feature-rich email apps available. With over 10 million downloads and a solid rating on Android (with 182,000+ reviews), Edison Mail appeals to users who want speed, smart features, and a polished interface. The app's iOS version maintains even higher satisfaction, showing strong cross-platform quality. What stands out in Edison's listing and reviews is the balance of advanced features—like package tracking, bill reminders, and smart assistant capabilities—with speed. The listing promises a unified inbox that loads faster than most competitors, and reviewers describe the smart categorization as effective without feeling intrusive. ### Key Features: - **Blazing Fast Performance**  – Optimized email fetching and rendering that outpaces competitors in loading speed - **Smart Assistant Features**  – Automatic package tracking, bill reminders, subscription management, price watching - **Unified Smart Inbox**  – Manage unlimited accounts from any provider with intelligent filtering and organization - **One-Tap Actions**  – Quick unsubscribe, block sender, delete by sender with minimal friction - **Email Scheduling**  – Send messages at optimal times with delayed send feature - **Read Receipts & Undo Send**  – Know when emails are read, retract messages within seconds of sending - **Secure Inbox**  – Block tracking pixels, secure email transmission, optional biometric authentication - **Cross-Platform Sync**  – Seamless experience across iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and web ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Fast email loading, per reviews - Excellent package tracking - Clean, modern interface - Strong multi-account support - Bill & subscription reminders - Read receipts work well - Free core features **Cons:** - Recent ads in free version - Occasional sync delays - Limited customization - Privacy concerns (Edison research) - Some features require premium ### Who is this great for? Edison Mail is perfect for anyone who values speed above all else and wants smart assistant features that actually work. Whether you're managing multiple email accounts, tracking frequent online orders, or need quick inbox cleanup tools, Edison delivers a polished experience that reviewers describe as faster than the competition. It's especially great for users who receive lots of bills, shipping notifications, and subscriptions—Edison's automatic categorization and tracking features save significant time managing these emails. The app works well for users who want mainstream reliability with more features than Gmail but less complexity than power-user tools. ### Compared to others Edison Mail differentiates itself through speed and smart assistant features compared to  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail)  or  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) . While  [Blue Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/blue-mail)  offers similar multi-account management, users find Edison much faster. Compared to privacy-focused  [FairEmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email) , Edison trades some privacy for convenience features like package tracking. ### Detailed comparisons [Edison Mail vs Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/edison-mail-vs-gmail)  •  [Edison Mail vs Blue Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/edison-mail-vs-blue-mail)  •  [Edison Mail vs Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/edison-mail-vs-microsoft-outlook) ### Rating Summary With 10 million+ downloads and 182,000+ reviews on Android, Edison Mail has proven its appeal to speed-focused users.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Edison Mail a score of 8.62/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail) . ## [3\. Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail) ![Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/gmail/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Gmail is the default email app for billions of users worldwide, and for good reason. With 10 billion+ downloads and millions of reviews across both platforms, Gmail represents the most widely used email client globally. The app maintains strong satisfaction across both iOS and Android, delivering consistent reliability that most users have come to expect from Google's infrastructure. What keeps Gmail ahead of the competition is its combination of core reliability and smart productivity features that don't feel forced. Reviewers call its search unmatched, say inbox categories reduce clutter automatically, and note that Smart Compose speeds up writing without requiring separate AI subscriptions. When everything works properly, Gmail provides the most frictionless email experience available. ### Key Features: - **Best-in-Class Search**  – Fast, accurate search across emails and attachments with advanced filters and optional Gemini assistance - **Smart Inbox Categories**  – Automatic separation of Primary, Social, Promotions, and Updates for faster email triage - **Industry-Leading Spam Protection**  – Blocks 99.9% of spam, phishing, and malware automatically - **Multi-Account Support**  – Add Gmail plus other providers (Outlook, Yahoo, IMAP) in unified inbox view - **Smart Compose & Reply**  – AI-powered writing suggestions and one-tap contextual responses - **Google Ecosystem Integration**  – Seamless Calendar, Tasks, Meet, and Drive integration within email interface - **Centralized Unsubscribe**  – Manage all newsletter subscriptions in one place with easy opt-out - **Offline Access**  – Read and compose emails without connection, sync automatically when online ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Best-in-class search - Excellent spam filtering - Completely free - Multi-account support - Fast setup and sync - Reliable cross-device access **Cons:** - Notifications fail for some - Calendar auto-add surprises - Occasional app crashes - Account recovery friction - Privacy trade-offs ### Who is this great for? Gmail is perfect for anyone who wants the most reliable all-around email app without paywalls or catastrophic performance failures. Whether you're a casual user managing one account or a professional juggling multiple email addresses, Gmail delivers consistent reliability. The deep Google ecosystem integration makes it ideal for users already using Google Calendar, Drive, or Meet. It's especially great for users who prioritize search functionality, spam protection, and just wanting email that "works" without configuration. Gmail is the safest default choice for users who don't have specific privacy requirements or need for advanced customization. ### Compared to others Gmail provides the most reliable baseline email experience compared to alternatives. While  [Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-mail)  offers superior privacy,  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook)  provides better Microsoft ecosystem integration, and  [FairEmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email)  delivers more customization, Gmail excels at just working reliably for the vast majority of users without significant compromises. ### Detailed comparisons [Gmail vs Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/gmail-vs-microsoft-outlook)  •  [Gmail vs Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/gmail-vs-proton-mail)  •  [Gmail vs Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/gmail-vs-edison-mail) ### Rating Summary With 10 billion+ downloads and millions of reviews across both platforms, Gmail remains the most widely used email app globally.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Gmail a score of 8.58/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail) . ## [4\. Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) ![Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/microsoft-outlook/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Microsoft Outlook brings Microsoft's enterprise email platform to mobile with 1 billion+ downloads and strong reviews across both platforms (10.4 million reviews on Android). The app excels at Microsoft ecosystem integration—for business users, teams, and anyone invested in Microsoft services, Outlook provides unified inbox management, powerful calendar scheduling, and seamless Office document access all in one app. Reviews suggest Outlook delivers on its productivity promise for users who need Microsoft integration. Users rate its calendar management above most competitors, call Office document handling genuinely useful, and find the Focused Inbox feature effective at reducing email noise. However, Android users report quality gaps that iOS users don't encounter—persistent freezing, unreliable search, and confusing behaviors like the back button deleting entire email chains. ### Key Features: - **Unified Multi-Account Inbox**  – Manage Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, Exchange, and IMAP accounts in one seamless interface - **Focused Inbox**  – AI-powered filtering that separates important emails from low-priority messages automatically - **Integrated Calendar & Tasks**  – Schedule meetings, set reminders, and manage to-do lists without leaving the email interface - **Microsoft 365 Integration**  – Open Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents directly from inbox with native editing support - **Intelligent Swipe Gestures**  – Customize swipe actions for delete, archive, snooze, move, or flag with one motion - **Teams & Video Call Integration**  – Join Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype meetings directly from calendar invites - **Play My Emails**  – Voice-powered email reading for hands-free inbox management while driving or multitasking - **Smart Search**  – Search across emails, attachments, contacts, and calendar events with voice or text queries ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Excellent Microsoft 365 integration - Free multi-account support - Powerful calendar management - Clean professional design - Focused inbox works well - Strong business features **Cons:** - Forced Copilot button - Android performance issues - Weak spam filtering - Confusing delete behavior - Search reliability problems ### Who is this great for? Microsoft Outlook is perfect for business users, professionals, and anyone already invested in Microsoft's ecosystem who needs tight Office integration, calendar scheduling with Teams, or enterprise email management. Whether you're coordinating meetings, collaborating on Office documents, or managing work and personal accounts in one place, Outlook delivers seamless Microsoft productivity. It's especially great for users who need calendar-focused workflows, teams relying on Microsoft 365 for collaboration, and professionals who want a business-class email experience. The free tier is genuinely complete, and for Office-centric work, Outlook provides integration that Gmail can't match. ### Compared to others Outlook excels at Microsoft ecosystem integration compared to  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail)  or  [Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail) . While Gmail offers better performance stability and spam filtering, Outlook provides tighter Office, OneDrive, and Teams integration. Compared to  [Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-mail) , Outlook trades privacy for productivity features. However, Android users encounter performance issues that don't affect iOS. ### Detailed comparisons [Outlook vs Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/microsoft-outlook-vs-gmail)  •  [Outlook vs Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/microsoft-outlook-vs-proton-mail)  •  [Outlook vs Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/microsoft-outlook-vs-edison-mail) ### Rating Summary With 1 billion+ downloads and 10.4 million reviews on Android (plus high iOS satisfaction), Outlook remains a top business email choice.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Microsoft Outlook a score of 8.33/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) . ## [5\. Proton Mail: Encrypted Email](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-mail) ![Proton Mail: Encrypted Email](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/proton-mail/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Proton Mail positions itself as the gold standard for private, encrypted email, and it largely lives up to that reputation. With over 10 million downloads on Android and strong privacy credentials, the app has built a loyal following among security-conscious users. What sets Proton apart is its uncompromising commitment to privacy—end-to-end encryption, zero-access architecture, Swiss-based servers under strict privacy laws, and open-source cryptography independently audited. According to Proton's listing, encryption works transparently for Proton-to-Proton emails, with password-protected messages available for non-Proton users. The app is described as working completely offline after initial setup, and the Easy Switch feature promises to make migrating from Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo straightforward. However, recent feedback suggests declining satisfaction—login issues, UI confusions, and limitations in the free tier create friction. ### Key Features: - **End-to-End Encryption**  – All messages stored with zero-access encryption, making them unreadable to anyone except you and your recipients - **Password-Protected Emails**  – Send encrypted messages to non-Proton users with password protection - **Proton Easy Switch**  – Migrate emails, calendars, and contacts from Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, or AOL in just a few taps - **Gmail Auto-Forwarding**  – Automatically forward messages from Gmail accounts into your Proton inbox while maintaining privacy - **Multi-Account Support**  – Manage multiple Proton Mail accounts within a single app interface - **Advanced Spam & Phishing Protection**  – Built-in filtering keeps malicious emails out of your inbox - **Folder & Label Organization**  – Keep your inbox organized with customizable folders, labels, and swipe gestures - **Open-Source Cryptography**  – Vetted security implementations using AES, RSA, and OpenPGP standards ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Industry-leading encryption - Strong privacy commitment - No ads or tracking - Open-source security - Easy Gmail migration - Works fully offline **Cons:** - Recent satisfaction decline - Login/setup issues reported - Not a multi-provider client - IMAP bridge paywalled - Limited free storage - Confusing conversation threads ### Who is this great for? Proton Mail is perfect for anyone serious about protecting their communications from surveillance, data harvesting, or third-party tracking. Whether you're a privacy advocate, journalist, activist, security-conscious professional, or anyone handling sensitive communications, Proton delivers encryption and privacy that mainstream apps can't match. It's especially great for users willing to migrate to a Proton email address in exchange for uncompromising privacy, and for anyone seeking transparent, open-source security they can verify. The free tier provides 1GB storage and works fully—upgrades unlock more storage and custom domains. ### Compared to others Proton Mail is the privacy leader compared to mainstream apps like  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail)  or  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) , which can technically access your emails. While  [FairEmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email)  also emphasizes privacy, Proton provides built-in encryption rather than relying on external email providers. However, Proton requires using Proton addresses—it's not a multi-provider client like most alternatives. ### Detailed comparisons [Proton Mail vs Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/proton-mail-vs-gmail)  •  [Proton Mail vs Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/proton-mail-vs-microsoft-outlook)  •  [Proton Mail vs FairEmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/proton-mail-vs-fair-email) ### Rating Summary With 10 million+ downloads on Android and strong privacy credentials, Proton Mail serves security-conscious users globally.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Proton Mail a score of 7.73/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-mail) . ## [6\. Email Blue Mail - Calendar](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/blue-mail) ![Email Blue Mail - Calendar](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/blue-mail/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Blue Mail (marketed as "Email Blue Mail - Calendar") is a multi-account email app with 50 million+ downloads that promises unified inbox management with calendar integration. With a solid presence on both Android and iOS, Blue Mail appeals to users who want to manage multiple email accounts from different providers in one interface. However, recent user feedback reveals a troubling pattern—what was once a reliable app has experienced quality decline. Reviewers say Blue Mail's multi-account support works as advertised, connecting Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, iCloud, and custom IMAP/POP3 accounts. The unified inbox view consolidates messages effectively, and the built-in calendar helps coordinate schedules. However, recent reviews name the issues driving the dissatisfaction: intrusive ads in the free version, occasional sync delays, and performance hiccups that interrupt basic workflows. ### Key Features: - **Unified People-Centric Inbox**  – Consolidate multiple email accounts with conversation grouping by contact - **Built-In Calendar**  – View and manage calendar events alongside emails without switching apps - **Multi-Account Support**  – Connect unlimited Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Exchange, iCloud, and custom IMAP/POP3 accounts - **Push Notifications**  – Real-time email alerts for all connected accounts - **Customizable Actions**  – Configure swipe gestures for quick email management - **Dark Theme**  – Eye-friendly dark mode for comfortable reading - **Email Clusters**  – Smart grouping of promotional emails, newsletters, and notifications - **Search & Filter**  – Find messages across all accounts with powerful search capabilities ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Multi-account consolidation - People-centric grouping - Built-in calendar - Push notifications work - Unlimited free accounts - Cross-platform availability **Cons:** - Severe recent decline - Ads increasingly intrusive - Sync delays reported - Performance inconsistency - Less polished than competitors ### Who is this great for? Blue Mail is suitable for users managing multiple email accounts who want unified inbox management with basic calendar integration. Whether you're juggling personal Gmail, work Exchange, and Yahoo accounts, Blue Mail consolidates them in one place. The people-centric inbox grouping helps organize conversations by contact rather than just chronologically. It's potentially useful for users seeking a free multi-account email app and who can tolerate ads and occasional performance issues. However, given recent quality trends, alternatives like  [Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail)  or  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail)  provide more reliable multi-account experiences. ### Compared to others Blue Mail offers similar multi-account management to  [Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail)  and  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) , but both alternatives provide better performance and more polished experiences. While Blue Mail is free like  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail) , Gmail delivers superior reliability and spam protection. Compared to  [Thunderbird](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunderbird) , Blue Mail has a more modern interface but less consistent quality. ### Detailed comparisons [Blue Mail vs Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/blue-mail-vs-edison-mail)  •  [Blue Mail vs Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/blue-mail-vs-gmail)  •  [Blue Mail vs Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/blue-mail-vs-microsoft-outlook) ### Rating Summary With 50 million+ downloads across platforms, Blue Mail has a substantial user base despite recent quality concerns.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Email Blue Mail a score of 7.43/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/blue-mail) . ## [7\. Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunderbird) ![Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/thunderbird/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Thunderbird, Mozilla's open-source email client, launched on Android after decades of desktop dominance. With millions of downloads and a reputation for privacy and open standards, Thunderbird mobile aims to bring the same philosophy to smartphones. However, recent user feedback shows Thunderbird mobile has experienced one of the most severe quality collapses in the email app category—a catastrophic decline that makes the current version difficult to recommend. What should have been a straightforward mobile adaptation of proven desktop software instead delivered broken core functionality. Recent reviews describe the disasters driving users away: essential features like sent folders and trash disappeared, basic email operations randomly fail, search barely functions, attachments don't work reliably, and the app crashes constantly. This isn't gradual decline; it's systematic destruction of functionality through poorly executed updates. ### Key Features: - **Open-Source & Community-Driven**  – Built by Mozilla with transparent development and no corporate tracking - **Multi-Account Support**  – Manage Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and custom IMAP/POP3 accounts in unified or separate views - **Unified Inbox**  – Consolidate messages from all accounts into one view for easier management - **Privacy-Focused**  – No data collection, no tracking, no advertising—email client that respects your privacy - **Standards-Based**  – Supports IMAP, POP3, SMTP with proper implementation of email standards - **Cross-Platform**  – Consistent experience between desktop and mobile (when working properly) - **Customizable Interface**  – Adjust views, folders, and organization to match your preferences - **Conversation Threading**  – Group related messages together for easier email management ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - 100% open source - Mozilla backing - No ads or tracking - Free forever - Multi-account support - Privacy-focused philosophy **Cons:** - Catastrophic recent quality - Folders disappeared - Search barely works - Constant crashes - Basic operations fail - Attachments broken ### Who is this great for? Thunderbird mobile  _should_  be perfect for privacy-conscious users, open-source advocates, and anyone who used Thunderbird desktop successfully for years. The philosophy—open standards, no tracking, community-driven development—represents everything email apps should be. However, given current quality problems, we cannot recommend Thunderbird mobile to anyone until Mozilla addresses the fundamental functionality failures. If you value Mozilla's mission and privacy focus, consider  [FairEmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email)  instead—it delivers the same open-source privacy philosophy with actually functional email management. Alternatively, wait for Mozilla to fix Thunderbird mobile's catastrophic problems before migrating from your current email app. ### Compared to others Thunderbird shares privacy philosophy with  [FairEmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email)  and  [Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-mail) , but both alternatives deliver functional apps that work reliably. While Thunderbird desktop has advantages over other desktop clients, Thunderbird mobile lags far behind  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail) ,  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) , or  [Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail)  in basic functionality and reliability. ### Detailed comparisons [Thunderbird vs FairEmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/thunderbird-vs-fair-email)  •  [Thunderbird vs Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/thunderbird-vs-gmail)  •  [Thunderbird vs Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/thunderbird-vs-proton-mail) ### Rating Summary Despite Mozilla backing and open-source philosophy, Thunderbird mobile currently suffers from severe quality problems.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Thunderbird a score of 6.92/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunderbird) . ## [8\. Spark Mail: AI Email, Calendar](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/spark-mail) ![Spark Mail: AI Email, Calendar](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/spark-mail/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Spark Mail launched with significant fanfare on iOS, earning praise for its design and team collaboration features. With millions of downloads and initial success on Apple platforms, Spark expanded to Android promising AI-powered email management and calendar integration. However, recent reviews show Spark has experienced a catastrophic Android quality collapse—one of the worst performance disasters we've documented. What worked well on iOS translated disastrously to Android. Android reviewers describe the failures driving mass user abandonment: the app loads emails so slowly it's often faster to use webmail (1-2 minute waits for inbox to load), dark mode is catastrophically broken (rendering emails unreadable), basic navigation freezes constantly, search returns no results or wrong results, swipe gestures require 10+ attempts, and the app crashes multiple times daily. This isn't minor bugs; it's fundamental Android optimization failure. ### Key Features: - **Smart Inbox**  – AI-powered categorization separating important emails from notifications (when functioning) - **Email Scheduling**  – Compose messages and send them at optimal times - **Team Collaboration**  – Create, discuss, and delegate emails with team members (Premium feature) - **Snooze & Reminders**  – Temporarily hide emails and set follow-up reminders - **Quick Replies**  – Pre-written response templates for common messages - **Multi-Account Support**  – Connect Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and custom IMAP accounts - **Calendar Integration**  – View events alongside emails for better schedule coordination - **Signature Templates**  – Create multiple email signatures for different contexts ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Strong iOS version quality - Nice design (when visible) - Team features (Premium) - Smart categorization works - Email scheduling useful - Calendar integration **Cons:** - Catastrophic Android performance - 1-2 minute loading times - Dark mode completely broken - Constant freezing & crashes - Search doesn't work - Swipe gestures fail ### Who is this great for? Spark Mail  _could_  be great for teams needing collaboration features and iOS users who value design—the iOS version maintains much higher quality than Android. However, we cannot recommend Spark to Android users in its current state. The performance problems are so severe that basic email operations become frustrating exercises in waiting and troubleshooting. If you're on iOS and need team email collaboration, Spark might work. For Android users, literally any alternative— [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail) ,  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) ,  [Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail) —will provide better reliability and faster performance. ### Compared to others Spark's iOS quality competes with  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail)  and  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) , but Android performance falls catastrophically behind all major alternatives. While  [Canary Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/canary-mail)  also has severe quality issues, Spark's Android problems are arguably worse. Compared to  [Blue Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/blue-mail)  or  [Thunderbird](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunderbird) , Spark has worse Android performance despite premium pricing. ### Detailed comparisons [Spark Mail vs Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/spark-mail-vs-gmail)  •  [Spark Mail vs Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/spark-mail-vs-microsoft-outlook)  •  [Spark Mail vs Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/spark-mail-vs-edison-mail) ### Rating Summary Despite initial iOS success, Spark's Android catastrophe severely impacts overall quality.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Spark Mail a score of 5.97/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/spark-mail) . ## [9\. Canary Mail - AI Email App](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/canary-mail) ![Canary Mail - AI Email App](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/canary-mail/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Canary Mail markets itself as an AI-powered premium email app with advanced features and security. With pricing up to €329.99 lifetime, Canary positions as a professional-grade solution for users willing to pay for quality. However, recent user feedback shows Canary has experienced a severe quality collapse—delivering one of the worst value propositions in email apps, combining high pricing with catastrophic reliability failures. What should distinguish a premium app—polish, reliability, working features—is absent in Canary. Recent reviews document the disasters: AI features that don't work or produce nonsensical results, constant crashes that interrupt basic email operations, emails getting stuck and failing to send, attachments that don't open, dark mode rendering emails unreadable, and search that returns no results. Users aren't getting premium quality; they're paying premium prices for fundamentally broken software. ### Key Features: - **AI Email Assistant**  – Supposed AI-powered writing help, summarization, and smart replies (rarely works correctly) - **End-to-End Encryption**  – PGP encryption support for secure communications - **Read Receipts**  – Know when recipients open your emails (unreliable functionality) - **Email Scheduling**  – Send messages at future times (when not stuck) - **Unified Inbox**  – Manage multiple accounts from one view - **Snooze & Templates**  – Delay messages and create response templates - **Biometric Security**  – Fingerprint/face authentication for app access - **Cross-Platform**  – Available on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows (inconsistent quality across platforms) ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Encryption support exists - Multi-account functionality - iOS version slightly better - Templates when working - Biometric auth - Scheduling feature **Cons:** - Catastrophic quality collapse - AI features don't work - Constant crashes - Emails fail to send - Dark mode broken - Extreme premium pricing (€329.99) ### Who is this great for? Canary Mail is difficult to recommend to anyone given current quality and pricing. The €329.99 lifetime pricing (or €4.99/month subscription) demands premium reliability that Canary doesn't deliver. Even users willing to pay for quality will find better value in virtually any alternative. If you want AI email features,  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail) 's free Smart Compose works better than Canary's paid AI. If you need encryption,  [Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-mail)  or  [FairEmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/fair-email)  provide more reliable security. For premium features without catastrophic bugs,  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook)  or  [Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail)  deliver better experiences free or at lower cost. ### Compared to others Canary's premium pricing positions it against professional tools like  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook)  (free) and  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail)  (free), both of which provide dramatically better reliability and features. Compared to  [Spark Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/spark-mail) , Canary has similar quality problems but higher pricing. Even troubled apps like  [Thunderbird](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunderbird)  are at least free—Canary charges premium prices for comparable dysfunction. ### Detailed comparisons [Canary Mail vs Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/canary-mail-vs-gmail)  •  [Canary Mail vs Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/canary-mail-vs-microsoft-outlook)  •  [Canary Mail vs Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/canary-mail-vs-proton-mail) ### Rating Summary Canary Mail's combination of premium pricing and severe quality problems creates poor value.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Canary Mail a score of 5.42/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/canary-mail) . ## [10\. Yahoo Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/yahoo-mail) ![Yahoo Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/yahoo-mail/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Yahoo Mail launched as one of the earliest major email apps with 100 million+ downloads and millions of reviews. For years, Yahoo Mail provided reliable email access with features like multi-account support and package tracking. However, recent reviews show Yahoo Mail has experienced the single most catastrophic quality collapse we've documented—an absolute disaster of product management that makes the current version actively hostile to use. Updates between August and October 2025 fundamentally broke core email functionality. Reviewers document the disasters: essential folders (spam, sent, trash) disappeared entirely for months with Yahoo refusing to fix what they called an "experiment." AI categorization forces emails into buckets users can't disable, hiding messages and causing users to miss critical mail. Move buttons randomly vanish, bulk selection broke, swipe gestures require 10+ attempts, emails stuck in outbox, attachments arrive blank, and constant crashes. This isn't bugs; it's systematic destruction of a functional app. ### Key Features: - **Multi-Account Unified Inbox**  – Connect Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Hotmail accounts (when working) - **Package Tracking**  – View order status and recent purchases (still functional) - **Delete by Sender**  – Quickly remove all emails from specific senders (one feature that works) - **One-Tap Unsubscribe**  – Easy newsletter management - **Forced AI Categorization**  – Automatic sorting into Primary/Offers/Newsletters/Other (cannot disable, hides emails) - **Gamified Cleanup**  – Fast swipe-based email sorting (requires 10+ attempts per swipe) - **Security Warnings**  – Alerts about suspicious emails - **Yahoo Mail+**  – Ad-free premium at $1.99/month (doesn't fix broken features) ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Delete by sender works - Package tracking useful - Multi-account support - Low premium price - Long-established service - Accessibility features **Cons:** - Catastrophic recent collapse - Folders disappeared (experiment) - Can't disable AI filtering - Deceptive ad placement - Move button missing - Emails stuck in outbox ### Who is this great for? Yahoo Mail is difficult to recommend to anyone in its current state. Users stuck with Yahoo email addresses should strongly consider accessing Yahoo mail through alternative apps— [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail) ,  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) , and  [Edison Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/edison-mail)  all support Yahoo accounts and provide dramatically more reliable access than Yahoo's own app. If you have a Yahoo email address but aren't locked in, migrating to Gmail, Outlook, or  [Proton Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-mail)  will provide better long-term reliability. Yahoo Mail's recent "experiments" that permanently removed features suggest the company has abandoned quality standards users deserve. ### Compared to others Yahoo Mail once competed with  [Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gmail)  and  [Microsoft Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-outlook) , but current quality places it far behind all major alternatives. Even troubled apps like  [Thunderbird](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunderbird) ,  [Spark Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/spark-mail) , and  [Canary Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/canary-mail)  are more functional than Yahoo Mail's broken state.  [Blue Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/blue-mail)  provides better Yahoo account access than Yahoo's own app. ### Detailed comparisons [Yahoo Mail vs Gmail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/yahoo-mail-vs-gmail)  •  [Yahoo Mail vs Outlook](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/yahoo-mail-vs-microsoft-outlook)  •  [Yahoo Mail vs Blue Mail](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/yahoo-mail-vs-blue-mail) ### Rating Summary With 100 million+ downloads but catastrophic recent quality collapse, Yahoo Mail represents email app failure.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Yahoo Mail a score of 4.00/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/yahoo-mail) . ## Final Thoughts Looking at all 10 email apps side by side across iOS and Android, clear winners emerge—though the email app landscape also reveals troubling quality problems that shouldn't exist from major developers. **FairEmail**  (8.72/10) takes the top spot for users who value privacy, open-source transparency, and comprehensive email management. The €7.49 one-time payment, exceptional developer support, and unlimited customization make it the best choice for power users and privacy advocates.  **Edison Mail**  (8.62/10) and  **Gmail**  (8.58/10) follow closely, with Edison excelling at speed and smart features while Gmail delivers unmatched reliability and search.  **Microsoft Outlook**  (8.33/10) remains the best business-focused option for users invested in Microsoft's ecosystem, despite Android performance issues. **Proton Mail**  (7.73/10) stands alone for users who need end-to-end encryption and zero-access security. If privacy is non-negotiable, Proton delivers despite recent quality concerns and interface limitations. However, apps ranked below 7/10 reveal severe problems:  **Blue Mail**  suffers declining quality with intrusive ads,  **Thunderbird**  experienced catastrophic mobile launch failures,  **Spark Mail**  has unusable Android performance despite strong iOS quality,  **Canary Mail**  charges premium prices for broken features, and  **Yahoo Mail**  represents the single worst email app collapse we've documented—systematic destruction of functionality through forced experiments. Our recommendation: Start with  **Gmail**  if you want reliable, free email that just works. Choose  **FairEmail**  if privacy and customization matter most. Pick  **Outlook**  for Microsoft ecosystem integration. Select  **Proton Mail**  if encryption is required. Test  **Edison Mail**  if you want smart features and speed. Avoid the bottom five apps entirely unless quality improves dramatically—there's simply no reason to tolerate crashes, broken features, and hostile user experiences when better alternatives exist free. Check out the  [full comparison table](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/category/email)  to see all 10 email apps side-by-side and make the best choice for your needs. And if the problem is finding the address rather than reading the reply, we ran the same treatment on the  [best email finder tools for Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-email-finder-tools/) . --- # What Is Web Annotation? A Complete Guide for Students and Researchers > Learn what web annotation is, how it works, and why students and researchers use web annotation to study, review sources, and keep context online. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2026-01-29 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Education, Reading - Reading time: 11 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/what-is-web-annotation-for-students-and-researchers/ --- When we read online, most of what we learn gets lost.  We skim online articles, open research sources in multiple tabs, bookmark pages we never return to, or copy text into separate notes without context. Web annotation changes that. It allows you to annotate web pages directly, keep your notes tied to the source, and build understanding as you read. For students and researchers, web annotation turns web content into active course materials and usable research sources instead of forgotten links. ## **What is web annotation?** Web annotation is the practice of adding highlights, comments, tags, or notes directly to live web pages while preserving the content's original context. It is used to study online articles, review research sources, collaborate with others, and track ideas over time.  Unlike bookmarking or traditional note-taking apps, web annotation lets you annotate web pages themselves instead of saving disconnected links or copied text. ## **Why Web Annotation Matters Today** Much of the reading students and researchers do has moved from printed books and handouts to the browser. Students now rely on online articles, JSTOR articles, course materials, and other online research sources that live across different web applications. This shift makes web annotation more important than ever. Copying text into notebooks or note-taking apps breaks context. Once the text is separated from the web content, it is harder to remember where it came from or why it mattered. Over time, this leads to information overload, scattered notes, and lost references. Web annotation helps solve these problems by letting students and researchers annotate web pages directly. Highlights, notes, and tags stay tied to the original source, making it easier to revisit insights later, compare research sources, and review ideas without rereading entire pages. ## **How Web Annotation Works** Web annotation follows a simple reading flow. You stay on the web page, read at your own pace, and interact with the content as you go. Instead of jumping between tabs, notebooks, or apps, everything happens right where you are reading, so your focus stays on the content, not the tools. ### **Selecting Text on a Live Web Page** When reading online articles or research sources, you select the text that matters. This can be a definition, an argument, a data point, or a paragraph you want to review later. The selection happens directly on the web page, not in a separate document. ### **Highlighting or Commenting Inline** Once selected, you can highlight web content or add short comments next to it. These notes explain why the section matters, how it connects to course materials, or how it fits into your research question. This keeps feedback and comments close to the source. ### **Saving Notes to a Personal Library** Annotations are saved to a personal library or cloud-based web annotation system. Instead of scattered files or screenshots, all highlighted web content stays searchable and organized across online research sources and media types. ### **Reopening Pages With Annotations Intact** When you revisit the same page later, your highlights and notes are still there. This makes it easier to review ideas, compare research sources, and build on earlier thinking without starting from scratch. ## **Common Types of Web Annotation** Web annotation supports different reading and research habits. Each type of annotation reflects how students and researchers actually work with web content during study and review. ### **Text Highlighting** Text highlighting is used to mark key ideas, definitions, or arguments while reading online articles or JSTOR articles. Students often highlight exam-relevant concepts, while researchers highlight claims or evidence they may reference later. Highlighting web content makes important sections easy to scan during revision. ### **Margin Notes and Comments** Margin notes let readers add short explanations next to selected text. This is common when breaking down complex theories, summarizing paragraphs in your own words, or leaving feedback and comments during collaborative learning. These notes help turn passive reading into active thinking. ### **Tags and Notes** Tags and notes help organize web annotations across multiple research sources. Students tag course materials by subject or exam topic, while notes are used to explain ideas in their own words. This creates an organized content structure and makes related annotations easier to search and review later. ### **Cross-Device Sync** Cross-device sync keeps annotations available across browsers and devices. Highlights and notes added on one device remain accessible when revisiting the same web pages later. This supports consistent review, better recall, and smoother research workflows without losing context. ### **Quote Extraction** Quote extraction allows readers to save exact passages for citations or discussion boards. This is common in academic writing, where accuracy matters. Extracted quotes keep the original source intact, making it easier to reference research sources without losing context. ## **Web Annotation vs Traditional Note-Taking** Web annotation and traditional note-taking serve different purposes. Web annotation keeps notes tied to web content, while notebooks and bookmarks separate ideas from their sources.

Method

Context preserved

Tool switching

Citation accuracy

Review & recall

Web annotation

Yes, notes stay on web pages + sync across devices

Minimal

High

Easy to revisit

Notebooks

No, content is copied

Frequent

Medium

Depends on memory

Bookmarks

No notes attached

Low

Low

Often forgotten

By letting users annotate web pages directly, a web annotation tool reduces tool switching, keeps research sources clear, and makes reviewing insights much easier later. ## **How Students Use Web Annotation** Students use web annotation to stay focused while reading course materials online. Instead of highlighting randomly, they annotate web pages with purpose. Many students annotate lecture readings by highlighting key points and adding short notes in their own words. Exam-relevant concepts are marked clearly, making revision faster. When paragraphs feel dense or unclear, margin notes help break ideas down into simpler explanations. During exams, students often revise from annotated sources, reviewing highlights and notes instead of rereading entire online articles or textbooks. ## **How Researchers Use Web Annotation** Researchers use web annotation to manage complex reading across many research sources. During literature reviews, they annotate journal articles, JSTOR articles, and blog research directly on the web, keeping insights tied to each source. Annotations help when comparing arguments across online research sources, especially when themes overlap. Tags are often used to group sources by methodology, theory, or research question. When it is time to write, saved highlights and quote extraction support accurate citations. This improves traceability and makes research decisions easier to revisit and explain later. ## **Web Annotation vs PDF Annotation** Web annotation and PDF annotation solve similar problems, but they work in different ways.  **Web annotation** - Works on dynamic web pages that change and update - Keeps notes linked to live content and shared URLs - Helps compare online articles, research sources, and competitor websites **PDF annotation** - Works on static files that rarely change - Fits fixed documents such as course materials and downloaded research papers - Sharing and version management can be harder across files Tools such as [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) support both website annotation and PDF annotation, including local PDFs. This allows researchers to search highlights across web content and PDFs in one place and review insights without switching between multiple web applications. ## **Popular Web Annotation Tools** Different web annotation tools support different reading and research habits. Below are commonly used options, explained in a factual and neutral way. Full disclosure: Web Highlights is our own product, so keep that in mind when you see it on this list. ### **1\. Hypothes.is** **What it is:** [Hypothes.is](https://web.hypothes.is/) is an open-source annotation tool run by a non-profit. It allows users to add highlights and comments directly on online articles, web content and PDFs, either publicly or within private groups. **Primary use case:** Collaborative annotation for courses, shared readings, and discussion-based learning. **Best suited for:** Educators, students, and researchers working in academic or classroom settings. ### **2\. Web Highlights** **What it is:**  Web Highlights is a browser-based web annotation tool that lets users highlight web pages, add  [notes](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/notes)  and  [tags](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/tags-and-organization) , read content in  [reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/)  , and export annotations.  [Compared to Hypothes.is](https://web-highlights.com/blog/web-highlights-vs-hypothesis-for-students/)  , it is built for personal study rather than group discussion: a searchable library with tags and folders, YouTube transcripts, AI summaries and flashcards. **Primary use case:** Studying, online research, and reviewing web content while keeping annotations organized in one place. **Best suited for:** Students and researchers who annotate web pages, PDFs, and online research sources regularly. > [**Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis: Which One’s Better for Students?**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/web-highlights-vs-hypothesis-for-students/) — Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis compared for students. See which tool works better for PDFs, YouTube study, summaries, flashcards, and personal learning. (Web Highlights) ### **3\. Diigo** **What it is:** [Diigo](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-import-highlights-from-diigo-into-web-highlights/) combines bookmarking with basic website annotation features such as highlights, sticky notes, and tags. It focuses on saving and organizing web pages rather than deep note-taking. > If you are currently using Diigo but want to switch to Web Highlights, Web Highlights offers an integration that lets you [import all your Diigo data into Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-import-highlights-from-diigo-into-web-highlights/) . **Primary use case:** Collecting and tagging online articles, visual references, and research links. **Best suited for:** Users who want lightweight annotation alongside bookmarking for online research. ## **What Makes a Good Web Annotation Tool** Not all annotation tools work the same way. When choosing a web annotation tool, it helps to focus on how well it supports real study and research habits. Here is what to look for: - **Works directly on web pages:** The tool should let you annotate web pages without copying text into another app or document. - **Supports highlights and notes:** Highlighting web content and adding comments or margin notes should feel natural while reading online articles. - **Tagging and search:** Tags and search make it easier to organize research sources, group related ideas, and find annotations later. - **Export options:** A good web annotation system should support exports such as Markdown or PDF so annotations can be reused for assignments or writing. - **Privacy and data control:** Users should be able to control who sees their annotations, especially when working with research sources. - **Cross-device access:** Annotations should stay available across devices for consistent review and recall. - **AI support:** Some tools now include AI features such as article summaries or YouTube transcript generator, which help scan web content before deeper annotation. These features help students and researchers decide which website annotation tools fit their workflow and long-term study needs. ## **Best Practices for Annotating the Web** Good web annotation is about intention, not volume. These practices help students and researchers get more value from annotated web pages and research sources. **1\. Annotate with a question in mind:** Before highlighting web content, ask what you are trying to understand or compare. This keeps annotations focused. **2\. Use tags and highlights consistently:** Apply the same tags or highlighter colors across online articles and research sources to keep content structure clear and searchable. **3\. Write notes in your own words:** Personal explanations improve recall and build digital literacy skills over time. **4\. Review annotations regularly:** Revisiting annotated web pages supports better recall and prevents insights from being forgotten. **5\. Group related annotations across sources:** Connecting notes from multiple web applications helps with synthesis and deeper understanding. ## **Common Web Annotation Mistakes** Web annotation helps when it supports thinking, not just collecting text. These mistakes are common among students and researchers who are new to annotating web pages. **Over-highlighting web content** Highlighting large sections of online articles without purpose creates noise. When everything is marked, it becomes harder to review key ideas during exams or research writing. **Copying text without adding context** Copying web content into notes or saving highlights without comments removes meaning. Web annotation works best when short explanations, feedback, and comments are added next to the source. **Never revisiting annotations** Annotations that are never reviewed lose value. Regular review supports recall and helps connect ideas across research sources and course materials. **Using too many annotation tools** Switching between different website annotation tools, notebooks, or browser extensions fragments research and makes content harder to search later. Pick one good option and stick to it. Avoiding these habits leads to clearer notes, better recall, and a more consistent web annotation system. ## **Using Web Highlights for Web Annotation** Modern web annotation works best when reading, annotating, and revisiting content happen in one place. Web Highlights is built around this idea and supports one highlighter for everything (web, PDFs, [YouTube annotation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/youtube-video-annotations/) ) through a browser-based workflow. #### **Browser-based Web Annotation** ![Easy web annotation in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/data-src-image-87a1dcec-ade1-4ba4-ba6a-446865d0b295.webp) You can annotate web pages directly as you read. Highlights, notes, and comments stay attached to the original web content, which helps preserve context across online articles and research sources. #### **PDF annotation, including local files** ![PDF annotation in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/data-src-image-e1950433-99c4-44ad-ad67-de9a616926c8.webp) Web Highlights supports annotating both online  [PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs)  and local PDFs from your computer. This allows students and researchers to work with course materials, journal papers, and downloaded files alongside live web pages in the same annotation system. #### **Reader Mode for Focused Reading** ![reader mode in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/data-src-image-5273e9f7-a4c6-485a-83c9-f53ad96e69db.webp) [Reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-5-reader-mode-chrome-extensions-for-focused-reading/) removes visual noise from online articles and restructures content for readability. This makes it easier to focus on content structure, highlight key sections, and add notes without distractions. #### **YouTube Annotation and Transcripts** ![YouTube annotation and transcript reader in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/data-src-image-ed76f778-404b-4ecf-b67f-a16c947b0ec2.webp) YouTube videos can be read as [transcripts](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-transcript-reader) and annotated like text. This helps when working with lectures, tutorials, or visual learning materials where written notes matter more than replaying the video. #### **AI summaries and review support** ![AI summaries for web and YouTube videos in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/data-src-image-23ea6881-48ea-440c-978d-6a75adaefb7e.webp) AI summaries help scan long web content before deeper annotation. Web Highlights also offers detailed [AI summaries for YouTube videos](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-get-youtube-ai-summary/) in different formats.  Highlights can also be turned into flashcards, supporting review and  [spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning)  across study sessions. #### **Exports for Research and Reuse** ![Export options available in Web Highlights for summaries and highlights.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/data-src-image-c847a834-7d1f-4c3d-b841-d5f0619b1bb1.webp) Highlights and notes can be copied as Markdown on every plan, sent to Notion or Capacities in one click, or saved as a PDF file with the Ultimate plan, making it easier to reuse notes for assignments, writing, or long-term research work. If you want a simple way to annotate web pages, PDFs, and YouTube content in one place, Web Highlights lets you highlight, add notes, review later, and keep everything connected to the original source. You can start using it directly in your browser and see how web annotation fits into your own study or research workflow. [Try it today](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) ! ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. Is web annotation legal and ethical for research?** Yes. Web annotation is legal and widely accepted in academic research when sources are cited properly. Annotating web pages, JSTOR articles, or online research sources for personal study or review is considered standard research practice, as long as copyright rules and academic integrity guidelines are followed. ### **2\. Can web annotations be private?** Yes. Most website annotation tools, including Web Highlights, allow private annotations that are visible only to the user. This is important when working with sensitive research sources, draft ideas, or early-stage analysis. Privacy controls help manage feedback and comments without sharing them publicly. ### **3\. Does web annotation replace note-taking apps?** Web annotation does not fully replace note-taking apps, but it reduces reliance on them. It keeps notes connected to web content, improving context preservation. Many users combine web annotation systems with project management tools or writing apps for final output. ### **4\. Can annotations be exported for assignments or research writing?** Yes. Many web annotation tools support exporting annotations to formats such as Markdown or PDF. This makes it easier to reuse highlighted web content, quotes, and notes when preparing assignments, literature reviews, or academic papers. ### **5\. Is web annotation useful beyond academics?** Yes. Web annotation is also used in web development workflows, digital marketing strategies, and design reviews. Teams annotate competitor websites, website mockups, visual references, and content structure using screenshot annotations, feedback pins, and version management during review and approval processes. --- # Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis: Which One’s Better for Students? > Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis compared for students. See which tool works better for PDFs, YouTube study, summaries, flashcards, and personal learning. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2026-01-23 - Updated: 2026-07-28 - Tags: comparison, Web Highlights - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/web-highlights-vs-hypothesis-for-students/ --- Students read more online than ever - articles, PDFs, lecture notes, and even YouTube videos. The problem isn’t access to information. It is keeping track of what matters and actually remembering it later.  That is why annotation tools have become part of daily study routines. They help students highlight key points, add notes, and return to important ideas without re-reading everything. Two tools often come up in this space: Web Highlights and Hypothesis. Both allow students to annotate content on the web, but they are built for different kinds of study habits. This comparison looks at how each tool fits real student workflows, including reading, annotating, summarizing, organizing research, and turning highlights into something you can review and remember. ## **Quick Comparison: Web Highlights vs Hypothesis (AEO Block)** Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis comes down to study style. Web Highlights is built for individual learning — highlighting, summarizing, organizing, and reviewing content across web pages, PDFs, and YouTube. Hypothesis is designed for classroom use, where students annotate the same texts, reply to peers, and discuss readings together, with less focus on personal review or long-term retention. ### **Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis: Student Comparison Table**

Feature

Web Highlights

Hypothesis

Supported formats

Web pages, online PDFs, local PDFs, YouTube transcripts

Web pages, PDFs (via supported viewers)

Browser support

Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Web app

Chrome, Web app, LMS

Features for studying

Notes, tags, AI summary+transcript, search bookmarks, reader mode, highlights

Basic notes, group threads, highlight, annotate videos, integrations

Flashcards

Yes (Learn & Remember)

No

AI summaries

Yes (websites + YouTube)

No

YouTube support

Full transcript reading, highlighting, AI summary

Not supported

Collaboration

Sharing supported

Strong focus on group annotation

Export options

Notion, Capacities (one-click API), Markdown (copy), HTML, PDF

JSON, plain text, CSV, and HTML exports

Pricing

Free plan + paid upgrades

Free (education-focused)

Ideal for

Self-study, research, long-term learning

Classroom discussion and group reading

## **What Students Need in a Modern Annotation Tool** Students don’t need complicated tools or long setup steps. They need something that fits how studying actually works day to day. Most students jump between articles, [PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/annotate-a-pdf-in-chrome/) , slides, and YouTube videos. A modern annotation tool should let them read, highlight, annotate, and add notes in the moment, then come back later without starting from scratch.  These annotation tools should facilitate quick revision before exams, keep everything in one place, and work across devices so nothing is lost when switching browsers or laptops. **For most students, that means:** - Highlight text anywhere on the web - Work on both web pages and PDFs - Add notes and tags while reading - Organize saved articles and highlights in one place - Export highlights to tools like Notion or Markdown - Support YouTube-based learning - Offer [AI summaries](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-summary-website-ai-tools/) for quick review before exams - Provide distraction-free reading when focus matters - Sync across devices for studying anywhere These needs set the bar for comparing Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis from a student's point of view. ## **Web Highlights**  ![Web Highlights' website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/data-src-image-6783091a-251c-4ee6-bf20-5d39092462dd.webp) [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a browser extension and web app built for students who study online every day. It allows you to highlight web pages, PDFs, and [YouTube transcripts](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-transcript-youtube-generators/) , add notes, and keep everything organized in one place. Web Highlights also includes Reader Mode, AI summaries, and flashcards, so studying doesn’t stop at highlighting; it helps with review and memory too. ### **Key Features for Students** - **Highlight anywhere** : highlight text on web pages, online PDFs, local PDFs, and YouTube transcripts - **Reader Mode (distraction-free)** : read any article without ads or clutter in [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-read-any-website-in-distraction-free-reader-mode/) - **AI summaries** : get quick summaries of articles and YouTube videos  - **Library with tags + search** : keep all highlights, notes, and saved content organized - **Learn & Remember flashcards** : turn highlights into [study flashcards](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) for spaced review - **Exports** : one-click export to Notion and Capacities (Ultimate plan), plus Markdown (copy), HTML, and PDF - **Sync across browser + web app** : access your study material anywhere - **Local AI summaries** : summaries run in the browser and stay privacy-friendly - **Online tools without signup** : use tools like YouTube transcript reader and website highlighter without creating an account In the Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis comparison, this setup clearly favors students who study alone, revise often, and want everything, from reading to review in one workflow. ## **Hypothes.is**  ![Hypothesis' website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/data-src-image-c111a80f-10d1-4a82-ab9a-1f562ffbe82e.webp) [Hypothes.is](https://web.hypothes.is/) is an open-source web annotation tool mainly used in academic and classroom settings. It’s designed for shared reading, group discussions, and assignment-based annotation. Hypothes.is works well when students and teachers need to comment on the same text together, but it offers fewer tools for personal studying, review, or long-term retention. Hypothesis does not offer PDF summaries, YouTube transcript highlighting, [AI summaries](https://web-highlights.com/blog/ai-summary-of-a-website/) , flashcards, or a distraction-free reading mode. Its main strength lies in annotation collaboration. ### **Key Features for Students** - **Web page highlighting** : highlight and add comments on online articles - **Collaborative annotations** : see and reply to notes from classmates or instructors - **Public and private groups** : control who can view and join discussions - **Educator integrations** : works with LMS platforms like Canvas and Blackboard - **Simple text-based notes** : focus on discussion rather than personal organization - **Video annotation support** : leave comments or questions tied to moments in a video - **Image annotation support** : place notes on charts, diagrams, scores, and other visuals ## **Side-by-Side Comparison for Students** ### **1\. Supported Content Types** In the Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis comparison, content coverage is one of the biggest differences. - Web Highlights works across web pages, online PDFs, local PDFs from your computer, and YouTube transcripts. Students can study articles, papers, and videos in one place for [increased productivity](https://web-highlights.com/blog/maximizing-productivity-tools-web-highlights/) . For students juggling mixed formats, Web Highlights covers more ground. - Hypothesis mainly supports web pages. PDF annotation works only through supported viewers or specific setups, which can limit flexibility for everyday study. ### **2\. Annotation + Highlighting** ![Annotate and highlight in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/data-src-image-77a792bf-5dad-4c23-b6b2-ee9ef754e8b1.webp) Both tools allow students to highlight text, but the level of detail differs. With Web Highlights, students get: - Multiple highlight colors - Notes attached to highlights - Tags for grouping topics - A saved library of all highlights - Sync across browser extension and web app Hypothesis focuses on text comments tied to discussions. Highlights are visible inside pages, but aren’t organized into a personal study library. ### **3\. Study & Learning Features** ![Reader mode in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/data-src-image-6961311b-27bd-4856-8598-b0f7fa37226c.webp) This is where Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis clearly split. **Web Highlights includes:** - AI summaries for articles and YouTube videos - Flashcards for review and [spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) - Reader Mode for distraction-free reading - Exports to Notion, Markdown, PDF, HTML, and more Hypothesis does not include study-focused features like AI summaries, flashcards, or reading modes. It’s built for discussion, not review or exam prep. ### **4\. Organization** ![Export options in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/data-src-image-978c9d80-a2f6-48ad-91d0-0eb53a8ed0ac.webp) Web Highlights gives students a central library with tags, search, saved notes, and export options. It’s designed for long-term studying and research projects. Hypothesis organizes content through groups and threads. That works well for classes, but it’s harder to use as a personal knowledge system over time. ### **5\. Classroom Collaboration** This is where Hypothesis does better. Hypothesis is built for: - Instructor-led assignments - Shared annotations - Group discussions around readings Web Highlights supports sharing, but it’s not designed around classroom workflows in the same way. ### **5\. Ease of Use** For everyday studying, Web Highlights is easier to pick up and use. Students can highlight, save, summarize, and review without setting up groups or joining classes. In the Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis comparison, Web Highlights fits solo study and independent research better, while Hypothesis fits structured classroom discussion. ## **When Should Students Choose Web Highlights?** In the Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis comparison, Web Highlights makes more sense when studying is personal, repetitive, and spread across many formats. It is built for students who study on their own and need tools that help them focus, revisit material, and actually remember what they read or watch. **Web Highlights is a good fit if you:** - Learn from YouTube lectures, tutorials, or recorded classes, and want to read, highlight, and [annotate video transcripts](https://web-highlights.com/blog/youtube-video-annotations/) - Use tools like the YouTube transcript generator to review videos without rewatching everything - Read and highlight PDFs every day, including local files stored on your computer - Want quick AI summaries of articles and YouTube videos before exams or revisions - Prefer reading without ads, pop-ups, or clutter using Reader Mode - Use flashcards or spaced repetition to lock in key ideas - Export highlights to Obsidian, Markdown, [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) , Notion, or PDF for long-term research and note-building - Want a clean tool that stays fast and doesn’t push classroom or group workflows This is where Web Highlights clearly stands out as a self-study tool for students and researchers who want their highlights to live beyond the page. ## **Which Tool Is Better for Most Students?** For most students, Web Highlights is the better choice. It supports how studying actually happens today, reading articles, marking PDFs, watching YouTube lectures, and reviewing notes later. Features such as AI summaries, Reader Mode, flashcards, and exports facilitate solo study and revision. Hypothesis works best in classrooms where group discussion matters more than personal study. In the Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis comparison, Web Highlights supports everyday learning, whereas Hypothesis supports shared coursework. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. What is the main difference between Web Highlights and Hypothesis?** The main difference in Web Highlights vs. Hypothesis is focus. Web Highlights is built for personal studying, summaries, review, and memory. Hypothesis is built for shared annotation, class discussions, and group-based reading. ### **2\. Can I annotate PDFs with both tools?** Yes, but in different ways. Web Highlights supports both online PDFs and local PDFs from your computer. Hypothesis supports PDFs primarily through supported viewers or assigned documents, which can be limiting for daily personal study. ### **3\. Which tool supports YouTube transcripts?** Only Web Highlights supports YouTube transcripts. Students can generate transcripts, read them like articles, highlight key points, add notes, and get AI summaries. The hypothesis does not support YouTube transcript reading or annotation. ### **4\. Which tool is better for an individual studying?** Web Highlights is better for individuals studying. It supports summaries, flashcards, Reader Mode, exports, and personal libraries. Hypothesis works better when studying is part of a class or group discussion rather than a solo review. ### **5\. Does Web Highlights work without an account?** Yes. Many Web Highlights tools work without an account, including website highlighting, Reader Mode, YouTube AI summaries, and transcript reading. An account is needed only if you want to save, sync, and organize highlights long term. ### **6\. Does the Hypothesis support collaborative annotations?** Yes. Collaboration is Hypothesis’s main strength. Students can annotate the same text together, reply to each other’s notes, and work inside public or private groups. This makes it useful for classroom assignments and guided reading. ### **7\. Do either of the annotation tools offer AI summaries?** Only Web Highlights offers AI summaries. Students can summarize websites and YouTube videos quickly, which helps with revision and exam prep. Hypothesis does not include any AI summary or review features. --- # Top 10 Chrome VPN Extensions: The Great Comparison > Best Chrome VPN extensions compared: 10 popular picks, each with its Tooltivity score. See how NordVPN, Planet VPN, Browsec and others score on store ratings and recent reviews. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2026-01-22 - Updated: 2026-10-12 - Tags: vpn, Chrome Extension - Reading time: 18 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-10-chrome-vpn-extensions-the-great-comparison/ --- With online privacy a growing concern, VPN browser extensions have become some of the most-installed tools on the Chrome Web Store: the ten in this list alone count more than 55 million users there. People use them to mask their location, access geo-restricted content, and browse more securely—all without installing heavy desktop software. Developers have responded with a wide range of options, from completely free services to premium offerings with advanced security features. Major players like NordVPN and Proton VPN compete alongside lightweight alternatives like Browsec and Planet VPN, each carving out their own niche in the crowded market. I wanted to know which Chrome VPN extension fits which kind of user. In this article, I'll compare and contrast 10 of the most popular VPN extensions available on the Chrome Web Store today. Most of these extensions are also available for Firefox, Edge, and other browsers, but we'll focus primarily on their Chrome versions. How this list was made: the scores come from Tooltivity, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each extension from its Chrome Web Store listing, its ratings and what recent reviews report. Places 2–10 follow that score. PureVPN’s #1 spot is a paid placement, labelled as sponsored below. The descriptions summarize each listing and what its users report. User counts and ratings are the Chrome Web Store figures from October 12, 2026; the scores and recent-review averages are Tooltivity’s from October 2026. ### List of the Best VPN Extensions for Chrome: - [PureVPN Proxy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/pure-vpn) - [NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn) - [Free VPN Proxy and ad blocker - Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) - [Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn) - [Proton VPN: Fast & Secure](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/proton-vpn) - [VPN Proxy VeePN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn) - [Urban VPN Proxy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/urban-vpn-proxy) - [Hola VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hola-vpn) - [Windscribe - Free Proxy and Ad Blocker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/windscribe) - [SetupVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/setupvpn) If you just prefer a simple comparison overview, check out the [full comparison table of all VPN extensions](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/category/vpn/chrome): ![Comparison Table of all VPN Chrome Extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-21-at-17.25.50.webp) *Comparison of all VPN Chrome Extensions (screenshot from January 2026; scores have changed since)* ## [1\. PureVPN Proxy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/pure-vpn) **Sponsored:** PureVPN paid for this placement. Its Tooltivity score is 6.2/10, which on its own would put it eighth in this list. ![PureVPN Proxy](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/pure-vpn/images/gallery-image-1.webp) PureVPN Proxy offers a lightweight browser extension tied to a broader VPN service. With around 300,000 users and a 4.0/5 rating from 4,000+ ratings on the Chrome Web Store, it has the smallest user base in this list. Recent reviews tell a concerning story, though: according to Tooltivity, the last 100 average about 1.5/5, and the most common complaint is that the extension won't connect without a paid subscription. The listing shows a compact, familiar extension: a one-click toggle, 52+ locations, and shortcuts to popular streaming sites. You need a PureVPN subscription and login before it connects. The pricing on long-term plans is aggressive: the 2-year Standard plan comes to $2.15/month ($58.20 for the first 27 months), with a 31-day money-back guarantee. ### Key Features - **One-click connect** – Enable the VPN in seconds from a small panel - **Location switching** – Jump between 52+ locations, according to the listing - **Browser traffic encryption** – An encrypted proxy protects traffic inside the browser - **Account-based access** – Needs a PureVPN subscription and login before it connects - **Multi-browser support** – Extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge - **Full-device apps** – Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS apps for system-wide coverage - **Streaming shortcuts** – A “Popular Websites” list with dedicated servers for Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and others - **Lightweight UI** – Simple status and region controls without clutter ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Easy region switching - Strong long-term pricing - Full-device apps available - Up to 10 devices on one account **Cons:** - Paid subscription required before it connects - Recent Chrome reviews are mostly one-star - Repeated sign-in prompts reported by users - Users report sites detecting and blocking its servers ### Who is this great for? PureVPN Proxy suits people who already pay for PureVPN, or plan to, and want a lightweight browser add-on that ties into the wider service. Whether you need browser-only protection now but might want full-device coverage later, or you're looking for aggressive long-term pricing, PureVPN offers a clear upgrade path. It's less suited to anyone who wants to try a VPN for free first, because the extension needs a subscription before it connects. The ability to add Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS apps on the same account is the main draw. ### Compared to others PureVPN's long-term pricing is more competitive than that of [NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn), but its recent store reviews are far weaker. Against [Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) and [Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn), PureVPN requires a paid account, while those two connect without registration. When compared to [VeePN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn), PureVPN's long-term pricing is similar. ### Detailed comparisons [PureVPN vs NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/pure-vpn-vs-nordvpn) • [PureVPN vs Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/pure-vpn-vs-free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) • [PureVPN vs VeePN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/pure-vpn-vs-free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn) ### Rating Summary PureVPN Proxy has around 300,000 users on Chrome with a 4.0/5 lifetime rating, though recent reviews are far lower. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave PureVPN a score of **6.2/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/pure-vpn). --- ## [2\. NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn) ![NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/nordvpn/images/gallery-image-1.webp) NordVPN is one of the best-known names in the VPN industry, and its Chrome extension has the numbers to match. With 15 million users and a 4.2/5 rating from 9,100+ ratings on the Chrome Web Store, it's clearly a go-to choice for security-conscious users. Recent ratings hold up too: per Tooltivity, the last 100 reviews average at or above that lifetime figure. What sets NordVPN apart is a security suite that goes beyond basic VPN functionality. The listing highlights Scam and Phishing Protection, which blocks intrusive ads and websites hosting malware, and a network of 7,400+ servers. There is no free tier: the extension only works with a NordVPN subscription, and most of the features below belong to that subscription and its apps rather than to the extension itself. ### Key Features - **Scam and Phishing Protection** – Blocks intrusive ads and websites hosting malware - **Meshnet** – Create your own private encrypted network for secure file sharing - **Dark Web Monitor** – Get alerts if your personal data turns up in a leak - **Dedicated IP** – Maintain online reputation and skip denylists (included only in the top plan) - **Double VPN** – Adds another layer of encryption - **SmartPlay** – Watch shows and movies without extra setup steps - **Kill Switch** – Shields your data if the VPN connection drops - **Split Tunneling** – Choose which apps need VPN protection; the extension can exclude URLs from the proxy - **Private DNS** – Enhanced privacy without third-party spying - **7,400+ Servers** – Covering 195 locations according to the listing (NordVPN's website says 225+) ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Broad security feature set, from malware blocking to Double VPN - Reviewers praise its speed and reliability - Reviewers find it easy to set up and use - No-logs claim verified by independent auditors every year, according to NordVPN **Cons:** - Higher pricing compared to some competitors - No free plan—a subscription is required (30-day money-back guarantee) - Occasional sign-outs and switching delays reported by users - Fewer advanced features in the browser extension than in the apps ### Who is this great for? NordVPN is perfect for anyone who prioritizes security and wants a premium VPN experience. Whether you're a professional handling sensitive data, someone who frequently uses public Wi-Fi, or just someone who values privacy, NordVPN delivers a polished experience. It's especially great for users who want more than just IP masking. The scam and malware protection, dark web monitoring, and dedicated IP option make it appealing for power users who need security coverage beyond basic VPN functionality. ### Compared to others NordVPN's premium positioning and extensive security features set it apart from free alternatives like [Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) and [Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn). While those offer usable free tiers, NordVPN provides more server options and a no-logs policy that, according to NordVPN, independent auditors check every year. Against [Proton VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/proton-vpn), NordVPN bundles more extras, but Proton has a free plan and NordVPN doesn't. ### Detailed comparisons [NordVPN vs Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/nordvpn-vs-free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) • [NordVPN vs Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/nordvpn-vs-browsec-vpn) • [NordVPN vs Proton VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/nordvpn-vs-proton-vpn) ### Rating Summary NordVPN has 15 million users on Chrome with an average rating of 4.2/5. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave NordVPN a score of **8.9/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn). --- ## [3\. Free VPN Proxy and ad blocker - Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) ![Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Planet VPN is a popular pick among users seeking a truly free VPN option. With 1 million users and a 4.6/5 rating from 30,000+ ratings, it's one of the highest-rated free VPNs on the Chrome Web Store. Recent feedback holds that level too: Tooltivity puts the last 100 reviews at 4.5/5 or higher. What stands out in the listing is the no-registration start. You can install and connect without creating an account or entering an email address. The free plan has no limits on traffic or time, but it is restricted to 6 server locations in 5 countries. ### Key Features - **No Registration Needed** – Start immediately without creating an account - **Free Plan** – No limits on traffic or time, with 6 server locations in 5 countries - **Kill Switch** – Blocks traffic if the VPN drops to avoid data leaks - **No-Logs Claim** – States that no activity logs are kept - **Multiple Protocols** – OpenVPN, IKEv2, and Planet VPN's own StarGuard - **Smart Filters** – Control which websites go through the VPN in the extension - **Premium Network** – 1,200+ servers across 60+ countries - **Streaming & P2P (Premium)** – Streaming, P2P, and Double VPN servers are part of Premium ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Truly free plan with no time limits - No registration required to start - Streaming and P2P support on Premium **Cons:** - Free version is funded by ads, according to Planet VPN's website (the listing says the extension itself shows none) - Free plan is limited to 6 server locations ### Who is this great for? Planet VPN is perfect for anyone who wants quick privacy without any signup friction. Whether you're a casual user who needs occasional geo-unblocking, a student on a budget, or just someone who wants to try a VPN before committing, Planet VPN's free tier delivers real value. It's especially great for users who prioritize ease of use over advanced features. The one-click activation and no-account start make it appealing for everyday browsing, while the premium upgrade path offers more locations and streaming servers when needed. ### Compared to others Planet VPN's completely free model with no registration gives it a clear advantage over [NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn) for budget-conscious users, though NordVPN offers a broader security suite. Against [Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn), Planet VPN provides a similar free, no-account start, with 6 free server locations to Browsec's 4. When compared to [Hola VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hola-vpn), Planet VPN states a no-logs policy, while Hola's privacy policy lists IP addresses and visited pages among the data it may log. ### Detailed comparisons [Planet VPN vs NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn-vs-nordvpn) • [Planet VPN vs Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn-vs-browsec-vpn) • [Planet VPN vs Hola VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn-vs-hola-vpn) ### Rating Summary Planet VPN has 1 million users on Chrome with a 4.6/5 rating, and its most recent reviews hold that level. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Planet VPN a score of **8.5/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn). --- ## [4\. Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn) ![Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/browsec-vpn/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Browsec VPN is one of the most popular browser VPNs with a massive user base. With 8 million users and a 4.5/5 rating from 40,000+ ratings, it has a large and largely satisfied audience. What's notable is the consistency: the last 100 reviews average 4.55/5, per Tooltivity, right in line with the lifetime figure. Reviewers describe Browsec as genuinely straightforward: one click to connect, a small list of free locations, and encrypted traffic that handles basic tasks. The free plan needs no account, has unlimited traffic, and offers 4 server locations. It's not trying to be everything—it's a simple browser VPN that does the job. ### Key Features - **Free, no-registration start** – Connect in one click without creating an account - **Multiple locations (free and premium)** – 4 free server locations; Premium unlocks 46+ countries - **Traffic encryption** – Secures browser traffic, helpful on public Wi-Fi - **Smart Settings (per-site rules)** – Auto-use or bypass VPN per site; unlimited rules on Premium - **Timezone spoofing (premium)** – Match timezone to chosen location - **Faster premium servers** – Premium runs on faster, dedicated servers - **Multi-device** – Up to 5 devices on one account; each browser counts as one - **Simple UI** – Clear toggle, quick country switch ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Works without registration; one-click setup - Very simple UI and onboarding - Free plan has unlimited traffic - Handy per-site Smart Settings **Cons:** - Free speeds can be slow or inconsistent, users report - Occasional upsell prompts and pop-ups reported by users - Mixed reliability in heavily restricted regions, according to reviews ### Who is this great for? Browsec VPN is perfect for anyone who wants a quick way to unblock sites or add a basic privacy layer without complexity. Whether you're a first-time VPN user, someone who occasionally needs to access geo-blocked content, or just someone who values simplicity, Browsec delivers. It's especially great for users who appreciate the per-site Smart Settings feature. Being able to automatically route certain sites through the VPN while bypassing others is genuinely useful for streamlined workflows. ### Compared to others Browsec's simplicity and no-registration model puts it on par with [Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn), though Planet VPN's free plan has two more server locations. Against [NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn), Browsec is lighter and free but lacks advanced security features. When compared to [Urban VPN Proxy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/urban-vpn-proxy), Browsec offers far fewer free locations, but Urban VPN's listing discloses that its protection features process visited URLs and other browsing data. ### Detailed comparisons [Browsec VPN vs NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/browsec-vpn-vs-nordvpn) • [Browsec VPN vs Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/browsec-vpn-vs-free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) • [Browsec VPN vs Proton VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/browsec-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) ### Rating Summary Browsec VPN has 8 million users on Chrome with a consistent 4.5/5 rating. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Browsec VPN a score of **8.2/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn). --- ## [5\. Proton VPN: Fast & Secure](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/proton-vpn) ![Proton VPN](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/proton-vpn/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Proton VPN brings the Proton brand to browser VPNs. With around 2 million users and a 4.3/5 rating from 4,500+ ratings, the overall score may seem modest—but the trend tells a better story. The last 100 reviews average about 4.7/5, according to Tooltivity, well above the lifetime figure. The extension is open to everyone with a Proton account, including the Free plan. Free users are connected to a server in one of 10 randomly selected countries; choosing a location takes a paid plan. The Proton brand carries weight in the privacy community, and that security-first positioning shows in the extension. ### Key Features - **One-click connect** – Fast toggle for basic browser protection - **Server list access** – Paid plans choose from 20,000+ servers in 140+ countries; the Free plan picks a country for you - **Browser-only tunnel** – Protects the browser without changing device-wide traffic - **Split tunneling (paid)** – Exclude websites from the VPN tunnel - **Account-based access** – Sign in with a Proton account, free or paid - **Cross-platform ecosystem** – Full apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux for device-wide coverage - **Lightweight UI** – Minimal controls with quick status feedback ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Free plan with no data limit - Simple one-click controls - Strict no-logs policy - Apps on every major platform **Cons:** - Random free server choice - Occasional disconnects reported by users - Connection profiles are a paid feature - Some sites fail to load, according to reviews ### Who is this great for? Proton VPN is perfect for users who value privacy from a trusted brand. Whether you're already in the Proton ecosystem (Proton Mail, Proton Drive) or simply want a VPN from a company with a strong privacy track record, Proton VPN fits naturally. It's especially great for users who want browser-only protection without affecting the rest of their device. The lightweight approach makes it ideal for quick privacy needs while keeping your other traffic normal. ### Compared to others Proton VPN's privacy positioning gives it an edge over [Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn) and [Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) for privacy-focused users, though those two connect without an account. Against [NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn), Proton VPN is lighter and has a free plan, but lacks the extensive feature set. When compared to [VeePN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn), Proton's selling point is its privacy record: Swiss-based, with a strict no-logs policy. ### Detailed comparisons [Proton VPN vs NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/proton-vpn-vs-nordvpn) • [Proton VPN vs Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/proton-vpn-vs-free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) • [Proton VPN vs Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/proton-vpn-vs-browsec-vpn) ### Rating Summary Proton VPN has around 2 million users on Chrome, with recent reviews trending strongly positive at about 4.7/5 (last 100, per Tooltivity). [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Proton VPN a score of **8.0/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/proton-vpn). --- ## [6\. VPN Proxy VeePN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn) ![VPN Proxy VeePN](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn/images/gallery-image-1.webp) VPN Proxy VeePN is one of the most-installed VPN extensions on Chrome. With 15 million users and a 4.5/5 rating from 53,000+ ratings, it's clearly resonating with users. In recent reviews, the most common complaint Tooltivity found is that the free version steers new installs toward a paid trial. VeePN advertises a network of 2,600+ servers, and its long-term plans are priced competitively. The Pro plan covers 10 devices at once, which is generous. ### Key Features - **Massive Server Network** – 2,600+ servers for global access - **Multi-Device Support** – Up to 10 devices at once on the Pro plan (5 on Basic, 20 on Max) - **Streaming** – Marketed for streaming services such as Netflix - **Strong Security** – AES-256 encryption with OpenVPN, IKEv2, and WireGuard protocols - **Kill Switch** – Cuts internet access if the VPN drops to prevent data leaks - **No-Logs Policy** – Claims a strict no-logs policy; the provider is based in Panama - **Ad and Tracker Blocking** – The extension blocks ads, trackers, and malware, according to the listing - **Browser Extensions** – Available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Strong security features with AES-256 encryption and multiple protocols - Up to 10 devices on one Pro subscription - Competitive pricing on longer-term plans **Cons:** - Inconsistent speeds across different servers, users report - Occasional connection drops reported by users - Reviewers say the free version pushes a paid trial ### Who is this great for? VeePN is perfect for users who need a balance between features and affordability. Whether you're a streaming enthusiast wanting to access geo-restricted content, a family needing multi-device coverage, or someone who values strong encryption, VeePN delivers solid value. It's especially great for users who want premium features without the premium price tag. The long-term plans are competitively priced, and the 10-device support makes it ideal for households. ### Compared to others VeePN's larger server network sets it apart from simpler options like [Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn) and [Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn). Against [NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn), VeePN offers lower long-term pricing but has a lower Tooltivity score. When compared to [Proton VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/proton-vpn), VeePN covers more devices on its top plan (20 to Proton's 10). ### Detailed comparisons [VeePN vs NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn-vs-nordvpn) • [VeePN vs Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn-vs-free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) • [VeePN vs Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn-vs-browsec-vpn) ### Rating Summary VeePN has 15 million users on Chrome—level with NordVPN for the most in this comparison—with a 4.5/5 rating. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave VeePN a score of **7.6/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn). --- ## [7\. Urban VPN Proxy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/urban-vpn-proxy) ![Urban VPN Proxy](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/urban-vpn-proxy/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Urban VPN Proxy is one of the most popular free VPN options available. With 7 million users and a 4.7/5 rating from 68,000+ ratings, it clearly works for a lot of people. Recent reviews stay close to that, with the last 100 averaging about 4.6/5, per Tooltivity. The appeal is obvious: free access to 632 servers in 82 countries, according to the listing, without a subscription fee. Reviewers mostly say it works well for everyday browsing, and the optional ad blocker adds extra value. ### Key Features - **IP Address Masking** – Allows users to change their IP location to any of the 82 available countries - **Ad-Blocking** – Optional protection against phishing attempts, malware, and intrusive ads - **Encryption** – Uses the latest OpenVPN standards, according to the listing - **No Additional Software Required** – Easy installation as a browser extension - **Free Service** – Offers a network of 632 VPN servers without a subscription fee ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Free access to a large network of servers - Easy to install and use - Optional ad and malware blocking - High user ratings and large user base **Cons:** - Its protection features process visited URLs, clickstream data, and IP address, as the listing discloses - Performance can vary depending on server load, users report ### Who is this great for? Urban VPN Proxy is perfect for casual users who want free VPN access without the hassle of subscriptions. Whether you're a student, someone who occasionally needs to access blocked content, or just someone who wants basic privacy on public Wi-Fi, Urban VPN delivers. It's especially great for users who prioritize value and don't need strict privacy guarantees. The completely free model with a large server network makes it appealing for everyday browsing and light streaming. ### Compared to others Urban VPN's completely free model with a large server network gives it an edge over [Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn) for users who need more location options. Against [NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn), Urban VPN is free but has notable privacy concerns due to data collection. When compared to [Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn), Urban VPN offers far more free locations, while Planet VPN states a no-logs policy. ### Detailed comparisons [Urban VPN vs NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/urban-vpn-proxy-vs-nordvpn) • [Urban VPN vs Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/urban-vpn-proxy-vs-free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) • [Urban VPN vs Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/urban-vpn-proxy-vs-browsec-vpn) ### Rating Summary Urban VPN Proxy has 7 million users on Chrome with a 4.7/5 rating. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Urban VPN Proxy a score of **7.4/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/urban-vpn-proxy). --- ## [8\. Hola VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hola-vpn) ![Hola VPN](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/hola-vpn/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Hola VPN is one of the most well-known VPN brands with a massive user base. With 4 million users and a 4.8/5 lifetime rating from 368,000+ ratings—the highest rating count in this comparison—it's clearly popular. Recent reviews are lower, though: the last 100 average about 4/5, per Tooltivity. What makes Hola unique is the per-tab country selection. You can set different countries for different tabs or sites, which is useful for multi-region workflows. The free version allows limited daily use, while Premium removes the time limits. ### Key Features - **Country switching per tab** – Pick a different location for each tab or site - **One-click unblocking** – Connect and switch countries in seconds - **Free and Premium tiers** – Free use with time limits; Premium removes limits - **Multi-device (Premium)** – Use on up to 10 devices with one subscription - **Split/multi-tunneling approach** – Routes traffic efficiently to improve speed - **Streaming access** – Listed for popular streaming services and social media sites ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Very easy, one-click unblocking - Reviewers like it for streaming and geo-restricted sites - Flexible per-tab country selection **Cons:** - Its privacy policy lists IP address and visited pages among the data it may log - Variable speeds and occasional disconnects or "not available" errors, users report ### Who is this great for? Hola VPN is perfect for users who mainly need quick, hassle-free access to geo-blocked sites. Whether you're accessing streaming content from different regions, browsing international shopping sites, or just occasionally need to change your apparent location, Hola makes it easy. It's especially great for users who need the per-tab country selection feature. Being able to browse from the US in one tab while using a UK location in another is useful for power users. ### Compared to others Hola VPN's per-tab feature gives it a unique advantage over [Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn) and [Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn). However, against [NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn) and [Proton VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/proton-vpn), Hola raises more privacy questions: its privacy policy lists IP addresses and visited pages as log data. When compared to [Urban VPN Proxy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/urban-vpn-proxy), both have similar privacy trade-offs. ### Detailed comparisons [Hola VPN vs NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/hola-vpn-vs-nordvpn) • [Hola VPN vs Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/hola-vpn-vs-free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) • [Hola VPN vs Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/hola-vpn-vs-browsec-vpn) ### Rating Summary Hola VPN has 4 million users on Chrome with the highest rating count (368,000+) and a 4.8/5 lifetime rating, though recent reviews run lower. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Hola VPN a score of **7.0/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hola-vpn). --- ## [9\. Windscribe - Free Proxy and Ad Blocker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/windscribe) ![Windscribe](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/windscribe/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Windscribe combines VPN functionality with built-in ad and tracker blocking. With around 2 million users and a 4.6/5 lifetime rating from 21,000+ ratings, it has a respectable presence. However, recent reviews are concerning: the last 100 average about 1.4/5, per Tooltivity, with most complaints about getting stuck at sign-up. Windscribe's main draw is its privacy controls. The listing puts built-in ad blocking and tracker protection front and center, and it lists more privacy settings than many free alternatives. The free plan is generous at 10 GB of data per month, but only once you confirm an email address. ### Key Features - **Browser-only VPN** – Protects just the browser without changing device-wide traffic - **Server locations** – Pro plans reach servers in 69+ countries - **Ad and tracker blocking** – Built-in tools to block ads, trackers, and malware - **Privacy controls** – Timezone and location spoofing, cookie-banner blocking, and anti-fingerprinting - **Account-based access** – Sign in to sync your plan and data allowance - **Cross-platform ecosystem** – Full apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android for device-wide coverage - **Support tooling** – Garry, a support bot that answers questions around the clock ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Strong privacy and ad blocking - Servers in 69+ countries on Pro - Browser-only VPN flexibility - 10 GB of free data per month - Support bot available around the clock **Cons:** - Sign-up required before it connects, users report - Captcha and login loops reported by users - Connection drops reported by users - Free data cap limits - Recent Chrome reviews are mostly one-star ### Who is this great for? Windscribe is perfect for privacy-focused users who want more than just IP masking. Whether you value the built-in ad blocking, appreciate advanced privacy controls, or want a VPN that integrates with full desktop and mobile apps, Windscribe delivers a richer feature set than most free alternatives. It's especially great for users who want a browser VPN as part of a larger ecosystem. The desktop and mobile apps mean the extension can be a lightweight companion rather than your only VPN. ### Compared to others Windscribe's privacy controls and ad blocking give it an edge on features over simpler options like [Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn) and [Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn), though both of those connect without an account. Against [NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn), Windscribe offers a generous free tier but has far weaker recent reviews. When compared to [VeePN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn), Windscribe's listing leads with privacy tools, while VeePN's leads with its server network. ### Detailed comparisons [Windscribe vs NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/windscribe-vs-nordvpn) • [Windscribe vs Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/windscribe-vs-free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) • [Windscribe vs Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/windscribe-vs-browsec-vpn) ### Rating Summary Windscribe has around 2 million users on Chrome with a 4.6/5 lifetime rating, though recent reviews have dropped sharply. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Windscribe a score of **5.9/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/windscribe). --- ## [10\. SetupVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/setupvpn) ![SetupVPN](https://tooltivity.com/data/tooltivity/apps/setupvpn/images/gallery-image-1.webp) SetupVPN markets itself as a "Lifetime Free VPN," but recent user reviews point to significant limitations. Despite 1 million users and a 4.7/5 lifetime rating from 47,000+ ratings, the recent feedback is alarming: the last 100 reviews average about 2/5, per Tooltivity, and the last 500 sit lower still. You need to register an account before it works, and SetupVPN's FAQ says free accounts come with a daily quota. According to Tooltivity's reading of recent reviews, most locations now sit behind the premium plan. ### Key Features - **Free Version** – Free account with a daily quota - **Ease of Use** – Simple interface suitable for beginners - **Basic Privacy** – Encrypts browser traffic and changes your IP address ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Easy to use - Free version available - Basic privacy protection **Cons:** - Free accounts have a daily quota - Account required - Recent reviews are mostly negative ### Who is this great for? SetupVPN is only suitable for users who need occasional, very basic VPN functionality and don't mind significant limitations. It may work for someone who rarely needs to change their apparent location and doesn't require reliable connections. It's not recommended for users who need consistent VPN access or streaming. Based on its recent user reviews, there are much better alternatives available. ### Compared to others SetupVPN has the lowest Tooltivity score in this comparison. Against [Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) and [Browsec VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn), SetupVPN requires an account and caps free use with a daily quota, while those two connect without registration. When compared to [Urban VPN Proxy](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/urban-vpn-proxy), Urban VPN lists more servers and has far better recent reviews. ### Detailed comparisons [SetupVPN vs NordVPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/setupvpn-vs-nordvpn) • [SetupVPN vs Planet VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/setupvpn-vs-free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) • [SetupVPN vs Urban VPN](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/compare/setupvpn-vs-urban-vpn-proxy) ### Rating Summary SetupVPN has a 4.7/5 lifetime rating from 47,000+ ratings, but recent feedback is overwhelmingly negative, with the last 100 reviews averaging about 2/5. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave SetupVPN a score of **5.0/10**. Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/setupvpn). --- ## Final Thoughts Looking at all 10 VPN Chrome extensions side by side, each has carved out its own niche in the market. Going by the Tooltivity scores, [**NordVPN**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/nordvpn) leads with the highest overall score (8.9/10), offering the broadest security feature set—though at a premium price and without a free plan. [**Planet VPN**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-proxy-and-ad-blocker-planet-vpn) is the highest-scoring free option, with no registration required, while [**Browsec VPN**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/browsec-vpn) provides a reliable middle ground with its easy-to-use interface and stable recent ratings. For specific use cases: [**Proton VPN**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/proton-vpn) is perfect for privacy-focused users who trust the Proton brand, [**VeePN**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/free-vpn-for-chrome-vpn-proxy-veepn) covers up to 10 devices on its Pro plan at a competitive long-term price, and [**Hola VPN**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/hola-vpn) stands out with its unique per-tab country selection—just be aware of the privacy trade-offs. [**Urban VPN Proxy**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/urban-vpn-proxy) offers a large free network (632 servers in 82 countries), while [**Windscribe**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/windscribe) combines VPN with ad blocking for a more complete privacy package—if you get past the sign-up that recent reviewers struggle with. One thing to keep in mind: these are browser extensions, so they won't run in Chrome on your phone. On Android, Edge and Firefox can install extensions instead; here is [which Android browsers can run Chrome extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-install-chrome-extensions-on-android/). Otherwise, most of the VPNs above also have their own mobile apps. The key is finding what fits your specific needs. Start with free options like Planet VPN or Browsec to see whether they cover your use case, and only upgrade to premium when you hit their limits. Among the paid options, NordVPN has the highest score. Avoid SetupVPN unless you have very minimal needs: it has the lowest score in this list, and its recent reviews are poor. --- # How to Get a YouTube AI Summary & Transcript for Any Video Instantly > Get a quick YouTube AI summary for any video and read full transcripts instantly. Paste a link and get key insights, clean text, and exports in seconds. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2026-01-09 - Updated: 2026-10-05 - Tags: Youtube, AI - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-get-youtube-ai-summary/ --- Long YouTube videos can be helpful, but most of us don’t always have the time to sit through an hour-long lecture or talk. Sometimes you just want the key insights, the main ideas, or a quick way to revisit a specific point without replaying the whole video. This is where [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) helps. You can open any YouTube link and get an instant YouTube AI summary and a clean transcript in seconds. The summary is generated by AI on your own device, not on a Web Highlights server. No signup. No copy-paste. Just fast, private summaries and transcripts whenever you need them. ## **What Is a YouTube AI Summary?** A YouTube AI Summary is a quick breakdown of any YouTube video that turns long, detailed video content into short, clear takeaways. It helps you understand the core ideas, video chapters, and key insights without watching the entire clip. This is useful for lengthy lectures, news content, or any video that takes time to process. When you use the [YouTube AI summary feature](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-ai-summary) inside Web Highlights, you get four compact types: - **Key Points** — A short list of the main ideas from the video. Good when you want quick bullet points or are taking meeting notes, planning content scripting, or dealing with volumes of video content. - **Headline** — A one-line title capturing the video’s main message. This works well for quick video overview notes or when saving summaries into your research organization library. - **TL;DR** — A brief text file–style summary that explains the message in a few sentences. Helpful when you want to understand complex materials or get ideas in minutes without manual effort. - **Teaser** — A short preview sentence that hints at the video’s theme. Ideal when you’re sorting YouTube videos, planning mind maps, or comparing several long clips. All of these are generated by the AI model built into your browser (Gemini Nano in Chrome, Phi-4-mini in Edge), so the summary is written on your device instead of on a Web Highlights AI server. That makes Web Highlights a private, fast option for anyone who wants clear, time-saving YouTube summaries. ## **How to Get an Instant YouTube AI Summary (Step-by-Step)** Here is a step-by-step process on how you can get an instant YouTube AI summary using Web Highlights: ### **Step 1 — Install the Web Highlights Chrome Extension** Start by installing the Web Highlights extension from the [Chrome Web Store](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) (also available for Edge and Firefox). Once installed, it sits on your browser and lets you open any YouTube videos for fast video summaries. The AI summary uses the browser's built-in AI model, which downloads once on first use. In Chrome that works on Windows, macOS and Linux. Edge only ships its model on Windows and macOS. Firefox and Brave don't ship that model yet, but the transcript works there too. You don’t need an account to use the YouTube AI summary feature, and you don’t need mobile apps or extra software. The free plan includes one AI summary per day; Ultimate and the free trial lift that limit. Everything works directly on YouTube like a simple video summarizer. ### **Step 2 — Open Any YouTube Video** ![YouTube video page with an arrow pointing to the Web Highlights AI summary button](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-ac20e7d2-5c68-49e0-921e-3181205e4dae.webp) Open any lecture, tutorial, podcast, commentary, or news clip. As soon as the page loads, click the Web Highlights extension icon in your extension bar.  Clicking on it will take you to the Reader Mode, where the side bar opens, giving you the option to highlight, add notes or tags to the transcript, or get a summary of your YouTube video. ### **Step 3 — Click “AI Summary”** ![YouTube video AI summary generation in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-696678ae-5106-4732-b52c-664c403b6ded.webp) Press the AI Summary button, and Web Highlights instantly creates a structured summary with your browser’s built-in AI model. You will see: - **Key Points** (helpful when handling large volumes of video content) - **TL;DR** (a short text file style explanation) - **Headline** (quick Video Overview) - **Teaser** (preview sentence for quick sorting) Choose the type of AI summary you want and its length. ![YouTube video AI summary lengths and types offered by Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-3ab9f709-7254-4a02-b84b-096ebb5d1e20.webp) The AI YouTube summarizer runs on your device, so there is no Web Highlights AI server reading your video. Just quick, private summaries. If you’d rather watch this step, the video below starts right at the AI summary part of our YouTube walkthrough: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg4m3bW1nOo&t=175s) ### **Step 4 — Copy, Save, or Export the Summary** ![Different summary export options in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-03c897a5-7e1d-429f-a80f-dfc8a40aec17.webp) Once your video summary generator finishes, you can reuse it anywhere. Export to: - Markdown (copy and paste, every plan) - Notion or Capacities in one click (one export per day on the free plan, unlimited on Ultimate) - PDF or HTML file (Ultimate or the free trial) You can also save summaries to your Web Highlights library with your preferred highlight colors, tags, and folders. This is useful for structured knowledge, meeting notes, video to text workflows, content scripting, mind maps, or combining summaries with the transcript generator for clear, time-saving YouTube summaries across all types of videos. Another easy way to get the AI summary is simply to copy and paste the YouTube video’s URL here: [https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-ai-summary](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-ai-summary) ![Copy and paste option to generate YouTube AI Summary in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-70bd48e3-eb8f-47c4-bd6b-34cfdd34492c.webp) ## **How to See the Transcript on YouTube (3 Methods)** Sometimes you just want to read what’s being said in a video. Maybe you’re looking for a specific quote, or the speaker is too fast, or you just prefer reading over watching. Whatever the reason — here are three ways to get a transcript from any YouTube video. ### **Method 1: Use YouTube’s Built-in Transcript** Most people don’t know this, but YouTube actually has a built-in transcript feature. It works for any video that has captions — whether auto-generated or manually uploaded by the creator. Here’s how to find it: 1. Open the YouTube video. 2. Click  **“...more”**  below the video description to expand it. 3. Click  **“Show transcript”**  at the bottom. 4. A transcript panel opens on the right side with timestamped text. You can click any timestamp to jump to that moment in the video. To hide timestamps, click the three-dot menu (⋮) inside the transcript panel. The downside? You can’t easily copy the full transcript at once, there’s no way to search within it, and you can’t export it anywhere. For longer videos, the formatting gets messy quickly. ### **Method 2: Use the Web Highlights Browser Extension** This is the method I use most. With our  [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/)  extension installed, you get a much better transcript experience: 1. Open any YouTube video. 2. Click the highlight button that appears in the video player controls — or click the Web Highlights extension icon in your browser toolbar. 3. The video opens in our distraction-free reader with the full transcript laid out as clean text. 4. From there you can highlight lines, add notes, tag sections, and search within the transcript. 5. Copy everything as Markdown, export it as a PDF or HTML file (Ultimate), or send it directly to  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  or  [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) . You can also copy as Markdown and paste into Obsidian or any other editor. What I really like about this: the transcript syncs with the video playback. The current sentence gets highlighted as the video plays, and you can click any line to jump to that point. It also supports multiple languages — it tries your preferred language first and lets you switch between whatever’s available. Works in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Brave, and other browsers like Vivaldi or Opera. ### **Method 3: Use the Free Online Transcript Reader (No Install)** Don’t want to install anything? Fair enough. You can use our free  [YouTube Transcript Reader](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-transcript-reader)   online. Just paste a YouTube URL and you get the full transcript as clean text — no account, no signup. A few things worth mentioning: - You can copy any line and paste it wherever you need — meeting notes, docs, study materials. - It supports multiple languages, same as the extension. - The text is clean and easy to read — no cluttered timestamps everywhere. - It’s free and needs no account. ## **Why Use Web Highlights for YouTube Summaries?** Web Highlights makes it easy to get a YouTube AI summary and a  [YouTube transcript](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-transcript-youtube-generators/)  without extra steps or tools. Everything works right inside your browser, and you can use the same workspace for notes, tags, exports, and transcript reading. Here is why many people prefer Web Highlights for video summaries: - Easy copy and paste - Works on any YouTube video, including long tutorials and lengthy lecture content - Runs locally in your browser, which keeps your video link private - [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-5-reader-mode-chrome-extensions-for-focused-reading/)   for distraction-free viewing of summaries and video content - Highlight or  [annotate YouTube videos](https://web-highlights.com/blog/youtube-video-annotations/)  inside Reader Mode to mark core ideas or specific lines - Organize everything with tags for better research organization - Send to Notion or Capacities in one click (unlimited on Ultimate, once a day on the free plan), export a PDF or HTML file on Ultimate, or copy as Markdown and paste into Obsidian - Merge summaries + transcripts + highlights into one place to handle volumes of video content easily ## **Additional Tools You Can Use** ### **YouTube Transcript Reader** The YouTube Transcript Reader is a free, instant Video to Text tool. Paste any video link and get clean text you can copy, search, and reuse in notes or research organization. ### **YouTube AI Summary (Online Tool)** The online YouTube AI summary tool gives you quick video summaries without installing anything. No signup needed. Just paste a video link and get Key Insights, bullet points, and a short video overview in seconds. ### **Website Highlighter** The Website Highlighter helps you save transcripts, summaries, and text from web pages in one place. This is useful when merging YouTube videos, articles, and other video content into structured knowledge or text file notes. ## **Use Cases for YouTube AI Summaries** **Students summarizing lectures**  - Useful for turning a lengthy lecture into quick bullet points, Key Insights, and a searchable transcript for easier revision. **Professionals learning faster**  - Helps break down long training videos or tutorials into simple steps and core ideas you can act on immediately. **Researchers extracting quotes**  - Makes it easy to scan large volumes of video content, pull accurate lines, and reuse them in research organization or mind maps. **Coaches and consultants taking notes**  - Useful for pulling Video to Text from long talks, saving meeting notes, and organising them with tags. **Creators doing competitive analysis**  - Lets you scan YouTube videos from other creators, grab the main ideas, and create quick video overview notes. **Anyone preparing study notes**  - Converts long videos into short, clear summaries that can be sent to Notion in one click, or copied as Markdown for  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-in-obsidian-and-maximize-your-note-taking-experience/)   and other note-taking apps. **Journalists scanning long content**  - Helps go through news content, lengthy lectures, and interviews to find core details without watching the entire video. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. Can I summarize any YouTube video with Web Highlights?** Yes. Web Highlights can create a YouTube AI summary for most YouTube videos, including tutorials, commentary, news content, and lengthy lecture clips. If the video is public and loads normally, the AI summarizer can process it and turn the video content into clear bullet points and Key Insights. ### **2\. Does Web Highlights work on long videos or videos with no chapters?** Yes. Web Highlights works on long tutorials, lectures, and videos without chapters, because it summarizes the transcript rather than relying on chapters. For very long videos, the full transcript stays available next to the summary, so you can search it and jump to any point. ### **3\. Are the summaries accurate for complex materials?** Web Highlights uses on-device AI to generate the summaries. It handles complex materials like research talks, technical tutorials, and news content by breaking them into short, readable key points, TL;DR blocks, and headlines. As with any AI summary, check important details against the transcript. ### **4\. Do I need to sign up to get a summary or transcript?** No signup is required. The YouTube Video Summarizer and Transcript Generator both work instantly. Paste the video link and get your results. Without an account, the free allowance is one AI summary per day. This works without accounts, mobile apps, or extra tools, and you can use it directly from your browser. ### **5\. Can I export my summaries and transcripts?** Yes. You can copy summaries and transcripts as Markdown on every plan, or send them directly to Notion or Capacities in one click (one export per day on the free plan, unlimited on Ultimate). Exporting a PDF or HTML file needs Ultimate or the free trial. For Obsidian, copy as Markdown and paste. This is helpful for meeting notes, mind maps, research organization, and preparing structured knowledge from different types of videos. ## **Key Takeaways** Web Highlights turns long YouTube videos into clear, quick notes by giving you a fast, private YouTube AI summary and an instant transcript with no signup or manual effort. You paste a link, get clean text, bullet points, Key Insights, and exports in a few seconds, useful for studying, research, content scripting, and handling large volumes of video content. If you want an easy way to review YouTube videos without sitting through every minute,  [try Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)   and save both time and effort. --- # Top 10 Meditation Apps for iOS & Android: Great Comparison > Compare the top 10 meditation apps for iOS & Android. From free options like Medito to premium picks like Calm—find the best meditation app for sleep, stress relief, and mindfulness in 2026. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-12-15 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Reading time: 25 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-10-meditation-apps-for-ios-android-great-comparison/ --- Finding the right meditation app can be overwhelming. With hundreds of options promising to reduce stress, improve sleep, and boost your wellbeing, it's hard to know which one actually delivers. Some apps lock all their content behind expensive subscriptions, while others are completely free but lack the polish you'd expect from a modern app. The meditation app market has exploded over the past few years, with everyone from nonprofit foundations to major tech companies trying to capture your attention. You've got apps offering celebrity-narrated sleep stories, AI-powered personalization, and even therapy services—all competing for space on your phone. The differences in pricing models alone are staggering, ranging from truly free options to premium subscriptions costing over $100 per year. We compared 10 of the top meditation apps available on both iOS and Android to see how they stack up. In this comparison, we'll break down the features, pricing, user experience, and overall value of each app, giving you the information you need to choose the meditation app that fits your needs and budget. How this list was made: the scores come from Productivity Apps, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each app from its App Store and Google Play listings, its ratings and what recent reviews report, and this list is ordered by that score. The descriptions below summarize each listing and what its users report. ### List of the Best Meditation Apps for Android & iOS: - [Medito: Meditation & Sleep](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito) - [Serenity: Guided Meditation](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/serenity) - [Meditation | Down Dog](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/down-dog-meditation) - [Let's Meditate: Relax & Sleep](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/lets-meditate) - [Waking Up: Meditation & Wisdom](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/waking-up-meditation) - [Balance: Meditation & Sleep](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/balance-meditation) - [Insight Timer - Meditation App](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/insight-timer) - [Calm - Sleep, Meditate, Relax](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm) - [Simple Habit: Meditation](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/simple-habit) - [Headspace: Meditation & Health](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace) If you prefer a comparison overview, check out the [full comparison table of all Meditation apps](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/medito-vs-serenity-vs-down-dog-meditation-vs-lets-meditate-vs-waking-up-meditation-vs-balance-meditation-vs-insight-timer-vs-calm-vs-simple-habit-vs-headspace) : ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-28.webp) ## [1\. Medito: Meditation & Sleep](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito) ![Medito](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-29.webp) Medito stands out immediately for one simple reason: it's completely free. With over 1 million downloads and a perfect 5.0-star rating on Android (with 39,400+ reviews), this non-profit app proves you don't need to pay for quality meditation content. The app maintains exceptional quality too, with a 4.69 rating for the last 100 reviews showing consistent user satisfaction. On iOS, it holds a 4.9-star rating with 3,800+ reviews. Medito's listing and its reviews tell the same story: no ads interrupt your practice, no premium content stays locked behind paywalls, and no subscription prompts pop up when you're trying to meditate. The Medito Foundation built this app with a genuine mission—making meditation accessible to everyone—and reviewers say that philosophy shines through in every aspect of the experience. ### Key Features: - **100% Free & Non-Profit**  – Unlimited access to all meditation content without any cost, ads, or subscriptions - **Comprehensive Meditation Library**  – Guided meditations, mindfulness courses, breathing exercises, and structured programs from 3 to 30 minutes - **Sleep Content**  – Sleep stories, white noise, nature sounds (rain, ocean), sleep meditations, and bedtime stories for adults - **Offline Mode**  – Download sessions for meditation anywhere without internet connection - **Evidence-Based**  – Backed by a 2024 randomized controlled trial proving regular use boosts wellbeing - **Progress Tracking**  – Streak recording, gentle reminders, and meditation history to track your journey - **Multiple Narrators**  – Choose from different voice options to find the tone that works best for you - **Home Screen Widgets**  – Quick access to meditation sessions directly from your home screen ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Completely free with no ads or subscriptions - Non-profit mission focused on accessibility - Beautiful, simple design - Excellent sleep content including Yoga Nidra - Works fully offline - Evidence-based with scientific backing - Responsive support team - Regular updates and improvements **Cons:** - Optional donation prompts can feel persistent - Navigation could be more intuitive - No Google Health Connect integration yet - Some voices are AI-generated rather than human narrators ### Who is this great for? Medito is perfect for anyone who wants high-quality meditation without spending money. Whether you're a student on a tight budget, someone skeptical about paying for meditation apps, or just someone who appreciates the non-profit approach, Medito delivers. The completely free model with no restrictions makes it accessible to everyone regardless of financial situation. It's especially great for users who value privacy and offline functionality. The beautiful visualization and clean interface appeal to users who want a premium experience without the premium price tag, while the evidence-based approach reassures skeptics that meditation actually works. ### Compared to others Medito's completely free model gives it a clear advantage over paid alternatives like  [Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm)  and  [Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace)  for budget-conscious users. While  [Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/insight-timer)  also offers extensive free content, Medito's cleaner interface and non-profit mission create a more focused experience. Compared to  [Serenity](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/serenity) , Medito offers more content at zero cost, though Serenity's narrator voice may appeal to some users. ### Detailed comparisons [Medito vs Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/medito-vs-headspace)  •  [Medito vs Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/medito-vs-calm)  •  [Medito vs Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/medito-vs-insight-timer) ### Rating Summary With over 1 million downloads and strong ratings on both Android (5.0 stars with 39.4K reviews) and iOS (4.9 stars with 3.8K reviews), Medito has built a loyal following.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Medito a score of 9.47/10, making it the highest-rated meditation app in this comparison. Check out the full review here:  [Medito review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito) . ## [2\. Serenity: Guided Meditation](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/serenity) ![Serenity](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-30.webp) Serenity has carved out a solid reputation with over 1 million downloads and a 4.8-star rating on Android (with 54,200+ reviews). What's even more impressive is the 4.95 rating for the last 100 reviews—the app is actually getting better over time. On iOS, it maintains a 4.9-star rating with 1,600+ reviews. This upward trend tells you the developers are actively improving the experience. Reviewers single out Serenity's simplicity. You don't need an account to start meditating, which removes a major barrier that stops many people from even trying. The free 7-day beginner course provides a solid foundation, and the narrator's voice is soothing without being grating—something thousands of users consistently praise in their reviews. ### Key Features: - **7-Day Beginner Course**  – Free, structured audio program that teaches meditation fundamentals step-by-step, perfect for building confidence - **Sleep Meditation Library**  – Dedicated sleep guides with relaxation techniques, peaceful music, and tranquil sounds to help you fall asleep naturally - **Stress Relief Sessions**  – Targeted meditations using relaxation and mindfulness techniques to calm anxiety and soothe the mind - **Quick Meditations**  – Short sessions for practicing skills or finding calm during busy days, ideal for quick mental resets - **Daily Meditations**  – Different meditation content each day to help maintain regular practice and keep sessions fresh - **No Account Required**  – Start meditating immediately after installation with no sign-up, login, or personal information needed - **Progress Tracking & Challenges**  – Stay motivated by completing challenges, unlocking free sessions, and monitoring your meditation journey with stats and graphs - **Flexible Purchasing**  – Choose between one-time purchases for specific content packs or unlock everything with a subscription—no forced subscription model ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Soothing, non-irritating narrator voice - Simple, clean interface - No account or login required - Excellent for beginners - Over 2 hours of free content - Effective sleep meditations - Flexible pricing options - Daily meditation variety - Progress tracking and challenges - Responsive customer support - Student discounts available **Cons:** - Limited free content beyond basics - Some advanced sessions require payment - Ads present in free version - Values-focused content not for everyone ### Who is this great for? Serenity is perfect for beginners building their first meditation practice. If you're overwhelmed by apps with massive libraries and complex features, Serenity's straightforward approach helps you focus on actually meditating. The soothing narrator voice and simple interface create a calming experience that makes it easy to stick with a daily practice. It's especially great for anyone struggling with sleep who wants guided sessions without complicated setup. The flexible pricing model—buy what you want rather than committing to a subscription—respects your budget and lets you test the app thoroughly before investing. ### Compared to others Serenity's no-account approach and excellent beginner course give it advantages over more complex apps like  [Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace) . While  [Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito)  offers completely free content, Serenity's professionally narrated voice may justify the cost for some users. Compared to  [Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm) , Serenity provides better value with its flexible purchasing options and generous free content. ### Detailed comparisons [Serenity vs Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/serenity-vs-medito)  •  [Serenity vs Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/serenity-vs-headspace)  •  [Serenity vs Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/serenity-vs-calm) ### Rating Summary With over 1 million downloads and impressive ratings on both Android (4.8 stars with 54.2K reviews) and iOS (4.9 stars with 1.6K reviews), Serenity delivers consistent quality.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Serenity a score of 9.00/10. Check out the full review here:  [Serenity review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/serenity) . ## [3\. Down Dog](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/down-dog-meditation) ![Down Dog](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-31.webp) Down Dog brings exceptional customization to meditation with over 500,000 downloads and a solid 4.7-star rating on Android (with 56,600+ reviews). The app's recent rating of 4.76 for the last 100 reviews shows steady improvement. On iOS, it shines even brighter with a 4.9-star rating and 16,000+ reviews. What sets Down Dog apart is that every meditation session is dynamically generated—you never experience the exact same practice twice. Customization is Down Dog's big selling point, and reviewers praise how useful it is. You can adjust session length (5-90 minutes), guidance level, background music, instructor voice, and meditation themes to match your exact preferences. The six different instructor voices give you real choice, and the walking meditation mode adds a unique dimension that most meditation apps skip entirely. ### Key Features: - **Dynamic Content Generation**  – Every meditation session is uniquely generated, ensuring you never experience the exact same practice twice - **Fully Customizable Practice**  – Adjust session length (5-90 minutes), guidance level, background music, instructor voice, and meditation themes to match your preferences - **Three Meditation Modes**  – Choose from guided meditations for daily practice, sleep meditations to drift off peacefully, or walking meditations to find calm while moving - **Six Instructor Voices**  – Select from multiple meditation teachers with different speaking styles to find the voice that resonates with you - **Diverse Background Options**  – Set your atmosphere with calming music, nature sounds, brainwave frequencies, spiritual playlists, or complete silence - **Thematic Focus**  – Target specific intentions like Self Love, Release Stress, or turn off themes entirely for open awareness practice - **Multi-Language Support**  – Access meditations in over 9 languages beyond English, making mindfulness accessible to a global audience - **Cross-Device Syncing**  – Seamlessly continue your practice across all your devices with automatic synchronization ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Exceptional customization options - Six different instructor voices - Walking and sleep meditations - Clean, minimal interface - Multi-language support included - Covers 5 apps with one subscription - Beginner-friendly approach - Regular content updates **Cons:** - Account required to use - Large file sizes - Some non-English voices sound robotic - Breathing timing occasionally inconsistent ### Who is this great for? Down Dog is perfect for anyone who values flexibility and personalization in their meditation practice. If you've tried other meditation apps and found them too rigid or repetitive, Down Dog's customizable approach addresses exactly those frustrations. The dynamic content generation means you'll never get bored hearing the same session repeatedly. It's especially great for users already interested in yoga or other fitness modalities since one subscription covers five Down Dog apps—meditation, yoga, barre, HIIT, and prenatal yoga. The walking meditation mode appeals to users who want to practice mindfulness while moving, and the six instructor voices let you find a narrator you actually enjoy listening to. ### Compared to others Down Dog's customization and multi-app access give it advantages over single-focus apps like  [Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito)  or  [Serenity](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/serenity) . While  [Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace)  and  [Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm)  charge similar prices for meditation alone, Down Dog's bundle provides better value if you're interested in multiple wellness practices. Compared to  [Balance](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/balance-meditation) , Down Dog offers more variety through dynamic generation rather than adaptive recommendations. ### Detailed comparisons [Down Dog vs Balance](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/down-dog-meditation-vs-balance-meditation)  •  [Down Dog vs Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/down-dog-meditation-vs-headspace)  •  [Down Dog vs Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/down-dog-meditation-vs-calm) ### Rating Summary With over 500,000 downloads and strong ratings on both Android (4.7 stars with 56.6K reviews) and iOS (4.9 stars with 16K reviews), Down Dog delivers solid value.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Meditation | Down Dog a score of 8.83/10. Check out the full review here:  [Down Dog review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/down-dog-meditation) . ## [4\. Let's Meditate: Relax & Sleep](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/lets-meditate) ![Let's Meditate: Relax & Sleep](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-32.webp) Let's Meditate takes a straightforward approach with over 1 million downloads and a 4.8-star rating on Android (with 68,200+ reviews). Recent reviews average 4.57 stars, showing a slight decline that aligns with user feedback about AI-generated voices. On iOS, it maintains a 4.7-star rating with 59 reviews. Despite some limitations, the app delivers on its promise of simple, accessible meditation at zero cost. Reviewers appreciate Let's Meditate's no-frills philosophy. No account required, no ads interrupting your practice, no complicated features to learn. You install it, pick a meditation track, and start practicing. The selective download system respects your phone's storage by letting you save only the meditations you actually want to listen to. ### Key Features: - **Guided Meditation Library**  – Curated collection of meditation tracks covering anxiety, body scan, healing, sleep, and more topics to suit various situations - **Flexible Session Lengths**  – Choose from quick 5-minute sessions for brief breaks to longer 40+ minute tracks for deeper practice - **Male and Female Voice Options**  – Select between different narrator voices to find the one that resonates best with your practice - **Selective Offline Downloads**  – Download only the meditations you want to save storage space and listen offline anywhere - **Sleep-Focused Content**  – Dedicated sleep meditations and stories designed to help you fall asleep faster and rest better - **No Ads or Sign-Ups**  – Clean, distraction-free interface with no account required and zero advertisements interrupting your practice - **Regular Content Updates**  – New meditation tracks added regularly to keep your practice fresh and engaging - **Morning Meditations**  – Start your day with focused morning sessions and motivational content ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Completely free with no ads - No account or sign-up required - Works offline after downloading - Simple and easy to use - Great for sleep and relaxation - Regular content updates - Wide variety of topics - Male and female voice options **Cons:** - AI-generated voices sound robotic - Download limits for some users - Limited advanced features - Donation system confusing ### Who is this great for? Let's Meditate is perfect for anyone who wants straightforward meditation without complications or costs. If you find other apps overwhelming with their features, subscription models, and account requirements, Let's Meditate strips everything down to the essentials. The completely free model makes it accessible regardless of your financial situation. It's especially great for users who value simplicity over polish. The AI-generated voices won't win any awards, but they get the job done for many users. The selective download system and offline functionality make it practical for daily use, and the no-account approach respects your privacy completely. ### Compared to others Let's Meditate's completely free, no-account approach gives it advantages over paid alternatives like  [Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm)  and  [Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace) . While  [Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito)  also offers free meditation with professionally recorded content, Let's Meditate's simplicity appeals to users who want the absolute minimum barrier to entry. Compared to  [Serenity](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/serenity) , Let's Meditate provides more content at zero cost, though the voice quality trade-off is noticeable. ### Detailed comparisons [Let's Meditate vs Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/lets-meditate-vs-medito)  •  [Let's Meditate vs Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/lets-meditate-vs-calm)  •  [Let's Meditate vs Serenity](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/lets-meditate-vs-serenity) ### Rating Summary With over 1 million downloads and solid ratings on Android (4.8 stars with 68.2K reviews) and iOS (4.7 stars with 59 reviews), Let's Meditate serves its audience well.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Let's Meditate a score of 8.68/10. Check out the full review here:  [Let's Meditate review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/lets-meditate) . ## [5\. Waking Up: Meditation & Wisdom](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/waking-up-meditation) ![Waking Up](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-33.webp) Waking Up stands out for its intellectually ambitious approach with over 1 million downloads and a 4.8-star rating on Android (with 41,400+ reviews). Recent reviews show a concerning decline to 4.27 stars, primarily due to pricing and trial accessibility frustrations. On iOS, it maintains an impressive 4.9-star rating with 42,000+ reviews. Created by neuroscientist Sam Harris, this app combines meditation practice with philosophical inquiry and scientific understanding. Waking Up's listing promises a 28-day introductory course that blends practice with theory, and many reviewers describe the app as life-changing. Unlike apps that promise stress relief and productivity gains, Waking Up dives deep into the nature of consciousness itself. The daily meditations from Sam Harris provide intellectual rigor alongside practice instruction, and the conversations with thought leaders like Yuval Noah Harari and Michael Pollan offer depth you won't find elsewhere. ### Key Features: - **28-Day Introductory Course**  – A comprehensive foundation for both beginners and experienced meditators, blending practice with theory to understand how meditation transforms consciousness - **Daily Meditations with Sam Harris**  – Regular guided sessions featuring neuroscience-backed techniques from mindfulness, Vipassana, Zen, Dzogchen, and Advaita Vedanta traditions - **Theory Lessons & Conversations**  – Deep dives into consciousness, philosophy, and psychology with leading voices like Joseph Goldstein, Yuval Noah Harari, and Michael Pollan - **Diverse Meditation Techniques**  – Practice mindfulness, loving-kindness, body scans, yoga nidra, and nondual awareness with expert teachers from multiple contemplative traditions - **Sleep Content**  – Guided meditations and talks designed to help you rest better and fall asleep more easily - **Moments & Daily Quotes**  – Short reflections and insights for when you need a quick mindfulness reminder throughout your day - **Custom Meditation Timer**  – Configure your own unguided sessions with flexible timing and ambient sounds - **Community Features**  – Connect with other members to discuss meditation, philosophy, psychedelics, and explore shared interests in contemplative practice ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Theory + practice approach - Sam Harris daily meditations - Deep philosophical content - Multiple meditation traditions - Expert teacher library - Life-changing for many users - Scholarly conversations included - Free for those who can't afford **Cons:** - Expensive subscription cost - Trial requires credit card - Confusing trial offerings - Limited free content - Occasional login issues - Playback progress bugs ### Who is this great for? Waking Up is perfect for intellectually curious practitioners seeking more than stress relief or sleep aids. If you're drawn to understanding how meditation actually works, interested in exploring nondual awareness, or seeking meditation that integrates philosophy and neuroscience, Waking Up will likely become an essential daily resource. The introductory course alone provides tremendous value. It's especially great for skeptical, science-minded individuals who want rigorous explanations alongside practice instructions. The expert teacher library and philosophical conversations appeal to users who enjoy learning while meditating, and Sam Harris's approach resonates with people interested in secular, neuroscience-based meditation. ### Compared to others Waking Up's intellectual depth gives it a unique position compared to apps like  [Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace)  and  [Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm) , which focus more on accessible stress relief. While  [Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/insight-timer)  offers diverse teachers, Waking Up's curated approach and theory integration create a more cohesive learning experience. Compared to free options like  [Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito) , Waking Up's premium content may justify the cost for the right audience. ### Detailed comparisons [Waking Up vs Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/waking-up-meditation-vs-headspace)  •  [Waking Up vs Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/waking-up-meditation-vs-calm)  •  [Waking Up vs Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/waking-up-meditation-vs-insight-timer) ### Rating Summary With over 1 million downloads and strong ratings on Android (4.8 stars with 41.4K reviews) and iOS (4.9 stars with 42K reviews), Waking Up has built a devoted following.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Waking Up a score of 8.52/10. Check out the full review here:  [Waking Up review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/waking-up-meditation) . ## [6\. Balance: Meditation & Sleep](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/balance-meditation) ![Balance](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-34.webp) Balance takes a personalized approach with over 1 million downloads and a 4.7-star rating on Android (with 47,200+ reviews). However, recent reviews tell a concerning story with a 3.48 rating for the last 100 reviews—a significant drop indicating growing problems on Android. On iOS, it maintains an excellent 4.9-star rating with 118,000+ reviews. The year-long free trial is genuinely generous, giving you ample time to experience the full app before committing. Reviewers find Balance's personalization genuinely useful when it works. The app asks questions about your mood, energy levels, and goals, then adapts session recommendations accordingly. The structured 10-day Plans teach concrete techniques progressively, and the instructor Ofosu's calm voice creates a soothing experience that users consistently praise. ### Key Features: - **Personalized Meditation Plans**  – Adaptive sessions tailored to your experience level, mood, and daily goals through ongoing questions - **Structured 10-Day Learning Plans**  – Comprehensive courses teaching concrete meditation techniques like Breath Focus, Body Scan, and mindful awareness - **Quick Singles Library**  – Stand-alone guided meditations for morning wake-ups, commute focus, stress relief, and energy boosts - **Sleep & Bedtime Tools**  – Sleep meditations, bedtime stories, white noise audio, and interactive wind-down activities using bilateral stimulation - **Animated Breathing Exercises**  – Visual guides for controlled breathing to reduce anxiety and find calm throughout the day - **Experience-Based Progression**  – Beginners start with Foundations Plan while experienced meditators access Advanced Plan for deeper practice - **Mid-Plan Check-Ins**  – Regular reviews that adjust your meditation journey based on progress and feedback - **Research-Backed Techniques**  – Multiple evidence-based meditation methods including body scans, breath work, and mindfulness exercises ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Highly personalized meditation experience - Calming instructor voices (Ofosu) - Generous year-long free trial - Excellent for sleep support - Clean, uncluttered interface - Wide variety of techniques - Effective for anxiety relief - Structured learning progression **Cons:** - Audio frequently cuts out - Subscription billing problems - Unresponsive customer support - Premium pricing required - Limited offline functionality - Recent Android stability issues ### Who is this great for? Balance is perfect for iOS users who value personalization over content volume. If you struggle with choice paralysis in apps with massive libraries, or if you want guided learning progression rather than self-directed exploration, Balance's curated approach justifies the premium. The year-long free trial provides ample time to experience the benefits without financial pressure. It's especially great for beginners who need structure and for users who appreciate the adaptive recommendations based on daily feedback. The calming instructor voices, particularly Ofosu, make it appealing for users who find motivation in consistent narration style. ### Compared to others Balance's personalization gives it advantages over content-heavy apps like  [Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/insight-timer)  for users who want guidance over choice. While  [Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito)  offers free content, Balance's structured learning and adaptation may justify the cost for some users. However, current Android technical issues make alternatives like  [Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace)  and  [Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm)  more reliable choices for Android users despite their own limitations. ### Detailed comparisons [Balance vs Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/balance-meditation-vs-calm)  •  [Balance vs Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/balance-meditation-vs-headspace)  •  [Balance vs Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/balance-meditation-vs-insight-timer) ### Rating Summary With over 1 million downloads and mixed ratings on Android (4.7 stars with 47.2K reviews but recent 3.48) and iOS (4.9 stars with 118K reviews), Balance shows platform-specific performance.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Balance a score of 8.17/10. Check out the full review here:  [Balance review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/balance-meditation) . ## [7\. Insight Timer - Meditation App](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/insight-timer) ![Insight timer](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-35.webp) Insight Timer boasts the largest free meditation library available with over 10 million downloads and a 4.7-star rating on Android (with 251,000+ reviews). Recent reviews show a concerning decline to 3.87 stars, reflecting frustrations with UI bloat and intrusive prompts. On iOS, it shines with a 4.9-star rating and 431,000+ reviews. With over 100,000 guided meditations from 11,000+ teachers, the sheer content volume is genuinely impressive. By the numbers, no other app in this comparison matches Insight Timer's content variety. You can find meditations for literally any practice type—from secular mindfulness to Buddhist traditions, sleep content to walking meditations, all led by expert teachers from institutions like Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford. The free tier is remarkably generous, offering substantially more than most paid apps provide. ### Key Features: - **100,000+ Guided Meditations**  – Access an enormous library of free meditations covering every practice type imaginable, from secular mindfulness to Buddhist traditions, with new content added daily - **Sleep Content Library**  – Thousands of sleep meditations, music tracks, soundscapes, and bedtime stories to help with insomnia and improve sleep quality - **Customizable Meditation Timer**  – A simple yet powerful timer with interval bells, ambient sounds, and complete customization for unguided practice - **Expert Teachers**  – Learn from over 11,000 meditation teachers, psychologists, and neuroscientists from top institutions like Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford - **Discussion Groups**  – Join thousands of community groups organized by practice type, religion, interests, or life circumstances for peer support - **Progress Tracking**  – Track your meditation journey with detailed stats, milestones, and streak counters to build consistent habits - **Offline Downloads**  – Premium subscribers can download meditations for offline listening without internet connection - **1,000+ Premium Courses**  – In-depth structured courses covering topics like better sleep, stress reduction, and building specific meditation skills (requires subscription) ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Massive free content library - No ads on free tier - Exceptional teacher variety - Works without account - Strong community features - Highly customizable timer - Regular new content additions - Excellent iOS ratings **Cons:** - Forced surveys and commitment prompts - Bloated UI with marketing - Sleep mode auto-plays music - Declining Android satisfaction - Search and filtering lacking - Premium features feel hidden ### Who is this great for? Insight Timer is perfect for dedicated meditators who value content variety above all else. If you want access to thousands of different teachers and meditation styles without paying, Insight Timer delivers exceptional value. The massive library means you'll never run out of new content to explore, and the free tier provides more than enough for building a consistent practice. It's especially great for experienced practitioners who know what they want and can navigate the large library effectively. The community features appeal to users seeking peer support, and the meditation timer satisfies users who want unguided practice with interval bells and ambient sounds. ### Compared to others Insight Timer's content volume dwarfs competitors like  [Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito)  and  [Serenity](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/serenity) . While  [Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm)  and  [Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace)  charge premium prices for curated experiences, Insight Timer provides overwhelming variety at zero cost. However, the UI complexity and intrusive prompts make simpler apps like  [Let's Meditate](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/lets-meditate)  more appealing for users who want distraction-free meditation. ### Detailed comparisons [Insight Timer vs Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/insight-timer-vs-calm)  •  [Insight Timer vs Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/insight-timer-vs-headspace)  •  [Insight Timer vs Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/insight-timer-vs-medito) ### Rating Summary With over 10 million downloads and mixed ratings on Android (4.7 stars with 251K reviews but recent 3.87) and iOS (4.9 stars with 431K reviews), Insight Timer shows its age.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Insight Timer a score of 7.92/10. Check out the full review here:  [Insight Timer review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/insight-timer) . ## [8\. Calm - Sleep, Meditate, Relax](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm) ![Calm](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-36.webp) Calm dominates the premium meditation space with over 50 million downloads and a 4.1-star rating on Android (with 604,000+ reviews). Recent reviews show a drop to 3.04 stars, indicating growing concerns among Android users. On iOS, it maintains a strong 4.8-star rating with 1.9 million reviews. The celebrity-narrated sleep stories are Calm's standout feature—falling asleep to Cillian Murphy, Bob Ross, or Rosé provides a unique experience that justifies the subscription for millions. Reviewers praise the production quality of Calm's extensive library. The Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt, Daily Trip with Jeff Warren, and comprehensive meditation library provide structure that helps build consistent habits. Most users say the sleep stories genuinely help them fall asleep, which is exactly what they're designed to do. ### Key Features: - **Sleep Stories**  – Bedtime stories narrated by celebrities like Cillian Murphy, Rosé, Jerome Flynn, and the popular Bob Ross "Painting" series - **Daily Programs**  – Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt (10-minute meditation), Daily Trip with Jeff Warren, Daily Move (mindful movement), and Daily Jay - **Extensive Meditation Library**  – Guided meditations for various needs including anxiety relief, focus, habit breaking, and stress management - **Soundscapes & Music**  – Sleep sounds, nature soundscapes, relaxing music, and EMDR sounds for therapeutic use - **Breathing Exercises**  – Guided breathwork sessions for relaxation and stress reduction - **Mindful Movement**  – Stretching exercises and movement sessions for relaxation - **Progress Tracking**  – Daily streaks, mindful minutes counter, and activity tracking - **Wear OS Support**  – Quick-start tiles and meditation tracking complications for smartwatches ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Unique celebrity-narrated sleep stories (Cillian Murphy, Rosé, Bob Ross) - Extensive, high-quality meditation and sleep content library - Daily programs (Daily Calm, Daily Trip, Daily Jay, Daily Move) provide structure - Beautiful, calming design and interface - Sleep stories genuinely effective for most users - Excellent kids content for bedtime routines - EMDR sounds and therapeutic content - Smartwatch integration with Wear OS - Trusted by major employers for wellness programs - Long-term reliability for millions of users **Cons:** - Subscription required for most content - Free version very limited - Some Android users report billing confusion during trials - Splash screen repetitive for daily users - Content updates could be more frequent - Occasional technical issues for some users - Premium pricing compared to free alternatives ### Who is this great for? Calm is perfect for users who value premium production quality and celebrity content. If you're someone who struggles with sleep and finds the idea of falling asleep to Cillian Murphy's voice appealing, the subscription justifies itself quickly. The daily programs provide structure for building consistent meditation habits, and the extensive library ensures you'll find content that resonates. It's especially great for users whose employers provide Calm subscriptions as wellness benefits—the value proposition becomes excellent when it's free. Families appreciate the kids content for establishing bedtime routines, and the celebrity sleep stories differentiate Calm from every other meditation app. ### Compared to others Calm's celebrity sleep stories and premium production give it unique advantages over competitors. While  [Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito)  offers free content and  [Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/insight-timer)  provides massive variety, Calm's curated, professionally produced library appeals to users willing to pay for polish. Compared to  [Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace) , Calm currently offers more stable performance on Android despite both having similar pricing. ### Detailed comparisons [Calm vs Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/calm-vs-headspace)  •  [Calm vs Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/calm-vs-medito)  •  [Calm vs Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/calm-vs-insight-timer) ### Rating Summary With over 50 million downloads and mixed ratings on Android (4.1 stars with 604K reviews but recent 3.04) and iOS (4.8 stars with 1.9M reviews), Calm maintains market leadership.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Calm a score of 7.33/10. Check out the full review here:  [Calm review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm) . ## [9\. Simple Habit: Meditation](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/simple-habit) ![Simple Habit](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-37.webp) Simple Habit carved out a niche with 5-minute meditations designed for busy people, achieving over 1 million downloads and a 4.6-star rating on Android (with 45,200+ reviews). Recent reviews show a concerning decline to 3.35 stars, reflecting technical issues and limited development. On iOS, it maintains a 4.8-star rating with 78,000+ reviews. The award-winning app (Google Play Awards, Material Design) shows promise, but current technical problems affect the experience. Reviewers appreciate the 5-minute format when sessions load properly. The quick meditation concept addresses a genuine need—many people genuinely can't find 20 minutes for traditional meditation. The expert-led content from Google mindfulness experts and former monks provides quality guidance, and users report that the kids content works well for bedtime routines. ### Key Features: - **5-Minute Meditations**  – Quick sessions designed for busy lifestyles, though many now fail to load properly - **Expert-Led Content**  – Sessions guided by meditation experts, psychologists, and former monks - **On-the-Go Feature**  – Designed for use during commutes or brief moments throughout the day - **Kids Content**  – Sleep stories and meditations specifically for children, which some users found effective - **Progress Tracking**  – Streak tracking and mindful minutes to monitor your practice - **Offline Access**  – Download meditations with premium subscription (when working properly) ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - 5-minute sessions perfect for busy schedules - Expert-led content from credentialed teachers - Kids content effective for bedtime routines - Quick meditation format unique in the market - Long-time users report years of successful use - Award-winning app (Google Play Awards, Material Design) **Cons:** - Limited Android development (web version recommended) - Some users experience loading issues - Very limited free content - Recent app rewrite removed favorites feature - Technical support responsiveness varies - Subscription required for most content ### Who is this great for? Simple Habit is perfect for iOS users who genuinely struggle to find meditation time and need ultra-short sessions. If you have iOS and want quick meditations that fit into brief moments throughout your day, Simple Habit's 4.8-star iOS rating suggests it works well. The 5-minute format addresses a real need for people with packed schedules. It's especially great for families who found success with the kids content for bedtime routines. Long-time users who've stuck with the app for years demonstrate that when it works, the format genuinely helps build consistent meditation habits. ### Compared to others Simple Habit's 5-minute format differentiates it from apps like  [Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm)  and  [Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace) , which typically offer longer sessions. However, technical issues and limited Android development make free alternatives like  [Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito)  and  [Let's Meditate](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/lets-meditate)  more reliable choices. Compared to  [Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/insight-timer) , Simple Habit offers focused brevity rather than overwhelming variety. ### Detailed comparisons [Simple Habit vs Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/simple-habit-vs-medito)  •  [Simple Habit vs Headspace](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/simple-habit-vs-headspace)  •  [Simple Habit vs Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/simple-habit-vs-calm) ### Rating Summary With over 1 million downloads and declining ratings on Android (4.6 stars with 45.2K reviews but recent 3.35) and strong iOS performance (4.8 stars with 78K reviews), Simple Habit shows platform inconsistency.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Simple Habit a score of 6.33/10. Check out the full review here:  [Simple Habit review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/simple-habit) . ## [10\. Headspace: Meditation & Health](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace) ![Headspace](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-38.webp) Headspace pioneered mainstream meditation apps with over 10 million downloads and a 4.2-star rating on Android (with 338,000+ reviews). However, recent reviews paint a troubling picture with a 2.03 rating for the last 100 reviews—the app suffers from frequent crashes, slow loading, and confusing navigation. On iOS, it maintains a 4.8-star rating with 974,000+ reviews. The content quality remains solid, but technical execution has deteriorated significantly. Recent reviews spell out what's going wrong. Users report the app crashing during meditation sessions, taking excessive time to load, and presenting a cluttered interface that works against the calming experience meditation should provide. When it works, the 500+ guided meditations and sleep stories deliver quality content, but reliability issues undermine everything. ### Key Features: - **500+ Guided Meditations**  – Access an extensive library of meditations covering anxiety, stress, sleep, focus, and mental wellness - **Sleep Content & Sleepcasts**  – Enjoy soothing sleep stories, soundscapes, and guided sleep meditations to improve sleep quality - **Mental Health Coaching & Therapy**  – Connect with licensed therapists, mental health coaches, and Ebb (AI companion) for personalized support - **Mindfulness & Breathing Exercises**  – Practice breathwork techniques for anxiety relief, stress management, and relaxation - **Mindful Movement & Yoga**  – Explore yoga sessions and movement exercises designed for stress relief and mind-body connection - **CBT Techniques & Courses**  – Access cognitive behavioral therapy exercises and structured meditation courses - **Focus Music & Soundscapes**  – Listen to relaxing music and ambient sounds for concentration and relaxation - **Progress Tracking**  – Monitor your meditation journey with a self-care tracker ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - High-quality meditation content - Comprehensive library of sleep stories and sleepcasts - Insurance coverage available through many providers - Professional narration and production quality - Wide variety of meditation topics - Therapy and coaching options available **Cons:** - Extremely buggy and crashes frequently (recent updates) - Very slow loading times and performance issues - Confusing and cluttered navigation - Expensive subscription pricing - Poor customer service - Aggressive upselling of therapy services - Constant UI changes that worsen user experience - Battery drain issues ### Who is this great for? Headspace is currently difficult to recommend due to widespread technical issues, but it may still work for users with insurance coverage who can tolerate the performance problems. If your employer provides Headspace subscriptions as a wellness benefit and you primarily use iOS where performance is better, the content quality may justify dealing with the technical friction. It's worth noting that when Headspace works properly, the structured courses and professionally narrated content provide genuine value. Long-time users who stuck with the app through better times demonstrate that the content itself is solid—the execution just needs fixing. ### Compared to others Headspace's current technical problems make it hard to compete with more stable alternatives.  [Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm)  offers similar premium content with better Android performance,  [Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito)  provides free meditation without technical issues, and  [Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/insight-timer)  delivers massive content variety with better reliability. Until Headspace fixes its stability and performance problems, most users will find better experiences elsewhere. ### Detailed comparisons [Headspace vs Calm](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/headspace-vs-calm)  •  [Headspace vs Medito](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/headspace-vs-medito)  •  [Headspace vs Insight Timer](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/headspace-vs-insight-timer) ### Rating Summary With over 10 million downloads and drastically declining ratings on Android (4.2 stars with 338K reviews but recent 2.03) and iOS (4.8 stars with 974K reviews), Headspace needs urgent attention.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Headspace a score of 5.58/10. Check out the full review here:  [Headspace review](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace) . ## Final Thoughts Looking at all 10 meditation apps side by side, each has carved out its own space in the market. Based on the scores,  [**Medito**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/medito)  stands out as the best overall choice with its perfect combination of quality content, beautiful design, and completely free access. The app's 9.47/10 rating reflects exceptional performance across all categories without asking for a single dollar. For users seeking professional narration and simple design,  [**Serenity**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/serenity)  (9.00/10) provides excellent value with its flexible pricing model and soothing narrator voice.  [**Meditation | Down Dog**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/down-dog-meditation)  (8.83/10) excels for users who want exceptional customization and value the multi-app subscription that includes yoga and fitness programs. For specific use cases:  [**Waking Up**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/waking-up-meditation)  (8.52/10) is perfect for intellectually curious practitioners seeking philosophical depth alongside meditation practice.  [**Balance**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/balance-meditation)  (8.17/10) offers strong personalization for iOS users, though Android users should proceed with caution due to technical issues.  [**Insight Timer**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/insight-timer)  (7.92/10) provides the largest free library available, despite UI bloat concerns. [**Calm**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/calm)  (7.33/10) remains valuable for its unique celebrity sleep stories if you can justify the premium pricing.  [**Let's Meditate**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/lets-meditate)  (8.68/10) delivers straightforward, completely free meditation despite AI-generated voices.  [**Simple Habit**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/simple-habit)  (6.33/10) works well for iOS users needing 5-minute sessions, though Android users face technical limitations.  [**Headspace**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/headspace)  (5.58/10) struggles with severe technical problems that overshadow its quality content. The key is finding what fits your specific needs and budget. Start with free options like Medito or Let's Meditate to build your practice, then consider paid alternatives only if you need features they don't provide. With excellent free options available, there's no need to pay for meditation apps unless premium features genuinely enhance your practice. --- # Top 22 VPN Apps Compared: Best iOS & Android VPNs (2026) > Compare 22 top iOS & Android VPN apps. From Proton VPN to NordVPN, find the perfect VPN for privacy, speed, and security in our detailed guide. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-12-10 - Updated: 2026-10-12 - Tags: comparison, vpn, Apps - Reading time: 40 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-20-vpn-apps-compared-best-ios-android-vpns-2026/ --- Concerns about online privacy and security have skyrocketed in recent years. VPN apps have become essential tools for millions of users worldwide. With countless people downloading VPN services every day, the market has exploded with options ranging from free basic protection to comprehensive security suites with advanced features. Many developers have jumped into the VPN space, creating powerful applications that offer everything from simple connection switching to advanced encryption protocols, ad blocking, and multi-device support. Of course, established companies and privacy-focused startups have all joined in, each promising the best protection for your data. I wanted to find out more and did a comprehensive VPN comparison. In this article, I will compare and contrast 22 of the best iOS & Android VPN apps available today. How this list was made: the scores come from Productivity Apps, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each app from its App Store and Google Play listings, its ratings and what recent reviews report. The descriptions below summarize each listing and what its users report — they are not hands-on reviews. The store numbers, prices and scores were read on October 12, 2026. The order goes back to the original comparison, so some apps now score lower than apps listed below them. Two sections are paid placements and labelled as sponsored: PureVPN at #1 and Planet VPN. ## List of the Best VPN Apps for Android & iOS: - [PureVPN: VPN Fast & Secure VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/pure-vpn) - [VPN Proton: Fast & Secure VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) - [OpenVPN Connect](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/openvpn-connect) - [Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn) - [Planet Free VPN ™ Super Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/planet-vpn) - [Brave Private Web Browser, VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/brave-browser-vpn) - [ExpressVPN: Fast & Secure VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn) - [Surfshark](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/surfshark-vpn) - [AVG Secure VPN Proxy & Privacy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/avg-secure-vpn) - [NordVPN – fast VPN for privacy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn) - [Thunder VPN - Fast, Safe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunder-vpn) - [Psiphon VPN: Freedom Online](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/psiphon-vpn) - [Secure VPN－Safer Internet](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/secure-vpn) - [VPN - Super Unlimited Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/vpn-super-unlimited-proxy) - [VPN PotatoVPN - WiFi Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/potato-vpn) - [JumpJumpVPN – Super Unlimited](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/jump-jump-vpn) - [PandaVPN Pro - Fast VPN Master](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/panda-vpn) - [Speedy Quark VPN - VPN Master](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/speedy-quark-vpn) - [Now VPN - Fast Secure Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/now-vpn) - [VPN Proxy Master - Safer Vpn](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/vpn-proxy-master) - [Cool VPN Pro: Secure VPN Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/cool-vpn-pro) - [Turbo VPN - Secure VPN Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/turbo-vpn) If you prefer a comparison overview, check out the [full comparison table of all VPN apps](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/category/vpn) : ![Comparison table of all 22 VPN apps](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-6.webp) *Comparison table of all 22 VPN apps* ## [1\. PureVPN: VPN Fast & Secure VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/pure-vpn) **Sponsored:** PureVPN paid for this placement at the top of the list. ![PureVPN](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-16-at-19.56.44.webp) *PureVPN* [PureVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/pure-vpn) is a well-established VPN with a broad feature set and a large global server network. It has over 5 million downloads on Android, where it holds 3.7/5 across 42,700+ reviews, and 4.4/5 on iOS across 7,900+ ratings. What really stands out right now is the aggressive pricing. With 82–85% discounts and 3 extra months included on the two-year plans, PureVPN’s long-term plans deliver premium-style features at a budget-friendly monthly cost. That pricing, paired with WireGuard support, split tunneling, and extras like a password manager, data removal, and eSIM data on the higher plans, is its main selling point. ### Key Features: - **Large global server network**  – 6,000+ servers across 65+ countries - **WireGuard & OpenVPN support**  – Fast, modern protocols with reliable fallbacks - **Split tunneling**  – Route selected apps outside the VPN - **Multi-device coverage**  – Protect up to 10 devices on one account - **Tracker blocker**  – Included from the Standard plan up - **Higher-plan extras**  – Password manager from Plus; data removal, dark web monitoring and eSIM data on Max ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Excellent long-term pricing with 82–85% discounts - Large server network for travel and streaming - WireGuard support and strong encryption - Multi-device coverage up to 10 devices - Useful add-ons like password manager and data removal - Generally fast connections on nearby servers - Responsive support in many cases - Strong feature-to-price ratio **Cons:** - Renewal pricing can surprise new users - Occasional connection drops reported - Some locations/features require higher tiers - Upsell prompts can feel heavy during onboarding - Billing flow requires careful review - Recent complaints about cancellation and billing ### Who is this great for? PureVPN is perfect for users who want a full-featured VPN at a highly discounted long-term price. If you care about streaming access, global server coverage, and modern protocol support, it delivers strong value without premium-level costs. It’s especially great for users who want more than just a VPN. The add-ons like tracker blocking, password manager, data removal, and optional eSIM data make it feel closer to a security suite than a basic privacy tool. ### Compared to others PureVPN prices its long-term plans aggressively — from $2.15 a month on the two-year Standard plan — while offering a feature set as broad as premium names like [ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn). Compared to [AVG Secure VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/avg-secure-vpn), it feels more feature-rich, and compared to [Brave Private Web Browser, VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/brave-browser-vpn), it provides deeper VPN controls rather than browser-first convenience. ### Detailed comparisons [PureVPN vs ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/pure-vpn-vs-expressvpn)  •  [PureVPN vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/pure-vpn-vs-nordvpn)  •  [PureVPN vs AVG Secure VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/pure-vpn-vs-avg-secure-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 5 million downloads on Android, 3.7/5 on Google Play and 4.4/5 on the App Store, PureVPN is a flexible, feature-rich VPN. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave PureVPN: VPN Fast & Secure VPN a score of 7.3/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/pure-vpn). ## [2\. VPN Proton: Fast & Secure VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-8.webp) *VPN Proton* VPN Proton has established itself as one of the most privacy-focused VPN services available. With over 100 million downloads and a strong 4.7-star rating on the Play Store (with 1,380,000+ reviews), it's clear that many users value its commitment to privacy and security. Recent reviews run a little cooler, as evidenced by its 4.30 rating for the last 100 reviews. What really sets Proton VPN apart is its Swiss-based privacy protection and unlimited bandwidth on the free tier with no ads. Created by the same CERN scientists behind Proton Mail, it brings advanced privacy features typically found only in premium VPNs. Whether you need secure browsing or want to bypass geo-restrictions, Proton VPN provides comprehensive protection. ### Key Features: - **Swiss-Based Privacy Protection** – Based in Switzerland and covered by Swiss privacy law - **Independent Security Audits** – Third-party audits verify privacy claims and security practices - **Unlimited Free Bandwidth** – No data caps or speed restrictions on the free tier - **No Ads, No Logs** – Ad-free, with a strict no-logs policy - **Advanced Encryption** – AES-256 and 4096 RSA encryption for maximum security - **Kill Switch Protection** – Automatic protection against connection drops ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Swiss-based privacy protection with independent audits - Unlimited bandwidth on free tier with no ads - Advanced encryption and security features - Strict no-logs policy - Kill switch protection against leaks - Open-source code for transparency - Excellent privacy and security reputation - No registration required for free tier **Cons:** - Limited server locations on free tier - Higher pricing than some competitors - Connection issues and speed limitations reported - Free tier has restricted server selection - Some users report disconnection issues - Premium features require subscription - Not as user-friendly as some alternatives - Limited customer support for free users ### Who is this great for? VPN Proton is perfect for anyone who prioritizes privacy above all else and wants Swiss-level data protection. Whether you're a privacy-conscious user who values transparency and independent audits, someone who needs unlimited bandwidth without ads, or just someone who wants advanced encryption without compromising privacy, Proton VPN delivers. It's especially great for users who appreciate open-source software and want complete transparency in their VPN provider. The Swiss base makes it appealing for users who want their provider under Swiss privacy law, while the unlimited free bandwidth is perfect for users who want to try a premium VPN experience without financial commitment. ### Compared to others Proton VPN's Swiss-based privacy protection and unlimited free bandwidth give it a clear advantage over other VPN services for privacy-conscious users, though its free plan only reaches servers in 10 countries, while a paid service like [NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn) opens its whole network to every subscriber. Against [Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunder-vpn), Proton VPN provides better privacy protection but with more technical complexity, while Thunder VPN offers a more user-friendly free experience. When compared to [ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn), Proton VPN is the more transparent choice and has a free tier, while ExpressVPN is paid-only and covers up to 14 devices on its top plan. ### Detailed comparisons [VPN Proton vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/proton-vpn-vs-nordvpn) • [VPN Proton vs Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/proton-vpn-vs-thunder-vpn) • [VPN Proton vs Surfshark](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/proton-vpn-vs-surfshark-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and strong ratings from both stores (4.7/5 on Android with 1,380,000+ reviews and 4.6/5 on iOS with 118,000+ ratings), VPN Proton has proven its value to millions of users worldwide. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave VPN Proton: Fast & Secure VPN a score of 8.3/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn). ## [3\. OpenVPN Connect](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/openvpn-connect) ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-9.webp) *OpenVPN Connect* OpenVPN Connect stands out as the official client for the OpenVPN protocol, developed by the creators of OpenVPN themselves. With over 10 million downloads and a solid 4.6-star rating on the Play Store (with 214,000+ reviews), it's the go-to choice for users who need enterprise-grade VPN security. The app maintains good quality, as evidenced by its 4.59 rating for the last 100 reviews. What makes OpenVPN Connect different is its open-source protocol and enterprise focus. Unlike consumer VPNs, this is a client that connects to OpenVPN-compatible servers, offering AES-256 encryption, TLS 1.3 support, and advanced features like split-tunneling. Its listing says over 20,000 organizations, including Salesforce, Target, and Boeing, rely on OpenVPN's business VPN products. ### Key Features: - **Enterprise-grade security** – AES-256 encryption and TLS 1.3 support - **Open-source protocol** – Built on the open-source OpenVPN protocol - **Advanced features** – Split-tunneling, kill switch, and auto-reconnect - **Flexible authentication** – Certificate, username/password, and MFA support - **Easy profile import** – Simple .ovpn file import and URL-based setup - **Cross-platform compatibility** – Works with all OpenVPN-compatible servers ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Free client for the open-source OpenVPN protocol - Enterprise-grade security - AES-256 encryption and TLS 1.3 - Advanced features like split-tunneling - Kill switch protection - No data shared with third parties, per its Google Play data safety label - Used by over 20,000 organizations, according to its listing - IPv6 and DNS leak protection **Cons:** - Requires technical setup - No built-in VPN service - Need compatible server - Not beginner-friendly - Complex configuration options - Requires server infrastructure - No customer support for setup - Steep learning curve ### Who is this great for? OpenVPN Connect is perfect for anyone who needs enterprise-grade VPN security with complete transparency and control. Whether you're a technical user who values open-source software, someone who needs the highest level of VPN security, or an organization that requires transparent security practices, OpenVPN Connect delivers. It's especially great for users who already have access to OpenVPN-compatible servers or are willing to set up their own infrastructure. The enterprise focus makes it appealing for organizations that need complete control over their VPN infrastructure, while the open-source protocol suits security-conscious users who want to read the code behind it themselves. ### Compared to others OpenVPN Connect's open-source protocol and enterprise-grade security give it a clear advantage over consumer VPNs for users who prioritize transparency, though it requires significantly more technical knowledge than alternatives like [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) . Against [NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn) , OpenVPN Connect provides superior security transparency but lacks built-in server access, while NordVPN offers a complete all-in-one solution. When compared to [ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn) , OpenVPN Connect excels in security and transparency, while ExpressVPN provides more user-friendly features and built-in servers. ### Detailed comparisons [OpenVPN Connect vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/openvpn-connect-vs-proton-vpn) • [OpenVPN Connect vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/openvpn-connect-vs-nordvpn) • [OpenVPN Connect vs ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/openvpn-connect-vs-expressvpn) ### Rating Summary With over 10 million downloads and strong ratings from both stores (4.6/5 on Android with 214,000+ reviews and 4.8/5 on iOS with 40,000+ ratings), OpenVPN Connect has earned its place as a standard client for enterprise VPN setups. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave OpenVPN Connect a score of 8.3/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/openvpn-connect). ## [4\. Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn) ![Windscribe VPN](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-10.webp) Windscribe VPN is a privacy-focused VPN service that's gained a solid reputation for offering generous free tier access. With over 10 million downloads and a strong 4.7-star rating on the Play Store (with 321,000+ reviews), it's clear that many users appreciate its court-proven privacy protection and comprehensive features. The app maintains good quality, as evidenced by its 4.58 rating for the last 100 reviews. What really sets Windscribe VPN apart is its generous 10GB monthly data allowance on the free tier with no time limits. Unlike many VPN services with ads or strict limitations, Windscribe offers tracker blocking, threat protection, and split tunneling for free. The service is independently owned, open-source, and has been audited, with its no-logs policy actually proven in court. ### Key Features: - **10GB free monthly data** – Generous free tier with no time limits - **Court-proven privacy protection** – No-logs policy backed up in real legal cases - **Tracker & threat blocking** – Block advertisers and filter malicious sites - **Split tunneling** – Route only selected apps through the VPN - **Multiple VPN protocols** – WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2, Stealth, and Wstunnel - **DNS leak protection** – Keep your browsing history private - **Firewall kill switch** – Block all traffic if VPN connection drops - **Multi-platform support** – Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, browsers - **Open-source and audited** – Transparent security practices ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Generous free tier with 10GB monthly data - Court-proven privacy protection - No-logs policy with independent audits - Tracker and threat blocking - Split tunneling support - Open-source and transparent - No credit card needed for the free plan - Multi-platform support **Cons:** - Limited free server locations - Recent connection stability issues - Billing and subscription concerns - Some servers may be slow or unreliable - Limited free trial options - The 10GB allowance needs a confirmed email address - Some users report billing problems - Connection issues on some networks ### Who is this great for? Windscribe VPN is perfect for anyone who values privacy and wants a generous free tier without ads. Whether you're a privacy-conscious user who appreciates court-proven privacy protection, someone who needs 10GB of monthly data for free, or just someone who wants comprehensive VPN features without financial commitment, Windscribe delivers. It's especially great for users who appreciate open-source software and independent audits. The court-proven privacy protection makes it appealing for users who need genuine privacy guarantees, while the generous free tier is perfect for users who want to try premium VPN features without paying upfront. ### Compared to others Windscribe VPN's generous free tier and court-proven privacy protection give it a clear advantage over many VPN services for privacy-conscious users on a budget, though alternatives like [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) offer unlimited bandwidth instead of data caps. Against [Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunder-vpn) , Windscribe VPN provides better privacy protection and more features, while Thunder VPN offers a simpler user experience. When compared to [Turbo VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/turbo-vpn) , Windscribe VPN excels in privacy transparency and ad-free experience, while Turbo VPN has more advertising but unlimited data. ### Detailed comparisons [Windscribe VPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/windscribe-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [Windscribe VPN vs Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/windscribe-vpn-vs-thunder-vpn) • [Windscribe VPN vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/windscribe-vpn-vs-nordvpn) ### Rating Summary With over 10 million downloads and strong ratings from both stores (4.7/5 on Android with 321,000+ reviews and 4.6/5 on iOS with 35,000+ ratings), Windscribe VPN has proven its value to privacy-conscious users worldwide. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Windscribe VPN a score of 7.9/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn). ## [5\. Planet Free VPN ™ Super Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/planet-vpn) **Sponsored:** Planet VPN paid to be included in this list. ![Planet Free VPN ™ Super Proxy](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/260827-01-image.webp) Planet VPN is the rare free VPN that asks for nothing before it works — no account, no email, no card anywhere in the flow. With over 50 million downloads and a 4.6-star rating on the Play Store (with 1.98M+ reviews), it's one of the most widely installed apps in this comparison. Recent feedback runs cooler than the lifetime average, as evidenced by its 3.73 rating for the last 100 reviews, while the iOS app holds 4.6 across roughly 37,000 ratings. What really sets Planet VPN apart is that its free tier isn't metered. Six locations across five countries — the USA, UK, France, the Netherlands and Germany — run with no time limit, no data cap and no speed throttle. You pay for it with ads instead. The company behind it, FREE VPN PLANET S.R.L., is a Romanian business operating under EU law with a published registered address, which is more transparency than most apps at this end of the market offer. ### Key Features: - **No-registration start** – Install, tap once, and you're connected; no account or email - **Uncapped free tier** – Six locations with no time limit, data cap or speed throttle - **Kill switch** – Drops your internet the moment the tunnel fails - **Multiple protocols** – Switch by hand when a network throttles or blocks the default - **Premium server network** – 1,260+ servers across 60+ countries, with streaming and P2P routes - **Per-app routing** – Send only selected apps through the tunnel (Premium) - **Network-level ad blocking** – Filters ads and trackers across apps, not just the browser (Premium) - **Shared account** – One Premium subscription covers up to ten devices ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Connects without any account - Free tier has no caps - Genuinely simple one-tap interface - Cheap long-term premium plans - Kill switch on every tier - EU company with published address **Cons:** - Free tier runs full-screen ads - Only six free locations - Recent connection-drop complaints - No published independent audit ### Who is this great for? Planet VPN is perfect for anyone who wants a VPN running in under a minute without handing over an identity. Whether you're unblocking a region-locked site, checking a store page from another country, or adding a layer on hotel Wi-Fi, it does the job with less friction than almost anything else in this list. It's especially great for users setting up a VPN for someone who doesn't want to think about VPNs. There's no onboarding to explain, no plan to choose and no settings you need to understand first — and if the free locations aren't enough, premium is cheap enough to be a reasonable step up rather than a bait-and-switch. ### Compared to others Planet VPN's zero-signup start makes it faster to get running than [Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn), which asks for a confirmed email before its full 10GB allowance, though Windscribe’s free plan includes tracker blocking and split tunneling in exchange for that monthly cap. Against [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn), Planet VPN is the easier start while Proton holds the stronger privacy record with an audited no-logs policy. When compared to [Turbo VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/turbo-vpn), Planet VPN is the cleaner and quieter app, with fewer permanent banners and less of the interface given over to selling the upgrade. ### Detailed comparisons [Planet VPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/planet-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [Planet VPN vs Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/planet-vpn-vs-windscribe-vpn) • [Planet VPN vs Turbo VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/planet-vpn-vs-turbo-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 50 million downloads and strong ratings across both stores (4.6/5 on Android with 1.98M+ reviews and 4.6/5 on iOS with 37,000+ ratings), Planet VPN has become one of the most widely used free VPNs available. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Planet Free VPN ™ Super Proxy a score of 7.8/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/planet-vpn) . ## [6\. Brave Private Web Browser, VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/brave-browser-vpn) ![Brave Private Web Browser](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-11.webp) Brave Browser VPN has become one of the most popular privacy-focused browsers with built-in VPN functionality. With over 100 million downloads and a solid 4.8-star rating on the Play Store (with 3,880,000+ reviews), it's clear that users appreciate its comprehensive approach to privacy and security. Recent reviews are more mixed, as evidenced by its 4.03 rating for the last 100 reviews. What makes Brave Browser VPN different is its all-in-one approach, combining a privacy-focused browser with VPN functionality and AI assistant features. Unlike standalone VPNs like Proton VPN, Brave integrates VPN directly into the browsing experience. With built-in ad blocking, tracking protection, and Brave Leo AI assistant, it offers comprehensive privacy tools in a single application. ### Key Features: - **Built-in ad blocking** – Block ads and trackers automatically - **Firewall + VPN** – Built into the browser as a paid subscription with a free trial, for up to 10 devices - **AI assistant (Brave Leo)** – Smart AI assistant for browsing help - **Privacy protection** – Comprehensive privacy and security features - **HTTPS Everywhere** – Encrypted data traffic protection - **Script blocking** – Block malicious scripts and trackers - **Private browsing** – Enhanced private browsing mode - **Sync across devices** – Secure synchronization across devices ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Excellent ad blocking - Built-in VPN functionality - Strong privacy protection - Fast browsing experience - AI assistant integration - No tracking or profiling - Free basic features - Cross-platform support **Cons:** - Recent performance issues - YouTube playback delays - Tab management bugs - Background playback issues - Some features require premium - Occasional crashes - Limited extension support - Download management issues ### Who is this great for? Brave Browser VPN is perfect for anyone who wants an all-in-one privacy solution without juggling multiple apps. Whether you're a user who values privacy and wants comprehensive ad blocking, someone who needs VPN functionality integrated into their browser, or just someone who appreciates innovative privacy tools, Brave Browser VPN delivers. It's especially great for users who prefer a unified privacy experience and don't want to install separate VPN apps. The AI assistant makes it appealing for users who want browsing help, while the built-in ad blocking is perfect for users who want a cleaner web experience without ads and trackers. ### Compared to others Brave Browser VPN's all-in-one approach gives it a clear advantage over standalone VPNs for users who want everything in one place, though dedicated VPN services like [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) offer more robust VPN features. Against [Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn) , Brave provides better browser integration but less focused VPN functionality, while Windscribe offers more dedicated VPN features. When compared to other browsers, Brave excels in privacy features while maintaining good browsing performance. ### Detailed comparisons [Brave Browser VPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/brave-browser-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [Brave Browser VPN vs Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/brave-browser-vpn-vs-windscribe-vpn) • [Brave Browser VPN vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/brave-browser-vpn-vs-nordvpn) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and strong ratings from both stores (4.8/5 on Android with 3,880,000+ reviews and 4.8/5 on iOS with 662,000+ ratings), Brave Browser VPN has proven its value to millions of privacy-conscious users. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Brave Private Web Browser, VPN a score of 7.7/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/brave-browser-vpn). ## [7\. ExpressVPN: Fast & Secure VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn) ![ExpressVPN: Fast & Secure VPN](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-12.webp) ExpressVPN is one of the most well-established premium VPN services in the market. With over 100 million downloads and a strong 4.6-star rating on the Play Store (with 492,000+ reviews), it's built a reputation for comprehensive security and reliability. Recent reviews are cooler, as evidenced by its 3.96 rating for the last 100 reviews. What sets ExpressVPN apart is its proprietary Lightway protocol and extensive server network spanning 113 countries. Unlike free alternatives, ExpressVPN focuses exclusively on premium features with fast speeds, AES-256 encryption, and advanced features like split tunneling and kill switch protection. Its listing cites recommendations from TechRadar, PCMag, and The Independent. ### Key Features: - **Servers in 113 countries** – Access to servers in 113 countries for bypassing geo-restrictions - **Military-grade encryption (AES-256)** – Strong encryption to secure your connection and protect your data - **No-logs policy with independent audits** – No logs of browsing history, IP address or DNS queries - **Kill switch protection** – Automatically blocks internet access if the VPN connection is lost - **Split tunneling for selective routing** – Route specific apps through the VPN tunnel to protect your privacy - **Lightway protocol for faster connections** – Proprietary protocol built to connect faster - **24/7 customer support** – Helpful support team available to assist you - **10 to 14 simultaneous devices** – 10 on the Basic plan, 12 on Advanced and 14 on Pro - **Password manager** – ExpressKeys, included in the Advanced and Pro plans ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Fast connection speeds with Lightway protocol - Comprehensive security features - Extensive global server network (113 countries) - No-logs policy with independent audits - Excellent for streaming and geo-blocking - Strong encryption and privacy protection - 24/7 customer support - Multi-platform support **Cons:** - No free tier available - Password manager and other extras need the pricier plans - Recent connection stability issues reported - Customer service challenges - Complex pricing structure - Some servers may be slow or unreliable - Reviews say the free trial asks for payment details first - Requires subscription for full features ### Who is this great for? ExpressVPN is perfect for anyone who prioritizes premium features and is willing to pay for comprehensive security. Whether you're a user who needs fast speeds for streaming, someone who values extensive server coverage, or just someone who wants a premium VPN experience with dedicated support, ExpressVPN delivers. It's especially great for users who travel frequently and need reliable access to global content. The extensive server network makes it appealing for users who need to bypass geo-restrictions, while the Lightway protocol is perfect for users who want fast speeds without compromising security. ### Compared to others ExpressVPN’s network in 113 countries and its own Lightway protocol are its main arguments against other premium VPNs, though free alternatives like [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) offer strong security without cost. Against [NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn), ExpressVPN allows more devices on its top plan (up to 14 versus 10), while NordVPN’s listing counts 7,000+ servers. When compared to [Surfshark VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/surfshark-vpn), ExpressVPN caps devices by plan, while Surfshark covers unlimited devices on one subscription. ### Detailed comparisons [ExpressVPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/expressvpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [ExpressVPN vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/expressvpn-vs-nordvpn) • [ExpressVPN vs Surfshark](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/expressvpn-vs-surfshark-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and strong ratings from both stores (4.6/5 on Android with 492,000+ reviews and 4.7/5 on iOS with 419,000+ ratings), ExpressVPN has proven its value as a premium VPN service. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave ExpressVPN: Fast & Secure VPN a score of 6.8/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn). ## [8\. Surfshark](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/surfshark-vpn) ![Surfshark](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-13.webp) Surfshark VPN has carved out a unique position in the premium VPN market with its unlimited device connections. With over 10 million downloads and a solid 4.6-star rating on the Play Store (with 314,000+ reviews), it offers a competitive feature set. Recent reviews are far cooler, as evidenced by its 3.45 rating for the last 100 reviews. What really sets Surfshark apart is its unique value proposition of unlimited simultaneous connections, allowing users to protect all their devices with a single subscription. With 4,500+ servers in 100 countries, CleanWeb ad blocking, and Alternative ID for privacy, it combines a broad feature set with one subscription for every device. ### Key Features: - **Unlimited device connections** – Connect unlimited devices simultaneously with a single subscription - **4,500+ servers in 100 countries** – Access to servers worldwide for bypassing geo-restrictions - **Strong encryption** – Secures your connection and protects your data - **No-logs policy** – The service says it does not log what you do online - **CleanWeb ad blocking** – Block ads, trackers, malware, and phishing attempts - **Dynamic MultiHop** – Connect via two different servers simultaneously for enhanced security - **Alternative ID** – Generate alternative online identities for enhanced privacy - **Built-in antivirus protection** – Shield your device from viruses and malware - **24/7 customer support** – Helpful support team available to assist you ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Unlimited device connections - Comprehensive security features - Dynamic MultiHop for extra privacy - Strong ad blocking capabilities - Alternative ID for privacy - Built-in antivirus protection - 24/7 customer support - Multi-platform support **Cons:** - No free tier available - Recent connection stability issues - Customer service challenges - Billing and cancellation issues - Some servers may be slow or unreliable - Limited free trial options - Requires subscription for full features - Auto-renewal concerns ### Who is this great for? Surfshark VPN is perfect for anyone who needs to protect multiple devices with a single subscription. Whether you're a family with multiple devices, someone who uses many gadgets, or just someone who values unlimited connections, Surfshark delivers excellent value. It's especially great for users who want comprehensive security features without device limitations. The unlimited connections make it appealing for households with many devices, while the Alternative ID feature is perfect for users who want additional privacy tools beyond basic VPN functionality. ### Compared to others Surfshark VPN's unlimited device connections give it a clear advantage over other premium VPNs like [NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn) which limits to 10 devices, though NordVPN lists more servers (7,000+ versus 4,500+). Against [ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn), Surfshark covers unlimited devices where ExpressVPN stops at 14 on its top plan, while ExpressVPN reaches more countries (113 versus 100). When compared to [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn), Surfshark excels in device flexibility, while Proton provides a free tier with unlimited bandwidth. ### Detailed comparisons [Surfshark vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/surfshark-vpn-vs-nordvpn) • [Surfshark vs ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/surfshark-vpn-vs-expressvpn) • [Surfshark vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/surfshark-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 10 million downloads and strong ratings from both stores (4.6/5 on Android with 314,000+ reviews and 4.7/5 on iOS with 131,000+ ratings), Surfshark VPN has proven its value to users seeking unlimited device protection. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Surfshark a score of 6.6/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/surfshark-vpn). ## [9\. AVG Secure VPN Proxy & Privacy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/avg-secure-vpn) ![AVG Secure VPN Proxy & Privacy](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-14.webp) AVG Secure VPN stands out as a security-focused VPN service from the well-known AVG brand. With over 10 million downloads and a 4.3-star rating on the Play Store (with 85,200+ reviews), it offers straightforward protection from a familiar security vendor. Recent reviews are cooler, as evidenced by its 3.72 rating for the last 100 reviews. What makes AVG Secure VPN different is its simplicity: it can switch itself on automatically, and a dashboard widget turns the VPN on or off in one tap. One multi-device subscription covers up to 10 devices across Android, iOS, Windows and Mac. On Android, the listing offers a 7-day free trial before the yearly subscription starts. ### Key Features: - **Secure VPN connection** – Protect your data and identity while browsing - **Automatic connection** – Set the VPN to switch on automatically - **Dashboard widget** – Quick one-click VPN on/off toggle - **Multiple server locations** – More than 100 server locations - **No-logs policy** – Your browsing activity is not logged - **Up to 10 devices** – One multi-device subscription for Android, iOS, Windows and Mac - **Easy setup** – Simple installation and configuration - **Cross-platform support** – Available on Android and iOS ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Backed by a well-known security brand - Easy to use interface - Automatic connection on unsecured networks - Up to 10 devices on a multi-device subscription - Dashboard widget for quick access - No-logs policy - More than 100 server locations - Cross-platform support **Cons:** - Recent connection issues - Blocked in some locations after purchase, reviews say - Some features require premium - Billing concerns reported - VPN switches itself off, reviews say - Not as feature-rich as competitors - Some users report performance issues - Premium subscription required for full features ### Who is this great for? AVG Secure VPN suits anyone who already trusts AVG's security products and wants a VPN from the same vendor. Whether you're an AVG user, someone who values automatic protection on public Wi-Fi, or just someone who wants a straightforward VPN without complex features, AVG Secure VPN delivers. It's especially great for users who appreciate automatic security features and dashboard widgets for quick access. The familiar AVG brand makes it appealing for users already invested in the AVG ecosystem, while the simple interface is perfect for users who want VPN protection without technical complexity. ### Compared to others AVG Secure VPN's familiar brand and simple setup speak to existing AVG users, though dedicated VPNs like [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) offer more comprehensive features. Against [NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn), AVG is the simpler app with fewer advanced features, while NordVPN lists 7,000+ servers against AVG's 100+ locations. When compared to free alternatives, AVG has no free tier beyond its trial, so free VPNs are the better fit for budget-conscious users. ### Detailed comparisons [AVG Secure VPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/avg-secure-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [AVG Secure VPN vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/avg-secure-vpn-vs-nordvpn) • [AVG Secure VPN vs Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/avg-secure-vpn-vs-windscribe-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 10 million downloads and a 4.3/5 rating on Android (85,200+ reviews), plus 4.7/5 on iOS with 13,200+ ratings, AVG Secure VPN has found its audience among users seeking security-focused VPN protection. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave AVG Secure VPN Proxy & Privacy a score of 6.8/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/avg-secure-vpn). ## [10\. NordVPN – fast VPN for privacy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn) ![NordVPN – fast VPN for privacy](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-15.webp) NordVPN is one of the most popular and well-established VPN services in the market. With over 100 million downloads and a solid 4.6-star rating on the Play Store (with 1,360,000+ reviews), it's built a strong reputation for comprehensive security and global reach. Recent reviews are far cooler, as evidenced by its 3.11 rating for the last 100 reviews. What sets NordVPN apart is its 7,000+ server network across 220+ locations and its NordLynx protocol based on WireGuard. Unlike free alternatives, NordVPN focuses on premium features with strong encryption, Double VPN, and specialty servers. Its listing cites recommendations from CNET, TechRadar, and PCMag. ### Key Features: - **One-tap connection with smart server selection** – Quick and easy connection to the best server for your location - **Unlimited bandwidth and data usage** – No data caps or speed restrictions - **Global server network (7,000+ servers in 220+ locations)** – Access to servers worldwide for bypassing geo-restrictions - **Strong encryption** – Secures your connection - **No-log policy with independent checks** – The policy has been reviewed by independent auditors - **Auto-connect** – Connects automatically on unknown Wi-Fi networks - **Double VPN for enhanced security** – Two layers of encryption for maximum protection - **Split tunneling** – Route specific apps through the VPN tunnel - **Scam and phishing protection** – Blocks malicious websites; tracker and ad blocking depend on the plan - **24/7 customer support** – Helpful support team available - **Up to 10 simultaneous connections** – Protect multiple devices - **Specialty servers** – Optimized for individual needs ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Fast connection speeds with NordLynx protocol - Comprehensive security features - Extensive global server network - No-logs policy with independent audits - Excellent for streaming and geo-blocking - Strong encryption and privacy protection - 24/7 customer support - Multi-platform support **Cons:** - No free tier available - Login failures after purchase, reviews say - Connection stability issues reported - Customer service challenges - Android TV app breaks after updates, reviews say - Some servers may be slow or unreliable - Reviews report charges during the free trial - Requires subscription for full features ### Who is this great for? NordVPN is perfect for anyone who needs comprehensive security with extensive server coverage. Whether you're a frequent traveler needing global access, someone who streams content from multiple regions, or just someone who values advanced security features like double VPN, NordVPN delivers. It's especially great for users who want specialty servers and Double VPN. The extensive server network makes it appealing for users who travel frequently, while the NordLynx protocol is perfect for users who want fast speeds without compromising security. ### Compared to others NordVPN’s 7,000+ servers and extras like Double VPN are its main arguments against other premium VPNs, though free alternatives like [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) offer strong security without cost. Against [ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn), NordVPN covers 10 devices on one account where ExpressVPN’s top plan covers 14, while ExpressVPN brings its own Lightway protocol. When compared to [Surfshark VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/surfshark-vpn), NordVPN lists more servers, while Surfshark provides unlimited device connections. ### Detailed comparisons [NordVPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/nordvpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [NordVPN vs ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/nordvpn-vs-expressvpn) • [NordVPN vs Surfshark](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/nordvpn-vs-surfshark-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and strong lifetime ratings from both stores (4.6/5 on Android with 1,360,000+ reviews and 4.7/5 on iOS with 708,000+ ratings), NordVPN remains one of the most widely used premium VPN services. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave NordVPN – fast VPN for privacy a score of 6.3/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn). ## [11\. Thunder VPN - Fast, Safe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunder-vpn) ![Thunder VPN - Fast, Safe VPN](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-16.webp) Thunder VPN has established itself as one of the most highly-rated free VPN services available. With over 100 million downloads and an impressive 4.8-star rating on the Play Store (with 1,860,000+ reviews), it's clear that users appreciate its simple approach and minimal advertising. The app maintains good quality, as evidenced by its 4.61 rating for the last 100 reviews. What really sets Thunder VPN apart is its focus on user experience over aggressive monetization. Its listing promises no usage or time limit, a server network across America, Europe and Asia, and only a few ads. The simple one-tap connection makes it particularly appealing to VPN newcomers who want protection without complexity. ### Key Features: - **One-Tap Connection** – Simple interface that connects to VPN servers with a single tap - **No Usage Limit** – No usage or time limit on the free tier - **Global Server Network** – Servers in America, Europe and Asia - **No Registration Required** – Start using immediately without creating accounts - **Manual Server Selection** – Choose specific server locations for optimal performance - **Minimal Advertising** – “A few ads”, according to the listing ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Fast connection speeds and reliable performance - No usage or time limit on free tier - Simple one-tap connection interface - No registration or account required - Good for accessing geo-blocked content - Minimal advertising compared to competitors - Global server network available - Free to use with no time limits **Cons:** - Frequent connection drops and instability - Must keep app window open to maintain connection - Some users report data harvesting concerns - Connection quality varies significantly - No kill switch mentioned in the listing - Limited advanced features in free version - Occasional slow loading times - Premium version pricing could be more competitive ### Who is this great for? Thunder VPN is perfect for anyone who wants a simple, free VPN without overwhelming features or aggressive advertising. Whether you're a VPN newcomer looking for basic protection, someone who needs occasional access to geo-blocked content, or just someone who wants unlimited bandwidth without paying, Thunder VPN delivers. It's especially great for users who value simplicity and don't need advanced features. The one-tap connection makes it appealing for users who want VPN protection without technical knowledge, while the minimal advertising is perfect for users who find other free VPNs too intrusive. ### Compared to others Thunder VPN's simplicity and minimal advertising give it a clear advantage over other free VPNs for users who want basic protection without hassle, though alternatives like [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) offer better privacy guarantees. Against [Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn) , Thunder VPN provides simpler interface but less comprehensive features, while Windscribe offers court-proven privacy protection. When compared to premium VPNs like [NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn) , Thunder VPN excels in accessibility and cost, while NordVPN provides more advanced features. ### Detailed comparisons [Thunder VPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/thunder-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [Thunder VPN vs Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/thunder-vpn-vs-windscribe-vpn) • [Thunder VPN vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/thunder-vpn-vs-nordvpn) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and outstanding ratings on Android (4.8/5 with 1,860,000+ reviews), Thunder VPN is one of the most popular free VPN options available. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Thunder VPN - Fast, Safe VPN a score of 7.2/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunder-vpn). ## [12\. Psiphon VPN: Freedom Online](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/psiphon-vpn) ![Psiphon VPN: Freedom Online](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-17.webp) Psiphon VPN is an open-source VPN designed specifically for circumventing censorship and accessing blocked content. With over 100 million downloads and a solid 4.5-star rating (998,000+ reviews), it's used in restrictive internet environments worldwide. Recent reviews are cooler, with a 3.86 rating in the last 100 reviews. What sets Psiphon apart is its focus on internet freedom and open-source transparency. It combines VPN, proxy, and circumvention technologies and picks the connection method automatically, so it's designed to bypass censorship rather than serve as a general-purpose VPN. According to its listing, people have relied on Psiphon for over 20 years, including during major internet blocking events. ### Key Features: - **Open-source transparency** – Code that can be independently reviewed - **Automatic protocol selection** – Best protocol for reliable connection - **Global server network** – Built to stay reachable on restricted networks - **Multi-language support** – International accessibility - **Internet freedom focus** – Designed for restricted regions - **Split tunneling** – Listed among its features ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Open-source and transparent, Automatic protocol selection, Internet freedom focus, Over 20 years in service, Free to use with ads, Multi-language support **Cons:** Recent connection issues, Forced app installations, Loading delays, Connection drops, Speed limitations, Update difficulties ### Who is this great for? Psiphon VPN is perfect for users in countries with restricted internet access who need to bypass censorship. It's ideal for accessing blocked content, connecting across borders, and circumventing regional restrictions. The open-source nature appeals to users who value transparency in circumvention tools. ### Compared to others Psiphon's circumvention focus gives it advantages in restricted regions over general VPNs like [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) , though Proton offers better privacy for general use. Against [Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunder-vpn) , Psiphon is the tool built for censorship bypass, while Thunder VPN is the simpler everyday app. ### Detailed comparisons [Psiphon VPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/psiphon-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [Psiphon VPN vs Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/psiphon-vpn-vs-thunder-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and solid ratings (4.5/5 on Android with 998,000+ reviews), Psiphon VPN remains a widely used tool for internet freedom. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Psiphon VPN: Freedom Online a score of 7.1/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/psiphon-vpn). ## [13\. Secure VPN－Safer Internet](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/secure-vpn) ![Secure VPN－Safer Internet](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-18.webp) Secure VPN promises lightning-fast VPN service with over 100 million downloads and a 4.7-star rating (2,410,000+ reviews). With simple one-tap connection and no registration required, it appeals to users seeking straightforward VPN access. Recent performance shows a 4.70 rating in the last 100 reviews, indicating consistent quality. The app positions itself as a privacy-focused solution with a strict no-logging policy and global server network spanning America, Europe, and Asia. Smart server selection automatically connects users to the fastest available option, while app-specific VPN routing lets Android 5.0+ users choose which apps use the VPN connection—useful for selective protection. ### Key Features: - **One-tap connection** – Lightning-fast connection without configuration - **Global server network** – Servers in America, Europe, and Asia - **Smart server selection** – Automatic fastest server connection - **App-specific VPN routing** – Choose which apps use VPN - **No registration required** – Immediate use without accounts - **Strict no-logging policy** – Privacy-focused data protection ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Lightning-fast connection, One-tap connection, No registration required, Global server network, Smart server selection, App-specific routing, Strict no-logging policy, Well-designed UI **Cons:** Limited free server options, Connection stability issues, Premium features require payment, Some servers not working, Network problems reported, Speed limitations, Ads in free version, Limited server selection ### Who is this great for? Secure VPN is perfect for users who value simplicity and want straightforward VPN protection without complicated setup. The no-registration approach and one-tap connection make it accessible for VPN beginners, while app-specific routing appeals to users who need selective VPN coverage for specific applications. ### Compared to others Secure VPN's free tier offers decent functionality but with limited servers compared to [Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn) 's 10GB free allowance. Against [Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunder-vpn) , Secure VPN provides similar free access with comparable advertising levels. ### Detailed comparisons [Secure VPN vs Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/secure-vpn-vs-windscribe-vpn) • [Secure VPN vs Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/secure-vpn-vs-thunder-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and strong ratings (4.7/5 on Android with 2,410,000+ reviews), Secure VPN has established a significant user base. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Secure VPN－Safer Internet a score of 7.1/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/secure-vpn). ## [14\. VPN - Super Unlimited Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/vpn-super-unlimited-proxy) ![VPN - Super Unlimited Proxy](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-19.webp) VPN Super Unlimited Proxy promises unlimited bandwidth and has over 100 million downloads and a 4.7-star rating (2,370,000+ reviews). The app maintains good recent performance at 4.57 in the last 100 reviews, offering a free VPN with no time limits or usage caps—a compelling proposition for users seeking unrestricted access. What sets this VPN apart is its protocol flexibility. The app supports OpenVPN, IKEv2, and V2Ray, and an Auto Mode picks the fastest protocol for your network. The listing counts thousands of servers in 60+ countries, with 25+ locations on the free plan, though the free experience includes advertising. ### Key Features: - **Unlimited bandwidth** – No data caps or time restrictions - **Multiple protocols** – OpenVPN, IKEv2, and V2Ray, with an Auto Mode - **Global server network** – Thousands of servers in 60+ countries; 25+ free locations - **Wi-Fi protection** – Alerts you when you join an unsecured Wi-Fi network - **No registration** – Simple one-tap connection - **No-activity-logs policy** – Described as strict in the listing ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Truly unlimited bandwidth, Multiple protocol support, Large server network, Home screen widget, No registration required, One-tap connection, Free tier available, Protocol switching options **Cons:** Ads in free version, Connection failures reported, Some servers unreliable, Speed varies by location, Limited customer support, Premium upsells, Forced upgrades, Privacy concerns ### Who is this great for? VPN Super Unlimited Proxy is perfect for users who need unlimited data without restrictions and can tolerate advertising. The protocol flexibility appeals to technically savvy users who understand how to optimize VPN connections, while the unlimited bandwidth makes it suitable for streaming and downloading. ### Compared to others VPN Super's unlimited data beats [Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn) 's 10GB free limit, though Windscribe offers better privacy guarantees. Against [Turbo VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/turbo-vpn) , Super Unlimited provides similar unlimited access with less aggressive advertising. ### Detailed comparisons [VPN Super Unlimited Proxy vs Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/vpn-super-unlimited-proxy-vs-windscribe-vpn) • [VPN Super Unlimited Proxy vs Turbo VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/vpn-super-unlimited-proxy-vs-turbo-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and strong ratings (4.7/5 on Android with 2,370,000+ reviews), VPN Super Unlimited Proxy has built massive popularity. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave VPN - Super Unlimited Proxy a score of 7.1/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/vpn-super-unlimited-proxy). ## [15\. VPN PotatoVPN - WiFi Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/potato-vpn) ![VPN PotatoVPN - WiFi Proxy](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-20.webp) PotatoVPN promises a fast and stable VPN service and has over 10 million downloads and a 4.4-star rating (227,000+ reviews). The app provides 6 free countries (US, Canada, UK, Germany, Singapore, India) with no credit cards or registration required. Recent reviews are in line with that, at a 4.48 rating in the last 100 reviews. The app emphasizes automatic fastest server selection and live chat support—features that distinguish it from competitors. Premium servers covering additional countries promise higher quality connections, though users report billing issues and difficulty obtaining refunds that significantly impact the service's value proposition. ### Key Features: - **6 free countries** – US, Canada, UK, Germany, Singapore, India - **No registration** – Immediate use without accounts - **Automatic server selection** – Fastest server connection - **Live chat support** – Direct customer assistance - **High-level encryption** – Privacy protection - **Premium servers** – Additional countries with better quality ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Fast speeds when working, No registration required, Live chat support, 6 free countries available, Automatic server selection, Simple interface, Good for geo-blocking **Cons:** Billing issues reported, Difficult refund process, Connection drops frequently, Some servers not working, Auto-renewal problems, Speed inconsistencies, Limited free servers, Customer service issues ### Who is this great for? PotatoVPN works for users who need basic VPN access across major countries and can navigate potential billing issues. The live chat support appeals to users who value direct assistance, though the reported billing and refund difficulties are a real concern. ### Compared to others PotatoVPN's 6 free countries offer decent geographic coverage, but [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) provides unlimited data with better privacy guarantees. Against [Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunder-vpn) , Potato offers similar free access but with more reported billing problems. ### Detailed comparisons [PotatoVPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/potato-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [PotatoVPN vs Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/potato-vpn-vs-thunder-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 10 million downloads and steady ratings (4.4/5 overall, 4.48/5 in the last 100 reviews), PotatoVPN holds its level. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave VPN PotatoVPN - WiFi Proxy a score of 6.9/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/potato-vpn). ## [16\. JumpJumpVPN – Super Unlimited](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/jump-jump-vpn) ![JumpJumpVPN – Super Unlimited](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-21.webp) JumpJumpVPN promises a fast and stable VPN service and has over 100 million downloads and a 4.3-star rating (1,130,000+ reviews). The app emphasizes clean design and easy operation with one-tap connection to a global server network. Recent reviews are warmer than the lifetime average, at 4.65 in the last 100 reviews. The free tier offers unlimited bandwidth on free nodes with no data caps—a significant advantage for users seeking unrestricted access. The app's straightforward approach focuses on consistent connection quality and flexible server options, positioning itself as a reliable option for users who prioritize simplicity over advanced features. ### Key Features: - **Free unlimited bandwidth** – No data caps on free nodes - **High-speed network** – Optimized routing for fast connections - **One-tap connection** – No complicated setup required - **Global servers** – Free server network worldwide - **Reliable performance** – Promises a smooth connection at all times - **Free and paid tiers** – Subscriptions renew automatically through Google Play ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Unlimited bandwidth on free nodes, Fast connection speeds, Simple one-tap interface, Global server access, Clean design, Free trial available **Cons:** Limited free server locations, Connection quality varies, Ads in free version, Premium upsells, Auto-renewal charges, Time limits on the free tier reported, Customer support issues, Speed limitations on free tier ### Who is this great for? JumpJumpVPN is perfect for users who value unlimited bandwidth on free nodes and prefer a clean, intuitive interface. The one-tap connection appeals to VPN beginners, while the unlimited data makes it suitable for users who need consistent access without worrying about data caps. ### Compared to others JumpJumpVPN's unlimited free bandwidth matches [VPN Super Unlimited Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/vpn-super-unlimited-proxy) , though with potentially fewer server options. Against [Secure VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/secure-vpn) , JumpJump offers cleaner design but similar free-tier limitations. ### Detailed comparisons [JumpJumpVPN vs VPN Super Unlimited Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/jump-jump-vpn-vs-vpn-super-unlimited-proxy) • [JumpJumpVPN vs Secure VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/jump-jump-vpn-vs-secure-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and decent ratings (4.3/5 on Android with 1,130,000+ reviews), JumpJumpVPN offers competitive free access. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave JumpJumpVPN – Super Unlimited a score of 6.8/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/jump-jump-vpn). ## [17\. PandaVPN Pro - Fast VPN Master](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/panda-vpn) ![PandaVPN Pro - Fast VPN Master](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-22.webp) PandaVPN Pro positions itself as a fast VPN for streaming and gaming with over 10 million downloads and a 4.4-star rating (153,000+ reviews). Built on WireGuard with AES-256 encryption, it lists 6,000+ servers across 100+ countries. However, recent reviews show a concerning decline—3.46 in the last 100 reviews. The app pitches itself at streaming, social apps, calls, and gaming, with unlimited VPN data. Split tunneling lets users control which apps use the VPN connection. However, reviews describe aggressive auto-charging after the 3-day trial and difficult refunds, which undermines the service's value proposition. ### Key Features: - **WireGuard protocol** – With AES-256 encryption - **6,000+ servers** – Across 100+ countries - **Unlimited VPN data** – No bandwidth caps - **Built-in ad blocker** – Plus custom DNS and IPv6 support - **Split tunneling** – Control which apps use VPN - **No-logs policy** – Described as verified in the listing ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Fast WireGuard protocol, Extensive server network (6,000+), Unlimited VPN data, Built-in ad blocker, Split tunneling, Good speeds when working, Up to 20 devices on the yearly plan **Cons:** Aggressive auto-charging, Difficult refunds, Difficult cancellation process, Recent quality decline, Unauthorized charges reported, Connection issues, Customer service problems, Billing transparency issues ### Who is this great for? PandaVPN Pro works for gamers and streamers who want fast speeds, provided they handle billing carefully. The WireGuard protocol appeals to users who prioritize performance, though the reported billing practices and the falling recent ratings are significant concerns. ### Compared to others PandaVPN lists 6,000+ servers, close to [NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn)’s 7,000+, but its recent reviews are dominated by billing complaints, and NordVPN and [ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn) are the more established names. Against [Surfshark VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/surfshark-vpn), Panda lists more servers (6,000+ versus 4,500+) but has the worse billing reputation. ### Detailed comparisons [PandaVPN vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/panda-vpn-vs-nordvpn) • [PandaVPN vs ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/panda-vpn-vs-expressvpn) ### Rating Summary With over 10 million downloads (4.4/5 overall, but 3.46/5 in last 100 reviews), PandaVPN shows significant quality decline. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave PandaVPN Pro - Fast VPN Master a score of 6.8/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/panda-vpn). ## [18\. Speedy Quark VPN - VPN Master](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/speedy-quark-vpn) ![Speedy Quark VPN - VPN Master](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-23.webp) Speedy Quark VPN bills itself as the world's fastest and most secure free VPN with over 100 million downloads and a 4.6-star rating (398,000+ reviews). Daily free traffic and a 7-day free trial with unlimited access make it easy to try out. Recent ratings at 4.62 in the last 100 reviews show stable performance. The app provides global VPN proxy network across America, Europe, and Asia with simple tap-the-screen connection. However, reviews describe a 30-minute usage limit on the free tier, which significantly restricts practical use and pushes users toward premium subscriptions. The listing also states that the current subscription cannot be cancelled during its active period, which raises concerns about flexibility. ### Key Features: - **Daily free traffic** – Limited free usage daily - **7-day free trial** – Unlimited traffic during trial - **Global server network** – America, Europe, Asia coverage - **Fast connection** – Optimized routing speeds - **Simple interface** – One-tap connection - **Encryption** – Secure connection protection ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Fast speeds when working, 7-day free trial available, Global server network, Simple one-tap interface, Daily free traffic option, Easy server switching, Easy to try out **Cons:** 30-minute free usage limit, No cancellation during active period, Auto-renewal issues, Connection drops, Monthly plan listed at $9.99, Limited free access, Customer service problems, Speed inconsistencies ### Who is this great for? Speedy Quark VPN works for users who need occasional brief VPN sessions within the 30-minute free limit or those comfortable with the 7-day trial. The free trial appeals to users who want to try it before committing, though the no-cancellation policy during active subscriptions creates commitment concerns. ### Compared to others Speedy Quark's 30-minute free limit is more restrictive than [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) 's unlimited free tier or [Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn) 's 10GB monthly allowance. The no-cancellation policy is also stricter than most competitors. ### Detailed comparisons [Speedy Quark VPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/speedy-quark-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [Speedy Quark VPN vs Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/speedy-quark-vpn-vs-windscribe-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and good ratings (4.6/5 on Android with 398,000+ reviews), Speedy Quark VPN has built popularity despite limitations. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Speedy Quark VPN - VPN Master a score of 6.3/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/speedy-quark-vpn). ## [19\. Now VPN - Fast Secure Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/now-vpn) ![Now VPN](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-24.webp) Now VPN offers free and unlimited VPN proxy with over 50 million downloads and a 4.5-star rating (2,330,000+ reviews). The app promises a fast connection with unlimited connection time and bandwidth on the free plan. Recent reviews match the lifetime average, at 4.52 in the last 100 reviews. What distinguishes Now VPN is its simple one-tap connection with no registration required and no browsing activity logs. The app picks a server automatically or lets you choose a location yourself. However, reviews describe an aggressive advertising model—30-60 second unskippable ads for connect/disconnect actions—and forced rating prompts, which significantly impact the free user experience. ### Key Features: - **Unlimited bandwidth** – No data caps on free tier - **One-tap connection** – Simple interface - **Global servers** – Worldwide server network - **No registration** – Immediate use without accounts - **Smart server selection** – Automatic optimization - **WiFi security** – Public hotspot protection ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Fast connection speeds, Truly unlimited bandwidth, Simple one-tap interface, No registration required, Good for geo-blocked content, Global server network, Free to use, WiFi protection **Cons:** Excessive advertising (30-60 sec unskippable), Forced rating prompts, Frequent connection drops, Cannot disable push notifications, Connection quality varies, Fake review concerns ### Who is this great for? Now VPN works for users who can tolerate significant advertising for truly unlimited VPN access. The no-registration approach and unlimited bandwidth appeal to users seeking quick, unrestricted access, though the 30-60 second unskippable ads for basic actions make the experience frustrating for many. ### Compared to others Now VPN's unlimited bandwidth matches [Turbo VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/turbo-vpn) , though both share aggressive advertising models. [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) offers better ad-free experience, while [Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunder-vpn) provides similar free access with less intrusive ads. ### Detailed comparisons [Now VPN vs Turbo VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/now-vpn-vs-turbo-vpn) • [Now VPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/now-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 50 million downloads and steady ratings (4.5/5 overall, 4.52/5 in the last 100 reviews), Now VPN holds its level despite the advertising complaints. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Now VPN - Fast Secure Proxy a score of 6.3/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/now-vpn). ## [20\. VPN Proxy Master - Safer Vpn](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/vpn-proxy-master) ![VPN Proxy Master - Safer Vpn](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-25.webp) VPN Proxy Master promises super secure and free VPN with over 100 million downloads and a 4.7-star rating (1,480,000+ reviews). The app lists 6,700+ global servers with AES 128-bit encryption and support for multiple protocols (IPsec, ISSR, OpenVPN, SSR). Recent reviews match the lifetime average, at 4.70 in the last 100 reviews. The extensive server network and protocol flexibility distinguish VPN Proxy Master from competitors. Dynamic traffic routing optimizes connections under different network conditions, while support for 10+ simultaneous devices makes it versatile for households. However, the free tier's heavy advertising and connection issues push users toward premium subscriptions. ### Key Features: - **6,700+ servers** – Massive global network - **Military-grade encryption** – AES-128 security - **Multiple protocols** – IPsec, ISSR, OpenVPN, SSR - **10+ device support** – Simultaneous connections - **Dynamic traffic routing** – Optimized paths - **No logs policy** – Privacy protection ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Massive 6,700+ server network, Military-grade encryption, Multiple protocol support, 10+ device connections, One-tap connection, Dynamic routing, Free tier available, Steady recent ratings **Cons:** Heavy advertising in free version, Connection failures frequent, Speed limitations, Premium upsells aggressive, Customer support issues, Some servers unreliable, Privacy concerns, Forced upgrades ### Who is this great for? VPN Proxy Master is perfect for users who need extensive server options and multi-device support. The 6,700+ servers and 10+ simultaneous connections appeal to households or users with multiple devices, while protocol flexibility benefits technically savvy users who understand connection optimization. ### Compared to others VPN Proxy Master's 6,700+ servers come close to [NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn)'s 7,000+, though NordVPN is the more transparent service, with a no-log policy reviewed by independent auditors. Against [VPN Super Unlimited Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/vpn-super-unlimited-proxy), Proxy Master provides more servers but similar free-tier limitations. ### Detailed comparisons [VPN Proxy Master vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/vpn-proxy-master-vs-nordvpn) • [VPN Proxy Master vs VPN Super Unlimited Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/vpn-proxy-master-vs-vpn-super-unlimited-proxy) ### Rating Summary With over 100 million downloads and strong ratings (4.7/5 overall, 4.70/5 in the last 100 reviews), VPN Proxy Master holds its level. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave VPN Proxy Master - Safer Vpn a score of 5.8/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/vpn-proxy-master). ## [21\. Cool VPN Pro: Secure VPN Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/cool-vpn-pro) ![Cool VPN Pro: Secure VPN Proxy](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-26.webp) Cool VPN Pro offers free and paid VPN access with thousands of servers worldwide. With over 50 million downloads and a 4.7-star rating (868,000+ reviews), it has built a substantial user base. Recent reviews sit somewhat lower—the last 100 average 4.37 stars—though that is up from the 3.86 recorded when this comparison was first published. Cool VPN Pro provides both free and paid tiers, with the free version supported by advertising. Earlier reviews complained about connection failures; more recent ones mention the ads, slow support responses, and occasional crashes on launch instead. ### Key Features: - **Global Server Network** – Thousands of VPN servers across multiple countries - **One-Tap Connection** – Instant connection with single tap - **Automatic Connection** – Auto-connect on Wi-Fi or cellular data - **App-Specific Routing** – Choose which apps use VPN - **Free and Premium Tiers** – Basic functionality free, premium features paid - **No-Logs Policy** – Claims not to track user activity ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Large global user base, Quick connection when working, Useful for bypassing restrictions, Free tier available, Thousands of server locations **Cons:** Excessive advertisements, Close button opens web pages, No independent security audit, Slow support responses, Occasional crashes on launch ### Who is this great for? Cool VPN Pro works for users who want free, ad-supported VPN access and for those who need to get around regional restrictions. The free tier makes it accessible, though the heavy advertising may frustrate users. ### Compared to others Cool VPN Pro has a free tier, which [NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn) and [ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn) don't, but it has no independent security audit to point to. [Brave Browser VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/brave-browser-vpn) offers better transparency with integrated features. ### Detailed comparisons [Cool VPN Pro vs NordVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/cool-vpn-pro-vs-nordvpn) • [Cool VPN Pro vs ExpressVPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/cool-vpn-pro-vs-expressvpn) ### Rating Summary With over 50 million downloads (4.7/5 overall, 4.37/5 in the last 100 reviews), Cool VPN Pro has recovered from its earlier slump. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Cool VPN Pro: Secure VPN Proxy a score of 6.3/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/cool-vpn-pro). ## [22\. Turbo VPN - Secure VPN Proxy](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/turbo-vpn) ![Turbo VPN - Secure VPN Proxy](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/12/image-27.webp) Turbo VPN has become one of the most downloaded VPN apps globally with over 500 million downloads and a 4.7-star rating (10,200,000+ reviews). This massive popularity reflects its promise of free, unlimited VPN access with fast speeds—an appealing proposition for users seeking privacy without upfront costs. What sets Turbo VPN apart is its straightforward one-tap approach with unlimited bandwidth and global servers. However, the free experience comes with significant advertising—reviews describe watching 4 ads to connect and 4 more to disconnect. Recent ratings (4.63 in the last 100) sit just below the lifetime average, and excessive advertising and billing concerns remain common complaints. ### Key Features: - **One-Tap Connection** – Simple single-tap interface - **Unlimited Bandwidth** – No data caps on free tier - **Global Server Network** – Servers worldwide for geo-blocking - **Multiple Protocols** – IPsec, ISSR, SSR, and OpenVPN (UDP/TCP) - **Military-Grade Encryption** – AES 128-bit encryption - **Free and Premium** – Basic free, ad-free premium ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** Fast speeds when working, Truly unlimited bandwidth, Simple interface, Multiple protocols, Good for geo-blocked content, Global server network, Free with no time limits **Cons:** Excessive advertising (8 ads per connection cycle), Frequent connection drops, Earlier reports of malicious ads, Earlier reports of unauthorized charges, Connection quality varies, Inappropriate ads, Poor customer support ### Who is this great for? Turbo VPN works for users who can tolerate significant advertising for free unlimited VPN access. It's suitable for occasional use and accessing geo-blocked content, though the ad-heavy experience pushes most users toward premium plans or alternatives with less intrusive monetization. ### Compared to others Turbo VPN's free unlimited access appeals to budget users, but excessive advertising makes [Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn) more attractive with ad-free experience. Against [Windscribe VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn) , Turbo offers unlimited data but with more aggressive advertising. ### Detailed comparisons [Turbo VPN vs Proton VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/turbo-vpn-vs-proton-vpn) • [Turbo VPN vs Thunder VPN](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/turbo-vpn-vs-thunder-vpn) ### Rating Summary With over 500 million downloads and strong ratings (4.7/5 on Android with 10,200,000+ reviews), Turbo VPN remains popular despite advertising concerns. [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com) gave Turbo VPN - Secure VPN Proxy a score of 5.7/10. Check out the [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/turbo-vpn). ## Final Thoughts Looking at all 22 VPN apps side by side, each has carved out its own niche in the market.  [**PureVPN**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/pure-vpn)  stands out for its long-term pricing, with 82–85% discounts on feature-rich two-year plans. For privacy-first users,  [**Proton VPN**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/proton-vpn)  still leads with Swiss-based protection and unlimited free bandwidth, while  [**NordVPN**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/nordvpn)  and  [**ExpressVPN**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/expressvpn)  remain well-known premium choices with extensive global coverage. For specific use cases:  [**OpenVPN Connect**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/openvpn-connect)  is perfect for enterprise users who need open-source transparency,  [**Surfshark VPN**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/surfshark-vpn)  excels with unlimited device connections, and  [**Windscribe VPN**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/windscribe-vpn)  offers court-proven privacy with a generous 10GB free tier.  [**Thunder VPN**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thunder-vpn)  stands out for simple free access with minimal ads, while  [**Brave Browser VPN**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/brave-browser-vpn)  provides integrated privacy tools. The key is finding what fits your specific needs. If you want a full-featured VPN at a low long-term price, PureVPN’s two-year discounts are the ones to look at. For privacy-conscious users, Proton VPN and Windscribe VPN offer excellent free tiers with genuine privacy protection. For premium features, NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark provide comprehensive solutions. For basic free access, Thunder VPN delivers simplicity with minimal advertising. Start with free versions, try them on your own network, and only upgrade when you hit the limits. With so many options available—from completely free privacy-focused services to premium feature-rich experiences—there's no need to settle for a VPN that doesn't work for you. > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) --- # 10 Best Adobe PDF Alternatives > Looking for a lightweight Adobe PDF alternative? Compare the best tools for reading, annotating, editing, and summarizing PDF files in your browser. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-12-01 - Updated: 2026-10-05 - Reading time: 11 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-adobe-pdf-alternatives/ --- Adobe Acrobat Pro is still popular, but many people now look for an Adobe PDF alternative because the app feels heavy, costs more than they need, and often includes features they never use. Most users just want something light, quick, and easy for reading or managing PDF files. This list covers simple viewers, PDF editing tools, annotators, cloud options, and newer AI-based readers. Many people also prefer browser tools instead of downloading full desktop apps. That is why tools like Web Highlights are becoming common for handling PDFs, taking notes, creating tags, and getting quick AI summaries without installing anything. For reading and annotating, a browser-based tool is now a real PDF alternative to desktop software, because your highlights can be saved into the PDF file itself as standard annotations. ## **What Makes a Good Adobe PDF Alternative?** A good Adobe PDF alternative should feel light, open fast, and work across different devices without needing a large install. Many users prefer tools that handle PDF files, offer simple PDF editing, support [AI summaries](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/ai-summary) , and keep documents safe. Options like Web Highlights also help when you want browser-based reading and quick notes. **Key factors to look for:** - Lightweight and not as heavy as Adobe Acrobat - Affordable plans - Browser-based or multi-platform access - Annotation and basic editing - AI reading or summarizing tools - Collaboration or cloud sync - Secure file handling for PDF documents ## **The Best Adobe PDF Alternatives** ### **1\. Web Highlights (Works in Browser + Extension)** ![Web Highlights website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-e2454014-e1a8-4e45-b3da-d1a904170bdd.webp) [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a lightweight and straightforward Adobe PDF alternative for anyone who mainly needs reading, highlighting, annotating, organizing, and getting AI summaries of PDF files without downloading large Adobe software. It works inside the browser, [supports PDF documents](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) , and also covers web pages, YouTube transcripts, and long articles. It fits well for users who want clean reading, quick notes, and easy exports across devices. Leaving Acrobat also no longer means losing your annotations — or the people who still use Acrobat. Web Highlights can  [download any PDF with your highlights embedded](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/download-print-pdf-with-highlights)   the way Acrobat itself would write them: as standard PDF annotations, each highlight in its own color, each note turned into a comment. Acrobat, macOS Preview, Edge — they all open the file fully editable, text and all. It works the other way, too:  [highlights made in Acrobat import back](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/import-pdf-annotations)   with one click — nothing gets lost, not even the notes. You keep full round-trip exchange of annotated PDFs with Acrobat users. #### **Key features of Web Highlights** - [Highlight and annotate PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/annotate-a-pdf-in-chrome/) , articles, and websites - Works with local PDFs and uploaded files - [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/tools/open-website-in-reader-mode) for a clean layout - Add tags and notes - [Save bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/) and search through keywords - AI summaries for PDFs and pages - “Add Content” lets you save URLs, text, and PDFs - Works on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge - Cross-device sync for your entire library (paid plans, free 7-day trial) - Copy as Markdown (every plan), export to [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , Capacities, or an HTML or PDF file (Ultimate or the free trial) - YouTube transcript highlighting + AI video summaries #### **Pros of Web Highlights** - Easy-to-use compared to Adobe Acrobat - No large install or heavy app size - Great tagging and library experience - Multiple highlight colors - Offline access for many features - Strong for image-heavy documents and long reading sessions - Clean user experience - One-click export to Notion and Capacities (unlimited on Ultimate), plus Markdown copy for Obsidian and other apps **Ideal for:**  Students, researchers, writers, and anyone who prefers browser tools or extensions with a broader feature set over Adobe Acrobat Pro. #### **Pricing of Web Highlights** Web Highlights is mostly free to use with three simple, affordable plans: - **Basic**  – Free - **Premium**  – Paid monthly, yearly, or lifetime - **Ultimate**  – Paid monthly, yearly, or lifetime Current prices are on the [pricing page](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . ### **2\. Foxit PDF Editor** ![Foxit PDF Editor's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-d628f9e0-a098-4867-90d2-560c6a7aae69.webp) Foxit PDF Editor is a strong Adobe PDF alternative for users who need full‐fledged editing, conversion, signing, and security across PDF files and workflows. It supports Windows, macOS, and web versions, giving both desktop and cloud-native solutions. #### **Key features of Foxit PDF Editor** - Edit text, images, and layout within PDF documents, with paragraph-level controls.  - Convert to/from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other formats - Advanced OCR technology  - Interactive form creation, digital signatures, and cloud integrations  - Collaboration features #### **Pros of Foxit PDF Editor** - Faster performance and lighter load compared with some full suites - Broad platform support and cloud-friendly usage - Works across desktop and mobile app setups **Ideal for:** Users who need editing, forms, and OCR but don’t want Adobe software. #### **Pricing of Foxit PDF Editor** Foxit sells annual subscriptions and a one-time perpetual license; current prices are on Foxit’s website, and larger teams can contact sales. ### **3\. Nitro PDF** ![Nitro PDF's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-88680135-cc2a-4cab-b65d-04772480d5a6.webp) Nitro PDF is another well-known Adobe PDF alternative for users who want strong PDF editing tools without the heavier feel of Adobe Acrobat. It works well for teams needing document management, PDF conversion, sharing, and signing. Nitro also integrates with Microsoft Word and other Microsoft 365 apps for everyday office work. #### **Key features of Nitro PDF** - Full PDF editing (text, images, layout) - PDF conversion to Word, Excel, PowerPoint - eSign tools + Digital signatures - Cloud-native solution with storage options - Highlight and take notes #### **Pros of Nitro PDF** - Cleaner interface than Adobe Acrobat Pro - Good for companies needing organized document workflows - Helpful for image-heavy documents and bulk tasks - Works on Windows and macOS - Reliable editing and signature handling **Ideal for:** Teams that need regular editing and signing without using Adobe software. #### **Pricing of Nitro PDF** Nitro PDF offers the following pricing plans: - **Nitro PDF Standard:** $15 per user/month, billed annually - **Nitro PDF Classic:** $270 one-time for a three-year license (Windows only) - **Nitro PDF Plus:** Contact sales ### **4\. PDFsimpli** ![PDFsimpli's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-18bff653-d53c-487a-877c-84adc7e517a6.webp) PDFsimpli is a simple browser-based Adobe PDF alternative for quick edits, annotations, and filling interactive forms. It’s useful when you want to avoid big apps like Adobe Acrobat or PDF Architect. PDFsimpli works well with standard PDF files, supports basic layout tweaks, and helps with simple daily edits. #### **Key features of PDFsimpli** - Edit text, links, and layout in PDF documents - Add notes, comments, and highlights - Form filling and form creation - Works fully online without installs - Supports scanned documents and basic OCR #### **Pros of PDFsimpli** - Works inside the browser - Simple interface for beginners - Handles most everyday PDF solution tasks **Ideal for:** Users who need quick edits, forms, and annotations without downloading software. #### **Pricing of PDFsimpli** PDFsimpli is mostly free to use with subscription-based pricing models. ### **5\. Smallpdf** ![SmallPDF's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-e0ecb021-4cc5-4104-8e21-b0cf244a499d.webp) Smallpdf is a popular online Adobe PDF alternative for quick tasks such as compression, merging, conversion, and light PDF editing. It works fully in the browser, making it a good fit for users who don’t want Adobe Acrobat or other heavy desktop tools. It supports PDF files, scanned documents, and basic security settings. #### **Key features of Smallpdf** - Convert PDFs to Word, Excel, PowerPoint - Compress and reduce file size - Merge, split, rotate, and organize PDF documents - eSign and Digital signatures - OCR tools for scanned pages - Works on web, mobile app, and desktop - Integrates with Google Workspace #### **Pros of Smallpdf** - Fast and simple interface - Good for small, quick document fixes - Useful for students and office users - Helps with everyday PDF management - Works across devices **Ideal for:** Users who want quick browser tools without installing Adobe software. #### **Pricing of Smallpdf** SmallPDF has the following pricing plans: - **Pro:** paid monthly or yearly (free plan with daily limits) - **Pro for Teams:** per-seat pricing for 2+ people - **Business:** Custom ### **6\. iLovePDF** ![iLovePDF's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-9d567c82-5734-4a56-8aea-711336fec4a1.webp) iLovePDF is another browser-based Adobe PDF alternative known for its wide set of PDF editing tools. It handles everything from PDF conversion to repair, watermarking, merging, and OCR. It works well with large PDF files, scanned documents, and image-heavy documents, making it a flexible pick for simple office tasks. #### **Key features of iLovePDF** - Convert PDFs to Word, JPG, Excel, and other file format types - Merge, split, and organize pages - Add page numbers, watermarks, or signatures - Mobile app and web version - Cloud management with Google Drive and Dropbox #### **Pros of iLovePDF** - Wide range of tools for everyday fixes - Easy web interface - Helpful when dealing with quick document edits - Works with many formats, including SVG format and images **Ideal for:** Users who want fast conversion and editing without Adobe Acrobat Pro. #### **Pricing of iLovePDF** iLovePDF has the following plans: - **Basic:** Free - **Premium:** €9/mo or €60/year - **Business:** Contact sales ### **7\. PDF-XChange Editor** ![PDF-XChange Editor](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-e4258ba2-c88f-4280-9ddf-049ec24aeb9a.webp) PDF-XChange Editor is a detailed Adobe PDF alternative known for fast performance and strong PDF editing tools. It works well with technical files, PDF documents, and scanned documents that need accurate text recognition. The editor includes annotation tools and layout controls, making it useful for users who don’t want the heavier Adobe Acrobat Pro setup. #### **Key features of PDF-XChange Editor** - PDF editing with text, images, and annotations - Support for many file format types, including SVG format - Fillable and interactive forms - Digital signatures, protection tools, and redaction - Tools for image-heavy documents and technical markups - Works on Windows with an optional portable build - Strong document management and versioning controls #### **Pros of PDF-XChange Editor** - Faster and lighter than Adobe Acrobat and other Adobe software - Good accuracy for OCR and scanned documents - Helpful for engineering, academic, and technical document workflows - Feature-rich free version **Ideal for:** Students or teachers needing advanced editing and OCR without Adobe software. #### **Pricing of PDF-XChange Editor** PDF-XChange Editor offers license-based pricing plans. ### **8\. Kami**  ![Kami's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-84a1eb77-1191-405c-9365-ed184f5c8e41.webp) Kami is a classroom-focused Adobe PDF alternative built for teachers and students who need shared annotations, comments, and PDF documents for lessons. It works fully online and syncs with Google Workspace, making it common in schools using Chromebooks. Kami supports interactive forms, drawing tools, video comments, and real-time collaboration for assignments. #### **Key features of Kami** - Shared annotations for students and teachers - Highlighting, drawing, text boxes, and shapes - Voice notes and video instructions - Works with Google Classroom and Microsoft 365 - Browser-based editing with autosave #### **Pros of Kami** - Made for students and teachers - Works well on Chromebooks - Good collaboration features - Helpful for group assignments and marking **Ideal for:** Schools or teachers needing shared PDF markup without Adobe Acrobat or Creative Cloud. #### **Pricing of Kami** - **Basic Plan:** Free - **Teacher Plan:** $149/year - **School or District Plan:** Custom ### **9\. Xodo** ![Xodo's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-f89d1af3-51be-4a01-a76d-c7273caa9821.webp) Xodo is a clean and reliable Adobe PDF alternative for users who want fast annotation on web, desktop, or mobile. It handles PDF files, supports shared reviews, and works well for everyday tasks like highlighting, filling forms, and organizing PDF documents. Xodo is often preferred by people who switch between devices. #### **Key features of Xodo** - Annotate, highlight, and comment on PDFs - Sync with Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive - Form filling + Digital signatures - Merge, organize, and rotate pages - Works on web, Windows, Android, and iOS - Supports image-heavy documents #### **Pros of Xodo** - Easy cross-device use - Strong mobile app - User-friendly interface - Reliable for basic PDF management **Ideal for:** Users who want a multi-platform annotation tool without Adobe Acrobat. #### **Pricing of Xodo** Xodo’s basic features are free to use, with paid plans starting at $7.99/mo (Xodo Web, billed annually).  ### **10\. Sejda** ![Sejda's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/11/data-src-image-47633264-236d-4c34-a670-078ea51463b4.webp) Sejda is a browser-based and desktop Adobe PDF alternative designed for quick tasks like splitting, merging, compressing, and light PDF editing. It’s useful when you need short sessions without installing heavy Adobe software. Sejda also supports PDF conversion, OCR, and basic layout changes for everyday office use. #### **Key features of Sejda** - Annotate text and images in PDF documents - Add bookmarks or compress PDFs - Convert PDFs to Word or JPG - Web version with daily task limits - Desktop app for offline access - Works with many file format types #### **Pros of Sejda** - Simple, lightweight interface - Works fully online - Useful for image-heavy documents - Helpful when handling small document workflows **Ideal for:** Users who want fast browser-based edits without Adobe Acrobat Pro. #### **Pricing of Sejda** Here are the pricing plans of Sejda: - **Web Week Pass:** $5 for 7 days - **Web Monthly:** $7.50/mo  - **Desktop+Web Annual:** $63/year Discounts offered for teams and high-volume usage. ## **Who Should Switch From Adobe PDF?** People switch from Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Pro when they don’t need a heavy editor and want something simpler and easier to use. A good Adobe PDF alternative usually opens faster, works better with everyday PDF documents, and doesn’t require Creative Cloud. Here is who benefits most: - **Students** Need quick annotation, highlights, and summary tools for PDF files, scanned documents, and lecture notes. Browser tools like Web Highlights help with reading, tags, and exports. - **Researchers** Want organized document management, clean markup, and AI summaries without large Adobe software. Good for handling image-heavy documents and source material. - **Knowledge workers** Prefer lightweight PDF editing tools, faster loading, and simple document workflows for reports, forms, and feedback. - **Users who want cloud-based reading or annotation** Need tools that work across devices with sync, instead of relying on Adobe Acrobat Pro installs. - **Users needing AI summaries** Want fast explanations of long PDF documents using tools like Web Highlights, which support automatic summaries. - **People who don’t need a full editing suite** Only require highlights, forms, notes, or simple edits, not everything inside Adobe software or PDF Architect. ## **How Web Highlights Works as an Adobe Alternative** Web Highlights is a lightweight Adobe PDF alternative for people who mainly read, highlight, and organize PDF files instead of doing heavy PDF editing. You can open PDFs in the browser, highlight, add notes, and sort everything with tags inside your library. AI summaries help when you need quick explanations of long PDF documents. Reader Mode gives a clean view of your PDF, and you can copy as Markdown on every plan, export to Notion, or save an HTML or PDF file with Ultimate or the free trial. Your library syncs across devices, and many online tools, like the PDF reader and AI summary tools, work without an account. The shortest version of the pitch: you don’t have to install anything to try it. Drop a file into the  [free online PDF highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/free-online-pdf-highlighter)  and you can read it, highlight it, and download or print it with your highlights still in it — no extension, no account. The file sits there for an hour with a countdown running; sign up before it runs out and the PDF plus every highlight moves into your library, otherwise it’s deleted. If you do keep going, PDFs on your own computer don’t have to stay there. You can  [upload a file of up to 30 MB](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/upload-pdf)  and it becomes a normal bookmark in your library — same highlights, same notes, same tags and collections as anything you saved from the web. That is the part Acrobat solves with a folder on your hard drive and a sync client. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. What is the best free alternative to Adobe PDF?** If you want a free Adobe PDF alternative for reading and simple annotation, Web Highlights is one of the easiest options because it works in the browser and supports PDFs, highlights, tags, and AI summaries without requiring Adobe Acrobat or a heavy install. ### **2\. Can I annotate PDFs without Adobe Acrobat?** Yes, you can [annotate PDF files using browser tools like Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs) , Xodo, or PDFescape. Web Highlights lets you highlight text, add notes, and organize everything with tags, making it useful when you don’t want Adobe software or Creative Cloud. ### **3\. What is the best browser-based PDF tool?** Web Highlights is one of the best browser-based tools because it handles PDF documents, websites, and YouTube transcripts in one place. It supports highlights, Reader Mode, tagging, AI summaries, and exports, which makes it more flexible than many traditional PDF editing tools. ### **4\. Can I summarize PDFs with AI?** Yes. [Web Highlights offers AI summaries](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/ai-summary) for PDF files, scanned documents (after text is recognized), and online articles. It’s helpful when you want a quick overview without reading the full document, especially for students and researchers. ### **5\. Is Web Highlights free?** Web Highlights has a free version that supports highlighting, note-taking, tagging, and reading PDF documents. Paid plans add cloud sync across devices, and Ultimate lifts the daily export and AI limits. No account is needed for many of the online tools. ### **6\. Do Adobe alternatives support cloud storage?** Yes. Tools like Foxit, Xodo, Smallpdf, and iLovePDF work with cloud storage such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. Web Highlights syncs your library across devices and integrates with Notion, Markdown, and other document management workflows. ### **7\. Which Adobe alternative is best for students?** Students prefer Web Highlights because it is light, works in the browser, supports tags, exports, and PDF management, and includes AI summaries. It also handles lecture notes, articles, and scanned documents once they have a text layer (OCR), without needing Adobe Acrobat Pro. ### **8\. Can I annotate a PDF without installing anything?** Yes. The [online PDF highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/tools/pdf-highlighter) runs in your browser: drag a PDF in, highlight it, and download or print the file with the highlights embedded as real PDF annotations. There’s no extension to install and no sign-up. Your file is kept for one hour — a banner counts it down — and creating an account before then moves the PDF and its highlights into your library. Scanned PDFs are the exception: without a text layer there is nothing to select, so those need OCR first. For getting more out of the highlighting itself, see  [5 tips for efficient PDF highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/5-helpful-tips-for-efficient-pdf-web-highlighting/) , or compare  [the 10 best PDF Chrome extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-pdf-chrome-extensions/)  side by side — Acrobat’s own extension is scored there too. ## **Key Takeaways** There are many lighter and faster options if you don’t want to use Adobe Acrobat for everyday PDF files. Tools like Web Highlights make reading, annotating, and summarizing simple without installing anything. If you want an easy way to handle PDF documents, [try Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and see how it fits your workflow. --- # 10 Best Free AI YouTube Summary Chrome Extensions to Learn Smarter > Compare 10 free tools to summarize YouTube videos fast. Pick the best YouTube AI summary Chrome extension for notes, exports, and studying. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-11-07 - Updated: 2026-10-05 - Reading time: 16 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-youtube-ai-summary-chrome-extension/ --- Drowning in hour-long tutorials when you only need five minutes of answers? You’re not alone, YouTube has the lessons, but time is the tax. People now use YouTube for learning every day: lecture recordings, coding walkthroughs, exam prep, conference talks, design critiques, and product demos. Students, researchers, and professionals treat channels like a living library of video content. That is why AI summary tools are everywhere. These AI-powered Chrome extensions read video transcripts, surface key ideas, and show a clean TL;DR right on the video page, so your learning process is faster and less confusing. This guide compares the 10 best YouTube AI summary Chrome extensions that balance accuracy, speed, and exports for YouTube videos. One thing up front: I built Web Highlights, so it’s on this list. You’ll see how it stands out because it’s simple, private, and works without sign-ups, and I’ve been honest about what the other nine tools do better. ## **What Is an AI YouTube Summary Chrome Extension?** An AI YouTube summary Chrome extension is a browser plugin that reads video transcripts from YouTube videos and generates an AI Summary of key points using artificial intelligence (e.g., ChatGPT AI or Google Gemini). You install it from the browser store, open a video, and review the summary in an embedded window on the video page. **Common uses:** Students condense lecture video content for faster revision. Professionals scan tutorials to speed up the learning process and content analysis. Researchers extract ideas for a knowledge base without manual replication. YouTube enthusiasts and digital marketers use these AI summary tools to spot key topics before they commit to a full watch. Many AI-powered Chrome extensions also let you highlight web content, add sticky notes, and export to other platforms or productivity apps. **Quick Steps: How it works?** Install the Google Chrome extension, open a video, and press “Summary.” Some tools accept web links or a summarization prompt. A few require an API Key; others work without Install and Sign Up. Good ones support language, exports, and timestamp notes right from the Chrome toolbar in a PC-based browser extension. ## **List of 10 Best Free AI YouTube Summary Chrome Extensions (2026)**

Tool

Free Plan

Video Transcripts Access

AI Summary Accuracy

Exports

Ideal For (no ✓/✗)

Web Highlights

✅

✅

✅

✅

Learners & researchers needing summaries, highlights, notes, transcriptions, and exports

Eightify AI

✅

✅

✅

✅

Students who want a quick TL;DR on the video page

Glarity AI

✅

❌

✅

❌

Minimal interface fans; quick transcript + TL;DR with API Key options

YouTubeDigest AI

✅

✅

✅

✅

Professionals who need PDF/TXT/DOCX exports and shareable links

Scripsy

✅

✅

✅

❌

Fast transcript + short summary in one Chrome extension

ScreenApp (Summarize Videos)

✅

✅

✅

❌

Mixed sources (YouTube + uploads) for quick content analysis

Glasp (YT Summary)

✅

✅

✅

✅

On-page transcript + tunable summaries; model flexibility

Noiz

✅

✅

❌

❌

Quick TL;DR with timestamps and a transcript toggle

NoteGPT

✅

✅

✅

✅

Long videos and study outputs (mind maps, slides, podcast)

Merlin (YT Summary)

✅

❌

✅

❌

Casual summaries inside a generalist assistant panel

## **1\. Web Highlights** **Best For** [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is best for anyone who wants to summarize YouTube videos, articles, or PDFs in one place with no extra tabs or sign-ups. It works as a [Google Chrome extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and a web app, so you can use it as a PC-based browser extension or in your browser without installing anything. ### **Features of Web Highlights** - [YouTube AI summary generator](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-ai-summary)   - YouTube reader with an easy-to-read transcript right away - [Highlight YouTube video transcripts](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-youtube-video) with [different colors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlight-the-web-with-the-colors-of-your-beloved-stabilo-highlighters/) , add your own notes, and create tags - Adjust the text size, background color, and width of the transcript window - Works in multiple languages and generates a transcript text based on those - Transcript syncs with video playback - Highlight and [annotate](https://web-highlights.com/blog/annotate-a-pdf-in-chrome/) any web page or [PDF](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) inside the browser - Add notes and tags to organize content - Works with local PDF files after a one-time setup - Save articles in clean [reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) for distraction-free reading - Set email reminders and [bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-organize-bookmarks-in-chrome/) to revisit saved highlights - Share a page and its highlights through a public link, and [export Chrome bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-bookmarks-and-import-to-web-highlights/) - Export highlights to  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  or Capacities (one export a day on the free plan, unlimited on Ultimate), and copy as Markdown for  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) - Supports offline access and cross-device sync - Import [Kindle highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) and convert them into study flashcards - Shareable links for collaboration ### **Web Highlights Top 3 Features for YouTube Summarization** #### **1\. Instant YouTube AI Summary (Free)** ![instant-youtube-ai-summary](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image6.webp) Open a YouTube video or paste its link to get an AI summary of the key points from the transcript. It sits in an embedded window so you can scan before you watch the YouTube video fully. The free plan includes one AI summary a day; Ultimate lifts that limit. #### **2\. YouTube Transcript Reader with Highlights & Notes** ![youtube-transcript-reader-with-highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image11.webp) Web Highlights allows you to pen the full transcript, select lines, and add sticky notes with timestamp notes. This reduces manual replication when moving study points into your knowledge base. #### **3\. Reader Mode + Exports for Study Packs** ![reader-mode-exports-for-study-packs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image4-1.webp) Web Highlights lets you copy key highlights or summaries as Markdown or HTML on every plan, export them as a PDF or HTML file on Ultimate, or send them directly to Notion or Capacities (one export a day free, unlimited on Ultimate). You can also copy as Markdown and paste into Obsidian to keep your learning process tidy. Researchers and digital marketers can run quick content analyses and maintain a clear trail of sources. ### **Pros of Web Highlights for AI YouTube Summarization** - Web-based tool, so no installation is required to read the transcript - Free transcript and AI summary - Transcripts in many languages; AI summaries can be written in English, German, Spanish, French, or Japanese - Privacy-focused, as the AI processing happens on your device - Easy-to-use YouTube transcript generator - Great for visual learners - Great for organizing research with tags and bookmarks - Excellent free version with unlimited offline highlights and bookmarks - Offline access to multiple features - Cross-device sync (paid plans, with a 7-day free trial) ### **Cons of Web Highlights** - The AI summaries run on your own device, so they need Chrome or Edge with on-device AI — they don’t work on ChromeOS, Android, or iOS. ### **Pricing of Web Highlights** Web Highlights is mostly free to use with three simple, affordable plans: - **Basic** – Free - **Premium** – $6.49/month, $56.99/year, $159.99/lifetime (US prices) - **Ultimate** – $7.49/month, $59.99/year, $174.99/lifetime (US prices) ### **Final Verdict** Web Highlights is the easiest way to turn long YouTube videos into quick summaries and keep them organized. You get instant summaries with clean annotations on transcripts, Reader Mode for articles, and exports in a simple interface. The built-in snooze reminder emails help you come back to saved pages and highlights, so nothing gets lost. Try it now: ## **2\. Eightify AI** ![eightify-ai-website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image5.webp) **Best For** Learners who want a quick AI Summary of YouTube videos directly on the video page, with one-click use from the Chrome toolbar. It is a Google Chrome extension (also on iOS/Android) that generates concise takeaways from video transcripts using ChatGPT AI and Claude.   ### **Features of Eightify AI** - One-click summaries on YouTube - Works on long videos - Share or export results - Multiplatform access across Chrome, iOS, and Android - YouTube transcript generator utility on its site ### **Eightify Top 3 Features for YouTube Summarization** #### **1\. One-Click TL;DR on YouTube** Hit “Summarize” and get a structured overview with key ideas and timestamp notes in Eightify, without any tab switching or summarization prompts needed in most cases. #### **2\. Long-Video Support** If you study deep-dive lectures or conference talks, Eightify’s support for videos up to 12 hours helps you scan material fast from the Chrome Extension sidebar. #### **3\. Shareable Summaries** Send a link or export highlights so teammates can review the summary without watching the whole video, handy for a team knowledge base. ### **Pros of Eightify AI** - Simple Chrome extension flow - Uses well-known LLMs (Claude + ChatGPT AI) - Mobile apps for learning on the go ### **Cons of Eightify AI** - The free plan is limited by the number of summaries and video length - Exports are basic; formats aren’t clearly listed on the store page ### **Pricing of Eightify AI** Free tier with a few short summaries; paid plans available — see their site for current pricing. ### **Final Verdict** Eightify is a fast way to preview long YouTube videos from your Chrome toolbar and decide what is worth a full watch. If you need deeper annotation, exports, and cross-format study packs, use it alongside Web Highlights to build notes and send results to your knowledge base. ## **3\. Glarity AI** ![glarity-ai-website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image9.webp) **Best For** Viewers who want a quick TL;DR on the video page with a minimal UI. Glarity adds a button on YouTube and opens an embedded window from the Chrome toolbar to summarize video transcripts using ChatGPT AI, Google Gemini, or Claude. ### **Features of Glarity AI** - Summarize YouTube videos directly on the video page with timestamped highlights - Multi-model support - Webpage and PDF reader - Translate pages and generate or translate subtitles - Cross-browser support - Free and ad-free ### **Glarity Top 3 Features for YouTube Summarization** **1\. Instant TL;DR** Use Glarity to see concise points in an embedded window next to the player so you can review the summary before you commit to a complete watch. #### **2\. Translate While You Summarize** Summarize non-English videos and translate results into your preferred language. This helps students and researchers fold global video content into a single knowledge base. #### **3\. Bring Your Own Model/API Key** Glarity allows you to use OpenAI, Claude, or Gemini via your API Key for predictable behavior and costs. Handy if your team standardizes on a specific provider. ### **Pros of Glarity AI** - Minimal interface; quick to use from the Chrome Extension button - Works across browsers ### **Cons of Glarity AI** - Exports are basic; no native Markdown/Notion export (copy/paste required) - Quality depends on transcript availability; long niche videos may need follow-up ### **Pricing of Glarity AI** Free to use. ### **Final Verdict** Glarity is a clean YouTube video summarizer AI for fast reads on the video page. If you also want annotations, exports, and an AI knowledge manager, send key points into Web Highlights for Markdown/Notion and organized study packs.  ## **4\. YouTubeDigest AI** ![youtubedigest-website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image2.webp) **Best For** Learners who want flexible output formats and easy exports. YouTubeDigest lets you pick summary style (article, bullets, layered bullets with chapters, TL;DR) and export to PDF, DOCX, or text from a PC-based browser extension. ### **Features of YouTubeDigest AI** - Multiple summary formats - Save summaries as PDF, DOCX, or TXT; share a link with teammates - Summarize in one language and translate to another for global YouTube enthusiasts - Chrome + Firefox extension  ### **YouTubeDigest Top 3 Features for YouTube Summarization** #### **1\. Format Control (Article, Bullets, TL;DR)** YouTubeDigest AI lets you pick the structure that fits your learning process: a single paragraph for a skim, or layered bullets with a chapter. #### **2\. One-Click Exports**  Move summaries into reports or a knowledge base without retyping. This reduces manual replication across [productivity apps](https://web-highlights.com/blog/maximizing-productivity-tools-web-highlights/) . #### **3\. Shareable Links for Team Review** Send a URL so others can scan the highlights before watching the YouTube Video. Helpful for study groups and Digital Marketers planning clips. ### **Pros of YouTubeDigest AI** - Strong export options (PDF/DOCX/TXT) and shareable links - Flexible AI summary tools with multiple output styles - Works in the YouTube embedded window ### **Cons of YouTubeDigest AI** - Limited features compared to other tools - No built-in annotation ### **Pricing of YouTubeDigest AI** Free to install; it runs on your own ChatGPT account, so you need one to use it. ### **Final Verdict** YouTubeDigest is handy when you need customizable formats and direct file exports (PDF/DOCX/TXT) from the Google Chrome extension. It is a good pick for students and teams who want quick TL; DRs, chaptered bullets, and shareable links without extra tools. ## **5\. Scripsy**  ![scripsy-website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image8.webp) **Best For** Students or researchers who want instant transcripts plus a short AI Summary in one Chrome extension. This YouTube AI summary Chrome extension is good for pulling video transcripts with time codes and scanning key ideas on the video page.   ### **Features of Scripsy** - Get full text with time stamps and a concise summary for YouTube videos - One-click use on desktop - Uses ChatGPT AI for summarization (site and listings note OpenAI usage) - Shareable results and summaries - Transcripts and summaries in multiple languages ### **Scripsy Top 3 Features for YouTube Summarization** #### **1\. Time-coded Transcripts** Use Scripsy for line-by-line text with timestamps, timestamp notes, and rewatching exact parts, making your learning process simpler. #### **2\. ChatGPT-Powered Summaries** Generate a short recap from the transcript so you can review the Summary first and decide whether to watch the YouTube Video fully. #### **3\. Quick Start on Chrome** Install Scripsy’s Google Chrome extension and trigger from the Chrome toolbar; no complex setup or summarization prompt is needed.   ### **Pros of Scripsy** - Transcript + summary in one place (less manual replication) - Clear time codes for jumping around long lectures ### **Cons of Scripsy** - Feature set focuses on YouTube; exports are limited - Quality relies on transcript availability ### **Pricing of Scripsy** Free extension listing available. ### **Final Verdict** If you want fast transcripts and a basic AI Summary inside a single browser plugin, Scripsy is a simple pick. It is practical for study sessions that require time-coded quotes and quick takeaways. ## **6\. ScreenApp**  ![screenapp-website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image12.webp) **Best For** Students and professionals who want quick key points from long videos, with extra tools for transcription and content analysis across platforms. It works from a PC-based browser extension and the web app. ### **Features of ScreenApp** - Summarize YouTube and more - Summarize from a URL or an uploaded file - Create searchable text notes and summaries - Broad platform support and high accuracy for text summaries - Video analysis and subtitle creator ### **ScreenApp Top 3 Features for YouTube Summarization** #### **1\. Quick TL;DR for Long Videos** ScreenApp turns hour-long talks into short notes so you can review the summary and decide which ones deserve a complete watch. #### **2\. Flexible Inputs (URL or Upload)** Paste web links or upload recordings; handy for classes, meetings, and conference replays in one place. #### **3\. Video Transcript + Notes** Produce text you can skim and search, useful for building a light knowledge base without switching productivity apps. ScreenApp also allows you to add notes and other annotations. ### **Pros of ScreenApp** - Works with YouTube and other sources, not just the video page - Web and extension options fit different workflows - Easy to use ### **Cons of ScreenApp** - Export specifics (Markdown/Notion) aren’t clearly outlined ### **Pricing of ScreenApp** Free tools and an extension listing exist. ### **Final Verdict** ScreenApp is a reliable option if you want YouTube summaries and the flexibility to process other videos and recordings. It’s useful for study recaps and quick meeting notes in one hub and is also simple to use. ## **7\. Glasp**  ![glasp-website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image1.webp) **Best For** Viewers who want a minimal AI Summary on the video page with model choice. Glasp pins a box on YouTube, pulls video transcripts, and allows you to run summaries using ChatGPT AI, Claude, Mistral, or Gemini.   ### **Features of Glasp** - On-page summaries, quick transcript access - Adjust summary length, number of points, and optionally include timestamps - Connect your preferred provider for control over behavior and costs - Web and PDF highlighter - Audio transcriber and highlights ### **Glasp Top 3 Features for YouTube Summarization** #### **1\. Transcript + TL;DR in a Click** Open a transcript and summary in an embedded window so you can review the summary before committing to a full watch. #### **2\. Web & PDF Highlighter** Glasp lets you highlight websites and PDFs in your browser with color-coded notes you can later search, tag, and share. It works on Chrome, Safari, Edge, Opera, and Brave. #### **3\. Audio Transcriber & Highlights**  Drop in audio files (mp3, m4a, wav, webm, etc.) up to 300 MB or 2 hours to get an instant transcript. From there, Glasp can auto-summarize and let you highlight key lines, then copy or download the text and .srt files. ### **Pros of Glasp** - Minimal UI; fast to use  - Custom length and timestamps  - Model flexibility (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral) ### **Cons of Glasp** - Requires ChatGPT/LLM login for some flows - Quality depends on transcript availability on the video page ### **Pricing of Glasp** Glasp offers a free plan plus paid plans (Pro and Unlimited) — see their site for current pricing. ### **Final Verdict** Glasp is another YouTube video summarizer AI with adjustable outputs and model choice. It’s good for quick checks, multilingual study, and lightweight transcript skims without heavy setup. Glasp also offers tools for web and PDF annotation and highlights.  ## **8\. Noiz**  ![noiz-website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image3.webp) **Best For** Learners who want a fast AI Summary with timestamps right on the video page. Noiz plugs into YouTube, reads video transcripts, and shows key ideas in an embedded window you open from the Chrome toolbar. ### **Features of Noiz** - On-page summaries with timestamps - Convert YouTube videos to readable text and switch between summary and transcript view - Convert video to text - 41-language support + translation - Copy transcripts or turn them into shareable articles and links - Install from the browser store, open a video, hit “Summarize” ### **Noiz Top 3 Features for YouTube Summarization** #### **1\. Instant TL;DR on YouTube** One click reveals key ideas and timestamp notes in an embedded window, so you can review the Summary before watching the full clip. #### **2\. Transcript + Summary Toggle** Jump between condensed bullets and full Video transcripts to copy quotes into a knowledge base without manual replication. #### **3\. Multi-language Coverage** Noiz summarizes lectures, talks, and tutorials across 40+ languages; helpful for cross-border classes and research. ### **Pros of Noiz** - Fast on-page flow from the Google Chrome extension button - Broad language support for international learners ### **Cons of Noiz** - Export formats are basic; heavy note-taking may need another app - Behavior still depends on transcript availability for some videos ### **Pricing of Noiz** Free trial; regular use needs a paid subscription. ### **Final Verdict** Noiz is a quick YouTube video summarizer AI Chrome extension for skimming long YouTube clips with timestamps and transcripts. It is solid for quick study checks and language-friendly recaps. ## **9\. NoteGPT**  ![notegpt-website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image7.webp) **Best For** Students and teams who want summaries plus extra study outputs (mind maps, slides, podcasts). The Chrome extension works on YouTube videos, webpages, and PDFs, pulling video transcripts and generating an AI Summary with ChatGPT AI, Claude, Mistral, or Gemini. ### **Features of NoteGPT** - Instant YouTube summary & transcript - Mind maps, slides, podcasts - Batch/long-video options - Built-in Summarization Prompt templates for different subjects - Workspace & sync ### **NoteGPT Top 3 Features for YouTube Summarization** #### **1\. Transcript for Videos Without Subtitles** NoteGPT generates text for videos that lack captions (listed up to 120 minutes), then reviews the Summary before a full watch. #### **2\. One-Click Study Outputs** Turn notes into mind maps, slides, or podcasts to speed your learning process without switching productivity apps. #### **3\. Model Flexibility** Use ChatGPT AI, Claude, or Google Gemini; some plans may support API Key setup. ### **Pros of NoteGPT** - Handles long videos and no-subtitle cases - Multiple outputs (mind map/slide/podcast) for different study styles - Chrome Web Store listing with a clear feature list  ### **Cons of NoteGPT** - Free plan uses monthly quotas; heavy users will hit caps - Some advanced exports or batch features may require paid tiers ### **Pricing of NoteGPT** Free tier with the following plans: - **Max:** from $69/mo - **Unlimited:** from $19.92/mo - **Pro:** from $9/mo ### **Final Verdict** NoteGPT suits learners who want more than a text TL; DR. If you need transcripts (even without captions) and study-ready outputs like mind maps and slides, it is an efficient pick.   ## **10\. Merlin**  ![merlin-website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/image10.webp) **Best For** People who want a fast AI Summary inside a broader AI assistant. Merlin adds a YouTube Summary with a ChatGPT feature you can trigger from the browser plugin, then skim key ideas without leaving the video page. ### **Features of Merlin** - YouTube Summarizer page - Works across websites and PDF - Quick article summaries - Insights from long videos ### **Merlin Top 3 Features for YouTube Summarization** #### **1\. Quick TL;DR Inside the Assistant** Open the Merlin panel from the Chrome toolbar and review the Summary in an embedded window before committing to a full watch. #### **2\. Simple Install & Start** Add the Google Chrome extension from the browser store, open a video, and trigger the summary, no complex setup. #### **3\. Generalist AI On Tap** As Merlin is an all-purpose assistant, you can run follow-up prompts on the summary for quick content analysis. ### **Pros of Merlin** - Straightforward “add to Chrome, summarize” workflow - Clean way to triage video content without leaving the page ### **Cons of Merlin** - Export details are light; expect copy/paste - Limited features compared to other YouTube AI summary Chrome extensions ### **Pricing of Merlin** Free plan with a daily query limit; paid plans available — see their site for current pricing. ### **Final Verdict** Merlin is a simple way to get quick YouTube summaries inside an all-in-one assistant. It is suitable for casual summaries when you prefer a single tool for multiple browsing tasks. ## **Choosing the Right Tool** **For Free and Fast Summaries: Web Highlights and Eightify AI** If speed matters, start with a YouTube AI summary Chrome extension that works with a single click. Web Highlights provides instant AI Summaries from video transcripts without sign-up. Eightify AI adds a summarize button on the video page for quick triage from the Chrome toolbar. **For Note-Taking and Export: Web Highlights and YouTubeDigest AI** Need tidy notes for a knowledge base? Web Highlights lets you highlight web content, add sticky notes, and export to various productivity apps. YouTubeDigest AI focuses on file exports (PDF/TXT/DOCX) from a Google Chrome extension. **For Minimal Interface: Glarity AI and Glasp** Prefer a clean panel with no fuss? Glarity AI shows a compact summary in an embedded window and supports API Key setup for ChatGPT/Claude/Google Gemini. Glasp pins a small summary box next to the video. **For Research Integration: Web Highlights (Reader Mode + Cross-Platform Exports)** Working across articles, PDFs, and web links? Web Highlights pairs YouTube summaries with reader mode for distraction-free reading and cross-device sync. Send results to Obsidian, Capacities, or Notion, or keep timestamp notes, and build an AI knowledge manager without manual replication. ## **Final Thoughts** AI YouTube summarizers cut the watch time and help you remember more. You get the key ideas from long YouTube videos in minutes, not hours. Among the free options, Web Highlights stands out. It gives you instant summaries, clean annotations, and a transcript reader in a simple interface. If you need a YouTube AI summary Chrome extension that also handles notes, highlights, and exports, Web Highlights is the easiest place to start.  Try it today. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** **1) What’s the best free AI YouTube summary Chrome extension in 2026?** Web Highlights is the best YouTube AI summary Chrome extension that gives free, fast AI summaries from video transcripts and also allows highlights and exports. **2) Can I use these extensions without signing up?** Yes. Web Highlights works instantly (no account) for summaries and transcript reading on the video page. Glarity AI also supports quick TL;DR with an optional API Key for ChatGPT AI/Google Gemini. **3) Do these tools work for all YouTube videos?** They work best on public videos with available  **video transcripts**  . Private or auto-generated caption videos may vary.  **4) Are AI summaries accurate for technical content?** Accuracy depends on transcript quality. Web Highlights and YouTubeDigest AI handle tutorials, education, and entertainment videos well and provide summaries in different formats. **5) How do I export notes to my knowledge base?** Use Web Highlights to highlight web content and annotate transcripts, then copy them as Markdown or HTML (every plan) or export a PDF or HTML file (Ultimate). You can also send them directly to Notion or Capacities (one export a day free, unlimited on Ultimate), or copy as Markdown for Obsidian. Build a clean knowledge base across videos, articles, and PDFs. --- # Top 5 AI Website Summary Tools in 2026 > Learn the best website summary AI tools. Compare Web Highlights, Scholarcy, Genei, SMMRY, and Resoomer for summarizing websites, PDFs, and YouTube videos. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-10-21 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Reading time: 12 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-summary-website-ai-tools/ --- The internet has turned reading into a full-time job. Between research papers, news articles, blog posts, and long YouTube videos, it’s almost impossible to keep up. That is where AI website summarizers come in — tools that can read, condense, and highlight the main ideas for you in seconds. In 2026, these AI website summary tools do far more than just shorten text. They can handle full web pages, PDFs, lecture summaries, and even YouTube transcripts, creating quick, organized overviews that save hours of manual reading. They are no longer just article summarizer tools; they have become personal research assistants for anyone dealing with information overload. One standout example is [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) , a browser-based AI-powered summarizer that works across websites, PDFs, and YouTube videos. It doesn’t just summarize, it allows you to highlight text, take notes, export to apps like Notion and Obsidian, and even generate interactive summaries from a YouTube video link or Website URL. > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) In this post, we will look at the Top 5 AI Website Summary Tools in 2026, comparing them for accuracy, AI context understanding, usability, and export options. Whether you are analyzing academic work, preparing teaching materials, or simply trying to make sense of long web pages, this comparison will help you find the right tool for your reading style. ## **What Is an AI Website Summary Tool?** An AI website summary tool is software that utilizes artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) to extract the main ideas from online content, including web pages, news articles, research papers, and PDF files. It turns long, detailed reading material into short, easy-to-understand summaries that highlight the core substance of the text. These tools are designed for individuals who need to process large amounts of information efficiently. This includes students summarizing academic work, teachers preparing classroom content, or professionals reviewing reports and meeting recaps. Many of them work directly as Chrome extensions or web apps, making it easy to summarize any Website URL without copying text elsewhere. The biggest benefit is time. Instead of manually scanning every paragraph, an AI-powered summarizer gives you concise overviews that save hours of reading, improve understanding, and help you organize key takeaways in your favorite productivity apps such as Notion or [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-in-obsidian-and-maximize-your-note-taking-experience/) . ## **List of the Best AI Website Summary Tools Compared (** 2026 **)**

Tool

Free Plan

PDF Support

Integrations

Ideal For

Web Highlights

✅

✅

Notion, Capacities (one-click API), Markdown (copy)

Teachers, students & researchers

Scholarcy

✅

✅

Word, Zotero

Academic papers & researchers

Genei

✅

✅

Notion, PDF

Research papers and students

SMMRY

✅

❌

Slack, Notion

Quick reads

Resoomer

✅

❌

None

Short text & quick summarization

Full disclosure: Web Highlights is our own product, so keep that in mind when you see it on this list. ## **1\. Web Highlights** **Best for** Web Highlights is best for anyone who wants to summarize websites, PDFs, and YouTube videos directly in the browser without switching tabs or creating an account. [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com) is more than just an article summarizer; it is a browser-based research companion built for people who read, annotate, and store information daily. The tool’s AI-powered summarizer lets you turn any web page or [YouTube transcript](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-transcript-youtube-generators/) into a structured summary in seconds. It works as a Browser [Extension](https://web-highlights.com/install/) or [web app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) , allowing users to summarize and highlight without leaving the site. The AI website summary feature automatically identifies the main ideas, tone, and content length. Whether you’re summarizing a research paper, condensing lecture summaries, or reviewing teaching materials, it adapts to your reading style. ### **Web Highlights Top 3 Features for Website Summaries** #### **1\. One-Click AI Website Summary** ![one-click-ai-website-summary](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/data-src-image-18304517-0384-40dc-93e7-2c1a28539146.webp) Web Highlights turns any article, blog, or Website URL into a clean, [readable summary](https://web-highlights.com/tools/website-ai-summary) . It offers several summary types — key points, TL;DR, teaser, and headline — in short, medium, or long, and you can save a summary with the page to review it any time. Its AI-powered responses capture context, structure, and key information, making every summary sound natural and useful. #### **2\. Reader Mode + Highlight Integration** ![reader-mode-highlight-integration](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/data-src-image-95abd968-a03f-4ca5-ab71-5b17c7e022c3.webp) Use [Web Highlights’ Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-read-any-website-in-distraction-free-reader-mode/) for distraction-free reading. You can highlight, annotate, and create an interactive summary in one clean interface. It’s especially helpful when summarizing news articles, academic work, or literature reviews. #### **3\. AI YouTube Summaries** ![ai-youtube-summaries](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/data-src-image-467c05bc-58ca-4353-b6df-a98919be237b.webp) Web Highlights automatically creates short, accurate summaries of [YouTube videos](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-ai-summary) using their captions. It helps you grasp the main ideas without having to watch the entire video. The summarization runs on your device, keeping everything private, and you can adjust the summary length limit or format as needed. ### **Pros of Web Highlights** - Websites, PDFs, and the YouTube summary tool - Web-based tool, so no installation is required to read the transcript - Free transcript and AI summary - Multi-language support for the AI summarizer works with multiple languages if the captions are available - Privacy-focused, as the AI processing happens on your device - Easy-to-use YouTube transcript generator and [YouTube video annotation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/youtube-video-annotations/) - Great for visual learners - Great for organizing research with tags and [self-organizing bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-organize-bookmarks-in-chrome/)   - Helps students stay organized across multiple educational platforms - Excellent free version with unlimited offline highlights and bookmarks ### **Cons of Web Highlights** - Because the AI runs locally, the first summary triggers a one-time model download and your browser needs about 22 GB of free disk space before it starts. ### **Pricing of Web Highlights** Web Highlights is mostly free to use with three simple, affordable plans: - **Basic**  – Free - **Premium**  – Paid monthly, yearly, or lifetime - **Ultimate**  – Paid monthly, yearly, or lifetime See current prices at  [web-highlights.com/pricing](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . ### **Final Verdict** Web Highlights is the most complete website summary AI tool in 2026. It combines [AI summarization](https://web-highlights.com/blog/ai-summary-of-a-website/) , highlights, and note-taking in a straightforward interface that works across websites, PDFs, and YouTube videos. The tool supports multiple languages, summarizes YouTube videos from their captions, and connects with your favorite productivity apps, such as [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) and Obsidian (via Markdown copy). For anyone who reads, learns, or researches daily, it is a practical, all-in-one solution to organize knowledge effortlessly. ## **2\. Scholarcy** ![scholarcy](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/data-src-image-e2f39274-6a6a-49c5-9c19-c3f639fa9f5f.webp) #### **Best For** [Scholarcy](https://www.scholarcy.com/article-summarizer) is best for academic settings where you’re dealing with research papers, literature reviews and need structured summaries with citations. Scholarcy is an AI article summarizer focused especially on research papers, reports, and long articles. It transforms dense documents into interactive summary flashcards, pulling out key information, study findings, and references. You can upload a PDF file, paste a Website URL, or import from reference tools like Zotero. The tool highlights important points, breaks down sections, and creates an easy-to-skim “snapshot” of the document. ### **Scholarcy Top 3 Features for Website Summaries** #### **1\. Interactive Summary Flashcards & Spotlight** Scholarcy converts content into flashcards that present the core substance, highlighting assumptions, methodology, and conclusions. Its Spotlight feature helps you jump to the most critical findings first. #### **2\. Customizable Summary Styles** You can choose how detailed you want your summary: one-liner, bulleted list, or a researcher-level version. That helps match your reading style and time constraints. #### **3\. Export & Library Integration** Export your summaries (flashcards) into formats compatible with Word, Markdown, or reference managers. You can also save them to your personal library within Scholarcy and organize your academic work there. ### **Pros** - Well-tuned for research papers and academic use - Flashcard and summarization combo helps with retention and review - Supports PDF files, online articles, and reference imports - You get different summary styles suited to your speed or depth needs - Helps you find references, figures, and important sections fast ### **Cons** - Doesn’t handle YouTube videos or YouTube transcripts natively - The free plan limits how many summaries you can create per day - No complete offline summary mode ### **Pricing of Scholarcy** Scholarcy has a free plan with a small summary allowance; unlimited summaries need a paid personal plan. Check [Scholarcy’s pricing page](https://www.scholarcy.com/pricing) for current prices. ### **Final Verdict** For individuals working in academic settings, literature reviews, or research-intensive domains, Scholarcy is a strong contender. It doesn’t replace reading, but it helps you extract the main ideas and structure from complex texts fast.  ## **3\. Genei** ![genei](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/data-src-image-32d22b09-2122-4364-94ed-4464beb591c8.webp) ### **Best for** Researchers, writers, or students who juggle many PDFs and web pages at once and want a tool that can pull insights across multiple sources. Genei is an AI research and summarization tool that processes PDF files, web pages, and documents to deliver condensed summaries, keyword extraction, and contextual insights. It offers a Chrome Extension so you can summarize a Website URL right from the browser or save pages for later. ### **Genei Top 3 Features for Website Summaries** #### **1\. Multi-Document Summarization**  Genei Pro can pull together insights from multiple PDFs or web pages simultaneously, allowing you to ask questions across all the documents and receive synthesized answers. #### **2\. Keyword Extraction & Topic Overviews** While summarizing, Genei also extracts key terms, topics, and phrases. That gives you a quick glance at what a document is about before diving deeper. #### **3\. Annotation & Export Tools** Genei annotates your text or highlights passages, and then exports summaries or reference lists. It also supports managing citations, which helps when dealing with academic work or research paper reviews. ### **Pros of Genei** - Handles PDF files and web pages - Useful for multi-document summarization - Keyword extraction gives you a map of what’s important - You can export summaries and references, aiding in workflow integration ### **Cons of Genei** - Doesn’t natively handle YouTube videos or YouTube transcript summarization - For general blog posts or simple web pages, the summary might feel basic - Complete offline mode is not present  ### **Pricing of Genei** Genei offers 2 paid plans, each with a 14-day free trial: - **Basic:** £3.99/month - **Pro:** £15.99/month ### **Final Verdict** Genei is a smart choice for individuals conducting research with numerous documents, particularly when comparing, contrasting, or synthesizing information across sources. It is not the easiest to use for casual blog or news reading, but for academic or deep research work, it delivers value.  ## **4\. SMMRY** ![smmry](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/data-src-image-db6feb8a-ba2a-463d-ac51-ac11debc8558.webp) ### **Best for** Users who need a fast, no-hassle article summarizer tool for web pages and texts without signing up. SMMRY is another web tool that condenses text or a Website URL into a shorter version by extracting key sentences. You paste in content (or a link) and get back a summarized version focused on the main ideas. ### **SMMRY Top 3 Features for Website Summaries** #### **1\. Quick Summaries** With SMMRY, you can summarize any web page, article, URL, or pasted text with a click. SMMRY picks out the key sentences and presents a shorter version. #### **2\. Custom Sentence Count / Summary Length**  SMMRY allows you to adjust the number of sentences in the summary, which helps control content length and ensure you achieve the desired level of detail. #### **3\. Developer API Access** With an API, SMMRY enables you to utilize its summarization engine as a service. You can send a Website URL, text, or PDF files and get back an AI-powered summary. ### **Pros of SMMRY** - Simple to use, no signup required - Works with Website URLs and raw text input - Free tier available for casual use ### **Cons of SMMRY** - YouTube summaries only on the paid plans - Accuracy is limited for highly technical or contextual content - The interface is basic, lacks highlighting, notes, and integrations ### **Pricing of SMMRY**  SMMRY’s free plan includes 10 summaries per month. The paid Essential and Advanced plans raise that limit (20 per day, or unlimited) and add YouTube video summaries; see [SMMRY’s pricing page](https://smmry.com/pricing) for current prices. ### **Final Verdict** SMMRY is best when you just want a quick summary of a web article or report without signing up or dealing with extra features. It works well for simple use cases, such as quickly digesting news articles or blog posts. However, if your reading involves YouTube videos or you want to export summaries or annotate, Web Highlights provides a more comprehensive experience in one place. ## **5\. Resoomer** ![resoomer](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/10/data-src-image-c8cc5c86-3e00-4db7-ae79-d36be87adf79.webp) ### **Best for** People who want a quick way to distill long articles and documents into the main ideas with minimal setup. Resoomer is a website summary AI tool that supports web content, long texts, or document uploads and returns a condensed version focused on essential facts and concepts. You can paste a Website URL, drop in PDF files, DOCX, EPUB, or other formats, or paste raw text. Resoomer highlights key passages and generates an article summarizer result you can read, edit, or export. ### **Resoomer Top 3 Features for Website Summaries** #### **1\. Multiple Input Formats** Resoomer accepts PDF files, DOCX, TXT, ODT, and e-books for summary. It also supports pasting a Website URL to summarize a public web page. #### **2\. Adjustable Summary Style & Modes** Choose from automatic, manual (by percentage), optimized by topics, or analysis mode that highlights key sentences. #### **3\. Export & Edit Options** After the summary, you can download it in .doc or PDF format, or copy the result to your own documents for further editing. Resoomer also deletes uploaded documents after processing for privacy. ### **Pros of Resoomer** - Easy to use - Works with multiple file types (PDF, DOCX, TXT, EPUB) - Supports summarizing web pages via URL - Offers different modes (optimized summary, manual reduction) to match reading style or task ### **Cons of Resoomer** - Doesn’t offer built-in YouTube video summarization or transcript reading - Lacks deep integrations with [productivity](https://web-highlights.com/blog/maximizing-productivity-tools-web-highlights/) apps (e.g., Notion, Obsidian)  - No offline mode ### **Pricing of Resoomer** Free to use, with no account required. ### **Final Verdict** Resoomer is an easy article summarizer tool that handles both web pages and documents. It won’t replace full reading, especially for complex texts, but it does a good job of providing a clean, condensed version. ## **Choosing the Right AI Website Summarizer** Finding the right website summary AI tool depends on the type of reader you are and how you process information. Each tool on this list fits a slightly different need, from academic work to everyday reading. ### **For All-in-One Use** If you want a single tool that does everything, like summarize web pages, [PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/annotate-a-pdf-in-chrome/) , and YouTube videos, highlight key text, and export organized notes,  Web Highlights is your best pick.  It also allows you to import [Kindle highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) and instantly convert them into [study flashcards](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-create-a-study-guide/) for [spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) learning. With local AI processing, all summaries are generated directly on your computer, not remote servers, keeping your data fully private. It offers AI summarization, note-taking, [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) , and integrations with Notion and Obsidian in a single, clean, browser-based workspace. ### **For Academic Research** When your focus is on research papers, effect sizes, confidence intervals, or detailed literature reviews, go with Scholarcy or Genei. Both tools handle complex academic content, with citation extraction and summaries tuned for analytical reading. ### **For Speed** If you only need short, readable summaries of news articles or short blogs, SMMRY is ideal. It skips the sign-up process and instantly reduces content length, giving you the main ideas without any extra setup. ### **For Simplicity** For users who prefer a minimal interface and want quick summaries of PDF files or web pages, Resoomer works well. It is easy to use, supports multiple formats, and gives straightforward overviews perfect for students or casual readers dealing with classroom content or long articles. Each of these tools can improve your summarization process, but if you want something that fits into your daily reading routine, connects with your productivity apps, and works across formats, Web Highlights remains the most balanced choice for 2026. ## **Final Thoughts** Website Summary AI tools are changing how we read, learn, and remember information. Instead of spending hours scrolling through web pages, research papers, and YouTube videos, these tools help you get straight to the main ideas and key takeaways. For most users, Web Highlights remains the most practical AI summarization option in 2026. Its Chrome extension allows you to highlight, annotate, and summarize any Website URL or YouTube video directly in your browser. You can even summarize YouTube transcripts, export your notes to Notion, and organize them into a clear, searchable archive with cross-device sync (free for a 7-day trial, then part of the paid plans) that makes it ideal for students, researchers, and professionals alike.  [Try Web Highlights today](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , and make your reading time count. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** **1\. What is the best AI website summary tool in 2026?** The best AI website summary tool in 2026 is Web Highlights. It offers multi-source summarization across websites, PDF files, and YouTube videos, along with one-click exports to Notion and Capacities (Ultimate plan), plus Markdown copy for Obsidian. Its built-in Reader Mode and AI-powered summarizer make it perfect for students, researchers, and anyone dealing with information overload. **2\. Are there free AI website summarizers?** Yes. Web Highlights, SMMRY, and Resoomer all have free versions. Web Highlights’ free plan includes one AI summary per day — of a web page or a YouTube video — and it works without an account; the Ultimate plan lifts that limit. SMMRY’s free plan includes 10 summaries per month, and Resoomer is free without an account. **3\. Do these AI summarization tools work on any website?** Most tools can summarize any public web page or article link. Web Highlights goes a step further by letting users summarize not only websites but also research papers, news articles, and YouTube transcripts. You can paste any Website URL, and the tool will extract and condense the main ideas into a clear, structured summary. **4\. Can AI summaries replace reading?** No. AI summaries are meant to complement reading, not replace it. They help you understand the core substance of long documents faster, so you can focus on what matters most. Interactive summaries improve comprehension without removing the value of in-depth reading. **5\. Which AI summarizer works best for students and researchers?** For academic use, Web Highlights, Scholarcy, and Genei are top choices. Web Highlights is an all-in-one tool for students, teachers, and researchers. It helps them organize teaching materials, generate lecture summaries, and export highlights to productivity tools. Meanwhile, Scholarcy and Genei are ideal for literature reviews, confidence intervals, and analyzing research papers that require deeper academic insight. --- # How to Create AI Summaries on Any Website with Web Highlights > Learn how to get an AI summary of a website with Web Highlights. It's a free browser extension that instantly summarizes articles, blogs, and papers. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-09-30 - Updated: 2026-04-04 - Reading time: 12 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/ai-summary-of-a-website/ --- Reading long articles, blogs, or research papers can feel like a huge time commitment. We all know the feeling of scanning a lengthy document, trying to find the most important parts, or getting hit with eye strain from staring at a screen for too long. You just need to get to the key points fast. This is exactly where Web Highlights comes in. It's a browser extension that helps you create AI-powered summaries from any webpage directly in your browser. By using your browser's built-in AI technology, Web Highlights automatically summarizes your highlighted content, saving you time and giving you the essential information you need with just one click. It’s an easy way to cut through the noise and get straight to the facts. > [**AI Summary - Generate Smart Summaries of Web Content**](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/ai-summary) — Create AI-powered summaries of your highlights and web pages using Chrome’s built-in AI. It runs on your device, so your pages stay with you. ## **Why AI Summaries are a Game-Changer for Busy Learners** Skimming lengthy articles, taking notes, or trying to find key terms can feel like a chore. This is especially true for students, researchers, or anyone dealing with information overload. We often spend a lot of time reading through paragraphs just to find a few relevant points. With [Web Highlights' AI Summary feature](https://web-highlights.com/tools/website-ai-summary) , you can instantly get a website summary. This tool automatically condenses entire web pages into short, easy-to-digest formats. You don't have to read every sentence. Web Highlights eliminates the need to take notes or skim through pages of text manually. This is a real [productivity booster](https://web-highlights.com/blog/maximizing-productivity-tools-web-highlights/#google_vignette) . Web Highlights’ AI-powered summarization tool summarizes webpages in a few different formats, depending on what you need, making it very flexible. You can get the main takeaways as Key Points, a brief headline, a quick TL;DR ("Too Long; Didn’t Read") version, or an engaging teaser. This helps you get the right amount of information you need, fast. Web Highlights uses your browser's local AI model, so the processing happens right on your device. This means the AI Summary feature is fast and reliable. It makes Web Highlights a straightforward and efficient solution for anyone who needs to quickly generate an AI professional summary of a website or use an AI to extract key points from articles. It helps you save a lot of time, making it a powerful AI summarization tool for web content. ## **Setting Up Web Highlights for AI Summaries** Getting started with Web Highlights and its AI features is a simple process. Here’s a quick, step-by-step guide to get everything set up so you can start creating a website summary ai in no time. #### **Install the Web Highlights Chrome Extension** First, you need to [install the browser extension](https://web-highlights.com/install/) .  Web Highlights is available for free for [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) , and [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig/) . > [**PDF & Web Highlighter Browser Extension**](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/pdf-web-highlighter) — Our online highlighter browser extension lets you highglight any website or PDF directly on the page. #### **Log In to Your Account** While you can use Web Highlights to highlight text and take notes offline without an account, we recommend signing up for the 7-day free trial to use the AI features unlimited.  Create a free account through the [Web Highlights app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) or log in if you already have one. This allows the extension to sync your highlights and notes across devices and gives you unlimited access to the AI-powered summarization tool. #### **Enable the AI Summary of a Website Feature** When you click it for the first time, your browser will begin downloading the necessary AI model. This is a one-time process and might take between 5 to 30 minutes, depending on your internet speed. You should keep your browser open during this time. To monitor the download progress, you can type **_chrome://on-device-internals_** into your browser's address bar and check the "Model Status." #### **Troubleshooting Common Issues** If you don't see the AI summary button, it might be due to a few simple issues. A common reason is that your browser version is outdated. Web Highlights' AI features rely on the latest technology, so make sure you are using Chrome 138+ or Microsoft Edge 4.49.0 or later. If the AI model download seems stuck, you can check our [troubleshooting guide](https://web-highlights.com/docs/troubleshooting/troubleshooting-chrome-ai) for more common fixes. ## **How to Generate AI Summaries from Any Website** Once you have Web Highlights set up, generating an AI summary of a website is very straightforward. With just a few clicks, you can get a concise overview of any webpage, making it an excellent AI Text Summarizer. Here is how to use Web Highlights’ summarizing tool: **1\. Open the Sidebar:** On any website you are reading, click the Web Highlights icon in your browser toolbar. This will open the sidebar on the side of your screen. ![AI summary feature button in Web Highlights' side bar](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/data-src-image-b78741a1-fb80-48bf-bc57-f7485a8de4fe.webp) **2\. Activate the AI Summary Button:** In the sidebar, you'll see an “AI summary” button. Click this button to activate the AI-powered summarization. This button will only appear if your browser meets the required specifications mentioned previously. ![Activating the AI summary feature on the sidebar of the website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/data-src-image-f2541114-9992-4a00-b379-64281120f850.webp) **3\. Receive Your Instant Summary:** After you click the button, Web Highlights analyzes the content and generates the summary. The summary is created instantly, often based on the highlights and notes you have already selected. This is a great way to summarize articles instantly using Web Highlights. ![Receive Your Instant Summary](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/data-src-image-cb1d7af0-66da-4b93-8230-5f6c38c19388.webp) ## **Customizing AI Summaries to Fit Your Needs** When you're reading a topic like climate change, you often encounter long articles filled with complex data, scientific studies, and policy discussions. It is easy to feel overwhelmed. Even with an AI summary of a website, the content can feel dull and lifeless.  With Web Highlights, you're not stuck with a single, generic output. The tool is designed to give you control over the information you capture, so you can customize it to your specific needs. This makes Web Highlights an advanced solution for AI summaries for productivity. ### **1\. Multiple Lengths** ![Multiple lengths and format options in the Web Highlights side bar](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/data-src-image-20a517d4-2e23-455a-b706-4b3fe530e098.webp) The first step in customization is choosing the right format. Whether you need a quick overview or a detailed breakdown, Web Highlights provides flexible options. When generating an AI professional summary, you can choose from different lengths: - **Short (1-3 points):** This is perfect for a quick TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read). It gives you the absolute core ideas of an article in a few bullet points, allowing you to instantly grasp the main topic. - **Medium (3-5 points):** A medium-length summary is ideal for getting a more comprehensive overview. It's concise enough to be scannable but provides enough detail to give you a solid understanding of the content. - **Long (5-7 points):** When you're working with complex articles or need a summary that captures more nuance, the long format is your go-to. This option provides a more detailed summary that still saves you time compared to reading the full text. These options help you summarize articles with AI in a way that aligns with your study or [research goals](https://web-highlights.com/blog/efficient-research-with-web-highlights/) , whether you’re just skimming or preparing for a deep analysis. ### **2\. Choose any Format** ![Different summary formats offered by Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/data-src-image-dc23611c-8742-444c-a8c5-aca9dd2700ec.webp) Web Highlights can provide different summary types to fit your needs: - **Key Points:** This gives you the main takeaways and most relevant points from the article in a bulleted list. - **Headline:** This is a brief, single-sentence title that captures the core idea of the content. - **TL;DR:** This means “Too Long; Didn’t Read” and gives you a quick, digestible overview. - **Teaser:** This provides an engaging, short preview of the content, which is perfect for sharing. ### **3\. Copy and Use**  ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/data-src-image-c371476b-7f6f-4415-a6bf-3835b1be9383.webp) *Copy options available to copy and save the AI summary* The final piece of the puzzle is making sure your summaries are accessible where you need them. Web Highlights enables you to effortlessly copy and paste your AI summaries anywhere you want. This can be a PDF, a Word doc, or your mobile notes app.  For those who use Notion to manage their projects and research, Web Highlights offers a one-click Notion export (Ultimate plan) that sends your highlights, notes, and page data directly to your Notion workspace via API. You can also copy and paste AI summaries into Notion manually. If you prefer Obsidian for its local-first approach and powerful linking capabilities, you can copy your summaries as Markdown and paste them directly into your vault. This will further allow you to  [higlight in Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-in-obsidian-and-maximize-your-note-taking-experience/)   as well.  Markdown is a universal format for plain text that’s widely supported. Copying your summaries to Markdown ensures you can use the content in almost any text editor or note-taking application. ## **Troubleshooting Common AI Summary Issues** While Web Highlights is designed to work smoothly, sometimes you might run into issues with the AI summary feature. This section covers some common problems and the simple steps you can take to fix them. #### **Check Your Browser & System Requirements** If the AI summary button isn't visible in the Web Highlights sidebar, the first thing to check is your browser. The AI features rely on specific, built-in technology. Make sure you are using Chrome 138+ or Microsoft Edge 4.49.0 or later. If your browser is outdated, a quick update will usually solve the problem. #### **Resolving AI Model Download Problems** When you use the AI summary feature for the first time, your browser downloads an AI model. This can sometimes lead to issues like an InvalidStateError or a message saying the model is "unavailable." - **Monitor the Download:** You can check the download status by typing chrome://on-device-internals into your browser's address bar. This page shows you the status of the AI model download and can help you see if there are any errors. - **Check Chrome Flags:** If you're still having issues, you might need to enable specific experimental features. Go to chrome://flags and search for and enable flags related to on-device models and the summarization API. - **Ensure Adequate Storage:** The AI model requires a good amount of local storage (at least 22GB) on your device. Make sure you have enough free space for the model to download and run correctly. For more detailed solutions to these and other issues, you can always visit the official [troubleshooting guide for Chrome AI features](https://web-highlights.com/docs/troubleshooting/troubleshooting-chrome-ai) . Web Highlights works seamlessly on global versions of both Chrome and Edge. This means no matter where you are in the world, the experience is consistent. The AI processes everything locally on your device, ensuring a reliable and fast performance for everyone. ## **How AI Summaries Can Boost Your Productivity** Feeling buried under a mountain of reading and research is common. Web Highlights' AI summary feature is designed to give you back control of your time and attention, turning a mountain of text into manageable, actionable insights. ### **1\. Save Time with Instant Overviews**  Imagine you have a long article to read, but only need the main takeaways. Instead of skimming or reading the entire piece, you can get an instant, concise summary of the key points. This helps you quickly decide if the full article is worth your time and allows you to focus only on the information that matters most. This is a great way to improve your reading speed. ### **2\. Study & Research in a Breeze** For students and researchers, the time spent sifting through academic papers, articles, and documents can be significant. Web Highlights’ AI-powered summaries for research help you quickly digest large volumes of text, allowing you to get the core concepts from multiple sources in a fraction of the time. This helps you prepare for exams, write papers, and build your knowledge base more efficiently. ### **3\. Content Creation** Whether you're a blogger, marketer, or journalist, AI summaries are a powerful tool for content creation. You can use an AI summary for content creation to quickly extract the main ideas from a competitor's blog post, get insights for an industry report, or brainstorm new topics. It helps streamline your research and ensures you have all the necessary information at your fingertips, making idea extraction and competitor analysis much faster. ## **Real-Life Examples of AI Summaries in Action** The true value of Web Highlights’ AI summaries comes to life in how people use them every day to get things done. **For the Student in Rome:** A university student preparing for their final exams needs to review dozens of academic articles. Instead of rereading each one, they can use Web Highlights to generate quick summaries of the most important papers. This will help them quickly recall key arguments and data points, saving hours of study time and allowing them to focus on active recall and practice questions. **For the Professional in Tokyo:** A marketing manager in Tokyo needs to stay updated on the latest trends in digital advertising. Every morning, they use Web Highlights for an AI summary of a website to quickly get the main takeaways from a variety of industry blogs and news sites. This allows them to stay informed and make data-driven decisions without spending hours reading through every article. **For the Content Creator in Chicago:** A freelance writer in Chicago is working on a new blog post about personal finance. They use Web Highlights to summarize several lengthy reports and financial news articles. The summaries help them identify the core statistics, expert opinions, and key insights they need to write a well-researched, authoritative piece, improving their research speed and efficiency. ## **Key Takeaways** As we have seen, reading through endless online articles and research papers is no longer a requirement for getting to the key points. Web Highlights simplifies the entire process. It is more than just a tool; it’s a way to reclaim your time and focus, giving you the core insights you need instantly. With its user-friendly interface and the ability to work across devices, it is a great productivity booster.  If you are looking for a way to get AI summaries now and AI summarize articles fast, Web Highlights offers a free, quick solution. [Install Web Highlights today](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and start generating an AI summary of a website to supercharge your productivity and learning. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **Q: How accurate are the AI summaries generated by Web Highlights?** Web Highlights’ AI summaries are designed to be highly accurate. They analyze the main content of a website to pinpoint the most important information. The quality and accuracy of the summary depend on the clarity and structure of the original content.  ### **Q: Can I export my AI-generated summary to Notion?** Yes, you can. Web Highlights offers a one-click Notion export (available on the Ultimate plan) that sends your highlights, notes, and page data directly to your Notion workspace via API. You can also copy the generated AI summary text and paste it into any Notion page. This is a great way to save your research or video notes and organize them alongside your other work. ### **Q: How do I know if the AI summary model is downloaded correctly?** The AI summary feature uses your browser's built-in AI technology, which requires a one-time download of a large model. This can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes, depending on your internet speed. To check the download progress, you can type _chrome://on-device-internals/_ into your Chrome address bar. From there, navigate to the "Model Status" section to see if the download is complete. Once it's done, you're good to go and can generate summaries instantly. ### **Q: Does Web Highlights work with all websites?** Web Highlights is built to work with most public websites. However, there are a few exceptions. Websites with dynamic content (like social media feeds), sites that require a login, or pages behind a paywall may not be compatible. This is because our extension needs to be able to access the static content of the page to create the AI summary. We are constantly working to improve compatibility. ### **Q: What if my AI summary doesn’t capture the key points correctly?** If you find that a summary isn’t quite right, remember that the AI’s understanding is based on the source material. For a more accurate result, try the AI summary on a different website with clearer text or on a YouTube video with a high-quality transcript. Our AI summary feature also works in tandem with your highlights.  ### **Q: Do AI summaries work for YouTube videos also?** Yes. Web Highlights offers a dedicated tool to get an AI summary of a YouTube video in seconds. It works by analyzing the video's captions, allowing you to quickly get the main ideas from a lecture, tutorial, or documentary without watching the entire thing. The feature is 100% free and requires no additional installation. --- # Best YouTube Transcript Generators Compared (2026) > Find the best transcript youtube generator for your needs. See why Web Highlights stands out with its free YouTube AI summary and transcripts. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-09-25 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Reading time: 18 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-transcript-youtube-generators/ --- Do you ever find yourself watching a long YouTube video and wishing you could just read the text instead? Maybe you're trying to quickly find a specific point in a lecture, or you want to save the information from an interview for your research. This is a common problem, especially for students, researchers, and professionals who rely on video content for their work.  The good news is, there is a simple solution: a [YouTube transcript generator](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-transcript-generator) . In this article, we will look at the best transcript YouTube generators, what they offer, and why they're so helpful. Let’s compare the top 10 tools of 2026 and see why Web Highlights stands out.  > [**YouTube Transcript Generator - Get Any Video’s Text Instantly**](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-transcript-generator) — Paste any YouTube video link and get the full transcript in seconds. Perfect for students, researchers, and anyone who wants to read video content. No signup needed. ## **What Is a YouTube Transcript Generator?** A YouTube transcript generator is a tool that takes a YouTube video URL and turns the spoken words into written transcript text. It uses automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology to listen to the audio and provide you with a text version of the video content. These tools are incredibly useful for a number of reasons. For students and researchers, they can turn educational videos or research interviews into searchable text, making it much easier to absorb content and find key information. They are also great for people who prefer reading over watching videos, or for those who need to quickly get a text version of a video without the hassle of manual transcription. This can save a lot of time and help with your overall transcription workflow. The main purpose of these tools is to make video content more accessible and easier to work with. They can also be used to get closed captions or generate summaries for your YouTube videos, helping you stay [more productive](https://web-highlights.com/blog/maximizing-productivity-tools-web-highlights/) . ## **List of the Best YouTube Transcript Generators Compared (2026)** Here is our list of the best YouTube transcript generators available today, starting with our top pick, Web Highlights. Full disclosure: Web Highlights is our own product, so keep that in mind when you see it on this list. ## **1\. Web Highlights** [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rumx2qVOr2c) ### **Best For** [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is ideal for anyone who wants to generate a transcript, highlight, get a summary, and take notes on it. It is perfect for students and researchers who need a comprehensive tool for both content absorption and note-taking. The tool is great for educational videos, research projects, and just about any other YouTube video content you need to study. ### **Features of Web Highlights** - **YouTube Reader:** With the [Web Highlights Transcript Generator](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-transcript-generator) or [YouTube Reader](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-transcript-reader) , you can paste any YouTube video link and get an easy-to-read transcript right away.  ![Read YouTube transcripts in Web Highlights by copy pasting video link](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image1.webp) - **Highlighting and Note-Taking:**   You can [highlight YouTube video transcripts](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-youtube-video) with [different colors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlight-the-web-with-the-colors-of-your-beloved-stabilo-highlighters/) , add your own notes, and create tags. This turns a simple transcript for YouTube videos into a powerful study guide. ![Add highlights and notes to YouTube transcript videos in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image12.webp) - **Works in Multiple Languages:** Web Highlights finds closed captions in your language and generates a transcript text based on those. If other languages are available, you can easily switch to them, making it a great option for transcription services for a global audience. - **Syncs with Video Playback:** As you play the video, the transcript scrolls along automatically, highlighting the current sentence. This makes it easy to follow along, take notes, and find the exact part of the video you need to reference. ![Video playback and auto-scroll as video plays feature in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image11-2.webp) - **AI YouTube Summaries:** [Web Highlights’ YouTube AI Summary Generator](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-ai-summary) that takes a video's captions and uses AI algorithms to create a quick, concise summary of the main points. This is ideal for quickly understanding long videos without watching the whole thing. The AI runs completely on your computer, so your data stays private. The free plan includes one AI summary per day. You can also adjust the lengths and format of the summary; see here how.  ![Web Highlights YouTube transcript generator showing a video transcript with AI key points](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image8.webp) - **Customize How It Looks:** You can adjust the text size, background color, and width of the transcript window, so you can set it up in a way that’s most comfortable for you. ![Customize the look of your YouTube transcript by adjusting background color, font sizes and page layout.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image15.webp) - **Export Your Notes:**  Once you’re done, you can copy your highlights and notes as Markdown or HTML on any plan (PDF and HTML files need Ultimate). You can also send them directly to  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-notion-with-web-highlights/)   (one export a day on Free, unlimited on Ultimate), or copy as Markdown and paste into  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/)   , helping you to keep your research projects organized. ![Export your YouTube transcript's highlights and notes into different platforms.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image3.webp) ### **Pros of Web Highlights for YouTube Transcription** - Web-based tool, so no installation is required to read the transcript - Free transcript plus one free AI summary per day - Multi language support for the AI summarizer works with multiple languages if the captions are available - Privacy-focused, as the AI processing happens on your device - Easy-to-use YouTube transcript generator - Great for visual learners - Multiple highlight colors - Great for organizing research with tags and bookmarks - Helps students stay organized across multiple educational platforms - Excellent free version with unlimited offline highlights and bookmarks - Offline access to multiple features - Cross-device sync (7-day free trial, then a paid plan) ### **Cons of Web Highlights** - Transcripts come from the video’s captions, so a video without captions opens in the reader but has no transcript to highlight. ### **Pricing of Web Highlights** Web Highlights is mostly free to use with three simple, affordable plans: - **Basic** – Free - **Premium** – $6.49/month, $56.99/year, $159.99/lifetime (US prices) - **Ultimate** – $7.49/month, $59.99/year, $174.99/lifetime (US prices) ### **Final Verdict** Web Highlights is more than just a simple YouTube transcript generator. It is a [browser extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) for active learning and research.  Beyond the YouTube to text feature, Web Highlights allows you to transform video content into a knowledge base. You can use its  [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-read-any-website-in-distraction-free-reader-mode/)   for a distraction-free experience, turning any web page into a clean, easy-to-read format. For students, the ability to create flashcards from their highlights helps reinforce concepts through spaced repetition. Most importantly, Web Highlights lets you take your research with you. You can copy your highlights and AI summaries as Markdown or HTML, export PDF and HTML files on Ultimate, send them directly to Notion, or copy as Markdown for  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-in-obsidian-and-maximize-your-note-taking-experience/)   , where you can continue to build your digital  [second brain](https://web-highlights.com/blog/master-your-second-brain-how-to-use-the-code-technique/) . > [**YouTube Transcript Generator - Get Any Video’s Text Instantly**](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-transcript-generator) — Paste any YouTube video link and get the full transcript in seconds. Perfect for students, researchers, and anyone who wants to read video content. No signup needed. ## **2\. Kome AI** ![KomeAI's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image2.webp) ### **Best For** Kome AI is best for users who need quick, easy transcription and multi-language support. It works for students or professionals who want a fast way to get the full transcript text of a video without any extra steps or complex features. ### **Features of Kome AI** - **Fast Transcription:** Kome AI is designed to quickly generate video transcripts. You just paste the video URL and get the text. - **Multi-language Support:** Get support for over 120 languages, which makes Kome AI a great option for a global audience. - **AI-Powered Summaries:** Kome’s AI summarizer gives you a concise version of the YouTube video's content. ### **Pros of Kome AI for YouTube Transcription** - Fast and efficient to use - Offers extensive language support - The interface is simple and easy to use. ### **Cons of Kome AI** - Free version has limited credits for summarization. - It may lack advanced features compared to other tools ### **Pricing of Kome AI** Kome AI has a free plan that provides five summary credits. Paid plans with more advanced features are available — see their site for current pricing. ### **Final Verdict** Kome AI is a transcript YouTube generator for anyone working with content in different languages. While it might not offer the deep research and note-taking features of a tool like Web Highlights, its speed and multilingual support make it a very useful tool for straight-up transcript generation. It is a good option for anyone who wants to use the YouTube to transcript tool or AI summary and nothing more. ## **3\. NoteGPT** ![NoteGPT website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image10.webp) ### **Best For** NoteGPT is best for users who want a full-featured AI tool that goes beyond just transcript generation. It's a great choice for students and professionals who need to do deep research, create study materials, or repurpose video content for other projects. It uses AI models to not only create transcripts but also help with mind maps and other creative outputs. ### **Features of NoteGPT** - **YouTube Transcript Generator:** NoteGPT converts a YouTube video URL into an easily readable transcript. - **AI YouTube Summarizer:** Using advanced natural language processing, NoteGPT creates quick transcript summaries, allowing you to get the main points without reading the entire transcript. - **Content Repurposing:** You can use NoteGPT's AI algorithms to turn your notes into mind maps, flashcards, or presentation slides. - **AI Chat:** NoteGPT’s AI chat feature allows you to ask questions about the video content, allowing for a wide understanding of the topic. - **Multi-language Translation:** It provides translation services for transcripts and summaries, supporting over 40 languages. ### **Pros of NoteGPT for YouTube Transcription** - It can transcribe videos even if they don't have subtitles or closed captions - Wide range of AI tools  - Multi-language support to work with a variety of video sources - Multiple export formats ### **Cons of NoteGPT** - Free plan is quite limited and operates on a quota system - The full-featured plans can be expensive, especially for a casual user ### **Pricing of NoteGPT** NoteGPT has a limited free plan, with 3 paid options: - **Pro:** $9.99/mo - **Unlimited:** $29/mo - **Max:** $99/mo ### **Final Verdict** NoteGPT’s strength lies in its ability to turn a video transcript into other useful formats for learning and research. While the free version is a good way to try it out, you will likely need to pay for a subscription to get the most out of all the extra features it offers and process unlimited videos. ## **4\. YouTube-Transcript.io** ![YouTube-Transcript.io website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image13.webp) ### **Best For** YouTube-Transcript.io works for users who need a straightforward and fast way to get the transcript text of a YouTube video. It is a good choice for someone who just wants to get the transcript quickly without needing a lot of extra features. ### **Features of YouTube-Transcript** - **Video URL Transcription:** You can paste a YouTube video URL into the tool, and it will generate the full transcript. - **AI Summarization:** This transcript YouTube generator creates quick summaries using AI models, helping you get a brief of a long video in seconds. - **Download Transcripts:** It allows you to download video transcripts as files instead of copying them by hand. - **Copy Button:** A simple Copy Button lets you easily copy the entire transcript text to your clipboard with one click. - **Language Support:** It supports all the languages that are available as closed captions on the original YouTube video. ### **Pros of YouTube-Transcript.io for YouTube Transcription** - Quick and efficient YouTube transcript generator - Offers different file formats for downloading - Free tier with 25 tokens per month to try it out ### **Cons of YouTube-Transcript.io** - Relies on the video's existing closed captions, so it may not work as well for videos without them - Lacks advanced features like highlighting and note-taking ### **Pricing of YouTube-Transcript.io** YouTube-Transcript.io offers a free plan with 25 "tokens" per month. The pricing plans are as follows: - **Plus:** $9.99/mo - **Pro:** $24.99/mo - **Enterprise:** custom pricing ### **Final Verdict** If your main goal is to get a fast, easy transcript and you don't need any complex research features, YouTube-Transcript.io is a solid option. It does exactly what it says it will do. However, if you're a student or a researcher who needs to do more with the transcript, like adding notes or organizing your work, Web Highlights might be a better fit. ## **5\. Vomo AI** ![Vomo AI website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image5.webp) ### **Best For** VOMO AI is best for people who want not only to get a transcript but also to interact with the content using AI algorithms. Its "Ask AI" feature makes it a great choice for students and researchers who need to ask questions about the video content for their research projects. It is an advanced AI tool to transcribe YouTube videos. ### **Features of Vomo AI** - **Speech to Text Transcription:** VOMO AI uses advanced automatic speech recognition to turn a video URL into a text transcript.  - **AI Summarization:** VOMO AI automatically creates quick transcript summaries, which is great for quickly understanding long video content. - **Interactive AI Chat:** "Ask AI" tool allows you to ask questions about the video's content and transcript into a searchable knowledge base. - **Multi-language Support:** The tool has language support for more than 90 languages, which makes it very useful for a global audience. - **Content Creation:** VOMO AI can help you turn your video transcripts into other forms of content like blog posts, articles, and emails. ### **Pros of VOMO AI for YouTube Transcription** - Easy-to-use YouTube to transcript tool - Extensive multi-language support  - Free plan with 60 minutes of transcription at signup ### **Cons of VOMO AI** - No in-depth highlighting and organization tools  ### **Pricing of VOMO AI** VOMO AI offers a free plan with 60 minutes of transcription at signup and a Pro plan billed weekly or yearly (from about $1.92 per week on the yearly plan). ### **Final Verdict** VOMO AI is a great choice if you are looking for an AI tool to transcribe YouTube video and interact with it. The "Ask AI" feature sets it apart from many other simple transcription tools. However, if you're a student or a researcher who wants to organize your transcript with a good tagging system and multiple highlight colors, a more comprehensive tool might be a better option. ## **6\. Tactiq** ![Tactiq website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image6.webp) ### **Best For** Tactiq is best for people who need to transcribe live meetings and webinars, particularly on platforms like Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. It is ideal for professionals and students who want to capture conversations in real-time, generate transcript summaries, and create meeting notes. ### **Features of Tactiq** - **AI YouTube Transcript Generator:** Tactiq can transcribe YouTube videos by users pasting a video URL into the tool. - **AI Summaries:** Using AI models, it can create a short summary of a long transcript, including key points and action items. - **Export and Sharing:** You can download transcripts in various formats or share them directly with others through Tactiq. - **Content Functionality:** Tactiq allows you to add tags, comments, and screenshots to the live transcript. ### **Pros of Tactiq for YouTube Transcription** - Main strength is in live transcription - AI algorithms can identify action items and key takeaways ### **Cons of Tactiq** - Its primary focus is on live meetings, not on-demand video - Limited free plan ### **Pricing of Tactiq** Tactiq has a free plan with 10 transcripts and 5 AI credits per month. Paid plans (Pro, Team, Business) are billed per user, with Enterprise on request. Its pricing page shows prices in your local currency. ### **Final Verdict** For someone looking to get a quick transcript for YouTube videos, Tactiq gets the job done well. However, if your main goal is to organize, highlight, and revisit video content for long-term study or research projects, there are more dedicated tools available. ## **7\. Maestra AI** ![Maestra AI website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image4.webp) ### **Best For** [Maestra AI](https://maestra.ai/tools/video-to-text/youtube-transcript-generator) is a reliable choice for anyone who needs more than a simple transcript. It is a professional-grade platform designed for content creators, marketers, and students who require audio and video translation services and want to turn their video transcripts into a variety of formats. ### **Features of Maestra AI** - **AI YouTube Transcript Generator:** Maestra AI can generate a full transcript from a video URL.  - **AI Summarization:** Maestra AI provides an AI-powered summary of the video content, which helps users quickly get the main ideas without reading the entire transcript. - **Multi-language Translation:** It supports over 125 languages, making it a great solution for those who need to work with video content in multiple languages. - **Dubbing and Subtitling:** You can use Maestra AI to create subtitles and even voiceovers for your video, which is a great feature for professional use and reaching a wider audience. - **Collaboration:** It includes features for team collaboration, allowing multiple users to work on the same video transcripts. ### **Pros of Maestra AI for YouTube Transcription** - Highly accurate AI algorithms - Easy-to-use AI tool to transcribe YouTube videos - Supports multiple formats ### **Cons of Maestra AI** - Limited free trial and paid version may not suit casual users - The large number of features can feel overwhelming for those looking for basic transcription ### **Pricing of Maestra AI** Maestra AI offers the following pricing plans: - **Pay As You Go:** $12 per 60 credits - **Lite:** $23/mo (billed yearly) - **Basic:** $39/mo (billed yearly) - **Premium:** $79/mo (billed yearly) - **Enterprise:** Contact sales ### **Final Verdict** Maestra AI is a professional-grade AI tool to transcribe YouTube video content. Its main appeal is its wide array of features, especially its extensive language support and content localization options. For simple, quick transcriptions, it might be more than you need, but for professional and complex research projects, it is a useful platform. ## **8\. Easemate AI**  ![Easemate AI  website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image7.webp) ### **Best For** Easemate AI is a comprehensive AI assistant designed for a wide range of users, from students and researchers to content creators and professionals. It is an ideal choice for those looking for an all-in-one platform that combines multiple YouTube features in a single, user-friendly interface. ### **Features of Easemate AI** - **YouTube Transcript Generator** : Quickly converts any YouTube video into an accurate, time-stamped text transcript, saving you the time of manual transcription. - **AI Video Summarizer** : Automatically condenses long videos into concise summaries, allowing you to get the main points without watching the entire content. - **AI Image & Video Tools** : Allows you to create, edit, and enhance visual content, including turning still photos into animated videos. - **AI Study & Research Tools** : Includes features for generating flashcards, creating quizzes, and solving complex problems in subjects like math and physics. ### **Pros of Easemate AI for YouTube Transcription** - Easy-to-use platform - Excellent customer support ### **Cons of Easemate AI** - Limited organization functionality - Advanced capabilities are restricted to the paid plans - Credit-based, so heavy use adds up ### **Pricing of Easemate AI** - **Basic** : $0/month. Includes 30 free credits at signup. - **Lite** : $9.9/month ($8.9 for the first month). Offers 1,200 credits per month. - **Pro** : $24.9/month ($19.9 for the first month). Provides 3,000 credits per month. ### **Final Verdict** Easemate AI is a flexible AI assistant that offers a great suite of tools for a wide variety of tasks. However, for those who are serious about deep learning, research, and building a structured knowledge base, the tool can feel limited. ## **9\. YouTubeToTranscript** ![YouTubeToTranscript website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image14.webp) ### **Best For** The YouTubeToTranscript tool is for people who need a fast, simple, and free way to get a basic transcript from a YouTube video. It is ideal for a quick one-off task when you don't want to sign up for an account or download anything. ### **Features of YouTubeToTranscript** - **Simple Transcription** : This tool converts a YouTube video URL into a plain-text transcript instantly, without any additional steps. - **No Sign-Up Required** : You can use the tool right away, making it one of the quickest ways to get a transcript. - **One-Click Copy** : It provides a simple Copy Button to grab the entire transcript text. There is no file download yet. - **AI Prompt Library** : After generating the transcript, you get ready-made prompts to turn it into a summary or notes with ChatGPT or another AI tool. ### **Pros of YouTubeToTranscript for YouTube Transcription** - Direct and simple YouTube transcript generator tools  - No sign-up required - Intuitive interface without any extra clutter ### **Cons of YouTubeToTranscript** - Might feel basic compared to other tools - No note-taking options ### **Pricing of YouTubeToTranscript** YouTubeToTranscript.com is free to use. There are no paid plans or subscriptions. ### **Final Verdict** YouTubeToTranscript.com is a great tool to transcribe YouTube video content if all you need is a quick, basic transcript for YouTube videos. However, if your goal is to do anything more, like organize your educational videos for research projects or build a second brain, it falls short. ## **10\. RecCloud** ![RecCloud website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image9.webp) ### **Best For** RecCloud is best for content creators, marketers, and educators who need a comprehensive suite of AI tools beyond just transcription. It is an all-in-one platform that combines Speech to Text, video editing, and translation services, making it a powerful choice for those with a complex transcription workflow. ### **Features of RecCloud** - **AI YouTube Transcript Generator** : This tool converts a video URL from YouTube into a detailed, time-stamped transcript text with a high level of accuracy. - **AI YouTube Video Summarizer** : Automatically generates transcript summaries to help you quickly grasp the main points of video content. - **Multi-Language Support** : The tool supports over 100 languages, making it ideal for translation services and reaching a global audience. - **AI Subtitle Generator** : RecCloud creates closed captions automatically, which is a great feature for improving accessibility and SEO. ### **Pros of RecCloud for YouTube Transcription** - Accurate AI algorithms - Easy to download and use ### **Cons of RecCloud** - Wide number of features might be overwhelming  - The free plan is limited to just a few minutes of transcription ### **Pricing of RecCloud** RecCloud has a free plan that includes a limited number of transcriptions. They also offer a range of paid plans: - **Basic:** $4/month (billed yearly) - **Pro:** $5.75/month (billed yearly) - **Business:** $27.80/month (billed yearly) ### **Final Verdict** RecCloud is a comprehensive platform that goes beyond simple transcript generation. However, if your main goal is to simply highlight, take notes, and organize your research from YouTube videos and other online content, a more specialized tool like Web Highlights serves as a more straightforward solution. ## **Comparing the Top YouTube Transcript Generators**

Tool Names

Completely free YouTube Transcription

Multi-Language Support

YouTube AI Summary

Export Formats

Web Highlights

✅

✅

✅

✅

Kome AI

✅

✅

✅

❌

Note GPT

❌

✅

✅

✅

YouTube-Transcript.io

❌

✅

✅

✅

Vomo AI

❌

✅

✅

❌

Tactiq

❌

✅

✅

✅

Maestra AI

❌

✅

✅

✅

Easemate AI

❌

✅

✅

❌

YouTubeToTranscript

✅

✅

✅

❌


RecCloud

❌

✅

✅

❌

## **How to Choose the Right Tool?** Choosing the best YouTube Transcript Generator depends entirely on what you need it for. Different tools are built for different jobs. Here is a simple guide to help you decide which one is right for your transcription workflow. #### **1\. For Quick Transcription** If you need a fast and straightforward YouTube to text without a lot of extra features, Web Highlights is a suitable choice. You can simply paste a video URL and get a clean transcript text in seconds. This is a great solution for those who prioritize speed and simplicity for content absorption. #### **2\. For Multilingual Support**  If your research projects involve videos in different languages, Kome AI and VOMO AI offer extensive language support. They are ideal for global audiences and can save you a significant amount of manual transcription. However, remember that Web Highlights reads the captions in any language a video offers and lets you switch between them, so it covers most multilingual videos too. #### **3\. For Annotation, Highlights, and Summary** When your goal is to do more than just get a transcript for YouTube videos, Web Highlights is the clear winner. This tool is ideal for highlighting key information, writing notes, adding tags, or creating [effective study guides](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-create-a-study-guide/) . The AI YouTube Transcript Generator in Web Highlights also provides a quick summary to get the main points of educational videos or research interviews. You can also open the transcript or the summary in the [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-5-reader-mode-chrome-extensions-for-focused-reading/) for [better annotation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/youtube-video-annotations/) and distraction-free reading. #### **4\. For Interactive Features** VOMO AI provides interactive tools that allow users to ask questions and engage with the transcript text, which can enhance the analysis process. This is a powerful feature for students and researchers who need a deeper understanding of the video content. #### **5\. For Live Content** Tactiq excels at real-time transcript generation. It is a great choice for live streams, online lectures, and webinars where you need Speech to Text as the conversation happens. Ultimately, the best AI tool to transcribe YouTube videos is the one that fits your specific needs. While some tools are great for live content or multilingual support, Web Highlights stands out for anyone who wants not only to transcribe but also organize, annotate, and learn from online video content. ## **Final Thoughts** We've looked at a lot of tools that can help with your transcription workflow. Some are built simply for AI summaries, and some are huge platforms that do everything.  While those tools are great for what they do, Web Highlights is built for something more. It is an all-in-one tool that allows you to generate transcripts, summaries, and highlights, add notes, and much more. It is for people who want to learn from video content, not just transcribe it. Ready to see how easy it is to save and learn from your favorite YouTube videos with Web Highlights? Try it today. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. How accurate is the Web Highlights’ AI YouTube Transcript Generator?** Web Highlights doesn't run its own speech recognition. It shows the video's captions, so the transcript is exactly as accurate as those captions: creator-written captions are near perfect, YouTube's auto-generated ones are usually good with clear audio and weaker with background noise or heavy accents. The AI summary runs on your computer, so your data stays private. ### **2\. Can I use these tools for languages other than English?** Yes. Many modern speech-to-text tools, including RecCloud, have extensive language support. They can often generate video transcripts and even provide basic translation services for a wide range of global languages. ### **3\. Do I need to pay to get transcript summaries?** Not always. Web Highlights gives you transcripts for free and includes one AI summary per day on the free plan; the Ultimate plan lifts that limit. Most other tools work with credits or a monthly quota, so you pay once you summarize more videos. ### **4\. How can video transcripts help with research projects?** Video transcripts transform video content into searchable text, making it much easier to find and reference specific information without re-watching the entire video. This is especially useful for research interviews and educational videos as it allows you to quickly locate key quotes, concepts, or data points. ### **5\. What is the difference between closed captions and transcript text?** Closed captions are typically timed to the video to appear at the right moment and are often used for accessibility. Transcript text, on the other hand, is a full, unformatted text version of the audio, often without timestamps, that is easier to copy, paste, and use for note-taking or building study guides. --- # How to Import Highlights from Diigo into Web Highlights > Diigo is a popular browser extension with over 300k users. Here's a quick guide on how to import all your annotations and notes from Diigo into Web Highlights. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-09-24 - Updated: 2025-09-24 - Tags: Diigo, integration, Tutorial - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-import-highlights-from-diigo-into-web-highlights/ --- Diigo is a popular Chrome extension with over 300,000 users. Similar to Web Highlights it allows you to annotate websites and PDFs. We've been getting a lot of requests to import highlights, notes, and annotations from Diigo into Web Highlights. So, we've created an easy integration that allows you to bring over all your highlights, notes, and pages from the Diigo Highlighter Browser Extension. > If you haven't installed the Web Highlights browser extension yet, please do. You can [install it here](https://web-highlights.com/install) . Here's a quick guide on how to easily import all your highlights, pages, and notes to Web Highlights. ## Step 1: Export Highlights from Diigo Open and log in to Diigo. Now go to  _"Tools"_  and choose _"Export your library"_ at the bottom of the page. ![Diigo Tools menu with an arrow pointing to Export your library](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image.webp) *Tools > Export your library* Now, choose the CSV format and click "Export". ![Choose CSV format & export](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image-1.webp) *Choose CSV format & export* You should receive an email with the exported CSV file. Alternatively, you can also download the file from the "Export History" page which will appear after the export is complete. You might need to refresh the page. Now, simply download the exported CSV file from the email or from the Export History. ![Download from Export History](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/image-2.webp) *Download from Export History* ## Step 2: Import Highlights into Web Highlights There are two ways to import your highlights into Web Highlights: 1. Use the extension sidebar on any website. 2. Use the web app at [app.web-highlights.com](https://app.web-highlights.com/) . Note that this requires a [Premium or Ultimate subscription](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . Click the extension icon to open the sidebar (You can skip this step if you are using the web app). ![Open Web Highlights Sidebar](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.31.22-1.webp) *Open Web Highlights Sidebar* Click on the `settings icon` in the bottom left side of the sidebar. ![Click on settings icon](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.32.03-1.webp) *Click on settings icon* On the  `Settings`  page, you can see  `Integrations` on the left. Click it and find the `Diigo Import` option. Click it to upload the CSV file in the next section. ![Diigo import integration](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/diigo-import-integration.png) *Diigo import integration* Click `Upload Diigo CSV File` and select the exported Diigo CSV file from the first step. ![Upload Diigo CSV file](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/upload-diigo-file.png) *Upload Diigo CSV file* If the file is valid, you will see an info of how many pages and highlights can be imported. Now, you can click `Start Import` . ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/09/start-import.png) *Start Import* Now, wait until the import finishes. If you have cloud sync enabled and are importing many highlights, synchronization may take some time. But don't worry, you can close the modal and continue working. The synchronization will keep running in the background. ## Step 3: View the Imported Highlights If the import was successful, you'll find your imported annotations in the history section of the sidebar. Click the left tab in the sidebar to see all your pages. ![View highlighted page history to see your imported highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.36.33.webp) *View highlighted page history to see your imported highlights* If you're using the web app, visit the dashboard to see all your imported highlights, pages, and notes. ![Find your pages in the web app](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.37.42.webp) *Find your pages in the web app* ## Step 4: Visit Highlighted Pages After importing your highlights, you can revisit the pages you previously highlighted using Diigo. Just select a highlighted page, visit it, and your highlights should appear. ![Recreated Weava highlights in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-13.02.18.webp) *Recreated Diigo highlights in Web Highlights* However, keep in mind that Web Highlights tries to recreate the highlights on the page, and this might not always work perfectly because Diigo uses a different highlighting method. Some highlights might not display correctly on the page, but they will always be accessible in the sidebar and the web app. You can learn more about [why highlights might not be recreated correctly here](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-are-my-highlights-not-visible-on-the-page/) . ## Final Thoughts If you’re using Diigo but want a more modern highlighter, switching is simple. Just [install the Web Highlights extension](https://web-highlights.com/install) for [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) , or [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig/) , import all your Diigo research, and you’ll be all set. > [**Install PDF & Web Highlighter on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. --- # How to Highlight in Obsidian (and Maximize Your Note-Taking Experience) > Learn how to highlight in Obsidian using Markdown and Web Highlights. Add colors, tags, notes, and one-click export for faster, cleaner notes. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-09-01 - Updated: 2026-10-05 - Reading time: 9 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-in-obsidian-and-maximize-your-note-taking-experience/ --- Obsidian is one of the most popular note-taking apps, but if you’ve ever tried to highlight text directly inside it, you probably noticed the options feel limited. Markdown gives you ways to format notes, but there is no simple built-in tool for color highlighting, tags, or organizing highlights across your vault. That’s where [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) comes in. It is a browser extension and web app that integrates with Obsidian, letting you highlight text from web pages, PDFs, or even your Kindle, and then export those highlights straight into Obsidian. You can tag, add notes, and organize them, turning plain text into something far more useful. > [**Install PDF & Web Highlighter on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. In this guide, we will walk through step-by-step how to highlight in Obsidian using Web Highlights, how to organize and tag those highlights, and how to export them so they actually improve your note-taking workflow.  By the end, you will know exactly how to make your Obsidian vault easier to reference, study, and build on. ## **Why Highlighting in Obsidian Makes Sense** Highlighting text makes note-taking far easier to manage.  Instead of scanning long notes or full documents, you can jump directly to the main content marked with a highlight color. It improves context, helps you spot key points faster, and makes review sessions [more productive](https://web-highlights.com/blog/maximizing-productivity-tools-web-highlights/) . In Obsidian, this becomes even more powerful because the app is built on markdown formatting syntax. You can mix highlights with other formatting, such as code blocks, numbered lists, or even column headers, to create a structured vault. Combined with search queries and saved searches, highlighted sections are easier to filter and resurface later. Highlighting also works well with Obsidian’s linking system.  A single cursor position inside a highlighted block can connect to another note, making your reading view more interactive. Features like preview mode, Live Preview, and reading mode give you different ways to view highlights alongside your notes without losing focus on the page content. On its own, though, Obsidian doesn’t provide rich options like multiple highlight colors, underlines, or color highlighting based on CSS style, or just simple research. This is where  [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-website)  fills the gap. It adds an intuitive highlighting layer that you can export into your vault. You can highlight web pages, PDFs, or even use it with Kindle, then send those annotations into Obsidian for long-term use. The tool also supports  [Spaced Repetition](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning)  by resurfacing highlights, so your study sessions don’t just collect notes; they help you actually remember them. By combining Obsidian’s linking and plugin ecosystem with Web Highlights’ tagging,  [annotation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/practical-annotation-examples/)  , and export features, you get a more organized workflow for research, writing, and studying. ## **2\. Setting Up Web Highlights for Obsidian Integration** Before you can highlight in Obsidian, you’ll need to connect it with Web Highlights. The setup only takes a few minutes. ### **Install the Extension** Start by installing the [Web Highlights Chrome extension](https://web-highlights.com/install/) . Once added, you’ll see the extension icon in your browser toolbar; just pin it. From there, you can highlight web pages, PDFs, or even import your Kindle highlights and export to Capacities. ### **Create an Account and Sign In** After installation, open the [Web Highlights app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) and create a free account. Cross-device sync is free during the 7-day trial, then part of the paid plans, so you can access them later in Obsidian, whether you’re on desktop or mobile. You can also adjust preferences, like [keyboard shortcuts](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages#highlight-text-using-keyboard-shortcuts) , from your account dashboard. ### **Enable Obsidian Export** There is no lengthy process of [exporting Web Highlights’ annotations to Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) . All you need to do is copy the markdown. We will look at this in detail below.  ## **3\. How to Highlight Text in Obsidian** One of the first things you’ll notice when working in Obsidian is that there’s no simple built-in way to highlight text. Unlike bold or italics, highlighting feels hidden behind formatting rules that aren’t very user-friendly. To highlight in Obsidian, you have to type two equal signs on each side of the text. For example: ==this==.  Sometimes you’ll see proper colour highlighting, but in other cases it blends in with the normal text. Due to this, many people try to fix highlights with custom CSS class tweaks, HTML tags, or even regular expressions inside search queries. However, adding these edits to every note quickly becomes time-consuming. You end up worrying about font colour, line breaks, and whether your formatting syntax will even show the highlight correctly in Light Mode Style versus dark mode. Without extra setup or third-party tools, Obsidian just treats everything as normal text, making it harder to scan your main content and page content during a review session. In short, Obsidian does allow highlighting text, but the method feels limited, clunky, and inconsistent. That’s why many users look for easier ways to manage highlighting text without constantly fighting with the user interface or relying on 3rd party plugins. ## **4\. How to Use Web Highlights to Export Highlights in Obsidian** This is where Web Highlights makes a real difference. Instead of fiddling with ==this== or custom CSS class snippets, you can highlight text on web pages or PDFs directly in your browser, then send those highlights into Obsidian in a clean markdown format. ### **Highlight in Multiple Colors** ![Different colors options available in Web Highlights to highlight text](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcn7-KBnmZXc6EW6vyn6VHDXTLnpc0jLtP4gFE0qK0TXt7EEkSHjiwrTgxLGi9iLOzrHGyNflDVREIBDjR4AgLG_Lfhl585QyJTfiWXfSqr3tAQCQCbLkXYBcS6NlY1wdh4OCzw?key=1X0rJiG9H4V5PgqRG-altw) With Web Highlights, you are not stuck with one highlight color. You can choose different colours to separate ideas, for example, yellow for definitions, blue for examples, or red for questions to revisit later. This kind of colour highlighting makes your review sessions much faster. Highlighting is really simple, too. You just need to select the text on any webpage and then choose a color to highlight it in.  ### **Annotate with Tags** ![Add multiple tags to text and images with Web Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdzoK2kVDN3tI4WtwurvkTc-B9J1J84GxiBLy9xyFVyQ672FdD0Z8fWiOumQH86wA41L-lR9zuL_Df3J3sY6LvyFpnYDpcHQlolBuxbTzJ2RjbRQfY18Kc4h5suAeoz0kDSCUNG0Q?key=1X0rJiG9H4V5PgqRG-altw) Every highlight can be  [tagged](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/tags-and-organization)  inside Web Highlights. When exported, these tags carry over to Obsidian, so you can group highlights by topic, project, or category. Later, you can find them with search queries or even build saved searches for resurfaced highlights. ### **Add Formatting** ![Format your highlights through different options in Web Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeAnZbUhZD4tHgyfLZxAuxCegfHNRGmEgpN2HHM6Y2HxP9wHQPo1EhYx_yySepZhbfhhUU1SP7FiTJ_KecxoyqilzDYdfPOmHJ158LkxD2vGHFBNEWNpzR0yu1XDO3mXluxbMsm?key=1X0rJiG9H4V5PgqRG-altw) Beyond colors and tags, you can [format your highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) with headings (H1, H2, H3), bullets, numbered lists, or even a code block for technical notes. This keeps your main content structured when it lands in Obsidian. ### **Add Notes** ![Add notes to images and text in Web Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcEauFFsHHpfs5yNGWQIjWqT0lUqbRGimzmjHIiLk7tWZtc9scTDUwLjITjItDA5k6TSQaRAkaXR6ciMzSpKefE6q1x3W0m_hN7sccI_cPVcJvbshsUekOE2cBMnzXSHhky3joilw?key=1X0rJiG9H4V5PgqRG-altw) Each highlight can include an attached note. Maybe you want to explain why you highlighted a passage, or add a quick reminder for your next review session. These notes sync into Obsidian, appearing right alongside the original page content. ### **Export Options** ![Exporting Web Highlights' highlights into Obsidian by copying Markdown](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfKapLv-r6bDEualD1VVo8cKFyOtHnyK0lwvDqRC8OK11NyaWoM4pUSA7gHmdLoFoRuAb7oxFGNu7LNLuSsNob6kWvSPz6aKm_C-JA6nC4jBGG6C3PWSO8Dt80AzV6Y9ufrTAasmg?key=1X0rJiG9H4V5PgqRG-altw) Exporting is simple. Copy your chosen highlights as Markdown and paste them into Obsidian. The export respects your formatting syntax, line breaks, and HTML tags, so what you see in Web Highlights is what you get in your vault.  To export your highlight in obsidian, click on the three dots that appear in your WebHighlights app or on the sidebar that appears when highlighting a webpage.  Then click on the “ [Copy Markdown](https://web-highlights.com/docs/integrations/markdown-export) ” option that appears.  After copying your markdown, go to Obsidian and create a new page. Paste the copied content onto the page, and you should see your highlights, notes, and tags. This is what highlights look like when pasted in Obsidian: ![Exported highlights from Web Highlights appearing in Obsidian](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcBB7N_yC0ATA06vQ9pqb8wiGIuowEn1ai5Rv-Sp76tBZTKHIbHPGWMJm8XZeQCcjeAvEiksAKSGE4rQJVmvOZzKb8z_mRXKeuKWwwLFY7Lu_Js_dN-hH7itmO6yCkraCy_SsJJVg?key=1X0rJiG9H4V5PgqRG-altw) By combining highlights, tags, notes, and formatting, Web Highlights turns plain text into structured notes that feel natural inside Obsidian. ## **5\. Organizing and Categorizing Your Highlights** Knowing how to highlight in Obsidian is only the first step.  The real value comes when you organize those highlights so they are easy to find and use later. Web Highlights makes this process smoother by exporting content in a way that works well with Obsidian’s structure. ### **Use Tags for Efficiency** Tags are one of the best ways to keep highlights searchable. For example, you can tag highlights with “Important,” “Definitions,” or “To Review.” In Obsidian, these tags can be pulled up through search queries or saved searches, helping you resurface highlights during a review session. Instead of scrolling through long notes, tags group related page content together, making your [research more efficient](https://web-highlights.com/blog/efficient-research-with-web-highlights/) . ### **Linking Highlights** One of Obsidian’s strengths is its ability to connect notes.  You can link highlights together by inserting links between related topics. A highlighted definition can connect to a detailed note, while an exported H2 heading can link back to the original web pages where the highlight was made. This creates a connected knowledge base, where each cursor position in your note can lead you to more context. By tagging, structuring, and linking, you turn basic highlights into a system that works across your research. This is where Web Highlights and Obsidian together move beyond simple colour highlighting and become a tool for long-term knowledge management. ## **6\. Reviewing and Managing Highlights Over Time** #### **_Search & filter highlights_** Use search queries with tags to pull up the exact snippets you need. Set up saved searches for topics you revisit a lot, so resurfaced highlights show up fast during a review session. #### **_Sync across devices_** Web Highlights keeps your annotations in sync (free during the 7-day trial, then part of the paid plans), so your Obsidian exports stay consistent on desktop and mobile. This way, how to highlight in Obsidian stays the same everywhere, and the user interface doesn’t get in your way. #### **_Cross-linking highlights_** Turn highlights into a web of ideas. In Live Preview, place the cursor position inside a highlighted line and add a link to another note using _\[\[Note Name\]\]_ . Do the same for definitions, sources, or follow-ups. In reading view/preview mode, Obsidian shows backlinks automatically so that you can jump between connected notes. Over time, this makes how to highlight in Obsidian more useful because your page is linked, searchable, and easy to revisit during any review session. ## **Key Takeaways** Highlighting in Obsidian gets much easier with Web Highlights. You get clean color highlights, tags, notes, and quick copy to Markdown. Your notes stay organized, quick to scan, and simple to review across devices. Ready to try it? [Install the extension today](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. How to highlight in Obsidian without the Web Highlights extension?** The basic way for how to highlight text in Obsidian is to wrap text with double equals, like _\==this==_ . It works in Live Preview and reading view, but styling depends on your theme and CSS. If you want multiple colors, tags, and notes you can copy as Markdown, use Web Highlights. ### **2\. How do I export Obsidian notes back to Web Highlights?** There isn’t a direct “send back” sync. Use Web Highlights’ Add Content (available in the app) to paste text, a URL, or a PDF so you can open it in [reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-read-any-website-in-distraction-free-reader-mode/) and highlight there. Then export to Obsidian again in clean Markdown. ### **3\. Is Web Highlights available for mobile versions of Obsidian?** Web Highlights is a browser extension and a web app. Your highlights sync to the Web Highlights app. After export, your Obsidian vault handles mobile via your own sync. ### **4\. Can I sync highlights across multiple devices with Web Highlights?** Yes. Sign in to your Web Highlights account to keep highlights in sync (free during the 7-day trial, then part of the paid plans). Exported Markdown in Obsidian will follow whatever sync you already use. This keeps your tags, highlight color, and notes consistent on all devices. ### **5\. How do I search for highlighted content in Obsidian?** Open global search (Ctrl+Shift+F / Cmd+Shift+F), and search for /==.+==/ (regular expressions go between slashes) to match Markdown highlights. Add operators such as tag:, file:, path: or section: to narrow the results, and bookmark the search to reuse it. If you export from Web Highlights, filter by tags or headings (H1/H2/H3) for quick resurfacing during a review session. ### **6\. How to Highlight in Obsidian Shortcut?** Obsidian has a built-in “Toggle highlight” command that wraps the selected text in ==, but it has no default hotkey. Open Settings → Hotkeys, search for “highlight” and assign your own shortcut. If you want color options without manual edits, highlight in Web Highlights first and export the results to your vault. --- # The Great Comparison: Top iOS & Android Habit Tracking Apps > Habit tracker apps compared: 10 top picks side by side. Discover which apps like HabitKit, Loop, and Habitica work best for building daily routines. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-08-21 - Updated: 2026-10-09 - Tags: comparison, Apps, Tools, Productivity - Reading time: 24 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-great-comparison-top-ios-android-habit-tracking-apps/ --- Habit tracker apps have revolutionized how millions build better routines and achieve personal goals. With the market exploding from simple streak counters to comprehensive life management systems, finding the right app can be overwhelming.  I compared the 10 best habit tracker apps for iOS and Android side by side. Whether you’re looking for basic habit monitoring or advanced analytics, this guide will help you choose the perfect productivity companion. How this list was made: I picked these apps from Productivity Apps, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each app from its App Store and Google Play listings, its ratings and what recent reviews report. The descriptions below summarize each listing and what its users report. ### List of the Best Habit-Tracker Apps for Android & iOS: - [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) - [Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/loop-habit-tracker) - [HabitNow Daily Routine Planner](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habit-now-daily-routine-planner) - [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) - [TheFor: Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thefor-habit-tracker) - [Motivated](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/motivated-habit-tracker) - [Me+ Lifestyle Routine](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/me-plus-lifestyle-routine) - [Habitica](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitica) - [Disciplined](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/disciplined-habit-tracker) - [Habit Diary](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habit-diary) If you prefer a simple comparison overview, check out the [full comparison table of all habit-tracker apps](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/category/habit-tracker) : ![Comparison of all apps for habit tracking](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2600/1*K5GAPOUmaGTb5DQvuqBpyQ.png) *Comparison of all apps for habit tracking* > [**Compare All 11 Habit Tracker Apps - Which is the Best?**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/category/habit-tracker) — In-depth comparison of all 11 Habit Tracker apps including Loop Habits, HabitNow, Habitive, HabitKit and more. See features, ratings, pricing side by side. (Marius Bongarts) ### [1\. HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) ![HabitKit](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*W_DhXxonIBXzISHr9Y-Mvw.png) *HabitKit* HabitKit has quickly become one of the most elegant and effective habit tracking apps available.  What sets HabitKit apart is its beautiful GitHub-style visualization, paired with a minimalist approach that keeps the focus on building and maintaining good habits. Whether your goal is to exercise more, read daily, or break a bad habit, HabitKit provides the right tools without unnecessary complexity. > [**HabitKit - Habit Tracker Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) — Read our in-depth review of HabitKit - Habit Tracker. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to… ### Key Features: - **GitHub-Style Progress Visualization** : Track your habits with beautiful tile-based grid charts that provide a clear visual representation of your progress over time - **Build, Quit, Count or Measure** : Check habits off with yes or no, count reps like glasses or pages, measure amounts with decimals and your own units (2 L of water, 7.5 km of running), or quit a habit and count your clean days - **Flexible Goals and Reminders** : Set daily targets, intervals, or a number of times per week or month, cap a habit at a daily maximum, and get a nudge at the right time - **Categories and Views** : Group habits into default or custom categories, filter the dashboard, reorder with drag and drop, and switch between Classic, Compact, and Split views - **Statistics, Streaks and Day Notes** : Follow current and best streaks, check completion statistics and monthly charts, fill in past days in the calendar, and add a note to any day - **Privacy-Focused Design** : All your data stays on your device, with no account required and full offline functionality - **Data Backup & Export** : Export and import your habit data as a backup file; announced to become free for everyone in October 2026, alongside a daily iCloud backup on iPhone - **Home Screen Widgets** : Keep your habits visible with small, medium, and multi-habit widgets (Premium feature) ### Pros & Cons Pros: - Beautiful GitHub-style visualization - Clean, minimalist interface - Privacy-focused with offline functionality - Count and measure with custom units - Lifetime purchase option available - Ad-free even in free version - Responsive developer support - Regular updates and improvements Cons: - Limited to 4 habits in free version - Widgets require premium - No sync across devices ### Who is this great for? HabitKit is perfect for anyone who values design excellence and wants a clean, focused approach to habit tracking. Whether you’re a developer who appreciates the GitHub-style aesthetic, a minimalist who prefers simplicity over complexity, or just someone who wants to track a few key habits effectively, HabitKit delivers. It’s especially great for users who want a premium experience without overwhelming features, and for anyone who values privacy and offline functionality. The beautiful visualization makes it appealing for users who find motivation in seeing their progress clearly displayed. ### Compared to others HabitKit stands out for its design excellence and premium user experience when compared to other habit trackers like [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) or [Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/loop-habit-tracker) . While some apps offer unlimited free habits or more comprehensive features, HabitKit carves out its niche with superior aesthetics and a focused approach that justifies its subscription model. ### Detailed comparisons [HabitKit vs Habitica](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habitkit-habit-tracker-vs-habitica) • [HabitKit vs Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habitkit-habit-tracker-vs-loop-habit-tracker) • [HabitKit vs Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habitkit-habit-tracker-vs-habitive-habit-tracker) ### [2\. Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/loop-habit-tracker) ![Loop Habit Tracker](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*r13L6JrhJ9LirTWYQEQwow.png) *Loop Habit Tracker* Loop Habit Tracker stands out as a remarkably focused and efficient habit tracking solution for Android.  With over 5 million downloads and a stellar 4.8 rating (with 59,500+ reviews), this free, open-source application has earned its reputation as a top choice for habit building. The app maintains excellent quality, as evidenced by its 4.6 rating for the last 100 reviews, showing consistent user satisfaction. What really sets Loop apart is its ability to strip away unnecessary complexity while maintaining powerful functionality. Its clean, minimalist interface paired with comprehensive tracking capabilities creates an experience that’s both sophisticated and approachable. While Habitive offers unlimited free habits and HabitKit excels in visual design, Loop strikes the perfect balance between simplicity and advanced features. > [**Loop Habit Tracker Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/loop-habit-tracker) — Read our in-depth review of Loop Habit Tracker. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Loop… ### Key Features: - **Flexible Habit Tracking** : Supports various tracking frequencies, including daily, weekly, and monthly goals (like “3 times per week” or “once every other week”) - **Detailed Analytics** : Provides comprehensive statistics and graphs that clearly visualize your progress over time, including habit strength calculations and historical data - **Customizable Widgets** : Variety of home screen widgets that allow quick habit tracking without opening the app - **Privacy-Focused** : All data is stored locally on your device with no account required. The app works completely offline and includes export options to CSV and SQLite formats - **Smart Reminders** : Each habit can have its own notification schedule, with the option to make notifications “sticky” until you respond - **Clean Interface** : Minimalist design keeps you focused on building habits without unnecessary distractions - **Habit Strength Calculation** : Advanced formula that considers both your streaks and overall consistency, making missed days less devastating to your progress - **Material Design** : Follows Android design guidelines for a familiar and intuitive user experience ### Pros & Cons Pros: - Completely free with no ads or premium features - Excellent privacy with offline-only storage and no account required - Clean, minimalist interface without distractions - Flexible tracking options for different habit frequencies - Comprehensive statistics and progress visualization - Useful home screen widgets for quick tracking - Reliable performance and stability - Data export options for backup and analysis Cons: - No cloud sync between devices - Cannot group habits into categories or folders - Limited to single daily check-ins per habit - No option to track negative habits (breaking bad habits) - Cannot select specific days for weekly habits - Font size may be too small for some users ### Who is this great for? Loop Habit Tracker is perfect for anyone who values simplicity and privacy in their habit tracking experience. Whether you’re a privacy-conscious user who wants complete control over their data, someone who prefers a distraction-free interface, or just someone who wants powerful features without the complexity, Loop delivers. It’s especially great for users who appreciate open-source software and want to support community-driven development. The comprehensive analytics make it appealing for data-driven users who want to understand their habit patterns, while the offline functionality is perfect for users who need reliable access even without internet. ### Compared to others Loop’s completely free model and privacy focus give it a clear advantage over paid alternatives like [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) for budget-conscious users, though HabitKit may offer more visual appeal. Against [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) , Loop provides better analytics and more sophisticated tracking features, while Habitive offers unlimited free habits with a simpler interface. ### Detailed comparisons [Loop Habit Tracker vs HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/loop-habit-tracker-vs-habitkit-habit-tracker) • [Loop Habit Tracker vs Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/loop-habit-tracker-vs-habitive-habit-tracker) • [Loop Habit Tracker vs Habitica](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/loop-habit-tracker-vs-habitica) ### [3\. HabitNow Daily Routine Planner](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habit-now-daily-routine-planner) ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*dn2wzSvGjKtVjH1wWPstrQ.png) HabitNow stands out as one of the most flexible and feature-rich habit trackers on Android. With over 5 million downloads and a strong 4.7-star rating (with 81,600+ reviews), this comprehensive app has earned its reputation as a top choice for productivity-focused users. The app maintains excellent quality, as evidenced by its 4.53 rating for the last 100 reviews, showing consistent user satisfaction. What really sets HabitNow apart is its highly customizable scheduling, motivating widgets, and clean, user-friendly interface. Whether you want to build new habits, manage daily tasks, or simply stay organized, HabitNow adapts to your needs without being overwhelming. While HabitKit excels in design elegance and Loop Habit Tracker offers simplicity, HabitNow provides the most comprehensive solution for users who need advanced scheduling and timer functionality. > [**HabitNow Daily Routine Planner Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habit-now-daily-routine-planner) — Read our in-depth review of HabitNow Daily Routine Planner. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best… ### Key Features: - **Flexible Habit & Task Scheduling** : Set daily, weekly, monthly, or custom routines with precision, ensuring your schedule adapts to your unique needs effortlessly - **Widgets & Reminders** : Home screen widgets and highly customizable notifications that ensure you never forget scheduled activities - **Timer & Pomodoro Tools** : Built-in stopwatch, countdown, and interval timers to enhance your focus and productivity - **Detailed Progress Tracking** : Visual stats, charts, and streaks to keep you motivated and track your achievements effectively - **Customizable Experience** : Personalize with themes, icons, and categories to create a personalized look and feel - **Data Backup & Privacy** : Local backups and lock screen feature for privacy protection, with manual export options - **Comprehensive Calendar Integration** : Seamless blend of task management and time organization in one unified interface - **Advanced Scheduling System** : Tailor tasks and events with precision, supporting complex routines and priorities ### Pros & Cons Pros: - Highly customizable and flexible scheduling - Widgets and reminders are effective - One-time premium purchase, no subscription - Clean and user-friendly interface - Motivating streaks and statistics - Built-in timer and Pomodoro functionality - Comprehensive progress tracking - Multiple theme and icon options Cons: - Free version limits number of habits/tasks - Some alarm and notification issues - No account sync or true cloud backup - Widgets and unlimited habits require premium - Occasional widget update quirks - Manual backup process could be simplified ### Who is this great for? HabitNow is perfect for anyone who needs comprehensive scheduling and productivity tools beyond basic habit tracking. Whether you’re a student managing school schedules, a professional organizing work routines, or someone who wants to integrate habit building with daily task management, HabitNow delivers. It’s especially great for users who appreciate flexibility and customization, and for anyone who wants timer functionality and detailed progress tracking in one app. The comprehensive scheduling system makes it appealing for users with complex routines, while the clean interface ensures it remains accessible to beginners. ### Compared to others HabitNow’s comprehensive feature set gives it a clear advantage over simpler habit trackers like [Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/loop-habit-tracker) for users who need advanced scheduling and timer functionality. Against [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) , HabitNow offers more organizational tools and flexibility, while HabitKit excels in visual design. When compared to [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) , HabitNow provides more sophisticated features, though Habitive offers unlimited free habits. ### Detailed comparisons [HabitNow vs HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habit-now-daily-routine-planner-vs-habitkit-habit-tracker) • [HabitNow vs Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habit-now-daily-routine-planner-vs-loop-habit-tracker) • [HabitNow vs Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habit-now-daily-routine-planner-vs-habitive-habit-tracker) ### [4\. Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) ![Habitive](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*cox0_aMpF4J9oxK1O7pW2A.png) *Habitive* Looking for a habit tracker that actually works? Habitive might be exactly what you need. With over 10,000 downloads and a stellar 4.9-star rating on the Play Store (with 254+ reviews), lots of people are loving this app.  The app maintains excellent quality, as evidenced by its 4.65 rating for the last 100 reviews, showing consistent user satisfaction. It has all the basics you’d want — unlimited habits, a fun achievement system, and it’s not overwhelming with too many features. What makes it special is how simple it is.  Most habit trackers either cost money or limit what you can do for free. While [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) offers a beautiful design and [Habitica](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitica) provides unique gamification, Habitive gives you everything without charging a penny. > [**Habitive - Your Habit Tracker Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) — Read our in-depth review of Habitive - Your Habit Tracker. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best… ### Key Features: - **Unlimited Habits** : No limits on how many habits you can create — unlike other apps that restrict free users - **Flexible Goals** : Set weekly targets that fit your life (daily, 4x/week, etc.) instead of forcing daily completion - **Achievement System** : Unlock rewards as you build your habits, providing motivation through gamification - **Home Screen Widgets** : Keep your habits visible without opening the app for quick access - **Progress Tracking** : See how you’re doing over time with detailed statistics and calendar views - **Weekly Schedule Focus** : Focus on current week goals rather than daily pressure - **Advanced Statistics** : Track performance history and unlock achievements as you progress ### Pros & Cons Pros: - Completely free with no ads - No account needed to start - Looks great and easy to use - Create unlimited habits - Fun achievement system - Set your own weekly goals - Widgets for your home screen - Clean, simple design - Keeps your data private - 3-click setup process - No premium tiers or restrictions Cons: - Widgets sometimes have bugs - Doesn’t sync well between phones and tablets - Can’t organize habits into groups - Some phones have compatibility issues - Limited organizational features - No cloud backup options ### Who is this great for? Habitive is perfect for anyone who wants a simple, effective habit tracker without any financial commitment. Whether you’re a student on a budget, someone who prefers straightforward tools, or just someone who wants unlimited free habits without restrictions, Habitive delivers. It’s especially great for users who appreciate simplicity and don’t need complex organizational features. The achievement system makes it appealing for users who find motivation in gamification, while the unlimited habits feature is perfect for users who want to track multiple aspects of their life without artificial limits. ### Compared to others Habitive’s completely free model with unlimited habits gives it a clear advantage over paid alternatives like [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) for budget-conscious users, though HabitKit may offer more visual appeal. Against [Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/loop-habit-tracker) , Habitive provides unlimited free habits with a simpler interface, while Loop offers better analytics and more sophisticated tracking features. When compared to [HabitNow](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habit-now-daily-routine-planner) , Habitive excels in simplicity and cost-effectiveness, while HabitNow provides more comprehensive scheduling and timer functionality. ### Detailed comparisons [Habitive vs HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habitive-habit-tracker-vs-habitkit-habit-tracker) • [Habitive vs Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habitive-habit-tracker-vs-loop-habit-tracker) • [Habitive vs HabitNow](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habitive-habit-tracker-vs-habit-now-daily-routine-planner) ### [5\. TheFor: Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thefor-habit-tracker) ![TheFor: Habit Tracker](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*jCdNGErU94RGqpOH77kZEw.png) *TheFor: Habit Tracker* TheFor: Habit Tracker’s listing promises a streamlined, visually appealing habit tracker, and its reviewers largely agree. With over 500,000 downloads and a strong 4.2-star rating on the Play Store (with 3,340+ reviews), it’s clear that TheFor has struck a chord with users looking for a simple, effective way to build better habits. The app maintains good quality, as evidenced by its 3.89 rating for the last 100 reviews. The app’s greatest strength is its minimalist, distraction-free design. You can track unlimited habits for free, without being bombarded by ads or unnecessary features. The interface is clean and intuitive, making it easy to focus on your daily routines and long-term goals. While Habitive leads the category with a perfect 10/10 value rating and completely free unlimited habits, TheFor offers a more polished premium experience for users who want advanced analytics and customization. > [**TheFor: Habit Tracker Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thefor-habit-tracker) — Read our in-depth review of TheFor: Habit Tracker. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to… ### Key Features: - **Unlimited Habit Tracking** : Track as many habits as you want, even in the free version — no artificial limits - **Minimalist & Intuitive Design** : Clean, distraction-free interface that makes habit tracking enjoyable and focused - **Streaks & Progress Overviews** : Visualize your progress with daily, weekly, and monthly views to stay motivated - **Custom Reminders** : Set personalized notifications to help you stay on track with your habit goals - **Home Screen Widgets** : Access and complete habits directly from your home screen for convenience (premium feature) - **Advanced Analytics & Journal** : Unlock detailed stats, journaling, and routines with premium upgrade - **Effortless Habit Tracking** : Simple swipe gestures to mark habits complete on the main screen - **Comprehensive Weekly Overview** : Get a bird’s-eye view of all your habits and their weekly progress ### Pros & Cons Pros: - Unlimited habits in free version - Minimalist and beautiful interface - No ads, even for free users - Flexible reminders and scheduling - Lifetime purchase option available - Widgets for home screen (premium) - Clean, distraction-free design - Smooth user experience Cons: - Advanced features require premium - Sync/backup limited to one device - Reminders can be unreliable - No monthly/custom habit frequency - Some features locked behind paywall - Limited organizational tools - Premium features can be expensive ### Who is this great for? TheFor: Habit Tracker is perfect for anyone who values a clean, minimalist interface and wants unlimited free habit tracking without visual clutter. Whether you’re someone who prefers distraction-free tools, a user who wants a polished premium experience, or just someone who appreciates beautiful design, TheFor delivers. It’s especially great for users who want unlimited habits without ads, and for those who are willing to pay for advanced analytics and customization features. The minimalist design makes it appealing for users who find motivation in clean, focused interfaces, while the premium features cater to users who want deeper insights into their habit patterns. ### Compared to others TheFor’s minimalist design and unlimited free habits give it an advantage over apps like [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) for users who prefer clean interfaces, though HabitKit offers more elegant GitHub-style visualization. Against [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) , TheFor provides a more polished premium experience but requires payment for advanced features, while Habitive offers everything completely free. When compared to [Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/loop-habit-tracker) , TheFor excels in design aesthetics, while Loop provides better analytics and more sophisticated tracking features. ### Detailed comparisons [TheFor vs HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/thefor-habit-tracker-vs-habitkit-habit-tracker) • [TheFor vs Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/thefor-habit-tracker-vs-habitive-habit-tracker) • [TheFor vs Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/thefor-habit-tracker-vs-loop-habit-tracker) ### [6\. Motivated: Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/motivated-habit-tracker) ![Motivated: Habit Tracker](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Nqnvqlt1MooWeT2_frWFbg.png) *Motivated: Habit Tracker* Looking for a habit tracker that actually helps you build lasting habits? Motivated might be exactly what you need. It’s got over 100,000 downloads and a solid 4.5-star rating on the Play Store (with 4,580+ reviews), so lots of people seem to like it. The app maintains good quality, as evidenced by its 4.26 rating for the last 100 reviews, showing consistent user satisfaction. What makes Motivated different is that it focuses on “Habit Strength” instead of just counting streaks. This is actually pretty smart — instead of getting bummed out when you break a streak, you can see how strong your habit actually is. The app also lets you organize habits by time of day (morning, afternoon, evening) which makes a lot of sense. While Habitive offers unlimited free habits and HabitKit provides elegant GitHub-style visualization, Motivated stands out with its unique strength-based tracking system. > [**Motivated: Habit Tracker Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/motivated-habit-tracker) — Read our in-depth review of Motivated: Habit Tracker. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to… ### Key Features: - **Habit Strength Meter** : Focus on building lasting habits rather than just maintaining streaks with a unique strength-based tracking system - **Smart Collections** : Organize habits by time of day (morning, afternoon, evening) or custom categories for better workflow management - **Interactive Widgets** : View and complete habits directly from your home screen for quick access and motivation - **Rich Text Notes** : Add detailed notes to each habit for planning routines, tracking progress, or capturing thoughts - **Customizable Interface** : Choose from over 550 custom icons and unlimited color options to personalize your experience - **Flexible Goal Setting** : Set custom completion goals and repeat intervals without affecting your statistics - **Smart Reminders** : Set custom notifications and opt-in for morning/evening summaries to stay on track - **Bad Habit Tracking** : Special mode that auto-completes habits at day’s end for easier bad habit monitoring ### Pros & Cons Pros: - Unique habit strength tracking system - Beautiful, intuitive interface - Excellent organization with collections - Rich customization options - Interactive widgets for quick access - Lifetime premium option available - Comprehensive habit management tools - Strong user satisfaction (4.5/5 rating) - Time-based habit organization - Over 550 custom icons available Cons: - Some advanced features require premium - Widgets limited to premium users - Date picker could be more user-friendly - Free version has some limitations - Premium features can feel restrictive - Some users find the freemium model aggressive ### Who is this great for? Motivated is perfect for anyone who wants to focus on building lasting habits rather than just maintaining streaks. Whether you’re someone who gets discouraged by broken streaks, a user who wants sophisticated habit organization, or just someone who appreciates a premium-feeling interface, Motivated delivers. It’s especially great for users who value the unique habit strength concept and want to organize their habits by time of day. The rich customization options make it appealing for users who want to personalize their experience, while the collections feature is perfect for users who need better organization for multiple habits. ### Compared to others Motivated’s unique habit strength tracking system gives it a clear advantage over other habit trackers for users who want to focus on long-term habit building rather than daily streaks. Against [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) , Motivated offers more sophisticated organization and customization, while Habitive provides unlimited free habits without any restrictions. When compared to [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) , Motivated excels in habit organization and strength tracking, while HabitKit offers more elegant visual design. ### Detailed comparisons [Motivated vs Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/motivated-habit-tracker-vs-habitive-habit-tracker) • [Motivated vs HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/motivated-habit-tracker-vs-habitkit-habit-tracker) • [Motivated vs Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/motivated-habit-tracker-vs-loop-habit-tracker) ### [7\. Me+ Lifestyle Routine](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/me-plus-lifestyle-routine) ![Me+ Lifestyle Routine](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*3GxjcUWTRulM7SLXT0ee7w.png) *Me+ Lifestyle Routine* Looking for a reliable way to build morning and daily routines? Me+ Lifestyle Routine is one of the most capable options in this list. With over 10 million installs and a stellar 4.8★ rating on Google Play (765K+ reviews), it clearly works for a lot of people. The app maintains excellent quality, as evidenced by its 4.81 rating for the last 100 reviews, showing consistent user satisfaction. Me+ combines routine planning, habit tracking, reminders, and mood logging in a clear, motivating way. The app nudges you at the right time and makes your progress visible — which, users say, actually helps them stick with their routines. What sets it apart from other habit trackers is the holistic approach. While Habitive excels at simplicity and being completely free, and HabitKit offers beautiful GitHub-style visualization, Me+ provides optional MBTI-based guidance, self-care schedules, and helpful widgets that keep your routines front and center throughout the day. > [**Me+ Lifestyle Routine Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/me-plus-lifestyle-routine) — Read our in-depth review of Me+ Lifestyle Routine. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to… ### Key Features: - **Routine Planner** : Build morning and daily routines with clear steps and timing for structured habit building - **Habit Tracking** : See your streaks and completion rates at a glance with motivating progress feedback - **Smart Reminders** : Helpful nudges that arrive when you need them most to keep you on schedule - **Mood & Progress** : Log how you feel and spot patterns over time for better self-awareness - **MBTI Guidance** : Take a personality test to get tailored routine suggestions that match your preferences - **Self-Care Schedules** : Plan exercise, nutrition, and wellness activities in organized blocks - **Home Screen Widgets** : Keep your routines visible and easy to access without opening the app - **Clear Visuals** : Simple charts that make progress feel rewarding and motivate continued use ### Pros & Cons Pros: - Takes a holistic approach to routines and habits that actually helps you follow through - Clean, motivating interface with clear progress feedback - Useful reminders and widgets keep you on track - Optional MBTI guidance adds personalized structure - Strong free tier covers most basic needs - Over 10 million users with excellent ratings - Comprehensive self-care planning features - Evidence-based approach to habit building Cons: - Some advanced content requires a premium subscription - Reordering items with drag-and-drop can be tricky - Setting up complex routines takes some time to get right - Premium features can be expensive (€8.99–€74.99) - Limited customization in free version ### Who is this great for? Me+ Lifestyle Routine is perfect for anyone who wants a structured, motivating way to build better daily habits with personalized guidance. Whether you’re someone who needs help organizing morning routines, a user who wants MBTI-based personalization, or just someone who appreciates a holistic approach to self-care, Me+ delivers. It’s especially great for users who want more than basic habit tracking but prefer structure over gamification. The MBTI guidance makes it appealing for users who want personalized routine suggestions, while the self-care focus is perfect for users who want to integrate exercise, nutrition, and wellness into their daily planning. ### Compared to others Me+’s holistic approach and MBTI guidance give it a clear advantage over simpler habit trackers like [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) for users who want structured routine planning, though Habitive offers unlimited free habits without any cost. Against [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) , Me+ provides more comprehensive self-care planning and personalization, while HabitKit excels in elegant visual design. When compared to [HabitNow](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habit-now-daily-routine-planner) , Me+ focuses on routine structure and personalization, while HabitNow offers more advanced scheduling and timer functionality. ### Detailed comparisons [Me+ vs Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/me-plus-lifestyle-routine-vs-habitive-habit-tracker) • [Me+ vs HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/me-plus-lifestyle-routine-vs-habitkit-habit-tracker) • [Me+ vs HabitNow](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/me-plus-lifestyle-routine-vs-habit-now-daily-routine-planner) ### [8\. Habitica](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitica) ![Habitica](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*pmNv5f9wWfCSUZekoVQNbA.png) *Habitica* It’s easy to see why so many people love Habitica. It turns your daily tasks into a game — literally.  You get to level up your character, earn rewards, and even team up with friends, all by getting stuff done in real life. With over 5 million downloads and a strong 4.7-star rating on the Play Store (with 67,100+ reviews), it’s clear that many users find the gamification approach highly motivating. The app maintains good quality, as evidenced by its 4.41 rating for the last 100 reviews. What makes Habitica special is how it mixes productivity with a fun, old-school RPG vibe. You can track habits, daily routines, and to-dos, and the pixel art style gives everything a playful feel. For many users, it makes building good habits something to look forward to. While Habitive offers unlimited free habits and HabitKit provides elegant GitHub-style visualization, Habitica carves out its unique niche with gamification that no other app can match. > [**Habitica: Gamify Your Tasks Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitica) — Read our in-depth review of Habitica: Gamify Your Tasks. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives… ### Key Features: - **Gamified Habit Tracking** : Turn daily tasks into RPG-style quests with experience points, gold, and leveling up - **Customizable Avatars & Collectibles** : Personalize your character with gear, pets, and accessories earned through task completion - **Flexible Task Types** : Track habits, dailies, and to-dos with different tracking methods for each - **Party & Social Features** : Team up with friends for extra accountability and battle fierce foes by completing tasks together - **Reminders & Widgets** : Stay on track with notifications and home screen widgets for quick access - **Retro RPG Style** : Pixel art graphics and old-school gaming elements make productivity fun - **Community Challenges** : Join shared task lists and community events for extra motivation - **Wear OS Support** : Take your tasks on the go with smartwatch integration ### Pros & Cons Pros: - Unique and motivating gamification - Fun and interactive design - Flexible habit and task tracking - Strong social and accountability features - Retro pixel art style is charming - Community challenges and events - Cross-platform syncing - Open-source development Cons: - Some features require payment - Occasional bugs and slowdowns - Limited advanced statistics - Offline functionality is lacking - Learning curve for new users - Performance issues on some devices - Premium currency system can feel restrictive ### Who is this great for? Habitica is perfect for anyone who loves gaming and wants to make habit tracking more engaging and fun. Whether you’re a gamer who finds traditional productivity apps boring, someone who needs extra motivation through rewards and social features, or just someone who appreciates creative approaches to self-improvement, Habitica delivers. It’s especially great for users who enjoy RPG elements and want to turn their daily tasks into an adventure. The social features make it appealing for users who want accountability from friends, while the gamification is perfect for users who need extrinsic motivation to build better habits. ### Compared to others Habitica’s unique gamification approach gives it a clear advantage over traditional habit trackers like [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) for users who find gaming motivating, though Habitive offers unlimited free habits without any restrictions. Against [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) , Habitica provides engaging social features and RPG elements, while HabitKit excels in elegant visual design and privacy focus. When compared to [Me+ Lifestyle Routine](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/me-plus-lifestyle-routine) , Habitica offers fun and social motivation, while Me+ provides structured guidance and MBTI-based personalization. ### Detailed comparisons [Habitica vs Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habitica-vs-habitive-habit-tracker) • [Habitica vs HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habitica-vs-habitkit-habit-tracker) • [Habitica vs Me+ Lifestyle Routine](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habitica-vs-me-plus-lifestyle-routine) ### [9\. Disciplined — Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/disciplined-habit-tracker) ![Disciplined — Habit Tracker](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*5bLFxollFTQKycMEBV-7gA.png) *Disciplined — Habit Tracker* Disciplined is a no-frills habit tracker that gets straight to the point. With over 100,000 downloads and a strong 4.8-star rating on the Play Store (with 9,740+ reviews), users clearly appreciate its focused approach to building better habits.  The app maintains good quality, as evidenced by its 4.24 rating for the last 100 reviews, showing consistent user satisfaction. What makes Disciplined different is its commitment to simplicity. While other apps might overwhelm you with games and social features, this one focuses on the basics: tracking your habits and showing your progress clearly.  It’s perfect if you find gamification distracting and just want to build better routines. > [**Disciplined - Habit Tracker Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/disciplined-habit-tracker) — Read our in-depth review of Disciplined - Habit Tracker. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives… ### Key Features: - **Customizable Habits** : Set up habits that fit your life with flexible scheduling for daily, weekly, or custom intervals - **Visual Progress** : See your streaks and progress with clear charts and trackers that motivate continued use - **Smart Reminders** : Get notifications that help you stay on track with your habit-building goals - **Detailed Stats** : Understand your habits better with in-depth analytics and insights (premium feature) - **Flexible Scheduling** : Set habits for daily, weekly, or custom intervals to match your lifestyle - **Cross-Device Sync** : Your data follows you across all your devices for seamless access - **Home Screen Widgets** : Quick habit checking without opening the app for convenience - **Clean Interface** : Distraction-free design that focuses on what matters most ### Pros & Cons Pros: - Clean, easy-to-use interface - Focuses on what matters — tracking habits - Good price for premium features - Simple design without distractions - Useful home screen widgets - Cross-device synchronization - No ads in the interface - Lifetime purchase option available Cons: - Free version has limited stats - Some users experience lag - Best features require premium - Widgets could be more customizable - Limited advanced features - Some performance issues reported - Free version feels restrictive ### Who is this great for? Disciplined is perfect for anyone who wants a simple, effective habit tracker without distractions or unnecessary complexity. Whether you’re someone who finds gamification overwhelming, a user who prefers clean interfaces, or just someone who wants to focus purely on building better habits, Disciplined delivers. It’s especially great for users who appreciate minimalist design and want to avoid feature bloat. The focused approach makes it appealing for users who get overwhelmed by too many options, while the clean interface is perfect for users who want to stay focused on their habit-building goals without visual clutter. ### Compared to others Disciplined’s simplicity and focus give it a clear advantage over feature-heavy apps like [Habitica](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitica) for users who prefer distraction-free tracking, though Habitica offers unique gamification that some users find motivating. Against [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) , Disciplined provides a cleaner interface but requires premium for advanced features, while Habitive offers unlimited free habits without any restrictions. When compared to [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) , Disciplined excels in simplicity, while HabitKit provides more elegant visual design and better privacy features. ### Detailed comparisons [Disciplined vs Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/disciplined-habit-tracker-vs-habitive-habit-tracker) • [Disciplined vs HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/disciplined-habit-tracker-vs-habitkit-habit-tracker) • [Disciplined vs Habitica](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/disciplined-habit-tracker-vs-habitica) ### [10\. Habit Diary](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habit-diary) ![Habit Diary](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*OEqZzxbkGhCWZ62-FJ9MnQ.png) *Habit Diary* Habit Diary, developed by Leap Fitness Group, is a comprehensive habit tracking application designed to help users break bad habits and build positive ones.  With over 5 million downloads and a strong 4.7-star rating on the Google Play Store (with 124,000+ reviews), it’s clear that many users find value in its approach to habit formation. The app maintains good quality, as evidenced by its 4.42 rating for the last 100 reviews, showing consistent user satisfaction. What sets Habit Diary apart is its focus on the 30-day challenge system, which is based on scientifically proven methods for habit building. The app combines traditional habit tracking with motivational elements like achievement medals and progress visualization to keep users engaged in their journey toward better habits. > [**Habit Tracker - Habit Diary Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habit-diary) — Read our in-depth review of Habit Tracker - Habit Diary. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives… ### Key Features: - **Customizable Daily Habits** : Create and customize your daily habits with a clean, intuitive interface and preset library of popular habits - **30-Day Challenge System** : Follow scientifically proven 3-stage habit-building journeys designed to help you form lasting habits - **Focus & Time Management** : Built-in timer and white noise features to help you stay focused and boost productivity - **Smart Reminders** : Customizable notifications to keep you on track throughout the day - **Progress Visualization** : Track your progress with detailed statistics, streaks, and achievement medals - **Multi-Type To-Do Lists** : Manage daily, monthly, and annual habits alongside one-time tasks - **Preset Habit Library** : Access to popular and essential habits to get started quickly - **Achievement System** : Earn medals and rewards as you build consistency in your habits ### Pros & Cons Pros: - Clean, intuitive interface - Comprehensive habit tracking features - 30-day challenge system - Good progress visualization - Multiple reminder options - Available on both Android and iOS - Preset habit library for quick setup - Achievement system for motivation Cons: - Free version is limited - Ad-supported in free version - Some features require premium - Limited backup options - Widget functionality is basic - Premium features can be expensive - Google backup issues reported ### Who is this great for? Habit Diary is perfect for anyone who wants a structured approach to habit building with scientific backing. Whether you’re someone who needs the motivation of challenges and achievements, a user who appreciates preset habit libraries, or just someone who wants comprehensive tracking with visual feedback, Habit Diary delivers. It’s especially great for users who value the 30-day challenge approach and want motivational elements like achievement medals. The preset habit library makes it appealing for users who want to get started quickly without creating habits from scratch, while the comprehensive tracking features are perfect for users who want detailed insights into their habit patterns. ### Compared to others Habit Diary’s 30-day challenge system and achievement medals give it a clear advantage over simpler habit trackers like [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) for users who want structured motivation, though Habitive offers unlimited free habits without any restrictions. Against [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) , Habit Diary provides more motivational elements and preset habits, while HabitKit excels in elegant visual design and privacy focus. When compared to [Habitica](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitica) , Habit Diary offers structured challenges and scientific backing, while Habitica provides unique gamification and social features. ### Detailed comparisons [Habit Diary vs Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habit-diary-vs-habitive-habit-tracker) • [Habit Diary vs HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habit-diary-vs-habitkit-habit-tracker) • [Habit Diary vs Habitica](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/habit-diary-vs-habitica) ### Final Thoughts Looking at all 10 habit tracker apps side by side, each has carved out its own unique space in the market. Based on their listings and reviews, [Habitive](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitive-habit-tracker) leads with the best overall value, offering unlimited free habits without any restrictions, while [HabitKit](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitkit-habit-tracker) excels in design excellence with its elegant GitHub-style visualization. [Loop Habit Tracker](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/loop-habit-tracker) provides the best free experience with comprehensive analytics and complete privacy. For specific use cases: [HabitNow](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habit-now-daily-routine-planner) is perfect for users who need advanced scheduling and timer functionality, [Me+ Lifestyle Routine](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/me-plus-lifestyle-routine) excels with structured guidance and MBTI-based personalization, and [Habitica](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/habitica) offers unique gamification that makes productivity fun. [Motivated](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/motivated-habit-tracker) stands out for its habit strength tracking system, while [TheFor](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/thefor-habit-tracker) provides a polished premium experience with unlimited free habits. The key is finding what fits your specific needs. Start with free versions, test thoroughly, and only upgrade when you hit the limits. With so many quality options available — from completely free unlimited tracking to premium design-focused experiences — there’s no need to settle for a habit tracker that doesn’t work for you. --- # How to Annotate YouTube Videos Like Articles > Learn how to use YouTube video annotations with Web Highlights to make your videos more interactive, organize key moments, and boost learning retention. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-08-20 - Updated: 2026-09-16 - Tags: Tutorial, Web Highlights, Learning - Reading time: 12 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/youtube-video-annotations/ --- Watching YouTube videos can often feel like a passive activity. You might find yourself taking in a lot of information, but when it’s time to recall key takeaways, it is easy to forget important details. Without the ability to highlight or take notes, you risk losing out on valuable insights from the videos you watch. Whether you are watching tutorials, lectures, or marketing insights, the real value lies in interacting with the content, not just passively consuming it. This is where YouTube video annotations help. With [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) , an annotation tool, you can transform the way you engage with YouTube videos by annotating them just like articles. This tool allows you to highlight key points, add notes, and organize your insights with tags, turning passive watching into active learning. In this blog, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to use Web Highlights to annotate YouTube videos. You’ll learn how to use AI summaries, transcript highlighting, time-stamped notes, and smart organization tools to make YouTube a more effective learning platform. Let’s dive in! ## **Why Annotating YouTube Videos Makes Learning Stick** When watching YouTube videos, it is easy to just sit back and let the information flow without truly absorbing it. However, annotation in the context of videos adds a level of engagement that turns this passive activity into something that is interactive and effective.  Highlighting the video transcript plays a key role here. Web Highlights allows you to mark key points directly in the video’s transcript, making it easier to capture the most important information. Along with highlighting, time-stamped notes are added to provide context, so you can quickly jump to specific moments in the video. These notes act as markers, reminding you of the critical points discussed at different times.  Using an AI summary before annotating further improves learning efficiency. When you preview a video through structured formats such as Key Points or TL;DR, you reduce cognitive overload and identify what truly matters. This allows you to focus your highlights and notes on high-value sections instead of marking everything. This way, you can revisit the most valuable sections with ease, improving your overall understanding and retention of the content. #### **_The benefits of video annotations are clear:_** #### **1\. Enhanced memory retention** By actively highlighting key points and adding personal notes, you make a direct connection with the material, which strengthens your memory. Studies have shown that active listening, along with engagement with content, rather than passive consumption, boosts retention, making the information easier to recall later. #### **2\. Easy to revisit key moments** Forget rewinding!  With [annotations](https://web-highlights.com/blog/practical-annotation-examples/) , you can jump straight to specific moments in the video. Whether you're reviewing an insightful tip, revisiting a tutorial step, or tracking a key takeaway, your annotated notes serve as a personalized map, helping you easily navigate back to what matters most. #### **3\. Organized insights** No more searching through hours of video. By tagging different sections of the video and adding context, your text annotations allow you to [organize](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-organize-bookmarks-in-chrome/) and retrieve your insights efficiently. Web Highlights makes this process simple and intuitive by activating directly on YouTube. Once the extension is installed, it detects YouTube videos automatically and enables the annotation features right in the browser. You don’t need to leave the video or switch to another app; just click on the video transcript and start highlighting or save the entire video in your Web Highlights app to create notes from scratch.  From there, you can add highlights, tag moments, and organize everything right within your YouTube experience. This makes video annotations accessible and easy to use for anyone looking to improve their learning from YouTube videos. ## **Setting Up Web Highlights for YouTube Annotation** Getting started with Web Highlights for YouTube annotations is quick and easy. Here’s how you can set it up: ### **1\. Install the Extension** First, install the Web Highlights extension from the [Chrome Web Store](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . It is free and available for Chrome users.  If you're an [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) or [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig/) user, our extension is available there too, so you can enjoy the same great features. ### **2\. Sign In/Create an Account** Once installed, sign in or create an account to unlock all features. This will allow you to sync your video annotations across multiple devices for easy access wherever you are. ### **3\. Using on YouTube** After installation, Web Highlights will automatically detect YouTube videos as you watch them. Just open any YouTube video, and the annotation tools will be ready for use. Highlight key moments, add time-stamped notes, and start organizing your video insights, all within your browser. Beyond in-video annotation, Web Highlights also provides: - A YouTube AI Summary tool for structured video summaries - A YouTube Transcript Reader for clean, distraction-free reading - A Highlight YouTube Video tool for direct transcript highlighting This allows you to choose between annotating directly inside YouTube or studying the transcript in Reader Mode. ## **How to Annotate YouTube Videos with Web Highlights** Annotating YouTube videos with Web Highlights is designed to feel as natural as highlighting an article. Instead of passively watching, you interact with the video’s transcript, summaries, and key moments to turn each video into a structured learning resource. Here is how to do it: ### **Highlight Key Moments Using the Transcript Reader** ![Highlights on a YouTube video transcript using Web Highlights, marking key moments for easy reference](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-7f27a6ea-192b-4b54-bd36-76e388d288fb.webp) Start by using the highlighter tool directly on the video transcript, time stamps, or any other section, like chapters,  to mark important sections. As you watch the video, highlight key points that stand out to you. Web Highlights also lets you highlight directly inside the [YouTube Transcript Reader](https://web-highlights.com/tools/youtube-transcript-generator) , not just the video player. As the video plays, you can open the transcript in a clean, readable format and highlight important sentences, timestamps, or chapter sections. This is especially useful for educational or long-form videos, where key explanations are often buried deep inside the timeline. By highlighting the transcript text itself, you can focus on concepts, terminology, or steps that matter, without rewatching the entire video. ![Highlight YouTube video inside Web Highlights transcript reader](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-65b25200-3448-4062-8f61-09f6c4ab300a.webp) This walkthrough shows the transcript reader in action, from opening it on a YouTube video to timestamps and the AI summary: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg4m3bW1nOo) ### **Add Time-Stamped Notes for Context** ![Notes added to highlights of a YouTube video in Web Highlights, capturing the context of key moments](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-b9b42134-47a0-417b-8edb-58948f6357a5.webp) Once you've highlighted a segment, you can [add time-stamped notes](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) by clicking on the highlighted text. These notes help capture the key video details and context of each part, making it easier to understand and remember specific details.  For example, if you’re watching a video on a scientific topic, you can add a note explaining the process or providing a brief summary of what was discussed at that timestamp. These time-stamped notes are especially useful for revisiting content quickly without searching through the video again. ### **Tagging Important Points** ![Different tags added to YouTube video highlights and notes in Web Highlights for better organization](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-5063f8d2-9233-4e9b-8115-60357e059e93.webp) To better organize your annotations, you can tag video segments with relevant labels. For example, you could categorize a section about the process of photosynthesis as _“Photosynthesis Process”_ or a segment explaining the light-dependent reactions as _“Light Reactions._ ” Tagging helps you easily sort and retrieve specific information, making your annotations more structured and accessible. This is especially helpful when you have multiple annotations on different aspects of the video. ### **Use YouTube AI Summary Before Annotating** Before diving into highlights and notes, Web Highlights also offers a YouTube [AI Summary feature](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/ai-summary) that helps you understand a video quickly before committing to full annotation. Instead of watching the entire video first, you can generate structured summary formats such as: - **Key Points** – a clear breakdown of the main ideas discussed - **Headline** – a short, focused description of what the video is about - **TL;DR** – a condensed version for quick scanning - **Teaser** – a short preview-style summary for rapid context These formats allow you to choose how deeply you want to engage. If you only need a quick overview, the TL;DR may be enough. If you are studying in detail, the Key Points format gives you a structured outline to annotate against. Using the summary first creates a smarter workflow: Preview → Identify important sections → Highlight transcript → Add notes → Tag and organize This approach prevents over-highlighting and helps you focus only on the parts that support your learning objective. > [**AI Summary - Generate Smart Summaries of Web Content**](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/ai-summary) — Create AI-powered summaries of your highlights and web pages using Chrome’s built-in AI. It runs on your device, so your pages stay with you. ### **Using the “Add Content” Button** ![Add content option in Web Highlights to directly copy YouTube transcript content](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-36a4a960-b58c-4475-93a4-3f54ffbe2219.webp) One of the standout features of Web Highlights is the “Add Content” button. This feature allows you to paste any URL or video transcript into the tool.  The content is then opened in [reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) for further annotation and reading. This feature turns your entire YouTube video into an actual article. It is particularly useful if you want to annotate the video’s transcript directly, turning the text into an editable learning resource. You can highlight, add notes, and engage with the content more effectively, without distractions from other elements on the page. 1. To get started with this feature, simply open your [web app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) and click on the “Add Content” icon that appears at the top.  ![Clicking on the 'Add Content' icon in the Web Highlights app to add URLs or video transcripts for annotation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-0a841c18-e0e8-48c4-a01f-bdcce1a8067e.webp) 2. Next, paste the URL of your YouTube video to get started.  ![Pasting a YouTube video URL to open it in reader mode within Web Highlights for focused annotation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-c55ef781-cd25-472f-ba38-578127a1b46f.webp) 3. This opens your YouTube video in the [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-read-any-website-in-distraction-free-reader-mode/) , so you can access it like a structured article instead of a standard video page. The transcript becomes clean, readable text, making it easier to focus on the actual content rather than distractions. Inside Reader Mode, you can adjust layout colors, change fonts, and customize the reading experience to match your preference. The video audio continues to play with visible timestamps, so you can follow along in sync. As the audio progresses, you can highlight specific lines, add notes directly next to key explanations, and annotate important moments without pausing or switching tabs. ![YouTube video opened in reader mode with highlights using Web Highlights, focusing on key moments for annotation.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/image12.webp) Lastly, all your annotations are automatically saved within the Web Highlights interface. Whether you are using the tool on your desktop or mobile devices, your annotations will sync across all devices. This ensures that your highlights and notes are always available, no matter where you are. You can easily search for specific tags or keywords to quickly access the content you've annotated, making your review process more efficient. ## **Organizing Your Annotations for Easy Access** Once you've annotated your YouTube videos, keeping everything organized is essential to make the most out of your notes. Web Highlights offers several tools to help you sort and access your annotations with ease. ### **Creating Collections** You can create collections to group video annotations by themes or projects. For example, you might create collections such as “Basics of Photosynthesis” or “Extensive Vocabulary” to keep your annotations organized by topic. This is especially useful if you're annotating multiple videos or creating a series of notes on a particular subject. Having everything in one place makes it easy to retrieve the information when needed. ### **Search and Filter** ![Easy tags search feature in the Web Highlights app, to quickly find specific annotations in YouTube videos](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-a5dee8bb-4424-474e-97c4-fccc2ea4864b.webp) With Web Highlights, you can easily search and filter through your annotations. Using tags and the search function, you can quickly find key moments in the video.  For instance, if you’ve tagged a segment as “Light Reactions,” you can search for this tag and jump directly to the relevant part of the video. This feature allows you to save time by avoiding the need to manually scroll through your annotations to find specific points. ### **Color-Coding** ![Color-coded highlights in Web Highlights, organizing annotations with different colors for better visual reference.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-25ef1095-6a62-4ffc-bdd1-0c80943a0869.webp) Another great feature of Web Highlights is the ability to [color-code](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) your notes.  Using different colors for various types of annotations can help you create interactive content. For example, you could use green for important vocabulary, yellow for ideas to explore later, and blue for important reminders. This system not only makes it easy to differentiate between various types of notes but also helps visually categorize your thoughts, making the annotations more effective for quick reference. With these features, Web Highlights makes it easy to organize and access your YouTube video annotations, so you can stay efficient and focused while reviewing and studying. ## **Exporting Your YouTube Annotations to Knowledge Platforms** ![YouTube video annotations exported to Notion platform, for further use and study.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-043a850c-aff3-4fa5-8614-439c9d04f28c.webp) Once you are done with your YouTube video annotations, Web Highlights makes it easy to export your annotations to popular knowledge platforms for further organization and use. With  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  export, you can send your annotated video highlights directly to Notion, making it perfect for research purposes. This allows you to keep all your video insights in one centralized, organized space. You can also export directly to  [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/)   (Ultimate plan), or use  [Markdown](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages/formatted-highlighting)  export to convert your annotated YouTube videos into permanent resources. Copy as Markdown and paste into  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/)   or any other note-taking app. This includes links, notes, and timestamps, allowing for seamless integration into your knowledge management system. These platforms support further organization, categorization, and efficient knowledge management, helping you stay on top of your learning and research. ## **Tips for Efficient YouTube Video Annotation** To make the most of your YouTube video annotations, here are some tips that will help you stay organized and efficient: ### **1\. Watch in Segments** Instead of annotating a long video all at once, try breaking the video into 1-3-minute chunks. This helps you focus on smaller sections of the video, making it easier to highlight key moments and add concise notes. By doing this, you’ll also avoid feeling overwhelmed and ensure that your annotations are more detailed and precise. ### **2\. Write Concise Notes** When adding annotations to your YouTube video, aim to keep your notes short and relevant. Focus on summarizing the key points or takeaways from each segment. For instance, instead of writing long paragraphs, jot down the main idea or concept discussed. This makes it easier to revisit your notes later and quickly find the essential information. ### **3\. Use Timestamps Effectively** To make it easier to navigate through your annotations, add specific time stamps in your notes or highlight the time stamps and then add notes.  This way, you can jump directly to the relevant part of the video when reviewing your annotations. For example, if you're watching a tutorial, you can add a timestamp to a segment that explains a specific step, so you don’t have to search through the entire video to find it again. ### **4\. Sync Across Devices** One of the great features of Web Highlights is the ability to sync your annotations across multiple devices. Whether you're working on your desktop at home or reviewing notes on your mobile device while on the go, your highlights and notes will be automatically synced, this ensures that you have access to your annotated video content whenever and wherever you need it. ### **5\. Use Email Reminders** ![Setting email reminders for YouTube video annotations in Web Highlights to revisit important content](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/02/data-src-image-9152c24f-bddf-43ee-a6ac-07d7adee4f8a.webp) To stay on top of your learning, set [reminder notifications](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) within Web Highlights.  If there is a video you have annotated and want to revisit, you can set a reminder to help you stay organized. This feature allows you to keep track of important videos and annotations, making sure you never forget to review critical content. By following these tips, you can make your YouTube video annotations more efficient and ensure you stay organized while learning or conducting research. ## **Key Takeaways** By using video annotations YouTube with Web Highlights, you can turn passive content into interactive, actionable learning. With time-stamped notes and the ability to organize your insights, you can capture key moments and make them easy to revisit whenever needed. This approach allows you to actively engage with the content and retain information better. Ready to get started? [Install Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , begin to add annotations to YouTube videos, and organize your insights for better retention today! ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **Q. What Are Annotations in YouTube Videos?** Annotations in YouTube videos are clickable text or notes that appear during the video on transcripts or descriptions, used to provide additional information, context, or links. With Web Highlights, annotations refer to highlighting text in the YouTube transcript, adding time-stamped notes, generating AI summaries, and organizing those insights with tags. This transforms videos into structured, searchable learning resources. ### **Q. How Do You Add Annotations to YouTube Videos?** Adding annotations to YouTube videos using Web Highlights is simple and enhances your viewing experience. You can then use the highlighter tool to mark key sections of the video transcript, add time-stamped notes, and tag important moments. This allows you to capture critical points in the video and revisit them later. ### **Q. How to Disable Annotations and Pop-ups on YouTube Videos?** If you want to disable annotations and pop-ups on YouTube videos, you can turn off Web Highlights’ Chrome extension from the extension bar. To avoid any third-party pop-ups, you can disable YouTube's built-in annotations feature in your account settings.  ### **Q. Can I add annotations to live-streamed videos on YouTube?** Yes, you can add annotations to YouTube videos after the stream has finished, but live-streamed videos are typically not available for annotation in real-time. Once the stream is over, you can go back and annotate it using Web Highlights. ### **Q. How do I export my YouTube video annotations to Notion?** You can easily export your YouTube video annotations to Notion by selecting the export option in Web Highlights. This will send your highlighted sections and notes directly into your Notion workspace for future use and organization. ### **Q. Are annotations saved automatically on YouTube videos, or do I need to re-annotate every time?** With Web Highlights, your annotations on YouTube videos are automatically saved and synced across devices. You don’t need to re-annotate the video each time you return, making your learning more efficient. ### **Q. Does Web Highlights work on other video platforms like Vimeo?** Currently, Web Highlights is designed to work specifically with YouTube video annotations. However, we are constantly working to expand support for other platforms, so stay tuned for future updates! ### **Q. How can I sync my annotations across multiple devices?** With Web Highlights, your annotations are automatically synced across all devices where you're logged in. Whether you’re using your phone, tablet, or desktop, your highlights and notes will be accessible on each device. Just make sure you have logged in with the same account. --- # The Great AI Showdown: The Best iOS & Android AI-Assistant Apps > The ultimate AI assistant comparison: the top apps compared and ranked. See how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others stack up for iOS & Android users. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-07-28 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Apps, comparison, AI - Reading time: 27 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-great-ai-showdown-12-best-ios-android-ai-assistant-apps/ --- Since ChatGPT went live in 2022, there has been a mass influx of new AI apps. Naturally, the big players like Google, Microsoft, and X didn’t want to miss out on the AI boom and joined in quickly. But can they really catch up to ChatGPT? To find out, I ran a big AI assistant comparison — in this article, I’ll review 12 iOS and Android apps side by side. How this list was made: the scores come from Productivity Apps, a review site run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. It rates each app from its App Store and Google Play listings, its ratings and what recent reviews report. The descriptions below summarize each listing and what its users report. ### List of the Best AI-Assistant Apps for Android & iOS: - [Microsoft Copilot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-copilot) - [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) - [Poe AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/poe-ai) - [Manus AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/manus-ai) - [Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/merlin-ai) - [Google Gemini AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/google-gemini-ai) - [Le Chat](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/le-chat) - [Deep Think](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deep-think) - [Perplexity AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/perplexity-ai) - [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) - [DeepSeek AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deepseek-ai) - [Grok](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/grok) - [Gemmy AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gemmy-ai) - [ChatOn AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chaton-ai) - [Chatbot AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatbot-ai) If you prefer a comparison overview, check out the [full comparison table of all AI-Assistant apps](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/category/ai-assistant) : ![Comparison table showing all AI apps](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2600/1*Dmyqr7SwArwz81lSPYvGww.png) *Comparison of all AI apps* > [**Compare All 16 AI Assistant Apps - Which is the Best?**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/category/ai-assistant) — In-depth comparison of all 16 AI Assistant apps including Claude, Poe AI Chat, Google Gemini, Manus and more. See features, ratings, pricing side by side. (Marius Bongarts) ### [1\. Microsoft Copilot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-copilot) ![Microsoft Copilot](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*YUk4enJy3WRZDSJyf_L4_g.png) *Microsoft Copilot* Microsoft Copilot has won over a lot of users. The ratings speak for themselves — 4.8 stars on both Android and iOS shows people are really liking it. Its reviews suggest why: it’s not just another AI chat app, but something that actually feels like it belongs in your workflow, especially if you’re already using Microsoft stuff. #### Key Features: - **Chat with AI** : Ask questions, get help with writing, or just have a conversation - **Create Images** : Describe what you want and the AI makes pictures for you - **Talk to AI** : Use your voice instead of typing - **Translate Text** : Get help with multiple languages - **Works with Office** : Use AI directly in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint - **Write for You** : Help with emails, resumes, and other writing tasks #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Free to use with good features - Works great with Microsoft Office - Can create images from text - Voice commands work well - Syncs across your devices - Easy to use **Cons:** - Pro version is expensive at $20/month - Some cool features cost money - Excel features still being worked on #### Who is this great for? Microsoft Copilot is perfect for anyone already using Microsoft Office or Windows regularly. If you’re a student, professional, or business user who relies on Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, Copilot will feel like a natural extension of your workflow. It’s also great for people who want a free AI assistant that can handle both chat and image creation without the complexity of some other AI tools. #### Compared to others Microsoft Copilot holds its own against [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) in most areas, though ChatGPT still has the edge in conversation quality and overall AI capabilities. When compared to [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) , Copilot’s Microsoft Office integration gives it a clear advantage for productivity users, while Claude excels in privacy and detailed reasoning. Against [Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/google-gemini-ai) , Copilot offers better Office integration, but Gemini has stronger multimodal capabilities and Google ecosystem integration. #### Detailed comparisons [Microsoft Copilot vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/microsoft-copilot-vs-chatgpt) • [Microsoft Copilot vs Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/microsoft-copilot-vs-claude) • [Microsoft Copilot vs Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/microsoft-copilot-vs-google-gemini-ai) ### [2\. Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) ![Claude](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*8P-WGCMuJA76jnMckbhULw.png) *Claude* Claude by Anthropic has quickly become one of the most trusted AI assistants out there. With over 5 million downloads and a strong focus on privacy, it’s clear why people are choosing Claude over other options. What really sets Claude apart is its commitment to user privacy and its ability to handle complex reasoning tasks. Unlike some other AI assistants that feel like they’re collecting data at every turn, Claude feels genuinely respectful of your information. #### Key Features: - **Instant Answers** : Get quick responses to any question or task - **Extended Reasoning** : Advanced models for step-by-step problem solving - **Image & File Analysis** : Attach files or photos for real-time analysis - **Cross-Device Sync** : Continue conversations across web and mobile - **Privacy-Focused** : Designed with user privacy in mind - **Trusted by Millions** : Over 5 million downloads and 92,000+ reviews #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Quick answers - Strong privacy - Easy to use - Works on phone and computer - No ads **Cons:** - Chat limits in free version - No memory between chats - Some features cost extra #### Who is this great for? Claude is perfect for anyone who values privacy and wants a reliable AI assistant that can handle both simple questions and complex reasoning tasks. If you’re working on detailed projects that require step-by-step thinking, or if you’re concerned about data privacy, Claude should be at the top of your list. It’s also great for professionals who need to analyze documents or images as part of their work. Students and researchers will appreciate Claude’s ability to break down complex topics, while business users will value the privacy-focused approach for sensitive work conversations. #### Compared to others Claude stands out for its privacy focus and reasoning capabilities when compared to [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) , though ChatGPT has the edge in conversation flow and creative tasks. Against [Microsoft Copilot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-copilot) , Claude offers better privacy and reasoning, while Copilot excels in Office integration and image creation. When compared to [Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/google-gemini-ai) , Claude provides stronger privacy protections, but Gemini offers better multimodal capabilities and Google ecosystem integration. #### Detailed comparisons [Claude vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/claude-vs-chatgpt) • [Claude vs Microsoft Copilot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/claude-vs-microsoft-copilot) • [Claude vs Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/claude-vs-google-gemini-ai) ### [3\. Poe AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/poe-ai) ![Poe AI](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*P4wnsQuBcmpfQZ_OcNwpug.png) *Poe AI* Poe is where AI diversity meets simplicity. With over 5 million downloads and a 4.6-star rating, it’s become the go-to platform for anyone who wants access to multiple AI models without the hassle of switching between different apps. What makes Poe special is its ability to bring together the best AI models — GPT-4.5, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Gemini 2.0, and more — all in one clean, intuitive interface. It’s like having a personal AI model comparison tool that actually works. #### Key Features: - **Multi-Model AI Access** : Chat with leading AI models including GPT-4.5, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Gemini 2.0, and more in one unified interface - **Custom Bot Creation** : Build and share your own AI chatbots with custom knowledge bases and personalities - **Multimedia Generation** : Create images, videos, and audio using state-of-the-art generators like FLUX1.1, Ideogram 2.0, and Stable Diffusion 3.5 - **File Upload Support** : Chat with AI about your PDFs, images, and documents for enhanced context - **Web Search Integration** : Get real-time information with AI-powered web search capabilities - **Cross-Platform Sync** : Seamlessly continue conversations across devices #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Access to multiple top-tier AI models - Excellent response quality and speed - User-friendly interface - Custom bot creation capabilities - Multimedia generation features - File upload and analysis support - Regular updates with new models - Strong community of custom bots **Cons:** - Limited daily points in free version - Some advanced features require premium - Occasional app crashes reported - Point system can be confusing - Email verification requirement for some features #### Who is this great for? Poe is perfect for anyone who wants to explore different AI models without committing to just one. Whether you’re a student comparing different AI responses for research, a professional who needs the best AI for specific tasks, or just someone curious about AI capabilities, Poe gives you the tools to find what works best for you. It’s especially great for power users who want to create custom AI bots for specific use cases, and for anyone who values having multiple AI options at their fingertips. The multimedia generation features also make it appealing for creative professionals. #### Compared to others Poe’s multi-model approach gives it a unique advantage over single-model apps like [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) or [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) , though those apps may offer deeper integration with their respective models. Against [Microsoft Copilot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-copilot) , Poe offers more AI model variety and custom bot creation, while Copilot excels in Office integration. When compared to [Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/google-gemini-ai) , Poe provides access to multiple AI models including Gemini, but Gemini offers deeper Google ecosystem integration. #### Detailed comparisons [Poe AI vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/poe-ai-vs-chatgpt) • [Poe AI vs Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/poe-ai-vs-claude) • [Poe AI vs Microsoft Copilot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/poe-ai-vs-microsoft-copilot) ## [4\. Manus AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/manus-ai) ![Manus AI](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/manus-ai/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Manus AI isn't your typical chatbot—it's an agent that actually does things for you. With over 1 million downloads and a 4.6-star rating on the Play Store (234K+ reviews), it's clearly resonated with users who want more than just conversation. On iOS, it holds a 4.8-star rating across 21K ratings. What's especially telling is the 4.64 rating from the last 100 Android reviews, which shows the app is still impressing people right now—not just riding early hype. What sets Manus apart is the shift from answering questions to executing tasks. You give it a prompt, it breaks the work into steps, runs them in the cloud, and notifies you when it's done. According to its listing, it can generate slide decks, turn documents into shareable websites, and run multi-step research workflows. You can literally close the app and come back to a finished result. That's a very different proposition from  [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt)  or  [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) , which are built around conversation. ### Key Features: - **Agent Mode & Task Execution**  – Manus breaks down tasks into steps, runs them in the cloud, and delivers results so you can close the app and get notified when done - **Free & Unlimited Chat**  – Ask questions and get answers without an account; one-click upgrade to Agent Mode for heavier workloads - **Slide Deck Generation**  – Create full slide decks from a single prompt and export or share for meetings and presentations - **Website from Files**  – Turn spreadsheets, slides, images, or documents into shareable websites with one prompt - **Image & Video Generation**  – Generate images and video from text prompts, from simple concepts to more polished visuals - **Multi-Language & Translation**  – Strong support for translation and understanding across languages, including nuanced and context-aware output - **Deep Research**  – Suited for research and business use, with tools that go beyond chat to execute and compile information ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Powerful agentic execution - Strong free tier - Research and business focus - Slides and websites from prompts - Runs tasks asynchronously - Less restricted than many AI apps **Cons:** - Credit system can feel unclear - Premium pricing on high tiers - Occasional connection errors - No human customer support ### Who is this great for? Manus is perfect for anyone who needs an AI that doesn't just talk—it works. Researchers, students compiling reports, and professionals who regularly build decks or turn data into presentations will get the most out of Agent Mode. The free chat tier is solid enough for everyday questions, and the step up to execution feels natural. It's especially great for users who are tired of copying AI outputs into other tools. If you've ever wished ChatGPT could just make the slides for you instead of listing bullet points, Manus delivers on that promise. Business users and freelancers who need quick deliverables will find real value here. ### Compared to others Manus occupies a unique space among AI assistants. While  [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt)  and  [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude)  focus on conversational depth and reasoning, Manus leans into task execution—it's less about back-and-forth dialogue and more about handing off work. Compared to  [Deep Think](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deep-think) , which bundles multiple models for variety, Manus prioritizes doing things rather than offering model choice. For users who want both conversation and execution, it's worth trying Manus alongside a traditional assistant. ### Detailed comparisons [Manus AI vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/manus-ai-vs-chatgpt)  •  [Manus AI vs Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/manus-ai-vs-claude)  •  [Manus AI vs Deep Think](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/manus-ai-vs-deep-think) ### Rating Summary With over 1 million downloads and strong ratings on both Android (4.6 stars, 234K reviews) and iOS (4.8 stars, 21K ratings), Manus has proven itself as a serious contender in the AI assistant space.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Manus AI a score of 8.17/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/manus-ai) . ### [5\. Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/merlin-ai) ![Merlin AI](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Pxj4QFoTmYpgWGzK2AGETw.png) *Merlin AI* Merlin AI is the Swiss Army knife of AI assistants. It brings together seven different AI models — ChatGPT, Grok AI, DeepSeek, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity AI — in one powerful app, along with 70+ AI tools that actually make sense. What really stands out about Merlin is how it eliminates the need to juggle multiple AI subscriptions. Instead of paying for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini separately, you get access to all of them plus more, with a generous 102 free queries per day. #### Key Features: - **Multi-AI Integration** : Access to ChatGPT, Grok AI, DeepSeek, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity AI in one app - **AI Tools Suite** : PDF summarizer, image generator, YouTube video summarizer, and language translation - **Platform Integration** : Works with Gmail, Google Search, and LinkedIn for enhanced productivity - **Cross-Device Sync** : Seamless experience across Android, desktop, and other platforms - **Generous Free Plan** : 102 queries per day with access to all major AI models - **Voice Chat** : Premium voice-powered chat capabilities for hands-free interaction #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Comprehensive AI model access in one app - Generous free tier with 102 daily queries - Excellent cross-platform integration - Powerful AI tools suite - Seamless switching between AI models **Cons:** - Premium features require subscription - Some advanced tools limited to paid plan - Voice chat only available in premium #### Who is this great for? Merlin AI is perfect for anyone who wants to consolidate their AI tools into one powerful platform. Whether you’re a student who needs different AI models for research, a professional who wants to streamline their workflow, or just someone who’s tired of managing multiple AI subscriptions, Merlin makes it all simple. It’s especially great for productivity-focused users who appreciate the Gmail and LinkedIn integrations, and for anyone who wants to experiment with different AI models without committing to expensive individual subscriptions. #### Compared to others Merlin’s comprehensive approach gives it a clear advantage over single-model apps like [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) or [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) , offering access to both plus more models. Against [Poe AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/poe-ai) , Merlin provides better platform integrations and a more generous free tier, while Poe offers more customization options. When compared to [Microsoft Copilot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-copilot) , Merlin offers more AI model variety and productivity tools, while Copilot excels in Office integration. #### Detailed comparisons [Merlin AI vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/merlin-ai-vs-chatgpt) • [Merlin AI vs Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/merlin-ai-vs-claude) • [Merlin AI vs Poe AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/merlin-ai-vs-poe-ai) ### [6\. Google Gemini AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/google-gemini-ai) ![Google Gemini AI](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*CgDWh0yk2ltz9VRoaE_DQQ.png) *Google Gemini AI* Google Gemini is what happens when the world’s biggest tech company decides to build an AI assistant. It brings together Google’s latest AI models with seamless integration across all your favorite Google apps — Search, Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and more. What really sets Gemini apart is how it feels like a natural extension of your Google ecosystem. Instead of having to switch between different apps, Gemini connects everything together in a way that actually makes sense. #### Key Features: - **AI-Powered Chat & Assistance** : Get help with brainstorming, research, and productivity tasks using Google’s latest AI models - **Google App Integration** : Seamlessly connect with Search, Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and more for a unified experience - **Image & Video Generation** : Create images from text and generate short video clips (Pro/Ultra plans) - **Live Mode** : Go live with Gemini to discuss ideas, rehearse, or simplify complex topics in real time - **File-to-Podcast** : Turn any file into a podcast you can listen to on the go - **Trip Planning & Summaries** : Plan trips, get summaries, and deep dives on any topic, all in one place #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Generous free tier with strong core features - Deep integration with Google apps and services - Powerful AI for creativity and productivity - Image and video generation capabilities - Live mode and file-to-podcast are unique tools - Frequent updates and new features **Cons:** - Some features only available on certain devices or regions - Advanced features require a paid subscription - Not all Google Assistant features are present yet - Occasional confusion due to inconsistent feature rollout #### Who is this great for? Google Gemini is perfect for anyone who’s already deeply invested in the Google ecosystem. If you use Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube, and Google Search regularly, Gemini will feel like a natural extension of your workflow. It’s especially great for students who need help with research and homework, professionals who want to streamline their Google-based work processes, and anyone who appreciates having all their tools connected in one place. The trip planning and file-to-podcast features also make it appealing for travelers and content creators. #### Compared to others Gemini’s Google ecosystem integration gives it a clear advantage over standalone AI apps like [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) or [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) for users who rely heavily on Google services. Against [Microsoft Copilot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-copilot) , Gemini offers better Google app integration, while Copilot excels in Microsoft Office integration. When compared to [Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/merlin-ai) , Gemini provides deeper Google ecosystem integration, but Merlin offers access to multiple AI models in one platform. #### Detailed comparisons [Google Gemini vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/google-gemini-ai-vs-chatgpt) • [Google Gemini vs Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/google-gemini-ai-vs-claude) • [Google Gemini vs Microsoft Copilot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/google-gemini-ai-vs-microsoft-copilot) ## [7\. Le Chat by Mistral AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/le-chat) ![Le Chat by Mistral AI](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/le-chat/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Le Chat is Mistral AI's answer to ChatGPT—and it's a convincing one. With over 1 million downloads and a 4.7-star rating on the Play Store (32.1K reviews), it's established itself as a legitimate daily driver for many users. On iOS, it holds a 4.8-star rating across 848 ratings. The 4.32 rating from the last 100 Android reviews suggests most users are happy, though some recent UI changes have caused friction. What draws people to Le Chat is the combination of a capable free tier, source citations on answers, and a European, privacy-conscious positioning. Store reviewers describe it as fast and often more concise than ChatGPT, and its citations suit research-style queries where you want to verify the source. Several of them put it plainly—calling it "similar but more concise" or "maybe even better" than the big US alternatives. ### Key Features: - **Deep Research & Reasoning**  – Multi-source research, advanced reasoning for complex tasks, and certified journalistic sources - **Lightning Search & News**  – Fast search across the web and real-time news - **Projects**  – Organize data, documents, and notes from multiple sources into personalized projects - **Image Generation & Iteration**  – Create images and iterate creatively with contextual support - **Multilanguage & Voice**  – Understands your language with multilanguage reasoning and voice recognition - **Document OCR**  – Document OCR with multilanguage support - **Source Citations**  – Clear links to sources so you can verify answers ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - European alternative to US big tech - Strong free tier, cites sources - Fast and concise answers - Good for daily and teaching use - Privacy-focused positioning - Clean, organized interface **Cons:** - Chat limits even on Pro - UI changes and keyboard friction - Light mode cursor visibility - Precision tasks sometimes fail ### Who is this great for? Le Chat is perfect for anyone who wants a capable AI assistant without handing their data to US big tech. Teachers, students, and researchers will appreciate the source citations—you can actually verify what the AI tells you, which is rare. The free tier handles daily questions comfortably, and the Projects feature is great for organizing ongoing work. It's especially great for European users who care about data sovereignty, and for anyone who finds ChatGPT's responses unnecessarily verbose. If you value concise, cited answers over lengthy prose, Le Chat often delivers better results in fewer words. ### Compared to others Le Chat carves out a distinct niche by combining a privacy-first European identity with genuinely useful source citations. Against  [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) , it's often faster and more concise, though ChatGPT has broader plugin and ecosystem support. Compared to  [DeepSeek](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deepseek-ai) , Le Chat offers a more polished interface and clearer source transparency, while DeepSeek may edge ahead on raw reasoning for certain technical tasks.  [Perplexity](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/perplexity-ai)  is the closest competitor in the "search with citations" space, but Le Chat's Projects feature and Mistral's model quality give it a different feel. ### Detailed comparisons [Le Chat vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/le-chat-vs-chatgpt)  •  [Le Chat vs Perplexity](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/le-chat-vs-perplexity-ai)  •  [Le Chat vs DeepSeek](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/le-chat-vs-deepseek-ai) ### Rating Summary With over 1 million downloads and strong ratings on Android (4.7 stars, 32.1K reviews) and iOS (4.8 stars, 848 ratings), Le Chat has earned a loyal user base as a European AI alternative.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Le Chat by Mistral AI a score of 8.00/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/le-chat) . ## [8\. Deep Think - AI Seek Chatbot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deep-think) ![Deep Think - AI Seek Chatbot](https://productivity-apps.com/data/prodapps/apps/deep-think/images/gallery-image-1.webp) Deep Think—also marketed as AI Seek—takes a different approach from most AI assistants: instead of locking you into one model, it bundles GPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, and Qwen into a single app. With over 1 million downloads and a 4.6-star rating on the Play Store (54K reviews), the multi-model concept clearly appeals to a lot of people. On iOS, it sits at 4.1 stars with only 9 ratings so far. The 4.36 rating from the last 100 Android reviews shows solid ongoing satisfaction. Its listing pitches it for writing help, quick questions, and a built-in math solver. The standout feature is genuinely useful: you can switch models mid-conversation and compare how different AIs handle the same prompt. Several store reviewers highlight the same thing—being able to "easily switch to a different bot" without leaving the app. It also offers image generation, long-form writing tools, and some lighter features like AI tarot and horoscopes. ### Key Features: - **Multi-Model Chat**  – Use GPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, and Qwen in one app; switch models within a single conversation - **Image Creation & Editing**  – Text-to-image, image-to-image, style transfer, and AI photo editing powered by Gemini - **Long-Form Writing Assistant**  – Plan storylines, build characters, and draft fiction or scripts with support from multiple models - **AI Fortune-Telling & Fun**  – Tarot, zodiac, horoscope, and light emotional guidance powered by language models - **Smart Math Solver**  – Scan problems and get step-by-step answers without a separate calculator - **Study & Learning**  – Practice languages, get explanations, and explore academic topics with model-backed research - **Quick Answers & Summaries**  – Break down concepts and get summaries using Qwen, GPT, and Gemini ### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Multiple AI models in one app - Switch models mid-conversation - Quick responses and clear explanations - Grammar and writing help - Image generation and math solver - Useful for study and assignments **Cons:** - Pricing can feel heavy for full use - Icon confusion with DeepSeek - Privacy controls not always obvious - Some models limited or removed in updates ### Who is this great for? Deep Think is perfect for anyone who doesn't want to be locked into a single AI provider. Students juggling homework across subjects will appreciate being able to switch from GPT for writing to DeepSeek for math reasoning in the same session. Writers and creatives benefit from comparing how different models handle narrative prompts or image generation. It's especially great for curious users who want to experiment with multiple models without installing five different apps. If you've ever wondered whether Claude gives a better answer than GPT for a specific question, Deep Think lets you find out instantly—within the same conversation thread. ### Compared to others Deep Think's multi-model approach is its clearest differentiator. While  [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt)  and  [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude)  each offer a single, polished model experience, Deep Think sacrifices some of that polish for variety. Compared to  [ChatOn](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chaton-ai) , which also aggregates models, Deep Think offers a broader selection and the ability to switch mid-conversation. It's worth noting that Deep Think is not  [DeepSeek](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deepseek-ai)  itself—it uses DeepSeek among other models, and the similar branding has confused some users. ### Detailed comparisons [Deep Think vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/deep-think-vs-chatgpt)  •  [Deep Think vs Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/deep-think-vs-claude)  •  [Deep Think vs ChatOn](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/deep-think-vs-chaton-ai) ### Rating Summary With over 1 million downloads on Android (4.6 stars, 54K reviews) and a growing iOS presence (4.1 stars, 9 ratings), Deep Think has found its audience among users who value model variety.  [ProdApps](https://productivity-apps.com/)  gave Deep Think a score of 7.92/10. Check out the  [full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deep-think) . ### [9\. Perplexity AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/perplexity-ai) ![Perplexity AI](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*6CW2hpNgqxK2jVqhZ-Zanw.png) *Perplexity AI* Perplexity AI is what happens when you combine the best of search engines with the power of AI. Instead of giving you a list of websites to visit, it gives you direct answers with sources cited — like having a really smart research assistant who actually shows their work. What really stands out about Perplexity is how it bridges the gap between traditional search and AI chat. You get the conversational feel of ChatGPT, but with the reliability and transparency of proper research. #### Key Features: - **Smart Search** : Ask questions and get answers with sources listed - **Talk to It** : Just speak your questions instead of typing - **Keep Talking** : Ask follow-up questions like a real conversation - **Works Everywhere** : Your searches sync across all your devices - **Discover New Things** : See what’s trending and popular - **Save Your Stuff** : Keep track of what you’ve learned #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Really good at finding answers with sources - Easy to use and looks clean - Free version has lots of features - Works on all your devices **Cons:** - Pro version is expensive at $20/month - Can’t upload files in free version - Some cool features cost money #### Who is this great for? Perplexity is perfect for anyone who needs reliable, well-sourced information quickly. Whether you’re a student doing research, a professional fact-checking something, or just someone who wants to settle arguments with friends, Perplexity gives you answers you can trust. It’s especially great for researchers, journalists, and anyone who values transparency in their information sources. The voice feature also makes it appealing for people who prefer speaking over typing, and the cross-device sync is perfect for users who work across multiple devices. #### Compared to others Perplexity’s source-citing approach gives it a clear advantage over other AI assistants like [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) or [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) when you need reliable, verifiable information. Against [Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/google-gemini-ai) , Perplexity offers better source transparency, while Gemini provides deeper Google ecosystem integration. When compared to [Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/merlin-ai) , Perplexity excels in research and fact-checking, while Merlin offers access to multiple AI models and productivity tools. #### Detailed comparisons [Perplexity AI vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/perplexity-ai-vs-chatgpt) • [Perplexity AI vs Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/perplexity-ai-vs-google-gemini-ai) • [Perplexity AI vs Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/perplexity-ai-vs-merlin-ai) ### [10\. ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) ![ChatGPT](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*NtrJMv9bJa0N-89wMbguJg.png) *ChatGPT* ChatGPT is the app that started it all. With over 500 million downloads and a 4.7-star rating, it’s still the gold standard for AI assistants — the one that made everyone realize AI could actually be useful for everyday conversations. What really sets ChatGPT apart is how natural the conversations feel. It’s not just answering questions; it’s having actual discussions, remembering context, and adapting to your communication style. #### Key Features: - **Smart Chat** : Talk to AI like you’re texting a friend - **Voice Chat** : Just talk and the AI responds - **Make Images** : Turn your ideas into pictures - **Photo Help** : Upload photos and ask questions about them - **Sync Everywhere** : Your chats follow you from phone to computer - **Custom AI** : Teach the AI how you want it to talk #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Really smart AI that understands context - Voice chat works great - Your conversations sync across all your devices - Gets regular updates with new features **Cons:** - Free version is pretty basic - Good features cost money - Sometimes gets slow when lots of people are using it #### Who is this great for? ChatGPT is perfect for anyone who wants the most natural AI conversation experience available. Whether you’re a student needing help with homework, a professional brainstorming ideas, or just someone who enjoys having intelligent conversations, ChatGPT delivers. It’s especially great for creative types who want to bounce ideas off an AI, professionals who need help with writing and analysis, and anyone who appreciates having a smart conversation partner available 24/7. The voice chat feature also makes it appealing for people who prefer speaking over typing. #### Compared to others ChatGPT’s conversational abilities give it the edge over other AI assistants like [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) or [Perplexity AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/perplexity-ai) when it comes to natural dialogue, though those apps excel in privacy and source-citing respectively. Against [Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/google-gemini-ai) , ChatGPT offers better conversation flow, while Gemini provides deeper Google ecosystem integration. When compared to [Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/merlin-ai) , ChatGPT excels in conversation quality, while Merlin offers access to multiple AI models in one platform. #### Detailed comparisons [ChatGPT vs Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/chatgpt-vs-claude) • [ChatGPT vs Perplexity AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/chatgpt-vs-perplexity-ai) • [ChatGPT vs Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/chatgpt-vs-google-gemini-ai) ### [11\. DeepSeek AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deepseek-ai) ![DeepSeek AI](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*jEUhpUJGUBWCCIArEgns1Q.png) *DeepSeek AI* DeepSeek AI is the AI assistant that proves you don’t need to pay for quality. With over 50 million downloads and a 4.2-star rating, it’s become the go-to choice for anyone who wants powerful AI capabilities without the subscription fees. What really stands out about DeepSeek is how it manages to offer a 600B+ parameter AI model completely free. While other AI assistants are charging $20/month for similar capabilities, DeepSeek gives you unlimited access to high-quality AI responses without any hidden costs. #### Key Features: - **Advanced AI Model** : Powered by DeepSeek-V3 with over 600B parameters for high-quality responses - **Completely Free** : No subscription fees, usage limits, or premium tiers - **Multi-Purpose Assistant** : Handles coding, writing, analysis, and general questions - **Step-by-Step Analysis** : Shows reasoning process and thought chains for complex problems - **Cross-Platform** : Available on both Android and iOS devices - **Offline Capability** : Works without internet connection for basic functions #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Completely free with no usage limits - Powerful AI model with 600B+ parameters - Excellent for coding and technical help - Shows step-by-step reasoning process - Available on both Android and iOS - No account registration required **Cons:** - Occasional server busy issues - Some accuracy concerns reported - Can be slow or laggy at times - Limited advanced features compared to paid alternatives - No voice input/output capabilities #### Who is this great for? DeepSeek AI is perfect for anyone who wants powerful AI assistance without the financial commitment. Whether you’re a student on a budget, a developer who needs coding help, or just someone who wants to try AI without paying, DeepSeek delivers impressive capabilities for free. It’s especially great for developers and technical users who appreciate the step-by-step reasoning process, and for anyone who values transparency in how AI arrives at its answers. The fact that it works offline for basic functions also makes it appealing for users who need reliable access even without internet. #### Compared to others DeepSeek’s completely free model gives it a clear advantage over paid alternatives like [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) or [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) for budget-conscious users, though those apps may offer more advanced features. Against [Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/google-gemini-ai) , DeepSeek provides better value for money, while Gemini offers deeper Google ecosystem integration. When compared to [Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/merlin-ai) , DeepSeek excels in cost-effectiveness, while Merlin offers access to multiple AI models and productivity tools. #### Detailed comparisons [DeepSeek AI vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/deepseek-ai-vs-chatgpt) • [DeepSeek AI vs Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/deepseek-ai-vs-claude) • [DeepSeek AI vs Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/deepseek-ai-vs-google-gemini-ai) ### [12\. Grok](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/grok) ![Grok](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*u42_i1VVGNJarwI7LHu7HQ.png) *Grok* Grok is Elon Musk’s answer to the AI assistant market, and it brings something genuinely different to the table. Developed by xAI, it combines cutting-edge language models with real-time information access and a personality that’s actually entertaining to interact with. What really sets Grok apart is its ability to access current events and live data — something most other AI assistants struggle with. Plus, it has a witty, rebellious personality that makes conversations feel more like talking to a smart friend than a corporate AI. #### Key Features: - **Real-time Information** : Access to current events and live data - **Multimodal AI** : Text, image generation, and image analysis capabilities - **Personality** : Witty and rebellious AI personality with humor - **Integration** : Seamless connection with X (Twitter) platform - **Advanced Reasoning** : Complex problem-solving and analytical capabilities - **Image Generation** : Create striking visuals from text descriptions #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Real-time information access - Witty and engaging personality - Strong image generation capabilities - Seamless X platform integration **Cons:** - Requires X Premium+ subscription for full access - Limited availability compared to competitors - Some users report occasional response delays #### Who is this great for? Grok is perfect for anyone who wants an AI assistant with personality and real-time information access. Whether you’re a news junkie who wants current events analysis, a creative professional who needs image generation, or just someone who appreciates an AI that doesn’t take itself too seriously, Grok delivers. It’s especially great for X (Twitter) users who are already invested in that ecosystem, and for anyone who values having access to up-to-the-minute information. The witty personality also makes it appealing for users who find other AI assistants too formal or corporate. #### Compared to others Grok’s real-time information access gives it a unique advantage over other AI assistants like [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) or [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) when you need current events, though those apps may offer better conversation flow. Against [Perplexity AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/perplexity-ai) , Grok offers more personality and X integration, while Perplexity provides better source-citing. When compared to [DeepSeek AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deepseek-ai) , Grok excels in real-time information and personality, while DeepSeek offers completely free access. #### Detailed comparisons [Grok vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/grok-vs-chatgpt) • [Grok vs Perplexity AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/grok-vs-perplexity-ai) • [Grok vs DeepSeek AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/grok-vs-deepseek-ai) ### [13\. Gemmy AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gemmy-ai) ![Gemmy AI](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*CwXdQhUJJL--Nh22ZFOTlw.png) *Gemmy AI* Gemmy AI is what happens when you combine Google’s Gemini technology with a massive library of creative prompts. With over 1 million downloads and a 4.4-star rating, it’s become a popular choice for anyone who wants AI-powered creative assistance. What really stands out about Gemmy is its extensive prompt library. Instead of having to figure out how to ask the AI for help with specific tasks, Gemmy provides ready-to-use prompts for everything from writing stories to crafting social media posts. #### Key Features: - **AI Chat Assistant** : Powered by Google’s Gemini AI for smart conversations and creative help - **Huge Prompt Library** : Tons of ready-to-use prompts for writing, brainstorming, and more - **Works in Multiple Languages** : Chat in your preferred language - **Save & Share Chats** : Keep important conversations and share them with others - **Creative Writing Help** : Get help with stories, poems, social media posts, and other content - **Privacy-Focused** : Built with security to protect your data #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Uses Google’s powerful Gemini AI - Huge collection of helpful prompts - Works in multiple languages - Great for creative writing - Easy to use interface - Regular updates with new content **Cons:** - Free version is very limited - Premium features are pricey - Can be slow sometimes - AI sometimes gives outdated info - Lots of premium popups #### Who is this great for? Gemmy AI is perfect for anyone who needs help with creative writing and content creation. Whether you’re a social media manager looking for post ideas, a writer struggling with writer’s block, or just someone who wants to explore AI-powered creativity, Gemmy’s prompt library makes it easy to get started. It’s especially great for content creators, marketers, and anyone who regularly needs help with writing tasks. The multi-language support also makes it appealing for international users, and the save/share features are perfect for collaborative projects. #### Compared to others Gemmy’s prompt library gives it a unique advantage over other AI assistants like [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) or [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) for creative writing tasks, though those apps may offer better general conversation abilities. Against [Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/google-gemini-ai) , Gemmy offers better creative prompts and organization, while Gemini provides deeper Google ecosystem integration. When compared to [DeepSeek AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deepseek-ai) , Gemmy excels in creative assistance and prompts, while DeepSeek offers completely free access. #### Detailed comparisons [Gemmy AI vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/gemmy-ai-vs-chatgpt) • [Gemmy AI vs Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/gemmy-ai-vs-google-gemini-ai) • [Gemmy AI vs DeepSeek AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/gemmy-ai-vs-deepseek-ai) ### [14\. ChatOn AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chaton-ai) ![ChatOn AI](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*lo5KIPT8h6zbXPRm-Ajitw.png) *ChatOn AI* ChatOn AI is the Swiss Army knife of AI assistants. With over 10 million downloads and a 4.5-star rating, it’s become one of the most popular AI apps by offering everything from text generation to image creation in one comprehensive platform. What really sets ChatOn apart is its ability to access multiple AI models — GPT-4o, Claude 3.7, DeepSeek-R1, and more — all in one app. Instead of having to choose between different AI assistants, you can pick the best model for each specific task. #### Key Features: - **Multiple AI Models** : You get access to GPT-4o, o4-mini, Sonar, Claude 3.7, and DeepSeek-R1, so you can pick the best one for your needs - **AI Image Creation** : Make custom pictures and artwork using AI - **Photo Effects** : Transform your photos with cool styles like Japanese Cartoon, Plushy, Cyberpunk, and Action Figure looks - **Document Help** : Upload documents and get summaries, translations, and analysis - **YouTube Analysis** : Paste a YouTube link and get summaries or ask questions about the video - **Writing Assistant** : Get help with emails, social media posts, speeches, and creative writing - **Code Helper** : Write and fix programming code with AI assistance - **100+ Ready Prompts** : Quick access to pre-written prompts for common tasks #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Access to multiple advanced AI models - Comprehensive feature set including image generation - User-friendly interface with ready-made prompts - Strong user base with 10M+ downloads - Regular updates and improvements - Good overall rating (4.5 stars) **Cons:** - Premium features require subscription - Some users report recent performance issues - Image generation accuracy can be inconsistent - Limited free tier functionality - Subscription management issues reported #### Who is this great for? ChatOn AI is perfect for anyone who wants a comprehensive AI solution that can handle multiple types of tasks. Whether you’re a content creator who needs both text and image generation, a professional who works with documents and videos, or just someone who wants access to multiple AI models in one place, ChatOn delivers. It’s especially great for users who want to experiment with different AI models without switching between apps, and for anyone who needs both creative and analytical AI assistance. The 100+ ready prompts also make it appealing for users who want to get started quickly without crafting their own prompts. #### Compared to others ChatOn’s multi-model approach gives it an advantage over single-model apps like [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) or [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) , offering access to both plus more models. Against [Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/merlin-ai) , ChatOn provides better image generation and photo effects, while Merlin offers a more generous free tier. When compared to [Gemmy AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/gemmy-ai) , ChatOn excels in multi-model access and comprehensive features, while Gemmy focuses more on creative prompts and writing assistance. #### Detailed comparisons [ChatOn AI vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/chaton-ai-vs-chatgpt) • [ChatOn AI vs Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/chaton-ai-vs-merlin-ai) • [ChatOn AI vs Gemmy AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/chaton-ai-vs-gemmy-ai) ### [15\. Chatbot AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatbot-ai) ![Chatbot AI](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*rd3t4Msl40AHw6CXyQnWbw.png) *Chatbot AI* Chatbot AI is another multi-model AI assistant that aims to be your one-stop solution for all things AI. With over 1 million downloads and a 4.4-star rating, it brings together GPT-4, GPT-4o, Google Gemini, Claude, and DeepSeek in one comprehensive platform. What really sets Chatbot AI apart is its specialized features beyond just text generation. It offers mental health support, fitness coaching, and language learning capabilities — making it more like a personal AI companion than just a chatbot. #### Key Features: - **Multi-Model AI Support** : Access to GPT-4, GPT-4o, Google Gemini, Claude, and DeepSeek models for diverse AI capabilities - **AI Text Generation** : Create stories, poems, emails, and technical content with advanced text generation - **AI Essay Writer** : Generate academic essays and articles on any topic within seconds - **AI Image Generator** : Transform text descriptions into unique images using DALL·E technology - **Mental Health Support** : Receive personalized advice and positive affirmations for mental well-being - **Fitness & Health Coaching** : Get exercise guidance, nutritional advice, and wellness tips - **Language Learning Practice** : Engage in conversations and receive grammar tips for language improvement - **Cross-Platform Access** : Use your account across mobile, web, and desktop devices #### Pros & Cons **Pros:** - Access to multiple advanced AI models - Comprehensive feature set including text and image generation - Cross-platform availability - Mental health and fitness coaching features - Language learning capabilities - User-friendly interface **Cons:** - Limited free usage before requiring subscription - Some users reported misleading app store presence - Pricing can be expensive for heavy users - Mixed user reviews about functionality - Some users experienced technical issues #### Who is this great for? Chatbot AI is perfect for anyone who wants a comprehensive AI assistant with specialized features for personal development. Whether you’re looking for mental health support, fitness coaching, language learning, or just general AI assistance, Chatbot AI offers a unique combination of capabilities. It’s especially great for users who want access to multiple AI models for different purposes, and for anyone who values the specialized coaching features that most other AI assistants don’t offer. The cross-platform access also makes it appealing for users who work across multiple devices. #### Compared to others Chatbot AI’s specialized features give it a unique advantage over general AI assistants like [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) or [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) , offering mental health and fitness coaching that those apps don’t provide. Against [ChatOn AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chaton-ai) , Chatbot AI offers more specialized coaching features, while ChatOn provides better image generation and photo effects. When compared to [Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/merlin-ai) , Chatbot AI excels in specialized assistance features, while Merlin offers a more generous free tier and better platform integrations. #### Detailed comparisons [Chatbot AI vs ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/chatbot-ai-vs-chatgpt) • [Chatbot AI vs ChatOn AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/chatbot-ai-vs-chaton-ai) • [Chatbot AI vs Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/compare/chatbot-ai-vs-merlin-ai) ### Final Thoughts Looking at all 12 AI assistants side by side, each has carved out its own unique space in the market. Going by their ratings and what users report, [ChatGPT](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/chatgpt) leads with the best overall performance and excels at natural conversations, while [Claude](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/claude) offers the strongest privacy protections. [Merlin AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/merlin-ai) provides the best value with its generous free tier and multi-model access. For specific use cases: [Google Gemini](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/google-gemini-ai) is perfect for Google ecosystem users, [Microsoft Copilot](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/microsoft-copilot) excels with Office integration, and [DeepSeek AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/deepseek-ai) offers completely free access to a powerful model. [Perplexity AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/perplexity-ai) stands out for sourced information, while [Poe AI](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/poe-ai) provides excellent multi-model flexibility. The key is finding what fits your specific needs. Start with free versions, test thoroughly, and only upgrade when you hit the limits. With so many quality options available, there’s no need to settle for an AI assistant that doesn’t work for you. --- # My Simple Strategy for 3,268 5‑Star Chrome Extension Reviews > Get 37x more reviews than Grammarly with this simple strategy. Learn the Win-Ask Method to boost your Chrome extension ratings and user engagement. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-07-28 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Marketing, Side Projects, Side Hustle, Chrome Extension - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/my-simple-strategy-for-3-268-5-star-chrome-extension-reviews/ --- Around 3.7% of my 100,000+ users leave a review for my Chrome extension — that’s 37 times higher than giants like Grammarly (0.1%) or AdGuard (0.4%). The 4.83 average rating is way above normal, and the amount of reviews is so unusually high that some people even think my reviews must be fake or bought — spoiler: they’re not. Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. ![Percentage of users who leave reviews — Grammarly (~0.1%), AdGuard (~0.4%), Web Highlights (~3.7%)](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*6--CTsrEwEKmQNy-yiz1wg.png) *Percentage of users who leave reviews — Grammarly (0.1%), AdGuard (0.4%), Web Highlights (3.7%)* Recently, someone asked me how I manage to get so many reviews. That’s why I wrote this article to walk you through my simple strategy and show you how to apply it to your own software business. In short, it all comes down to one simple idea: **Ask at the right time.** --- ### The Win-Ask Method In their book _Software as a Science: Unlock Limitless Recurring Revenue Without_ , [Dan Martell](https://medium.com/u/4488524a778a) , Johnny Page, and Matt Verlaque explain their “Win-Ask Method,” which is based on a simple human behavior: > People are much more likely to help others if they’ve just experienced a small positive moment. To prove this, they ran an experiment asking strangers for help on the street. In the first test, only 4% agreed. But in the second test, they secretly made people find a dollar just before asking — and this time, 84% said yes! Using this insight, they created the “Win-Ask” method: you ask your customers for something only after they’ve had a positive experience with your software. > If you can identify a milestone in the customer journey that correlates to a customer winning, you also have an opportunity to ask the customer to share that win with the world. — Software as a Science --- ### My Strategy Even though I had already developed my strategy before discovering the Win-Ask Method, it revolves around the same idea. #### 1\. Find a User Win The first thing you need to do is to find a moment where your users are experiencing a win. This can be anything where you provide value for your users.  For example, users of my [highlighter extension](https://web-highlights.com/) experience a win every time they use the web highlighter to highlight some text on a page. For [writing‑assistant add-ons](https://tooltivity.com/categories/writing-tools) , like [Grammarly](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/grammarly) , that win could be when a user accepts an auto‑completion suggestion. So, first, ask yourself: **At what point in the customer journey do your users feel like they’ve achieved a win?** #### 2\. Find the Sweet Spot Finding a situation where your users experience a win is only the first part of the strategy. The even more important question is when exactly to ask for a review. The main idea is that we only want to ask happy users for a review; the unhappy ones should never be asked.  That’s the sweet spot to find. Some users might test your app for a day, try the main features, and then realize it’s not what they wanted. In the worst case, they might even hate it. Asking those users for a review would only lead to more 1‑star ratings. Most of the time, those users either forget about your app or uninstall it.  Instead, you want to focus on users who actually use and enjoy your tool. Find the right moment — a point where you know they’re actively using your product and experiencing wins regularly. That’s the perfect time to ask for a review. For [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) , I don’t ask for a review right after someone creates their first highlight. That would include almost everyone who’s just trying out the app and might uninstall it right after. Instead, I wait until they’ve highlighted their 12th website. By that point, most unhappy users have already left, and the ones who reach it are usually happy with the tool. So the second question is: **When do my happy users experience wins, while unhappy users usually drop off before reaching this point in the journey?** #### 3\. The Prompt Finally, it’s time to ask for a review. There aren’t really strict rules for this — the main thing is to show a pop-up that your users can’t ignore. Here’s how I do it in Web Highlights: ![Web Highlights pop-up to ask for review](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*8ZPzQrsFbvXxAlwOBy0PwA.png) *Web Highlights pop-up to ask for review* The pop-up shows up right after a user creates a highlight on their 12th website. And even though it’s pretty self‑explanatory, here are a few things worth pointing out: - **Keep it personal** : I think users appreciate that I’m building [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) on my own, and they’re more likely to leave a review than if a big company asked them. - **Make them feel bad** : To close the dialog, users have to click “No, I Don’t Want To 😔.” There’s no X‑button, and clicking outside the dialog won’t close it either. When I first set this up, I wasn’t sure how it would go, but my goal was to make them feel just a little bad for not supporting me. And what can I say? It works surprisingly well. - **Show it only once** : Don’t annoy your users by asking them over and over. Each user should see the pop-up just once — showing it too often can easily backfire. #### **4\. Build a great product** I know this should be obvious, but I wanted to bring this up to say that this strategy doesn’t get you anywhere if your product isn’t good. My goal — and hopefully yours too — is always to create something users genuinely love. The review pop-up should just be a small reminder for those who already like your product but normally wouldn’t leave a review. That’s really the main idea: most users won’t leave reviews unless you ask. We just need to give them a friendly reminder, and maybe we’ll get some well-deserved feedback from people who otherwise wouldn’t have shared it. ### Asking for More Favors You can use this strategy in more ways within your SaaS business. Here are a few ideas: - **Ask for an upgrade** : If your product offers a Pro plan, encourage your users to upgrade to a paid subscription right after they experience a success. - **Ask users to share on social media** : This is a powerful way to drive growth because word‑of‑mouth remains one of the most effective marketing methods. If a close friend recommends a product, you’re likely to consider it — because you trust them. That trust naturally extends to the product they endorse. - **Ask for feedback:** Listening to your users is the best way to improve your product. Just ask them to fill out a simple Google Form to learn what they want — then use that feedback to make things better. ### Final Thoughts Many good reviews are the best social proof you can get.  However, most users will never leave a review unless you ask them to. We’ve learned that humans are more likely to help others if they’ve just experienced a win. So, identify those winning moments in your customer journey, filter out unhappy users, and actively and kindly ask your happy users to leave a review.  Given that your product is providing real value, your users will be happy to share their feedback. --- > [**3 Unusually Painful Mistakes on My Side Project Journey to 100K Users**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-unusually-painful-mistakes-on-my-side-project-journey/) — Discover the three unusually painful mistakes I made on my side project journey and how to avoid them. Get tips for smoother project execution. (Marius Bongarts) > [**Forget About Marketing. Focus on Building The Best Product.**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/forget-about-marketing-focus-on-building-an-awesome-product/) — I completely focused on building the best PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension and stopped marketing for 3 months — here is what happened. (Marius Bongarts) > [**How I Increased Chrome Extension Users by 270% in 9 Months**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/rocketing-to-10-000-users-how-i-achieved-a-270-increase-in-just-9-months-with-my-chrome-extension/) — Learn how I managed to grow the user base of my Chrome extension by 270% in just nine months by applying simple SEO strategies. (Marius Bongarts) --- # How to Highlight in Apple Notes (with Different Colors) > Learn how to highlight text in Apple Notes with colors using this free online tool. Copy, paste, color‑code your notes, and export them — no account required. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-07-24 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Tutorial, Note-Taking, Apple, Tools - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-in-apple-notes-with-different-colors/ --- I love Apple Notes. Its popularity comes from its simplicity and Apple’s clean design. I think it’s crazy that many people prefer this simple app over so many [more powerful note‑taking tools](https://tooltivity.com/categories/note-taking-apps) .  Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. However, sometimes its capabilities come to an end, and many MacBook users wonder: **how do you highlight in notes?** If you use Apple Notes, you might have noticed there’s no built-in way to highlight words in different colors. This realization can be frustrating when you’re trying to use more [advanced summarization technique](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-art-of-summarization-tiago-fortes-progressive-highlighting-2-0-technique-in-action/) s. This guide will show you how to highlight in notes with multiple colors using a [free online notes highlighter tool](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-in-notes) . > [**Free Online Notes Highlighter - How to Highlight in Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-in-notes) — Highlight in notes with our free online tool. Paste notes from Apple Notes, Google Keep, textbooks, or anywhere else and highlight words in notes with multiple colors. ### Why Can’t I Highlight in Apple Notes? Apple Notes is great for quick note-taking, but it doesn’t offer colored highlighting.  You can bold, italicize, or underline, but you can’t visually mark important information with color. If you want to make your notes more visual and organized, you’ll need a workaround. ### How to Highlight Words in Apple Notes (Step-by-Step) ### 1\. Copy Your Notes from Apple Notes Select the text you want to highlight in your Apple Notes app and copy it (Cmd+C on Mac or right-click > Copy). ![Apple Notes: Copy Text](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*G8NHN6V-ycKotl4UDbUhSg.png) *Copy Notes From Apple Notes* ### 2\. Open the Free Online Notes Highlighter Go to the [free notes highlighter tool](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-in-notes) . ![Screenshot of: Free Online Notes Highlighter](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Qg6ejW_snPPCC-p10EG3Xg.png) *Free Online Notes Highlighter* ### 3\. Paste Your Notes Click into the input area and paste your notes. The formatting will be preserved. ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*zWKjJ8ERZ25UbrWE27SP0g.png) After you paste your notes, the **“Highlight Notes”** button will become active, and you can click it to start highlighting. ### 4\. Highlight Words in Notes Once you click “Highlight Notes”, a new Reader page opens up showing your notes in a [clean reader format](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) . Here you can start to: - Select the words or sentences you want to highlight. - Choose a color from the highlighter palette. - Repeat for as many highlights and colors as you need. ![Screenshot: Highlight in multiple colors](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*QzoA5E_bHWIjbgnlUpmwNw.png) *Highlight in multiple colors within your notes* This is the easiest way to highlight words in notes and use multiple colors for different types of information (e.g., yellow for key points, green for examples, pink for questions).  Learn more about [highlighting text and taking notes on any content](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) . > [**How to Use Reader Mode For Focused Article Reading**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) — Learn how to read online articles without distractions using Web Highlights’ reader mode. Enjoy a clean, focused reading experience on any website. (Marius Bongarts) ### 5\. Export Your Highlighted Notes When you’re done, you can export your highlighted notes as Markdown, HTML, or PDF.  These formats are perfect for sharing, studying, or integrating with other note-taking and knowledge management tools such as Notion, Obsidian, or Capacities.  For integration with other tools, check out guides on [exporting to Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , [exporting to Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) , or [exporting to Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) . ### 6\. Organize Your Notes & Highlights All your notes and highlights are automatically saved locally in your browser. You can add multiple notes, revisit your content, and manage your highlights and annotations at any time.  To view and organize your saved notes, simply click on the left tab of the sidebar — here you’ll find all your notes stored after pasting them into the tool: ![Sidebar with saved notes](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*wJ5BKXwhMv4DeQwMVTsKlQ.png) *Sidebar with saved notes* If you create a free account, you can even access your notes and highlights from any device, including your phone. This makes it easy to keep your study materials and research organized and available wherever you go. --- If you prefer a quick video, here is a quick demo: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH0en5IW5Xo) ### Limitations of the Free Online Tool While the free online notes highlighter is great for most use cases, there are a few limitations to be aware of: - Character Limit: The web tool supports up to 10,000 characters per note. For longer notes or documents, you may need to split your content. - Manual Copy-Paste: You need to copy your notes into the tool and then back into Apple Notes or your preferred app. - No Direct Highlighting on Websites: The online tool works with pasted text only, not directly on web pages. To highlight on any website, [install the free web highlighter add-on](https://web-highlights.com/install) . ### Need More? Try the Free Browser Extension This free tool is built by [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) , the team behind the popular PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension with hundreds of thousands of active users. ![The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*G17SntSjza_QYw15ASQZRQ.png) *Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter | 100,000 users — 4.8 ⭐ (3.7K ratings). That listing was captured a while ago; it now reads 300,000+ users and 5,000+ ratings.* If you want to highlight unlimited text, annotate directly on any website or PDF, or save highlights instantly without copy-paste, consider [installing the free browser extension](https://web-highlights.com/install) . It lets you: - Highlight and annotate directly on any webpage or PDF - Save unlimited highlights and notes - Sync your highlights across devices — free for your first 7 days Learn more and [install the free browser extension here:](https://web-highlights.com/install) > [**Install PDF & Web Highlighter on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. ### Tips for Better Highlighting in Notes - Use consistent colors for specific types of information. Discover our [Stabilo-inspired color palette](https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlight-the-web-with-the-colors-of-your-beloved-stabilo-highlighters/) and [formatted highlighting features](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) . - Don’t over-highlight — focus on the most important words in your notes. - Review your highlights regularly to reinforce learning. - Consider using the [PARA method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/master-your-second-brain-part-1-how-to-use-the-para-method/) for organizing your notes systematically. ### Advanced Use Cases ### For Students and Researchers If you’re taking notes from textbooks or research papers, this method is perfect for [annotation tools for researchers and students](https://web-highlights.com/blog/article-annotation-tools-for-researchers-and-students/) . You can highlight key concepts, add annotations, and create comprehensive study materials. > [**10 Best Article Annotation Tools for Researchers and Students**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/article-annotation-tools-for-researchers-and-students/) — Struggling to find high-quality annotation tools? Check out our list of 10 advanced article tools, making annotations easy for researchers and students! (Web Highlights) ### For Knowledge Management This approach works well with the [second brain method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) for building a personal knowledge management system. You can organize your highlighted notes into projects, areas, resources, and archives. > [**Master Your Creativity by Building a Digital Second Brain**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) — Unlock your creative potential with Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain” digital system. Discover the transformative ‘CODE’ technique and ‘PARA’ method. (Marius Bongarts) ### Final Thoughts While Apple Notes doesn’t support colored highlights natively, you can easily add them by copying your notes into the [free online highlighter tool](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-in-notes) by Web Highlights. It’s perfect if you just want a quick way to highlight important parts of your notes in different colors — no account required. The best part? Your notes stay saved in your browser, so you can easily return to them anytime. > [**Free Online Notes Highlighter - How to Highlight in Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-in-notes) — Highlight in notes with our free online tool. Paste notes from Apple Notes, Google Keep, textbooks, or anywhere else and highlight words in notes with multiple colors. --- # 10 Annotation and Reading Tools for Dyslexic Students > Struggling with dyslexia? These 10 annotation and reading tools for dyslexic students in 2025 can help improve focus, comprehension, and learning confidence. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-07-23 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Active Reading - Reading time: 16 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/reading-tools-for-dyslexic-students/ --- Reading shouldn’t feel like a struggle.  However, for students with a learning disability such as dyslexia, even basic reading or note-taking can become a frustrating task, marked by skipped lines, forgotten sentences, and words that simply don’t stick. That is where the right learning platforms can make a big difference in improving literacy skills. Whether it’s a browser extension that highlights important text or assistive technology like text readers and spelling aids, tech can help dyslexic learners stay on track without getting overwhelmed. In this blog, we have put together a list of 10 useful annotation and reading tools for dyslexic students that actually work. From colorful annotations to distraction-free reading modes and text-to-speech apps, these tools are built to strengthen reading skills and support how dyslexic students learn best. Let’s get into it. ## **Why Dyslexic Students Need Specialized Tools?** Reading with dyslexia isn’t just about reversing letters or reading slowly; it is a combination of things that make learning harder.  Students may struggle to match letters to sounds, maintain focus, or develop reading fluency without targeted support. Some deal with visual stress, where the words seem to blur or move, while others struggle with decoding, which means breaking words down into readable parts. Add in poor working memory, and without graphic organizers or visual supports, long paragraphs and complex instructions can become overwhelming pretty fast. That is why advanced learning platforms designed for dyslexic learners are essential. Simple features like [formatted color-coded highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) , [engaging flashcards or summaries](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-create-a-study-guide/) , and phonemic awareness tools can go a long way in helping students absorb information while making learning fun.  Tools with reading strips, dyslexia-friendly fonts, text-to-speech software or distraction-free reading modes (such as [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) ) help dyslexic learners regain control. And when everything is saved and synced, such as scanned worksheets using optical character recognition, it becomes easier to study and stay organized. ## **Top Annotation Tools for Dyslexic Students** Here is a list of top annotation tools for dyslexic students: ## **1.  Web Highlights**  [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rumx2qVOr2c) [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) functions as both an [annotation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/practical-annotation-examples/) and reading tool for dyslexic students, blending digital literacy with visual organizers. It features a browser extension and web app that enable students to highlight, tag, and annotate any content they read, whether it is a website, online article, or PDF. This tool is beneficial for dyslexic learners who require both reading support and note organization in a single, intuitive platform. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension,  [Web App](https://app.web-highlights.com/)  , Edge, Firefox, Mobile (PWA) > [**Install PDF & Web Highlighter on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. ### **Features** - Highlight and [annotate](https://web-highlights.com/blog/annotate-a-pdf-in-chrome/) any web page or [PDF](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) inside the browser - Add notes and tags to organize content - Works with local PDF files after a one-time setup - Save articles in clean [reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) for distraction-free reading - Set email reminders and [bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-organize-bookmarks-in-chrome/) to revisit saved highlights - Collaborate or share highlights with others and [export Chrome bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-bookmarks-and-import-to-web-highlights/) - Export highlights to  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  and  [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/)   with one click, or copy as Markdown and paste into  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) - Supports offline access and cross-device sync - Import [Kindle highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) and convert them into study flashcards - Shareable links for collaboration ### **Top 3 Features of Web Highlights** #### **1\. Formatted Highlighting & Note Structuring** ![Popup with multiple options to select from for formatted highlighting in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-01.webp) Web Highlights automatically keeps your highlights formatted, whether they’re bullet lists, subheadings, or quotes. This helps dyslexic readers break text into smaller chunks, making it easier to process and understand. #### **2\. Distraction-Free Reader Mode** ![Reader mode in Web Highlights to adjust font size, spacing and add highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-02.webp) [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-read-any-website-in-distraction-free-reader-mode/) strips away clutter like ads and sidebars, helping users focus only on the main content, which is key for reducing distractions during reading. #### **3\. Color-coded Highlighting with Tags** ![Add tags and color code highlights through web app or on webpage](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-03.webp) Students can highlight in different colors based on theme, subject, or priority, and then add tags to them for easier review and [increased productivity](https://web-highlights.com/blog/maximizing-productivity-tools-web-highlights/) . ### **Pros** - Easy to use - Great for visual learners - Multiple highlight colors - Great for organizing research with tags and folders - Helps students stay organized across multiple educational platforms - Excellent free version with unlimited offline highlights and bookmarks - Offline access to multiple features - Cross-device sync ### **Cons** - There is no Safari extension, so students who read in Safari need to switch to Chrome, Edge, or Firefox to highlight. ### **How It Helps with Dyslexia** - Reader Mode removes distractions, making it easier to concentrate on the main text. - [Formatted highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) helps break down long chunks into readable sections. - Color-coded highlights + tags support visual memory. - [Flashcards with spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-way-to-read-articles-and-remember-what-you-learned/) improve recall over time. - Works with PDFs, articles, and Kindle, so everything is in one place. - [Kindle import](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) lets students review highlights from ebooks in a more readable layout. - [Email reminders](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) help with follow-through, especially for students who forget to revisit study material. ### **Pricing** - **Basic**  – Free - **Premium**  – Paid monthly, yearly, or lifetime - **Ultimate**  – Paid monthly, yearly, or lifetime See current prices at  [web-highlights.com/pricing](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . ### **Customer Support** - [Blogs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/) - FAQs - Email support - [Tutorials](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials) - Extensive [documentation](https://web-highlights.com/docs) ### **Average Rating** 4.8 / 5 (3.7K ratings), 100 000 + users on Chrome Web Store ![Web Highlights Average Rating](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-04.webp) ## **2\. Glasp**  ![Glasp's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-05.webp) [Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter) is a social web annotation tool that allows users to highlight content from articles, tag it, and share key takeaways with others. It is particularly beneficial for students who learn from audio clips, word webs, and observing others’ thought processes in collaborative environments. Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by our company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. ### **Platform** Chrome extension, Safari extension, Edge, Firefox, iOS app, and Android app ### **Features** - Highlight any online article or web content - Add notes  - Tag and categorize highlights - View other users’ public highlights - Create summary feeds  - Social sharing - Export to markdown and CSV ### **Top 3 Features of Glasp** #### **1\. Public Highlighting Feed** See what others are highlighting in the same article for peer-supported learning and topic discovery. #### **2\. Note-Taking with Tags** You can add short notes and tags to each highlight. This helps with organizing thoughts around a specific topic. #### **3\. Export Options** Export highlights and notes in markdown or CSV format, which can be helpful for compiling revision materials. ### **Pros** - Simple interface - Great for collaborative or social learning - No login needed to explore public content ### **Cons** - No PDF annotation - No reader mode or visual overlays - Limited customizations ### **Why It Helps with Dyslexia** - Clean highlighting interface makes it easier to focus on important points. - Tag-based note organization helps learners group topics visually. - Public highlights can offer cues on what to focus on, useful when students don’t know where to start. - Simple layout with no cluttered menus reduces overload for dyslexic students. ### **Pricing** - **Free plan** - **Pro** – $10/month - **Unlimited** – $25/month ### **Customer Support** - Email-based support - Help center on the website - Community support ### **Average Rating** ![Glasp Average Rating](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-06.webp) The average rating of Glasp is 4.5/5 on the Chrome Web Store. ## **3\. Helperbird**  ![Helperbird's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-07.webp) [Helperbird](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/helperbird-accessibility/ahmapmilbkfamljbpgphfndeemhnajme) is an all-in-one accessibility extension designed to support students with dyslexia, ADHD, and other learning differences. It offers a wide range of features; however, the number of features can feel overwhelming if you’re just looking for a clean, distraction-free reading or highlighting tool. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension, Microsoft Edge Extension, Firefox, Safari, and Web App ### **Features** - Dyslexia-friendly fonts  - Text-to-speech with adjustable speed and voice - Screen masking and line focus - Font resizing, spacing, and background adjustments - Immersive Reader (via Microsoft) - OCR reader for scanned text - Translation and dictionary tools ### **Top 3 Features of Helperbird** #### **1\. Dyslexia Fonts & Customization** Students can choose from fonts like OpenDyslexic and Lexend, change spacing, or adjust font size to make text easier to read. #### **2\. Text-to-Speech Reader** Any webpage or Google Doc can be read aloud with voice controls, helping auditory learners keep up with content. #### **3\. Screen Masking & Color Overlays** Students can apply colored overlays or use multisensory learning aids to reduce glare and support focus during reading. ### **Pros** - Customizable reading experience - Works on most websites and Google tools - Offers a free plan with useful basics ### **Cons** - Can feel cluttered due to too many options - Interface isn't as simple as other tools - Requires setup time to customize for best use ### **Why It Helps with Dyslexia** - Dyslexia-friendly fonts improve readability and reduce decoding stress. - Color overlays and line focus help with visual tracking issues. - Text-to-speech gives students another way to access content. - Font spacing and sizing tools allow learners to adapt reading environments. ### **Pricing** - **Free Plan** - **Helperbird Pro** – $30/year - **Helperbird Pro Unlimited** – $1500/year - **Pro Unlimited +** – Custom plan ### **Customer Support** - Help guides - Tutorials - Web Support - Email Support ### **Average Rating** ![Helperbird Average Rating](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-08.webp) The average rating of Helperbird is 4/8/5 according to G2. ## **4\. Weava**  ![Weava's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-09.webp) [Weava](https://web-highlights.com/blog/webhighlights-weava-alternative/) is a browser-based annotation and highlighter tool built for students who need a simple way to collect, color-code, and organize their research. It is best for visual learners who rely on color to make sense of large amounts of text, especially across PDFs and websites. ### **Platform** Chrome extension and iOS mobile app ### **Features** - Highlight websites and PDFs in multiple colors - Organize highlights into folders and subfolders - Add comments and notes  - Export notes to Word or Excel - Search and filter - Collaborate with others using shared folders ### **Top 3 Features of Weava** #### **1\. Multi-Color Highlighting** Use color to group similar ideas or topics, which is helpful for dyslexic students who benefit from visual separation. #### **2\. Folder Organization** All your highlights can be stored in folders with tags or notes, providing students with structure without the need to manage messy documents. #### **3\. Commenting on Highlights** Add small notes or summaries next to each highlight so nothing gets lost in context. ### **Pros** - Easy to use for beginners - Offers a clean dashboard for revision - Simple color coding helps with visual grouping ### **Cons** - Occasional technical issues - Collaboration requires a premium plan - Can get messy without folder organization ### **Why It Helps with Dyslexia** - Color-coded highlights make it easier to separate key ideas or themes. - Folder-based organization helps reduce overwhelm and keep track of materials. - Inline notes give students the ability to summarize in their own words. - The visual layout is clean and easy to scan, especially for those who struggle with reading wall-of-text content. ### **Pricing** - **Free Plan** - **Premium Plan** – $3.99/month  ### **Customer Support** - Help center on the website - Email support - Video tutorials and onboarding help ### **Average Rating** ![Weava Average Rating](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-10.webp) The average rating of Weava is 4.1/5 on the Chrome Web Store.  ## **5\. Kami** ![Kami's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-11.webp) [Kami](https://www.kamiapp.com/) is a PDF and document annotation tool designed for dyslexic students who work with worksheets, scanned documents, and class materials. While Kami supports a wide range of annotations and read-aloud tools, it primarily works with uploaded PDFs or documents, making it less useful for live web annotation. ### **Platform** Chrome extension and Web app ### **Features** - Annotate PDFs and documents  - Text-to-speech - Drawing, shapes, and markup tools - Voice, video, and screen recording comments - OCR for scanned documents - Adjustable font size, color, and spacing - Math and equation tools for STEM subjects ### **Top 3 Features of Kami** #### **1\. Document Annotation** Highlight text, draw, underline, or add comments directly on any PDF, useful for class handouts, homework, or scanned books. #### **2\. Text-to-Speech** Read selected text aloud with adjustable speed and voice, helping dyslexic students follow along more comfortably. #### **3\. Voice & Video Comments** Teachers (or students) can leave audio or video explanations instead of written feedback, making it easier for some learners to understand instructions. ### **Pros** - Simple to use - Voice and video notes help clarify instructions - Supports group work and collaboration ### **Cons** - Mostly limited to uploaded documents and PDFs - Can be expensive for individual use ### **Why It Helps with Dyslexia** - Text-to-speech lets students listen instead of reading, easing eye strain and decoding fatigue. - Voice and video comments provide audio explanations that are easier to understand. - Drawing and markup tools help with visual expression and memory. - Document annotations allow students to interact with class materials in their own way. - Font controls give students the flexibility to adjust text for better readability. ### **Pricing** - **Free Plan** – Basic annotation tools - **Teacher Plan** – $149 - **School or District Plans** – Custom pricing ### **Customer Support** - Help center with video tutorials - Email and form support - Google Workspace for Education guides available ### **Average Rating** ![Kami Average Rating](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-12.webp) Kami is rated 4.7/5 on Capterra.  ## **Reading Tools for Dyslexic Students** Not all dyslexic learners struggle in the same way. Some individuals require text to be read aloud, others benefit from increased spacing, and many struggle to stay focused on a single line at a time. If listening is what helps most, there's a separate comparison of [text to speech extensions for Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-text-to-speech-chrome-extensions/). Here are five reading tools for dyslexic students that support comprehension, focus, and auditory learning, whether you're reading online, working in Google Docs, or reviewing homework. ## **1\. Read&Write by TextHelp** ![Read&Write's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-13.webp) [Read&Write](https://www.everway.com/products/read-and-write-education/) is a reading and writing support tool built for classrooms, especially those using Google Docs or Microsoft Word. It is ideal for dyslexic students who require both auditory and visual support while completing school assignments. ### **Platform** Chrome extension, Windows, and Mac app ### **Features** - Text-to-speech - Screen masking and line focus - Dictionary and picture dictionary support - Predictive spelling help - Vocabulary list builder - Annotation and highlighting tools ### **Top 3 Features of Read&Write** #### **1\. Text-to-Speech** Students can hear content read aloud while following along visually, ideal for those who decode slowly or get overwhelmed by blocks of text. #### **2\. Screen Masking** This reading tool for dyslexic students places a colored overlay or bar across the screen to help students stay focused on one line at a time. #### **3\. Picture Dictionary** It supports reading strategies for dyslexic students by allowing them to click on a word and see an image that represents it. ### **Pros** - Designed with dyslexia and ADHD support - Combines reading and writing support - Easy-to-use ### **Cons** - Might feel heavy for students who only need basic features - Pricing may be high for individual users ### **Why It Helps with Dyslexia** - Text-to-speech reduces decoding strain and improves comprehension. - Screen masking keeps eyes on one line, which is helpful for focus and line tracking. - Predictive spelling and picture support make it easier to express ideas and learn new terms as ways to help dyslexic students read. - Audio notes provide students with an additional way to process instructions or feedback. - Multiplatform support means students can use it across school apps. ### **Pricing** - Free Plan - **Individual Plan** – $175/year - Custom Plans available ### **Customer Support** - Email and chat support - Webinars and professional development - Integration help for schools ### **Average Rating** ![Read&Write Average Rating](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-14.webp) The average rating of Read&Write on Chrome Web store is 3.5/5. ## **2\. NaturalReader** ![NaturalReader's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-15.webp) [NaturalReader](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/naturalreader-ai-text-to/kohfgcgbkjodfcfkcackpagifgbcmimk?hl=en) is a text-to-speech tool that turns written content into spoken audio. It’s best for students who understand better when they hear text rather than read it visually. As one of the more focused reading tools for dyslexic students, it works great for listening, but it doesn’t offer note-taking or annotation features. ### **Platform** Web app, Chrome extension, iOS, and Android app ### **Features** - Converts text to natural-sounding speech - Supports PDFs, Docs, emails, and websites - Adjustable reading speed and voice tone - OCR for scanned documents or photos - Custom pronunciation editor - Cloud storage for saved documents ### **Top 3 Features of NaturalReader** #### **1\. Natural-Sounding Voices** Students can choose from over 100 voices in various languages, featuring realistic intonation that makes it easier to follow along without a robotic tone. #### **2\. OCR & File Reading** Upload scanned homework, books, or worksheets and have them read out loud, especially useful for students who struggle with printed text. #### **3\. MP3 Conversion** Turn long readings into audio files that students can listen to later, ideal for reviewing content during commutes or breaks. ### **Pros** - Very easy to use - High-quality voice output - Works across file types and websites ### **Cons** - No annotation or highlighting tools - Limited organizational features - Some advanced voices are paid ### **Why It Helps with Dyslexia** - Text-to-speech helps students who process spoken language better than written language. - Reading speed control gives students more control over pacing. - MP3 downloads allow for repeated listening and revision. - Realistic voices make listening feel more natural and less tiring. - Supports a wide range of formats, including scanned documents. ### **Pricing** Pricing not disclosed publicly.  ### **Customer Support** - Email support - Help center and personal solutions - FAQs - Web support ### **Average Rating** ![Natural Reader Average Rating](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-16.webp) The average rating of NaturalReader is 4.5/5 on TechRadar. ## **3\. BeeLine Reader** ![BeeLine Reader's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-17.webp) [BeeLine Reader](https://www.beelinereader.com/) uses a color-gradient reading format that helps guide your eyes from line to line. It is especially beneficial for students with reading disorders, offering visual support for tracking and decoding. ### **Platform** Chrome extension, iOS app, Android app, Firefox, and ePub ### **Features** - Gradient color text - Compatible with eBooks and Word docs - Multiple integrations - Adjustable font size, line height, and gradient settings - Reading mode - PDF reading ### **Top 3 Features of BeeLine Reader** #### **1\. Color Gradient Text** Alternating color shades across each line helps the eyes track smoothly, reducing line skipping and visual fatigue. #### **2\. Google Docs & Newsela Support** Students can activate BeeLine inside their classroom documents and reading platforms, making it useful for schoolwork. #### **3\. Reading Display Controls** Students can tweak line spacing, text size, and color settings to match their comfort level. ### **Pros** - Unique visual reading aid - Customizable display settings - Simple browser setup ### **Cons** - No text-to-speech - May not work on every website - Requires separate tools for saving or reviewing content ### **Why It Helps with Dyslexia** - Color gradient text helps with line tracking and eye movement, reducing skipping and re-reading. - Adjustable spacing and font controls let students reduce visual clutter. - Reading comfort increases over time, especially for those who get overwhelmed by walls of text. - Integrates with school tools, so students don’t have to change their workflow. ### **Pricing** Free trial available, but contact them for custom plans. ### **Customer Support** - Email and contact form - Website support - Support for school onboarding ### **Average Rating** ![Beeline reader's average rating](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-18.webp) The average rating of the BeeLine reader is 3/5 on Commonsense. ## **4\. Speechify** ![Speechify's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-19.webp) [Speechify](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/speechify-%E2%80%94-text-to-speec/ljflmlehinmoeknoonhibbjpldiijjmm) is another of the tools for dyslexia that offers realistic voices and mobile-friendly experience. It is a high-quality text-to-speech app for those who prefer listening to content while multitasking or reviewing on the go. ### **Platform** Android, Mac and Web app, Chrome extension and Edge Add-on. ### **Features** - Converts text to speech in natural-sounding voices - Scan physical documents and read them aloud - Sync content across devices - Import from Dropbox, Google Drive, and more - Listen at up to 4x speed - Highlight while listening ### **Top 3 Features of Speechify** #### **1\. Human-Like Voices** Speechify’s premium voices are known for sounding less robotic, which helps enhance brain connectivity during long study sessions. #### **2\. Mobile-Friendly Reading** Students can take photos of physical books or worksheets and convert them to audio, making them ideal for studying on the go. #### **3\. Cross-Device Sync** Switch between phone, tablet, and laptop without losing your place, helpful for students reviewing in different settings. ### **Pros** - High-quality audio - Works with multiple file formats - Mobile-friendly ### **Cons** - Not ideal for visual learners - Free plan has voice limits ### **Why It Helps with Dyslexia** - Text-to-speech is an alternative for dyslexic students who struggle with decoding words visually, one of the most effective reading strategies for dyslexic students. - Natural-sounding voices reduce listening fatigue and make it easier to stay focused during longer study sessions. - Scanning tools let students convert printed worksheets, textbooks, or notes into audio. - Playback speed and sync across devices give students control over when, where, and how fast they learn, reducing pressure during revision. - Support for PDFs and scanned images means students aren’t restricted to screen-based reading. ### **Pricing** Free plan available. Contact sales for custom plans. ### **Customer Support** - Email and help center - Web support ### **Average Rating** ![Speechify Average Rating](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-20.webp) The average rating of Speechify is 4.6/5 on Trustpilot. ## **5\. Microsoft Immersive Reader** ![Microsoft immersive reader's website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/10/dyslexic-students-21.webp) [Microsoft Immersive Reader](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/word/use-immersive-reader-in-word) is a free reading support tool built into Microsoft apps such as Word, OneNote, and Teams. It’s best for dyslexic students who already use Microsoft tools and need reading aids like text spacing, line focus, and read-aloud features. On websites, it lives in Microsoft Edge, where it is now called [Reading mode](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/use-immersive-reader-in-microsoft-edge) (press F9). The Chrome extension that used to bring Immersive Reader to websites has been removed from the Chrome Web Store, so Chrome users no longer have a direct way to use it on web pages. ### **Platform** Microsoft Word, OneNote, and Teams (desktop, web, and mobile), and Microsoft Edge as Reading mode ### **Features** - Text-to-speech with natural voices - Line focus and screen masking - Adjustable text size, spacing, and background colors - Highlights nouns, verbs, and adjectives - Picture dictionary support ### **Top 3 Features of Microsoft Immersive Reader** #### **1\. Line Focus** This tool allows students to read one, three, or five lines at a time, helping reduce overwhelm and improve attention. #### **2\. Text Formatting Options** Change font size, style, background color, and letter spacing to reduce visual stress or decoding issues. #### **3\. Parts of Speech Highlighting** Color-codes different parts of speech so students can better understand sentence structure. ### **Pros** - Dyslexia-friendly layout options - Free and available in education settings - Strong focus and attention aids ### **Cons** - Limited to Microsoft tools, with no Chrome extension - Edge’s Reading mode has fewer tools than the Word and OneNote version and doesn’t work on all web pages ### **Why It Helps with Dyslexia** - Line focus keeps the eyes from jumping lines and losing focus.  - Adjustable spacing and fonts reduce visual strain. - Syllable splitting helps with decoding unfamiliar words. - Color-coding parts of speech supports comprehension. - Read-aloud with highlighting helps students follow text with audio. ### **Pricing** - Free in Microsoft Edge and in the Microsoft apps that include it, such as the free web versions of Word and OneNote ### **Customer Support** - Microsoft support center - Help articles and how-to videos - Active educator forums for setup tips ### **Average Rating** Microsoft's Immersive Reader does not have a numerical average rating, but it is widely praised for its effectiveness in improving reading comprehension. ## **Final Thoughts** Finding the right tools can make all the difference when reading feels frustrating or overwhelming. Every student with dyslexia has different needs. While some individuals require text to be read aloud, others prefer color-coded notes or a line-by-line focus. The blog covers a wide range of annotation and reading tools for dyslexic students, from text-to-speech apps to PDF annotation and visual reading aids. If you're looking for something that combines reading support and annotation organization in one simple tool, [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com) is worth trying. You can highlight websites and PDFs, organize everything with tags, and even switch to Reader Mode when the page feels too noisy. It’s free to start, and genuinely helpful. [Install Web Highlights here](https://web-highlights.com/install) and see how it fits into your workflow. --- # 10 Best Chrome Extensions for Teachers for Virtual Classroom > Learn the 10 best Chrome extensions for teachers for virtual classroom success. Get tools for reading, planning, annotation, student engagement & more. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-07-16 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Reading time: 15 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-chrome-extensions-for-teachers-for-virtual-classroom/ --- Teaching online is not just teaching — it’s juggling tabs, answering chats, managing submissions, and somehow still keeping students focused. No surprise, more teachers are turning to Chrome extensions to make virtual classrooms easier to run. From grading assignments in Google Docs to giving feedback in Google Classroom or sharing quick video instructions through Google Meet, the right tools can save hours every week. Instead of switching between tabs or dealing with scattered student submissions, these best Chrome extensions for teachers for virtual classrooms help simplify day-to-day tasks. This list features 10 Chrome extensions that are actually effective in a virtual classroom environment. You’ll find tools for screen recording, interactive classes, PDF files, annotation, lesson plans, math input, creating flashcards, and much more. Most of them are free or offer strong freemium plans, so you won’t need to worry about your school budget either. ## **Why Chrome Extensions Are a Must for Virtual Classrooms?** Google Chrome isn’t just a browser anymore. It has become a hub for nearly everything teachers do online. Thanks to its seamless integration with Google Workspace for Education, including Google Docs, Slides, Google Classroom, and Google Meet, it makes it the go-to setup for virtual teaching. However, even with all these tools, teachers still encounter the same challenges: students getting distracted, missing assignments, delayed grading, low participation, or simply spending too much time switching between platforms. That is where Chrome extensions help.  They act like quick fixes, letting you record lessons, track submissions, give feedback, or manage your class without needing to download heavy software or learn anything complicated. (Looking for your students’ side? Here are the [best Chrome extensions for students](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-chrome-extensions-for-students/).) Whether you're building a lesson plan in Google Sheets, leaving comments on student work in Docs, or running a quiz through Google Forms, there’s likely a Chrome extension that can make your job easier and your class run smoother. ## **The Top Chrome Extensions for Virtual Teaching** Let’s look at the list of 10 best Chrome extensions for teachers for virtual classrooms. ## **1\. Web Highlights** [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rumx2qVOr2c) If your teaching involves reading online articles, reviewing PDF documents, or using different websites, [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is one of the best [Chrome extensions](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) for teachers for virtual classroom workflows.  You can highlight any webpage or PDF, organize those highlights with tags and notes, and then export everything into tools like [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) , [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , Markdown or [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/#google_vignette) . It’s designed for teachers who want to stay organized without constantly switching tabs. ### **Best For** Highlighting text, organizing research, and turning your reading into ready-to-use material for lesson planning. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension, [Web App](https://app.web-highlights.com/) , Edge, Firefox, Mobile app ### **Features** - Highlight and [annotate](https://web-highlights.com/blog/annotate-a-pdf-in-chrome/) any web page or [PDF](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) inside the browser - Add notes and tags to organize content - Export highlights to tools like [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , Obsidian, and Capacities - Supports offline access and cross-device sync - Import [Kindle highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) and convert them into study flashcards - Works with local PDF files after a one-time setup - Save articles in clean [reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) for distraction-free reading - Set email reminders and [bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-organize-bookmarks-in-chrome/) to revisit saved highlights - Collaborate or share highlights with others and [export Chrome bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-bookmarks-and-import-to-web-highlights/) ## **Top 3 Features of Web Highlights** #### **1\. Spaced Repetition + Flashcards** ![See entire learning progress through spaced repetition and flashcards](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXda8OcCJ7eSSNKTJnQdqm-ENy0M0b4bMGXs_3OIL3oCt0MMBp3hbpRFGZJFt0k91DrwMpUcc7Qo4nM4FPp_-1FvmjRawqMGb-_DPvKaOMAfwamZi1MArhT4gkk0MKvT71YWX8y9?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) Teachers can turn highlights into flashcards and utilize [spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) to reinforce ideas. It’s perfect for reviewing key concepts, lesson notes, and prepping students during exam season. #### **2\. Formatted Highlighting** ![Formatted highlighting in Web Highlights to highlight as H2, H3, bullets or codes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfdBjrCVWfdt_Iwyzvjco2CfYVjNUDc7GAG0nuxgzTDM9RXMw96gW8OmmrPi3S4F7jpC6aMGoYlty0caPYqoliIlK4eqySIuxukseCbm9lbj7NEBut8-eJ1IQBnJgdSJlM25XI0qA?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) Use bullet points, headings, and block quotes while highlighting to keep things structured. [Formatted highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) is great for breaking down long articles or organizing your lesson material. #### **3\. Email Reminders** ![Set up email reminders in Web Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc5DB4wpodU8flWb7UkGgQlYZfngNgTV0W8FvMYTLNqjcP2mpPIYLRN97kwdgyhzaG8R-oJkizgkTDYF0f8sQeTlzSOOQKOiU7j6YWDs9U1P8VEA-LGYl-l5NrJCnBubFe97M3-OQ?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) You can schedule email reminders for any highlight, so if you saved something important for next week’s lesson, it won’t get lost in a sea of [bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/) . ### **Pros** - Easy to use - Multiple highlight colors - Great for organizing research with tags and folders - Excellent free version with unlimited offline highlights and bookmarks - Offline access to multiple features - Helps teachers stay organized across multiple educational platforms ### **Cons** - There’s no shared class workspace — you share single pages with a public link rather than a folder the whole class can edit. ### **Pricing** - **Basic**  – Free - **Premium**  and  **Ultimate**  plans available. See current prices at  [web-highlights.com/pricing](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . ### **Customer Support** - Blogs - FAQs - Email support - [Tutorials](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials) - Extensive [documentation](https://web-highlights.com/docs) ### **Average User Rating & Installs** 4.8 / 5 (3.7K ratings), 100 000 + users on Chrome Web Store ![Average User Rating - Web Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeXtgZH7Y-cZotTBia78ABnEuFvYzuKAtNaUcrtwAguSbR2hiG7e7ep7zc3Xmfd9zenoOMvY1jn7zvz0akksQrg83KcCFwJi7_BHHUA85G_1OncRdWCbZLlPCxmjGyO1fegbyiF?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) ## **2\. Mote**  ![Mote's website](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfPdOPlmdVH-BpL7m7g1yLRJe9dmcocxf-WxD4PlqVE3fzsmvYQbTW4fED6jQ6LPbjUMTdxjLTWhHKNEuEjgu0fjWRISvFfIeVFQvC8vUZG-1U8dmLTlZ6rt0UzIr1eG3esYS-l4w?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) [Mote](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mote-voice-audio-for-lear/ajphlblkfpppdpkgokiejbjfohfohhmk) is a voice recording extension built for teachers who use Google Docs, Slides, and Google Classroom. It allows you to leave voice comments directly on student work, eliminating the need to type everything out. ### **Best For** Adding voice feedback to assignments, especially in Google Workspace tools. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension ### **Features** - Record and insert voice notes in Google Docs, Slides, and Google Classroom - Support for transcripts and captions - Reading mode - Share audio as links via email or classroom platforms - Color coding highlights ### **Top 3 Features of Mote** #### **1\. Voice Comments** You can leave a quick voice comment on student work directly in Google Docs, which helps in saving time on grading. #### **2\. Google Slides Feedback** Leave voice notes on each slide to clarify student presentations or give recorded instructions. #### **3\. Reader Mode Support** Mote works with reader-friendly formats, making it easier to focus when reviewing content-heavy pages. While it doesn’t have a built-in reader mode, it pairs well with tools that simplify pages for distraction-free review. ### **Pros** - Saves time on written feedback - More personal than text-only comments - Easy integration with Google for Education tools ### **Cons** - No built-in tagging or annotation system - Limited use outside of Google Workspace - Full features are locked behind the Pro plan ### **Pricing** - **Free Plan** – Limited functionality - **Unlimited** – $59.40/year - **Department/Team** – $49.00/year - **School** – $1500/per building ### **Customer Support** - Online help center - Email support - Google for Education integrations and guides ### **Average User Rating & Installs** 4.6 / 5 (165 ratings), 500 000 + users on Chrome Web Store ![Mote Average User Rating](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcgqimzRHnjDtYZcgyPNYQ1Kp09HrBrmqLxDc3z1oFByEe5WMzbKRuLudE0xVFMCWIlXZg1TeCOmnuAnBh2Z8ygJ3sjHv-1MhMn9ChZd9P--MP6Ea0KW-vAjiBGBvG4BCDmYrTC?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) ## **3\. Kami**  ![Kami website](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe8LTqidkF78KeVo0uTaCYlloQREIC6_PR0cjDy9qlhm79CJJHVVZKz9nj5rjDmaj0ateACxFqXsTgof4ldXuTPbNhSksg5t1mSYe4FWJs4QrlPdKwgMI1EKDtWsDbL7mgBnIPSVA?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) [Kami](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/kami-for-google-chrome/ecnphlgnajanjnkcmbpancdjoidceilk?hl=en) is another one of the best Chrome extensions for teachers for virtual classrooms that helps mark up assignments or collaborate on digital worksheets. It turns PDFs and other files into interactive canvases with drawing, typing, and voice feedback tools. ### **Best For** Collaborating on and annotating PDF files in Google Drive or Google Classroom. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension, Web App ### **Features** - Annotate PDF files, Word documents, and images - Integrates with Google Classroom, docs, and drive - Document sharing - Read aloud and highlighting tools - Offline mode - Live collaboration ### **Top 3 Features of Kami** #### **1\. PDF Annotation** Mark up documents with highlighters, shapes, text boxes, or freehand tools, useful for homework reviews or open-ended assignments. #### **2\. Offline mode** Kami works even without an internet connection, so students can annotate or complete work offline and sync it later. #### **3\. Live Collaboration** Students and teachers can edit the same file at once, which works well for group tasks or formative assessments. ### **Pros** - Increases classroom engagement - Wide range of annotation tools - Easy accessibility ### **Cons** - Most of the useful tools require premium packages  - Interface can be slow with large PDF files ### **Pricing** - **Free Plan** – Basic annotation tools - **Teacher Plan** – $149 - **School or District Plans** – Custom pricing ### **Customer Support** - Help center with video tutorials - Email and form support - Google Workspace for Education guides available ### **Average User Rating & Installs** 4.6 / 5 (8.4K ratings), 3,000,000 + users on Chrome Web Store ![Kami Average User Rating](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeS-ag1DOXefqnnFUByKozCQRtgVawAnQz6Qo886bC9NMevLg_d9wHJUCiImgwG_orGpflVsCxne8OkweayqYM74kGXYWnIUVNXhbP04L-vPmeHtJLuVmRHU5Pu43j-mkl8zxHPHA?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) ## **4\. Screencastify**  ![Screencastify website](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeO4vUEHtjpId8hOqL7oyzzk5DKFVsF8z0clIUD9F37aChKZ2dB40gUTqBmpa3hzyiQlpgEmVVBFWnHCg6XlU0FU0OPjdn8K7SJ8pZ59bTr_55LGWGjLUxjTphgSB5y_sNP081Y?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) [Screencastify](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/screencastify-screen-vide/mmeijimgabbpbgpdklnllpncmdofkcpn?hl=en) is mainly a screen recording tool used to create video lessons or walkthroughs. It’s a solid option for teachers doing remote lessons, but the free version allows only 10 videos to be recorded.  ### **Best For** Recording short lessons, how-to tutorials, and assignment instructions. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension ### **Features** - Record browser tab, full desktop, or webcam - Built-in video editor  - Export Options - Add quizzes or interactive questions ### **Top 3 Features of Screencastify** #### **1\. Screen Recording** This feature is useful for explaining assignment steps or doing visual lessons that need a personal touch. #### **2\. Video Editor** Teachers can trim awkward pauses or merge multiple clips without using a separate tool. #### **3\. Export Options** Every video you make is saved to Drive automatically. You can share it right away with your class. ### **Pros** - Easy to use for teachers at any tech skill level - No student logins needed to view recordings - Built for Google Classroom workflows ### **Cons** - 10 free recordings are a limit - Editing and quizzes only available on the paid version - Some uploads can be slow depending on the connection ### **Pricing** - **Free Plan** – Up to 10 videos - **Starter** – $7/month billed annually - **Pro** – $10/month billed annually ### **Customer Support** - Help center with video lessons - Demo support ### **Average User Rating & Installs** 4.0 / 5 (11.7K ratings), 4,000,000 + users on Chrome Web Store ![Screencastify Average User Rating](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfk0hzfyNtUGW6fyenSzDgVvqR6vs6qNAZF7EVbK4dhGYx2N_YwD1zk3rYNIkL5m1gKgqw5FLdFRvr05ciFcUTHR1Bz8aJ0aYeBFssOpfOkEcEbGben8DYHMULlYj6JjoY5QONElA?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) ## **5\. Evernote** ![Evernote website](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcUAWieDke6fgsC5SJUAZ9SzNjwiVDzIi9yjWZAJYEHk5FqKgLTUH6PmBOTaUXiagmSg7Zf88g8NVXLkqA2PsKa6y0KQ_hIL9NnpMmvX3duK7OJ4oL2KgogEfO5t9n1IwAnuyrvNw?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) [Evernote](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/evernote-web-clipper) is a digital notebook that helps teachers organize class notes, lesson plans, clipped articles, and more. It works well for keeping everything in one place, but it lacks some real-time collaboration features that other education extensions offer. Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by our company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. > [**Evernote Web Clipper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/evernote-web-clipper) — Read our in-depth review of Evernote Web Clipper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Evernote Web Clipper. ### **Best For** Organizing notes, saving lesson ideas, and syncing across devices. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension, Web, Android, iOS, Desktop, Mac ### **Features** - Save entire web pages or selected text from Chrome - Organize notes with tags - Search handwriting, images, and PDFs - Set reminders and create checklists - Sync content across all devices ### **Top 3 Features of Evernote** #### **1\. Web Clipper Extension** With [web clipper](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-7-web-clipper-chrome-extensions-for-capturing-websites/#google_vignette) , teachers can save useful websites, articles, and PDF files while browsing. These clips can include annotations and tags, making research or lesson planning easier. #### **2\. Organize and Tag System**  Keep notes organized by subject or class using notebooks and tags. Great for managing multiple sections or prep materials. #### **3\. Cross-Device Sync** Access your notes from any device, whether you're at home, school, or switching between laptops and tablets. ### **Pros** - Strong organization system with tags and folders - Works on mobile, desktop, and Chrome - Integrates with Google Drive ### **Cons** - Limited collaboration features for group projects - Free plan has monthly upload caps - Offline access only available on paid plans ### **Pricing** - Free Plan  - **Personal** – $14.99/month  - **Professional** – $17.99/month  - **Enterprise** – Contact team ### **Customer Support** - Help center with guides and articles - Email support for free users - Priority support for paid users ### **Average User Rating & Installs** 4.7 / 5 (129.5K ratings), 2,000,000 + users on Chrome Web Store ![Evernote Average User Rating](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcX0ZWv8yDVVcoX_7EzUbkPmE5OdXSG3JrPH4tFN5rGlI31sFZ4pd-iJccFBEstWMkYcNHFcrC6QHOAsOZIRwgk-u8wxpoXyDtHIVP5hrU3NNEzmTiSqGt8DOf7S1yNSjjmJxTwnQ?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) ## **6\. EquatIO**  ![EquatIO Website](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcYwBEIQSOD-lHtbzfVUZZcu6eHVXfySltinfLPO0aAmZerxDrRSd8EGe2ji1SivD8sktX7I9OkeMC-SKnB3ewulE_gZxhGHZhdWvGkrqFFETiymvFK5SoRAqt9s-4PDD5fjlV_-Q?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) [EquatIO](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/equatio-math-made-digital/hjngolefdpdnooamgdldlkjgmdcmcjnc) is built for math and science teachers who need an easier way to insert formulas, equations, and scientific symbols into digital assignments. It works well with virtual classrooms, but may take some time to get used to if you're not familiar with equation editors. ### **Best For** Typing or speaking math equations into Google Workspace tools without using complex code or formatting. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension, Windows, Mac ### **Features** - Insert math symbols in Google Docs and Google Forms - Handwrite equations or use voice typing - Converts handwritten math to digital format - Predictive texts - Chemistry formula prediction ### **Top 3 Features of EquatIO** #### **1\. Handwriting Recognition** You can write equations using a stylus or mouse, and EquatIO converts them into clean digital math. #### **2\. Voice Input for Equations** Say the formula out loud, and EquatIO will convert it into written math. This works well for teachers who want to dictate while creating Google Docs or Forms. #### **3\. Google Forms Integration** Add math questions directly to quizzes or state practice tests in Google Forms. No coding or formatting required. ### **Pros** - Saves time when writing equations - Useful for assessment data and student submissions - Includes options for accessibility (speech-to-math) ### **Cons** - Learning curve for beginners - Graphing tools can feel limited compared to full math software ### **Pricing** - Free Plan – Limited features - **Single** – $128.05 - **Schools** – $1171 - $3500  ### **Customer Support** - Webinars - Blogs - Email Support ### **Average User Rating & Installs** 3.9 / 5 (633 ratings), 1,000,000 + users on Chrome Web Store ![EquatIO Average User Rating](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdlKXT-k1t4Ug3PTpq2Zv-mpOPu9sT3rB5dfctfTfklF1hU9sCvf9bkZgqlOdOApu8pYQmYLrk7xmEvYsxnOqfEwQTs3XgjICog_5sDggPJtclIpnQkbxM0C31JtT8BW78BhQvysA?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) ## **7\. Classwork Zoom** ![Classwork Zoom website](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfIvuijvuRpXoADol9meXXMQji1PCjPiM27TcRyYtFEjGstCVmEj1npFWCoO1jpRvamy6692ZxNdviqZFDHhcyzqNEImG8CDfCrOgI5qa_xu-b_TEnaRYKIe9k76PKvRVLCxh9Dsw?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) [Classwork Zoom](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/classwork-zoom-for-google/flkiihnalkdcocknmgjolnbhfaigngfp?hl=en) provides teachers with a clear visual timeline of student activity within Google Classroom. It’s especially helpful for spotting late work, missing assignments, or students who might be falling behind. It is primarily designed for Google Classroom, so it may not function well on its own. ### **Best For** Tracking student submissions, assignment status, and workflow inside Google Classroom. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension ### **Features** - Visual timeline of student work - View submission dates and delays - Filter by student or assignment - Highlights and annotation - Export reports ### **Top 3 Features of Classwork Zoom** #### **1\. Student Activity Timeline** See when each student viewed, opened, or submitted assignments. This helps flag participation issues early. #### **2\. Highlights and Annotations** Teachers can review classroom activity highlights and notes to quickly assess individual or group progress, which is useful for lesson planning. #### **3\. Export Reports**  Download summaries of student work for grading or parent-teacher meetings. ### **Pros** - Great for assignment management - Helps identify trends in student engagement - Easy-to-use ### **Cons** - Only supports Google Classroom, not other LMS platforms - No built-in grading tools - Visual layout might take time to get used to ### **Pricing** - Free basic plan - **Premium** – $2.99/month & $1.67/year - **Schools & Districts** – Contact Team ### **Customer Support** - Email-based support - Online help docs ### **Average User Rating & Installs** 4.1 / 5 (7 ratings), 10 000 + users on Chrome Web Store ![Classwork Zoom Average User Rating](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfFZUSmuLPkgBrbCjO2ibb9ogEr_t5hY0sBZPjjOWzqsT4YjmFyl1V3HdQEJ8iKJPBLc3bt_ZE77SliXBAEb4N2xgQ5ZE-4qei37_8S6UxACt_jT1_j0pi_Qs1_e_zs29e1n_lv2w?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) ## **8\. Weava** ![Weava Website](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXembP-cLkqY_gJDJPL9ImE1GmZy9viw3eUHg-dB-6xpB59LW66Z_lI4xo6NHJnw-9QVgTeGSOKwzrH6gDmdukWjR-ODqanbSMe7MuIlQN1uCT5lBPuq6IeXTN9XvUVTEmrxWmdvUQ?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) [Weava](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) is a Chrome extension that helps users highlight and organize research across websites and PDF documents. It works similar like [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) and it is commonly used by students and teachers to gather content for assignments or lesson plans. While it covers basic needs well, syncing across devices and exporting to other platforms can be tricky for some users. In our [comparison between Weava and Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/webhighlights-weava-alternative/) , we found that Web Highlights is a much more convenient and powerful choice. > [**Weava Highlighter: PDF & Web Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) — Read our in-depth review of Weava Highlighter: PDF & Web. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Weava. ### **Best For** Highlighting and saving research content from the web and PDF files. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension, Web ### **Features** - Highlight text from web pages or PDF files - Organize content into folders and subfolders - Add notes to saved highlights - Basic citation generation - [Export](https://web-highlights.com/blog/import-research-from-weava-highlighter-to-web-highlights/) notes to different formats and apps ### **Top 3 Features of Weava** #### **1\. Multi-Color Highlighting** Teachers can highlight different parts of an article in color-coded layers. This works well for sorting lesson content by topic or theme. #### **2\. Organized Folders** Keep highlights grouped by subject or project. Helps in managing multiple classes or ongoing research tasks. #### **3\. Note-Taking with Highlights** Add simple notes alongside your highlights for context. This is useful for reminders or expanding on a quote or stat. ### **Pros** - Easy to use  - Cloud syncing - Works well with both websites and PDF documents ### **Cons** - Sync and backup require account login - Some features are only available in the Premium version - Interface cluttered with ads ### **Pricing** - Free Plan  - **Premium** – $3.99/month ### **Customer Support** - Email support - Help articles and video tutorials ### **Average User Rating & Installs** 4.1 / 5 (2.7K ratings), 300 000 + users on Chrome Web Store ![Weava Average User Rating](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfDM3id_OK-9EZzi3a4pbTShxpxZwGzzLvf-R2IRgpdW1COGtownRjyU22hmAx3r3HdIc61GEKIclR8pjB-tlq9EvjmLDAWyJ7GYi2ZeldHxUChc2srgRRyrgMsbmq-mwVok2ywkg?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) ## **9\. Loom** ![Loom website](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdBEhUSo4hDFhYaVwOsxlMaIliPH8YJVV5IXfTmGGrPid9QiY_ZsXuJIT8WKdARfO7_JZYbabRhV6f5Kqcvm7dNcl7OFUTRqfVJDyJoYmzN4kTeK5ljOVnQirrrLfjkoSNbIWou8Q?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) [Loom](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/loom-%E2%80%93-screen-recorder-sc/liecbddmkiiihnedobmlmillhodjkdmb) is a video messaging tool that allows teachers to record quick videos to explain tasks, share announcements, or respond to student questions. It helps support real-time communication in a virtual classroom environment.  ### **Best For** Recording short, clear video instructions for students or fellow teachers. ### **Platform** Chrome Extension, Web, Desktop, iOS, Android ### **Features** - Record screen, webcam, or both - Share videos instantly with a link - Add emoji reactions or comments - Add comments or notes - Integrates with Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Docs ### **Top 3 Features of Loom** #### **1\. Screen + Camera Recording** Great for walking through Google Classroom or showing students how to complete assignments in Google Sheets or Docs. #### **2\. Instant Video Links** No downloads needed, just copy and paste the video link directly into Google Classroom or a message. #### **3\. Viewer Insights** See who watched your videos and when. Helpful for tracking engagement or identifying students who might have missed instructions. ### **Pros** - Easy to use, even for non-tech-savvy teachers - Speeds up feedback and class communication - Useful for remote and hybrid classes ### **Cons** - Free plan has storage limits - Editing tools are basic in the free version - Slow and lagging interface ### **Pricing** A free plan is available. Contact sales for a custom quote. ### **Customer Support** - Help center with tutorials - Email support ### **Average User Rating & Installs** 4.6 / 5 (10.2K ratings), 7 000 000 + users on Chrome Web Store ![loom Average User Rating](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXesKNR4J2vWHhJQ0j5VCpTs3GwAUtV8eyRg0m7zc6WV3LO2dh4tz2iMbtlhqkoIrRfhLYVwJMSLKyQ1BT3Zl7yX4ZzQZ_k4osFfv9dgXpPdHRxYuPQlH46mXr8mbaOrFkqG_Yj2?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) ## **10\. Classroom Screen** ![Classroom Screen website](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfN8d0L7Kz2N_4zQoA2CWK5lPFrQF2sNa6nc4-ZqJM3VA7w5s5aOy88JNMqfUa9iZvjIJ5lFUM9ZuWAC3Y3D0zyPEEdsv5dngNqr6ajC4shJc_7WqyQf-iOizGpVGQ2YC6Pc5LaPw?key=K_7ZRS2gvb11Yykh23Cbxg) [Classroom Screen](https://classroomscreen.com/app/screen/w/5f4f20cb-39d6-4443-98d3-cdba586f1e52/g/134cf088-54f4-450b-9878-ff7c513a104e/s/c93ad381-1d00-4933-846e-54cefb637a64) easily makes the list of the best web apps for teachers for virtual classroom setups. It helps you manage daily class routines without jumping between multiple apps. Although it doesn’t directly integrate with Google Classroom, it works smoothly for teachers. ### **Best For** Managing digital class flow and boosting student engagement during virtual education. ### **Platform** Web App (works in Google Chrome) ### **Features** - Customizable digital screen with widgets - Timer, stopwatch, and traffic light tools - QR code generator and drawing board - Image highlights - Draw and highlight ### **Top 3 Features of Classroom Screen** #### **1\. Digital Noise Meter** Monitor the sound in your environment to keep things calm. Great for teaching from home or shared spaces during interactive video classes. #### **2\. Timers and Visual Cues** Use countdowns, visual reminders, or icons to structure class activities. Helpful for pacing lessons or group work online. #### **3\. Instruction Display + Drawing Pad** Show key instructions or use the drawing board to visually explain concepts. Works well with students at different reading levels or with accessibility problems. ### **Pros** - Easy to use - Helps structure virtual classroom environments - Good support for visual learners ### **Cons** - Doesn’t directly integrate with Google Drive or Google Classroom - No student login or progress tracking - Limited file saving options ### **Pricing** - Free Plan  - **Pro Plan** – $3/month ### **Customer Support** - Online tutorials - Email support - Community Facebook group for teachers ### **Average User Rating & Installs** 4.9 / 5 (40 ratings) on G2. ## **What to Consider When Choosing a Chrome Extension** Not every tool works the same in a virtual classroom environment. Before adding new Chrome extensions to your teaching setup, here are a few things to check: ### **1\. Cross-Use for Reading, Research, and Note-Taking** Some extensions are designed for a single task, such as grading or recording. Others, like Web Highlights, support a wider range of needs, such as reading web articles in reader mode, [creating study guides](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-create-a-study-guide/) , [organizing notes](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-5-note-taking-browser-extensions-in-2025/) , and syncing them across devices. Having an extension that covers all those bases will save time and reduce the need for multiple tabs. ### **2\. Free vs Paid Features** Some of the best Chrome extensions for teachers for virtual classroom use offer core tools for free, but advanced options (like collaboration or export features) are often behind a paywall. Always check what’s included in the free plan and what’s not. ### **3\. Student Data & Privacy** With so many educational platforms collecting information, it’s essential to examine how each tool handles privacy and security. Does the extension store your files? Can it access student submissions or PDF documents? Review their privacy policy if you are unsure. ### **4\. Reviews & User Ratings** Check ratings in the Chrome Web Store or on reputable teacher blogs. If other teachers have faced glitches, slow loading, or poor support, it is better to know before installing and wasting your time. ### **5\. Tech Skill Level** Some tools (like math equation editors or annotation tools) may take more time to learn. Choose extensions that match your comfort level and don’t add extra work during lesson planning or assignment management. ## **Key Takeaways** There are tons of Chrome extensions out there, but only a handful actually make your virtual teaching easier. Whether it’s planning lessons, reviewing student work, or just trying to keep things organized, the right tools save time and help you focus on what matters. If you're trying to decide which tools actually help in daily teaching, Web Highlights should be high on your list of the best Chrome extensions for teachers for virtual classroom use. It is perfect for anyone who spends time reading online articles, reviewing PDF files, or organizing teaching content. You can highlight, tag, take notes, and even export everything to Capacities, Notion, or Obsidian. It also syncs across devices and keeps your work backed up, no extra effort needed. [Try Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) today, it’s simple, useful, and built for how teachers actually work. > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) --- # Pocket Shut Down Last Week – Everything You Need to Know > Pocket, the popular read-it-later app, is shutting down today. Find out what you need to know—alternatives, deadlines, and what happens next. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-07-07 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Reading time: 2 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-tomorrow-everything-you-need-to-know/ --- What was announced months ago became reality: Pocket — the popular web clipper, read-it-later, and content discovery app by Mozilla — is shut down. I'll keep it short here - here is what you need to know: - You could use Pocket until July 8, 2025. - You could export your Pocket data until **November 12, 2025** (Mozilla extended the original October 8 deadline). - Since then, the export is disabled and **all user data is queued for permanent deletion** . If you're curious about the reasons behind the shutdown or looking for a good Pocket alternative, check out this article: > [**Pocket Shuts Down in July 2025 - The 10 Best Alternatives**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-in-july-2025-the-10-best-alternatives/) — Pocket, the popular read-it-later app, is shutting down in July 2025. Discover the 10 best alternatives to save, highlight and organize web content (Marius Bongarts) ## Takeaways If you're still using Pocket, make sure to find a good alternative as it has shut down already. Look for a tool like [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) that lets you [import all your Pocket data](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-pocket-saves-and-import-to-webhighlights/) , so you can pick up right where you left off—maybe even with more powerful features than Pocket offered. The export deadline has passed: since **November 12, 2025** , Pocket no longer lets you download your data. If you exported it before then, you can still import that file. ### Best Pocket Alternatives In our article [Pocket Shuts Down in July 2025 - The 10 Best Alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-in-july-2025-the-10-best-alternatives/) we collected a list of tools that are the best alternatives for Pocket. Here is a quick overview of the top Pocket alternatives: Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. 1. [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) 2. [Recall](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/recall-or-summarize-anything-forget-nothing) 3. [Milanote](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) 4. [Instapaper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/instapaper) 5. [Raindrop](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) 6. [Save to Notion](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/save-to-notion) 7. [OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) 8. [Evernote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/evernote-web-clipper) 9. [Matter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/matter) 10. [Obsidian Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/obsidian-web-clipper) > [**How to Export Pocket Data and Import to Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-pocket-saves-and-import-to-webhighlights/) — Pocket shut down in 2025 and its export closed. Already have your export file? Here's how to import your Pocket saves & annotations into Web Highlights. (Marius Bongarts) > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) --- # Top 5 Reader Mode Chrome Extensions For Focused Reading > Discover the best Reader Mode Chrome extensions for distraction-free reading. Compare features like dark mode, highlighting, notes & customization. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-07-02 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Reading, comparison, Tools, Chrome Extension - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-5-reader-mode-chrome-extensions-for-focused-reading/ --- Reader mode extensions are powerful productivity tools that transform cluttered websites into a clean, distraction-free reading experience. With a single click, they remove popups, ads, sidebars, and other noisy elements that make web pages hard to read. For example, the image below shows a standard Wikipedia page (left) compared to its simplified reader mode version (right): ![Original Wikipedia page (left) turned into Reader Mode (right)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/07/original-website-and-reader-mode-comparison.webp) *Original Wikipedia page (left) turned into Reader Mode (right)* I have reviewed the best Reader Mode extensions available for Chrome. Here are my favorites: ### List of the Best Reader Mode Chrome Extensions 1. [Reader Mode + Notes & Annotations](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode-+-notes-annot/cbjbjjgipedbjgbamfodgihnfdlghcaf) 2. Reader View 3. Just Read 4. Clearly Reader 5. Chrome reader mode Full disclosure: Reader Mode is my own extension, made by the same company as Web Highlights, so keep that in mind when you see it on this list. ### [1\. Reader Mode + Notes & Annotations](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode-+-notes-annot/cbjbjjgipedbjgbamfodgihnfdlghcaf) ![Reader Mode + Notes & Annotations - Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/07/reader-mode-notes-annotations-extension.webp) *Reader Mode + Notes & Annotations - Web Highlights* This Reader Mode Chrome Extension is built by [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) and includes everything you’d expect from a great reader mode tool: - Modern, beautiful design - Many customization options: - Eye-friendly color modes (Auto, Light, Dark, Sepia, Contrast) - Adjustable font size, line height, and reading width It’s built on Mozilla’s open-source Readability engine and works on almost any website, turning cluttered pages into a clean, distraction-free reading experience. But what sets it apart is what comes  _on top_  of the usual: - You can highlight text in multiple colors - Add notes and tags - Export to PDF, HTML, or  [Markdown (copy)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/)  — plus one-click export to  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  and  [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/)  (Ultimate plan) - Syncs across devices (with account) - Saves a copy of website (keep reading articles, even if they get deleted) This Reader Mode extension helps you a lot in organizing your thoughts as you read - here is a quick tour: [Watch the video](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/media/2025/07/reader-mode-highlighter-preview.mp4) *Quick Tour Reader Mode : Highlight text in multiple colors* And the best part? Everything is saved locally on your computer – no sign-up needed. If you _do_ create an account, you’ll also get access to a central web app where you can view your saved articles from any device – even your phone. #### Does Reader Mode Work on PDFs? Yes — and this is the part no other extension in this list does. Web Highlights reads a PDF and rebuilds it as an article: the title, the headings, and the paragraph breaks survive, so you get the same clean column of text you get on a website. We rewrote this in mid-2026 because the old version was honestly bad. A two-column scientific paper came out as a jumble — half a sentence from the left column, half from the right. Now it reads the left column first, then the right, the way you would. Lists stay lists, code blocks keep their monospace font and indentation, and if the PDF was tagged properly by its publisher, we use that structure instead of guessing. One honest limit: it needs real text. A scanned PDF is a photo of a page, so there is nothing to reflow — you would have to run it through OCR first. And if you want a PDF from your own computer in there, you can  [upload it to your library](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/upload-pdf)  and read it the same way. Reader Mode can be used for free - [install it here](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/reader-mode/install) . > [**Reader Mode + Notes & Annotations - Web Highlights - Chrome Web Store**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode-+-notes-annot/cbjbjjgipedbjgbamfodgihnfdlghcaf) — Distraction free reading mode with notes and annotations - free, easy to use, no sign-up required. ### [2\. Reader View](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-view/ecabifbgmdmgdllomnfinbmaellmclnh) ![Reader View](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/07/reader-view-extension.webp) *Reader View* Reader View is the most popular Reader Mode extension for Chrome, with more than 300,000 users. Same as [Web Highlights' Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/extensions/reader-mode) , it is also built on Mozilla’s open-source Readability engine and does exactly what you expect: it removes clutter from web pages and turns them into a clean, focused reading experience. Reader View comes with a ton of customization options: - Change font size, font family, and line height - Adjust background and text color - Switch between single and multi-column layout - Resize images and tweak the width There’s even a built-in “design mode” that lets you remove unwanted elements from the page before printing or saving. Besides the basics, Reader View comes with a lot of bonus features: - Highlight text and add sticky notes - Use the powerful text-to-speech tool to read articles out loud - Save articles as HTML, print them, or email them directly - Supports mathematical formulas (MathJax) and Bionic Reading While I must say that it offers a bunch of useful features, the design feels a bit outdated. The interface could definitely use a refresh. Also, I would love to at least have the option for cloud sync, so I can access my highlights and notes from any device – something that’s missing here. Still, if you're looking for a free and privacy-focused reader mode extension with a strong feature set, this one is worth checking out. ### [3\. Just Read](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/just-read/dgmanlpmmkibanfdgjocnabmcaclkmod) ![Just Read](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/07/just-read-extension.webp) *Just Read* Just Read is one of the lightest reader mode extensions for Chrome. It removes all clutter from the page and gives you a clean, focused view for reading, without tracking or unnecessary permissions. While the free version does a great job already, Just Read also offers a **Pro upgrade** with a few nice extras: - Cloud syncing of styles and domain-specific settings - Keyboard shortcuts and auto-run mode - The ability to share a clean, hosted version of the article with others The Pro plan is a one-time payment, not a subscription – which I personally like. If you’re just looking for a clean, fast reader without extra features, Just Read is great. But keep in mind: there’s no built-in highlighting, tagging, or notes – so if you're looking for a more complete tool with built-in annotation and cross-device access, the [**Web Highlights Reader Mode**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode-+-notes-annot/cbjbjjgipedbjgbamfodgihnfdlghcaf) is a much better fit. Still, for a no-nonsense reading experience, this one’s a great choice. ### [4\. Clearly Reader](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clearly-reader-your-ai-re/odfonlkabodgbolnmmkdijkaeggofoop) ![Clearly Reader](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/07/clearly-reader-1.webp) *Clearly Reader* Clearly Reader is one of the most visually polished reader mode extensions out there. It transforms articles into a clean, elegant layout and comes packed with features that go beyond the basics. It’s especially great if you value design and want something that feels modern and smooth right out of the box. Here is what this extension brings: - Clean and beautiful reading experience - Supports highlighting and adding notes - Dark, light, and sepia themes - Export to Markdown and save as PDF - Built-in text-to-speech - Syncs across devices (with account) You can also adjust spacing, font, and text size — and it works really well across most websites. While Clearly Reader is feature-rich, most of its advanced functionality — including exporting, syncing, and even highlighting — requires a **paid subscription** . There’s a limited free trial, but after that, the free version becomes very limited. If you’re willing to pay, it’s a solid option. But if you're looking for a free tool that offers highlighting, tagging, and taking notes without requiring a subscription or even without creating an account, the [**Web Highlights Reader Mode**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode-+-notes-annot/cbjbjjgipedbjgbamfodgihnfdlghcaf) offers a lot more out of the box. ### [5\. Chrome reader mode](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/chrome-reader-mode/opfflfgjinednmneaiplkponjphblmmc) ![Chrome reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/07/chrome-reader-mode-extension.webp) *Chrome reader mode* I didn’t expect much from this one — it’s not super well-known and has just a few thousand users. But after trying it, I have to say: it actually does a really solid job. It instantly removes all the clutter (ads, popups, borders) and gives you a super clean reading view. Several users even compared it to a Kindle-like experience, and I get where they’re coming from. It just works. There’s support for light, dark, and sepia tones — and it feels super lightweight. Here is what this extensions comes with: - Clean layout that strips away ads and distractions - Light, dark, and Kindle-like modes - Works well with translation plugins - No sign-up, fully free - Minimal, fast, and easy to use There are a few things that bug me though. You **can’t copy text** while in reading mode — which feels weird. Also, there’s no way to save the article or sync across devices. Some users also mentioned it would be nice to export as a web page. If you just want to read in peace, it’s great. But if you’re like me and want to highlight, take notes, and revisit your thoughts later — **W** [**eb Highlights Reader Mode**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode-+-notes-annot/cbjbjjgipedbjgbamfodgihnfdlghcaf) clearly offers more flexibility. ### What is the Best Reader Mode Chrome Extension? In the end, picking the best Reader Mode extension really comes down to personal preference. All of the ones I mentioned do a great job at turning messy websites into clean, distraction-free reading views. If you just want to read, try a few and go with the design you like best. For example, [Reader Mode + Notes & Annotations](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode-+-notes-annot/cbjbjjgipedbjgbamfodgihnfdlghcaf) has a more modern look, while Reader View offers a more old-school style with lots of customization options. However, if you're looking for a more powerful tool that lets you highlight text, that's where the real differences start to show. The [Web Highlights Reader Mode](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode-+-notes-annot/cbjbjjgipedbjgbamfodgihnfdlghcaf) clearly stands out. It lets you highlight in beautiful colors, format your text, take notes, and add tags to organize your thoughts. On top of that, you can easily export your research — whether to your favorite tool, a PDF, or even as an HTML file. And if the reason you want a reader mode is that ordinary web pages are hard to read in the first place, the font, spacing, and color settings matter more than any of the extras here — I went through those in  [reading tools for dyslexic students](https://web-highlights.com/blog/reading-tools-for-dyslexic-students/) . Would you rather listen than read? Then a reader mode isn't the right tool. I've compared the [best text to speech extensions for Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-text-to-speech-chrome-extensions/) separately. > [**Reader Mode + Notes & Annotations - Web Highlights - Chrome Web Store**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode-+-notes-annot/cbjbjjgipedbjgbamfodgihnfdlghcaf) — Distraction free reading mode with notes and annotations - free, easy to use, no sign-up required. > [**How to Export Your Research to Notion with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-notion-with-web-highlights/) — A central organized tool helps to structure your research. Export highlights & notes to Notion using the Web Highlights Chrome Extension. (Marius Bongarts) --- # How to Organize Bookmarks in Chrome > Learn how to organize bookmarks in Chrome with Web Highlights. Use smart tags, notes, and keep your bookmarks tidy, synced, and easy to find on any device. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-06-24 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-organize-bookmarks-in-chrome/ --- Ever opened Chrome’s bookmarks bar and wondered why half of it is random pages you don’t even remember saving? Or can’t find pages that you actually saved?  It happens to everyone.  Everyone has their folder of old shopping products and work-related sites, with dozens of bookmarks saved over time, into a messy bookmark drop-down menu or hidden away in "Other Bookmarks. Good news: you don’t need to lose time digging through that chaos.  With Chrome’s built-in folders and a handy bookmark manager extension for [Chrome like Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , you can add clear tags, quick notes, cloud sync, and even export everything to your favorite tools. This guide takes you step by step through the process of how to organize bookmarks in Chrome in a searchable collection that you will actually use.  Let’s fix that bookmark graveyard for good. ## **Understanding Bookmark Organization** An organized bookmarks list is not just one big folder called "Stuff to Read." This is an orderly structure where every saved link has a clear place and a reason to be there. All that starts in Chrome by creating folders and giving each bookmark a simple yet descriptive title.  However, folders alone are not sufficient.  That’s where bookmark tools, tags, and notes come in. With a Chrome bookmark extension like [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) , you can tag each link by topic or purpose and jot down a quick note about why you saved it. Not only this, you can also [export your existing Chrome bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-bookmarks-and-import-to-web-highlights/) into Web Highlights. What does this do for you? - **Find things faster:** No more scrolling through a bookmark list or bookmarks bar, hoping to spot the right link. - **Cut duplicate research:** Tags and notes remind you what you’ve already read or planned to read. - **Work smarter:** A clean folder system plus smart tags acts like a simple second brain for your browser bar. While Chrome’s built-in Bookmarks Manager handles folders well, [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-website) adds that extra layer of tags, notes, and cloud sync. This helps you turn a messy collection of bookmarks into a proper knowledge base you can search anytime. ## **2\. Setting Up Web Highlights for Smarter Bookmarking** Getting started with Web Highlights is quick and easy. Head to the [install page](https://web-highlights.com/install) , add the Chrome extension, and you are good to go. Once installed, it is best to [create an account](https://app.web-highlights.com/) or sign in. It is free, and some features can be used without an account. However, this small step unlocks cloud sync and other advanced features, so your bookmarks, tags, and notes stay updated across your laptop, desktop, or even a different browser later on. ## **3\. Saving and Categorizing Links Like a Pro** Most people use Chrome’s basic way to save bookmarks: click the **star icon** in the address bar and pick a folder. It works fine for simple bookmarks, like saving favorite sites or shopping products for later. But over time, this drops everything into big folders and clutters your bookmarks bar and drop-down menu. With [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) , you get a smarter option. Here is how to save Chrome bookmarks with this best bookmark extension: 1\. Open the page or the link that you want to save as a bookmark. ![open-any-webpage-to-be-saved-in-the-web-highlights-extension](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfP3i0K1E7Y_1B-V9pQWtdksJhhoV8nppxRiBeLS1Qs-T2I0syC035_NtB7JyF9XYcBtG7NM-pWme0nxLIa6tWpO7iuM1OCQJfRv5qX2pHISVIVIn-VDcKHa5brJhqM5C4INhICaA?key=YXqSwPG53z6iqFofjduVtg) 2\. Next, click the Web Highlights icon in your Chrome toolbar — you’ll see extra options pop up. Once clicked, the Web Highlights sidebar will open on the left of your webpage.  ![web-highlights-icon-appearing-in-the-chrome-extension-bar](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe3RbJdcyWYteMxw1AE3HEnEksJLUFon7Pf_cBq-W2vNeRiML3Xoj0ctr0BBc3xV-QCuNwz6mMG3FmdUkKOTZQci01IfumeNJxCd8TDqkm-iNW_zqc2MAp5-Dhx29IN0CUGHraTkA?key=YXqSwPG53z6iqFofjduVtg) 3\. Once opened, tap the little bookmark icon (it’s next to your webpage URL). Once it turns green, your page is saved. ![bookmark-popup-icon-in-the-web-highlights's-sidebar](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXez8lMc8UzjA-z1fNDZrl2csvrICDMi8G2gQDG1n1Vg64HS8FNi6biLmiLNYyRBTN3vSvTmp2ANNf6YvZc7hJ66vUL5r-PgWUYH1Eg_MHeY2egK8fsmhPdwn0018oXXo_j0oDog2A?key=YXqSwPG53z6iqFofjduVtg) **Quick Tip:** For even faster bookmarking, give the “Save Bookmark” command a keyboard shortcut at _chrome://extensions/shortcuts_. Another quick way to save a bookmark on Web Highlights is by right-clicking on any page and selecting the _“Save page as bookmark”_ option. This makes saving bookmarks even faster without leaving the page. ![Right click on any page to save a bookmark in Web Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfqwbIZbOv071ezHuXYp3Ynz0BEvE4GuBSoAprGs13elys0WvcJ-34LbplYTyK9BJkjZuyfPVB0YP2jNCEdjvWlt__1YT2k6F9ODF6JO16y2dPrdtB5Xdlkknj9NN9grs77jK9h?key=YXqSwPG53z6iqFofjduVtg) #### **When should you use each method?** - **Chrome’s built-in bookmarks:** Good for a quick save into a folder when you’re in a hurry. - **Web Highlights:** Best when you want more context, like tags, notes, colors, so you don’t forget why you saved it and can find it quickly using the search bar or the built-in Bookmarks Manager. All your saved bookmarks are easy to find in the Web Highlights sidebar or the [web app dashboard](https://app.web-highlights.com/) . Want to save links from your phone, too? It’s just as simple. Check [this guide](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/) to learn how. With Web Highlights, you no longer have to wonder how to organize bookmarks in Chrome. It provides an organized bookmarks bar with smart folders, tags, and notes like a proper bookmark manager. ## **4\. Add Tags + Tag Taxonomy That Scales** ![adding-multiple-tags-to-your-saved-bookmark-in-the-web-highlights-sidebar](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdgRTs7qiCn3nv6HWmEa4QIxPXqF2bLT_owJBbH5rqdpEpr2mOrcOlkoXARbwnMT0-9TqcTm6px7HVqH2wyOr2RRhn43LZI-mYPA9pWVOJNFmpg3KCMguN4Hbvy5buxoQ41XZvD0Q?key=YXqSwPG53z6iqFofjduVtg) Now that you have saved your bookmarks, it's time to organize them. With Web Highlights, we skip the traditional folder system and go straight for tags. Think of them like organized sticky notes on every link. This short video shows how to tag a highlight or a whole page, and how to find everything by tag later: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDEgrdOVf0Q) Here’s one tag strategy that works well: - **Category → Subcategory → Resource** For baking, this might look like: _Recipes > Cakes > Chocolate_ _Recipes > Breads > Sourdough_ _Shopping > Bakeware > Oven-safeTools_ This setup keeps your Chrome bookmarks menu clean and your bookmark list short under each tab. You can always multi-select bookmarks later if you want to move them in bulk. Later, when you search in the Web Highlights app, you’ll find all your chocolate cake ideas in seconds! ## **5\. Syncing and Accessing Bookmarks Everywhere** One big headache with Chrome bookmarks is that your bookmark list often lives on one device. Web Highlights fixes this with simple cloud sync, so your organized bookmarks, tags, and notes follow you wherever you work. Let’s say you save a collection of bookmarks for baking tips on your laptop. Later, you’re in the kitchen with just your phone, no problem. Open the [Web Highlights web app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) in your mobile browser, and your bookmarks are right there, neatly tagged and easy to search with the search bar. _Make sure that you are logged in from the same account on your laptop and your phone._ Even better: you don’t always need a perfect connection. Web Highlights lets you save links offline. Next time you’re back online, it syncs automatically so your Chrome bookmark extension stays updated on every device — laptop, desktop, or phone. This cross-device access means no more losing track of work-related sites, shopping products, or that list of favorite recipes you bookmarked last week. Whether you’re on your main computer or checking quick notes on the go, your bookmarks are ready when you need them. ## **6\. Exporting Bookmarks to Knowledge Platforms** ![export-your-bookmarks-to-different-knowledge-platforms-from-web-highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcWDthF1v7Jyb1YZF2gQpL3pFfZhXbmrpN3_eY6s0VBPjV7JWsNkivxEvW2Br2SQtDkFr9XWzoBfnadnjyYonPUD_Wn2ArB4XIsENRozzh8Mil7PaIV5kELcG6janyFZ0yHrbSj4A?key=YXqSwPG53z6iqFofjduVtg) Learning how to organize bookmarks in Chrome doesn’t stop at tagging and saving. You should also know where to keep them long-term. With this Chrome bookmark extension, exporting your organized bookmarks is simple and keeps your knowledge tidy across all your favorite tools. #### **Export to Notion** Once you’ve sorted your bookmarks with tags and notes, you can send them to [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) with one click. This builds a database with each bookmark’s URL, title, notes, and tags, making it easy to connect research, work-related sites, or shopping products to your other Notion pages. #### **Export to Obsidian, Capacities, or Markdown** Prefer Markdown? You can export bookmarks as clean text files and add them straight into [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) or [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) . Many users set up automations so new bookmarks land in the right folder without extra work. When you learn how to organize bookmarks in Chrome and link them to a tool like Notion or Obsidian, you keep your highlights, notes, and favorite sites in one neat place. This makes it easy to search, edit, and reuse. This is a simple way to make sure your Chrome bookmark extension does more than just collect dozens of bookmarks saved over time.  ## **7\. Maintaining a Clutter-Free System** Knowing how to organize bookmarks in Chrome is one thing, keeping them tidy is another. Even with smart bookmark tools, it’s easy for old or useless links to pile up. A simple habit can fix that. #### **Do a quick 10-minute cleanup once a week:** - Open your Web Highlights bookmark list or sidebar. - Discard any links you no longer need. - Merge duplicate tags to keep your tag list clean. This keeps your bookmarks bar and saved files of bookmarks from turning back into a chaotic mess. #### **Remember what you saved** Another hidden gem is the [Learn and Remember](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) feature.  Let’s say you bookmark a cake recipe — you can turn the key notes into quick flashcards. This helps you [remember what you saved](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-way-to-read-articles-and-remember-what-you-learned/) like steps, ingredients, or bake times. You can manage these flashcards in Web Highlights, which works like a mini spaced repetition tool for your bookmarks. ![learn-through-spaced-repetition-flashcards-in-web-highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXenICAFInRqTTxR1hxWrubIOJUULi1KpwloFKzEH_aj0Ck1x3OAqbA8uYyivbHGMz1AwP0uFQnaZKiv3PUWWk-Fbi_tzaK4VPfs12vgOvEXVZsx8ZcjZU0UCrDbgo03cecxFmX7ng?key=YXqSwPG53z6iqFofjduVtg) #### **Use email reminders to revisit stuff you forgot** Web Highlights has a handy “Snooze” feature. Let’s say you bookmark a cake recipe you want to try for Easter next month. Just snooze it for a few weeks, you’ll get an email reminder closer to Easter so you don’t forget about it buried in dozens of bookmarks saved over time. ![set-up-snooze-reminder-feature-in-web-highlights-to-keep-track-of-your-bookmarks](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcpQaX7CLMKQsuUlhFk7koDKLYMGhqHtIqGAJujQpymSQIljEM5VyFzwoxfnLZ5GM3Q7qWW8YH-VB4S3UT4W-MdfJXeSfo-g7-a6YUYJAVCkKSbqxiSmGUYlDfHh8Kkg2LRUfuhFQ?key=YXqSwPG53z6iqFofjduVtg) #### **Track what you’ve read and what’s pending** If you’re serious about organized bookmarks, make a simple Notion dashboard or spreadsheet. Log what you’ve read and what’s still pending. It is a small step, but it helps with time management and makes your bookmark manager extension for Chrome way more useful in daily life. ## **Final Thoughts** Learning how to organize bookmarks in Chrome isn’t hard. You just need the right mix of habits and tools. Chrome’s basic bookmarks bar and star icon are a start, but using Web Highlights takes your bookmark organization to another level. By tagging, adding quick notes, and syncing everything across devices, your dozens of bookmarks saved won’t get buried or forgotten. Add spaced repetition flashcards and reminders, and you’ll actually use what you save, whether it’s work-related sites, recipes, or shopping products. Ready to see the difference? [Install Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/install) , pick one messy bookmark list or folder, and clean it up today. Small steps make a huge difference when it comes to bookmark tools that work for you! Still weighing up which tool to organize them in? Compare [the 12 best Chrome bookmark manager extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-bookmark-manager-chrome-extensions/) , including how Chrome's built-in manager compares. ## **FAQs** ### **1\. Can I import existing Chrome bookmarks into Web Highlights tags?** Yes. Read this [guide](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-bookmarks-and-import-to-web-highlights/) to find out how.  ### **2\. Is there a limit on the number of tags?** Nope! Web Highlights lets you create as many tags as you need. Whether it’s for work-related sites, recipes, or dozens of bookmarks saved over time, your tags help keep everything easy to find using the search bar. ### **3\. How does this differ from Chrome’s Reading List?** Chrome’s Reading List is a simple place to store pages to read later, but it doesn’t offer tags, notes, spaced repetition, or easy export. Web Highlights turns your saved links into an organized bookmarks list with notes, tags, flashcards, and cloud sync. ### **4\. Does Web Highlights work on Firefox or Edge?** Web Highlights is built as a Chrome bookmark extension, but some users install it on other Chromium-based browsers like Edge. Full support is focused on Chrome for now. ### **5\. What happens to my data if I uninstall the extension?** Your saved bookmarks, tags, and notes stay safe in your Web Highlights account. You can always sign back in through the [web app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) , and your organized bookmarks will be right there waiting for you. --- # How to Annotate a PDF in Chrome > Learn how to annotate a PDF in Chrome using Web Highlights. Highlight text, add notes, tag content, and export to different platforms. No extra tools needed. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2025-06-13 - Updated: 2026-07-01 - Reading time: 10 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/annotate-a-pdf-in-chrome/ --- Ever tried to quickly mark up a PDF, only to end up downloading a clunky online tool, waiting for it to open, and juggling between windows just to highlight a sentence? Yeah, same. That is where Web Highlights changes the game. It is a lightweight Chrome annotation extension that lets you highlight, comment, and tag any PDF task right inside your browser. It offers  [multiple annotation options](https://web-highlights.com/blog/practical-annotation-examples/)  with no extra software, switching tabs, or bloated tools. Here’s how I think about it: a highlight marks what the author said — an annotation adds what  _you_  think. In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to   [annotate a PDF in Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs)   using Web Highlights — adding notes and comments to your highlights, organizing your thinking with tags, and exporting it to wherever you work. If you’re a student, researcher, or just someone who reads a lot of PDFs online, this is for you. **New to highlighting PDFs in Chrome?**  Start with my complete guide on  [how to highlight PDFs in Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/)  — it covers installing the extension, online and local PDFs, and even downloading the PDF with your highlights embedded. This article builds on those basics and focuses on the annotation workflow: notes, comments, and tags. ## **Understanding PDF Annotation** PDF annotation is all about interacting with a document. It includes highlighting key points, adding comments, marking diagrams, or leaving quick reminders for later. Whether underlining a definition, tagging a quote, or drawing attention to a confusing chart, document annotation tools help you stay organized while reading. With PDF annotations, everything is easier: - You don’t have to re-read full pages—just scan your notes through highlights. - You can filter and search by tags or keywords. - [Save bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/) for later. - It’s great for collaborating or prepping for meetings, exams, or research reviews. And yes, you can also annotate local PDFs from your computer; you’ll just need to make one small adjustment in your browser settings to allow file access. Here's a quick [guide on how to highlight local PDFs using Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/#:~:text=How%20To%20Highlight%20Local%20PDFs%20From%20Your%20Computer) . Doing all this inside Chrome means you skip the annoying part: no file downloads, no switching between a PDF viewer and a notes app. With a PDF annotation Chrome extension like [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) , you just open a PDF link, start annotating, and everything is stored in one place. It’s an effective PDF annotation without breaking your reading flow, and that is what makes it practical. ## **Setting Up Web Highlights for PDF Annotation** Before you start highlighting or adding notes, you'll need to set up Web Highlights properly. It only takes a few steps to turn Chrome into a full [PDF annotation tool](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) , and no separate apps or complicated software are required. The first thing you need to do is install the [Web Highlights extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) from the Chrome Web Store. You can also simply click on the “Add to Chrome” button that appears on their webpage, which takes you directly to the Chrome web store. It takes less than a minute and installs like any other browser extension. Once added, you’ll see the Web Highlights icon in your Chrome toolbar. **_Bonus Tip:_** Make sure to pin the extension for easy access.  To get the most out of it — like syncing across devices for your first 7 days, exporting your PDF annotations to  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  or  [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) , or copying them as Markdown for  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/)  — you’ll want to  [create a free account](https://web-highlights.com/?WEBHIGHLIGHTS_OPEN_AUTH=TRUE) . The free version already covers most use cases, but an account gives you cloud sync and full export options. Once you're signed in, you’re ready to use Web Highlights as your go-to Chrome annotation extension. Next, let's move on to how to annotate a PDF in Chrome. ## **Annotating PDFs Directly in Chrome** Once you’ve set up Web Highlights, annotating a PDF in Chrome becomes second nature. Let’s break it down step by step: ### **Step 1: Open the PDF and highlight the passage you want to annotate** Open any PDF in your browser and click the “Highlight this PDF” pop-up on the top right — or click the Web Highlights extension icon in your extension bar. ![Highlight this PDF popup to highlight with Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/07/highlight-this-pdf-popup.webp) The PDF opens in the Web Highlights viewer, ready to be used as a PDF annotation tool. Then click and drag over the section you want to comment on and pick a highlight color from the pop-up. This highlight is the anchor for everything that follows: your note, your tags, your export. (For the full click-by-click of highlighting — including local PDF files — see the  [complete highlighting guide](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) .) ![A PDF opened in the Web Highlights viewer with several colored highlights and a note in the sidebar](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/extension/pdf-with-highlight.png) **No extension yet?**  You can also   [highlight a PDF online for free](https://web-highlights.com/blog/free-online-pdf-highlighter-highlight-any-pdf-no-install/)   with the   [online PDF highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/tools/pdf-highlighter)   — upload a PDF and start annotating right in your browser, no install required. It’s the quickest way to try the annotation workflow before adding the extension. **Tip:**  Use the keyboard shortcut (Alt+S) for faster navigation, making it easy to annotate longer PDF documents without breaking your reading flow. Web Highlights also gives you the option to customize your  [keyboard shortcuts](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages#highlight-text-using-keyboard-shortcuts)   .   Once you do this, the PDF format automatically opens in the Web Highlights app, which is ready to be used as a PDF annotation tool. With a simple and user-friendly interface, Web Highlights makes it easier to carry out different annotation options.  ### **Step 2: Select format or add notes** ![The Web Highlights formatting menu offering bullet points, lists, headings, quotes, and code for a highlight](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/extension/formatted-highlight-media-dropdown.png) Web Highlights supports a range of PDF annotation features and in different text formats, too. You can  [format highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/)   into bullet points, numbered lists, headings (H1, H2), quotes, and code. This makes it work well for both structured documents and plain-text PDFs. Whether you’re annotating a formal report or a lecture handout, the extension makes it easy to apply consistent formatting. ![Taking a note on a highlight in Web Highlights, with a rich-text formatting toolbar in the sidebar](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/extension/page-note-formatting-toolbar.png) Need to leave a thought, summary, or reminder next to a highlighted section?  Just right-click on the highlight and select “Take a note.” This allows you to jot down anything in a simple text box, which automatically gets stored in the sidebar on the left.  What makes this even better is that all your PDF annotations, both highlights and notes, stay saved under your account. If you're logged in, everything syncs to the cloud, and you can review your annotations from any device. ### **Step 3: Undo, Redo, and Edit Annotations** Made a mistake while highlighting? No problem. Web Highlights includes quick editing annotations tools so you can undo, redo, or change anything without restarting your work. At the top of the highlight popup, you’ll see simple controls. Just click the dustbin icon to delete your last action if you change your mind. If you want to edit a note or switch a highlight color, just click on the existing annotation to update it. Whether it’s a text highlight, a note, or a tag, everything stays editable. The goal here is an effective annotation you can tweak and manage as your work evolves. ## **Organizing and Tagging Your Annotations** Highlighting a PDF is just the first step; organizing those annotations makes them useful later. With Web Highlights, you can apply topic tags to every highlight or note. Think of tags like labels: “Definitions,” “Research evidence,” “Key Points,” or anything else that helps you group similar annotations. These tags let you filter and find specific content instantly, which is a lifesaver when you're skimming through dozens of PDF documents. The tagging system is flexible and straightforward to use. You can add multiple tags to the same highlight and update them anytime.  ![The tags view in Web Highlights showing all tags and their highlights grouped in one place](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/extension/tags-grid-view.png) By clicking on the “tags” icon, you can easily access all your tags on one page. This acts as a collection, helping you create an efficient PDF workflow.  Combined with the ability to highlight in PDF, add notes, and tag them clearly, these annotation functions make Web Highlights more than just a text annotation tool. If you’ve been wondering how to annotate a PDF in Chrome without downloading extra software, this is it. ## **Exporting PDF Annotations to Knowledge Platforms** ![Exporting Web Highlights annotations to Notion, Obsidian (Markdown), Capacities, and other tools](https://web-highlights.com/images/landing-export.png) Web Highlights isn’t just a PDF annotation tool. It also helps you move your notes into the apps where you actually use them. Here’s how: ### **1\. Export to Notion** With one click, send your highlights to Notion. Each annotation becomes a database row, complete with your note, tags, and a page reference to the original PDF. Ideal for  [organizing research](https://web-highlights.com/blog/efficient-research-with-web-highlights/)  or building a reading tracker. ### **2\. Copy as Markdown (for Obsidian, etc.)** If you use Obsidian or another Markdown-based tool, click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the sidebar and choose “Copy Markdown.” Your highlights, notes, and tags get copied in clean Markdown format — just paste it into Obsidian, Notion, or wherever you write. For a full walkthrough, check out our  [Obsidian export guide](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) . ### **3\. Other Export Formats** Web Highlights also supports HTML and  [Capacities export](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/)   . Use HTML for clean previews, or Capacities if that’s your tool of choice.  ## **Reviewing and Managing Annotations Over Time** Knowing how to annotate a PDF in Chrome is only useful if you can find and use your notes later. Web Highlights makes it easy to review and manage annotations without digging through old files or re-reading full documents. You can bulk-edit tags, delete outdated notes, or merge duplicate highlights from your dashboard. This is great for keeping your research tidy and your annotation process focused. There’s also a handy email [“Snooze” reminder feature](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) . You can set reminders to revisit specific PDFs or annotations later, which is perfect for long-term projects or papers you must follow up on. Instead of forgetting about a useful PDF version you skimmed last week, Web Highlights brings it back to your inbox at just the right time. ## **Tips for Efficient PDF Annotation** If you're working with a lot of PDF documents, small habits can make a big difference in how effective your annotations are. One easy tip is to use color coding for priority. Mark important highlights in pink, possible references in yellow, and general notes in blue. It is a simple way to visually separate what’s urgent from what’s just “good to know,” making reviewing faster later. Outside of PDFs, Web Highlights also includes a  [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/reader-mode)  for regular web pages — it strips out ads, pop-ups, and clutter so you can focus on the actual content. You can adjust font size, switch between light and dark themes, and tweak the layout. If you read a lot of articles alongside your PDFs, it’s a nice complement to the PDF annotation workflow. Here’s our  [full Reader Mode guide](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) . **_Another clever trick:_**  let your annotations sync on Wi-Fi, and then work offline while you travel or study somewhere without the internet. Web Highlights queues your changes and syncs everything once you’re back online. So your highlights, sticky notes, and tags are always up to date, even if you’re on a plane or in a dead zone. ## **A Few Limitations to Keep in Mind** I want to be upfront about a couple of things that PDF highlighting can’t do yet: - **Scanned PDFs don’t work**  — if your PDF is basically a photo of a document (no selectable text layer), there’s nothing to highlight. You’d need to run it through an OCR tool first. - **No image highlights in PDFs**  — you can highlight images on regular web pages, but inside PDFs it’s text-only for now. - **Local PDF highlights are path-dependent**  — if you highlight a PDF stored on your computer, those highlights only reappear if you open the same file from the same location. Move or rename the file, and the highlights won’t reconnect automatically. - **Large PDFs take a moment**  — Web Highlights converts the PDF into a format that can be highlighted, so very large files may need a few seconds to load. For the full details, check out our  [official PDF highlighting documentation](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs) . ## **Final Thoughts** Using a browser-based tool like Web Highlights means you don’t waste time opening heavy software or juggling between apps. It simplifies how you annotate PDFs in Chrome, keeps your notes searchable, and lets you export to Notion, Capacities, or copy as Markdown for Obsidian. Now that you know how to annotate a PDF in Chrome without extra hassle, give it a try and see how it fits into your workflow. It's one of those document annotation tools that just makes sense. If you would rather compare your options first, we ranked [the 10 best PDF Chrome extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-pdf-chrome-extensions/) — including the editors and signing tools that do the things a highlighter deliberately does not. [Install Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)   today! ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. Does Web Highlights store the PDF itself or just the annotations?** Web Highlights does not store the PDF file itself. It only saves your PDF annotations, tags, and notes securely under your account. This way, you can reopen the same file later and continue working using your preferred annotating tools. ### **2\. Can I annotate password-protected PDFs?** Currently, most PDF annotation Chrome extensions, including Web Highlights, do not support annotation on password-protected files due to browser-level restrictions. You’ll need to unlock the PDF first to use the annotation features. ### **3\. Can I highlight images in PDFs?** Currently, you can’t highlight images inside PDFs — only selectable text. Image highlighting is available on regular web pages, but PDF files are limited to text-based annotations. If your PDF contains charts or diagrams you want to reference, you can add a text note next to a nearby highlight as a workaround. ###  **4. How do I share an annotated PDF with colleagues?** After you annotate your PDF in Chrome, you can export your highlights and notes to tools like Notion, Obsidian, or Markdown and then share them. Alternatively, you can send your teammates the PDF link if it’s hosted online. They can view annotations if they’re also using Web Highlights or receive your notes via export. ### **5\. Will annotations sync between Chrome and Edge?** Yes, your annotations sync across browsers as long as you're signed into your Web Highlights account. Whether using Chrome, Edge, or another Chromium-based browser, your annotations, tags, and notes stay connected through the cloud, making it easy to continue your work anywhere. --- # The 5 Best-Rated Read-it-Later Apps for Android > Discover the best read-it-later apps for Android. Compare top tools like Raindrop.io, Instapaper, and Readwise Reader to save and organize articles. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-06-10 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-5-best-rated-read-it-later-apps-for-android/ --- Discover the top read-it-later apps for Android that help you save, organize, and read articles offline. Compare features, pricing, and performance. Got way too many tabs open right now? We've all been there. You see something interesting, think "I'll read this later," and then never actually do. These apps help you save stuff properly so you'll actually get around to reading it. Full disclosure: Productivity Apps, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. ## List of the Best Read-it-Later Android Apps: - [Raindrop.io](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/raindrop) - [Instapaper](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/instapaper) - [Readwise Reader](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/readwise-reader) - [PaperSpan](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/paperspan) - [Pocket](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/pocket) ## 1.  [Raindrop.io](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/raindrop) ![Raindrop.io: 3.8★ | 100K+ Downloads](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/06/image.webp) *Raindrop.io : 3.8★ | 100K+ Downloads* A visual bookmark manager for organizing articles and links. Raindrop.io offers a clean interface and strong organization features, letting you add custom icons and images to your collections. With over 100,000 downloads and a 4.0-star Play Store rating, it's a popular choice for managing reading lists and bookmarks across devices. Great for anyone who wants a visually organized reading list. **Key Features:** - **Pretty Organization**  – Add custom icons and pictures to your collections - **Great Free Version**  – Sync across devices without paying anything - **Search Inside Articles**  – Find text within your saved stuff (paid version) **Who is this great for?**  People who want to organize bookmarks visually and need strong categorization tools. ProdApps gave Raindrop.io an impressive rating of 8.1 out of 10. [Check out the full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/raindrop) : > [**Raindrop.io Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/raindrop) — Read our in-depth review of Raindrop.io. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Raindrop. ## 2.  [Instapaper](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/instapaper) ![Instapaper 4.4 ★ | 500K+ Downloads](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/06/image-1.webp) *Instapaper 4.4 ★ | 500K+ Downloads* A simple app for distraction-free reading. Instapaper strips away clutter for a clean reading experience and works offline, making it easy to save and read articles anywhere. With 500,000+ downloads and a 4.5-star rating, it's widely used for reading without distractions. Perfect for those who want a minimalist reading app. **Key Features:** - **No Ads Ever**  – Even the free version is completely ad-free - **Clean Reading**  – Removes all the clutter from web pages - **Works Offline**  – Read your saved articles without internet **Who is this great for?**  Anyone who values a clean, ad-free reading experience and wants to read offline. ProdApps gave Instapaper a solid rating of 7.6 out of 10. [Check out the full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/instapaper) : > [**Instapaper Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/instapaper) — Read our in-depth review of Instapaper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Instapaper. ## 3.  [Readwise Reader](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/readwise-reader) ![Readwise Reader 4.3 ★ | 100K+ Downloads](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/06/image-2.webp) *Readwise Reader 4.3 ★ | 100K+ Downloads* A powerful tool for organizing and highlighting reading material. Readwise Reader brings together articles, PDFs, and newsletters, with AI-powered tools and syncing for highlights. W ith 100,000+ downloads and a 4.3-star rating, it's designed for users who want to get more out of their reading. Ideal for power users and those who love highlighting and note-taking. **Key Features:** - **AI Helper**  – Ask questions about articles and get decent answers - **Everything Together**  – Articles, PDFs, newsletters all in one place - **Smart Highlighting**  – Your highlights sync everywhere and connect to note apps **Who is this great for?**  Heavy readers, researchers, and anyone who wants to organize, highlight, and sync their reading material. ProdApps gave Readwise Reader a rating of 7.6 out of 10. [Check out the full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/readwise-reader) : > [**Readwise Reader Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/readwise-reader) — Read our in-depth review of Readwise Reader. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Readwise Reader. Only need the highlighting part, without a Readwise subscription? Our [Readwise alternative comparison](https://web-highlights.com/blog/readwise-alternative/) looks at where Web Highlights fits. Still missing Omnivore? Here are the [best Omnivore alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/omnivore-alternative/). ## 4.  [PaperSpan](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/paperspan) ![PaperSpan: 3.8 ★| 50K+ Downloads](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/06/image-3.webp) *PaperSpan : 3.8 ★| 50K+ Downloads* A straightforward read-it-later app with unique features. PaperSpan offers auto-sorting, text-to-speech, and the ability to send articles to Kindle. With 50,000+ downloads and a 3.8-star rating, it's a practical choice for basic read-it-later needs. Great for users who want to listen to articles or use Kindle integration. **Key Features:** - **Auto-Sorting**  – Puts articles into categories by itself - **Read Aloud**  – Listen to articles instead of reading them - **Send to Kindle**  – Push articles to your Kindle device **Who is this great for?**  People who want to listen to articles or send them to Kindle for later reading. **ProdApps** gave PaperSpan a rating of **7.2 out of 10** . [Check out the full review here](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/paperspan) : > [**PaperSpan - Read It Later Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/paperspan) — Read our in-depth review of PaperSpan - Read It Later. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to PaperSpan. ## 5.  [Pocket (Discontinued)](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/pocket) A once-leading read-it-later app, now discontinued. Pocket was known for clean formatting and reliable syncing, with over 10 million downloads and a 3.4-star rating before its shutdown in July 2025. Instapaper is the closest alternative for former Pocket users. Best for those looking for a legacy app or seeking alternatives. **Key Features:** - **Was Super Popular**  – Had over 20 million users - **Clean Articles**  – Made messy web pages look good - **Worked Everywhere**  – Synced across all your devices reliably **Who is this great for?**  Former Pocket users loved the simple and intuitive design of Pocket. [Check out our guide to Pocket alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-in-july-2025-the-10-best-alternatives)  for more options. > [**Pocket Shuts Down in July 2025 - The 10 Best Alternatives**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-in-july-2025-the-10-best-alternatives/) — Pocket, the popular read-it-later app, is shutting down in July 2025. Discover the 10 best alternatives to save, highlight and organize web content (Marius Bongarts) ## Final Thoughts For most people, I'd recommend starting with [Raindrop.io](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/raindrop) – it's free, well-designed, and handles both bookmarking and reading well. If you prefer simple, distraction-free reading, go with Instapaper. Only consider [Readwise Reader](https://productivity-apps.com/apps/readwise-reader) if you're a heavy reader who doesn't mind the monthly subscription cost. If you're looking for more apps, check out the complete list of  [Read-it-later apps on productivity-apps.com](https://productivity-apps.com/categories/read-it-later) . > [**Best Read It Later Apps (2025 Guide)**](https://productivity-apps.com/categories/read-it-later) — Compare the top-rated Read It Later apps for your device. Hand-picked and reviewed for 2025. Find the perfect read it later tools to enhance your mobile experience. (Marius Bongarts) --- # How to Export Bookmarks from Chrome & Import to Web Highlights > Learn how to export bookmarks from Chrome, Firefox, Edge & Safari. Restore them in any browser or import into Web Highlights — your bookmark manager. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-06-01 - Updated: 2026-03-18 - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-bookmarks-and-import-to-web-highlights/ --- Whether you want to back up your Chrome bookmarks, export bookmarks to a new browser, or organize all your saved pages in one place — exporting your bookmarks is quick and easy. **Quick Steps: Export Chrome Bookmarks** 1. Open Chrome → Three-dot menu (⋮) →  **Bookmarks and lists**  →  **Bookmark manager** 2. Click three-dot menu (⋮) in Bookmark Manager →  **Export bookmarks** 3. Save the HTML file to your computer 4. Import into Web Highlights via  **Settings → Integrations → Bookmarks Import** All major browsers let you export bookmarks as an HTML file, which means you can transfer bookmarks between Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and any other browser. This guide will show you how to export bookmarks from Chrome (or any other browser), restore them in a different browser, and import them into Web Highlights — so you can keep all your research, notes, and favorite sites organized in one spot. ## Table of Contents - Why Export Bookmarks in Chrome? - How to Export Bookmarks from Chrome - How to Export Bookmarks from Firefox - How to Export Bookmarks from Edge - How to Export Bookmarks from Safari - How to Export Bookmarks in Any Other Browser - How to Restore Bookmarks in Chrome - How to Restore Bookmarks in Any Other Browser - Import Chrome Bookmarks to Web Highlights - Why Use Web Highlights for Bookmarks? - FAQ - Final Thoughts ## Why Export Bookmarks in Chrome? Exporting your Chrome bookmarks can be helpful if you: - Want to  **back them up**  so you don't lose anything - Plan to  **switch to a different browser**  or device - Need to  **organize bookmarks**  across multiple browsers - Want to  **manage your bookmarks**  together with highlights and notes in a tool like [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) ## How to Export Bookmarks in Chrome Here is a step-by-step guide for exporting bookmarks in Chrome: **Step 1:** Open Google Chrome. **Step 2:** Click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner. **Step 3** : Go to  **Bookmarks and lists**  →  **Bookmark manager** . Alternatively, enter **_chrome://bookmarks_** in your address bar. ![Step 1-3: Open Bookmark Manager](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/open-bookmark-manager-chrome.webp) *Step 1-3: Open Bookmark Manager* **Step 4** : In Bookmark Manager, click the three-dot menu (⋮) again. ![Step 4: Click three dots in Bookmark Manager](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/click-three-dots-in-bookmark-manager.webp) *Step 4: Click three dots in Bookmark Manager* **Step 5** : Click  **Export bookmarks**  and save the HTML file to your computer. ![Step 5: Click Export bookmarks and save .html file to computer](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/click-export-bookmarks-in-bookmark-manager.webp) *Step 5: Click Export bookmarks and save .html file to computer* > For a detailed walkthrough, see our  [Chrome bookmark export tutorial](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/chrome/how-to-export-bookmarks) . ## How to Export Bookmarks from Firefox Firefox also lets you export bookmarks as an HTML file in just a few steps: Step 1: Open Mozilla Firefox. Step 2: Click the three-line menu button in the top-right corner. Step 3: Click  **Bookmarks**  →  **Manage bookmarks** . Step 4: In the Library window, click  **Import and Backup**  →  **Export Bookmarks to HTML** . Step 5: Save the HTML file to your computer. > For a detailed walkthrough with screenshots, see our  [Firefox bookmark export tutorial](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/firefox/how-to-export-bookmarks) . ## How to Export Bookmarks from Edge Microsoft Edge uses the term "Favorites" instead of bookmarks, but the export process works the same way: Step 1: Open Microsoft Edge. Step 2: Click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner. Step 3: Click  **Favorites** . Step 4: In the Favorites pane, click the three-dot menu →  **Export favorites** . Step 5: Save the HTML file to your computer. > For a detailed walkthrough with screenshots, see our  [Edge bookmark export tutorial](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/edge/how-to-export-bookmarks) . Lost your Collections in the Edge 149 update? If you moved them to Favorites first, this export brings those links along. Here’s [what happened to Edge Collections](https://web-highlights.com/blog/microsoft-edge-collections-removed/) and how to get the rest back. ## How to Export Bookmarks from Safari On macOS, Safari lets you export your bookmarks through the File menu: Step 1: Open Safari. Step 2: In the menu bar, click  **File**  →  **Export Browsing Data to File...** . Step 3: Enable the toggle switch for  **Bookmarks**  and click  **Export** . Step 4: Save the .zip file to your computer, then extract it to get the HTML file. > For a detailed walkthrough with screenshots, see our  [Safari bookmark export tutorial](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/safari/how-to-export-bookmarks) . ## How to Export Bookmarks in Any Other Browser Luckily, all browsers use the same format to export bookmarks as an HTML file. That's why you can easily export and import your bookmarks across any browser. Here are step-by-step guides for all remaining major browsers on how to export your bookmarks: - [How to Export Opera Bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/opera/how-to-export-bookmarks) - [How to Export Brave Bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/brave/how-to-export-bookmarks) - [How to Export DuckDuckGo Bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/duckduckgo/how-to-export-bookmarks) - [How to Export Vivaldi Bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/vivaldi/how-to-export-bookmarks) ## How to Restore Bookmarks in Chrome If you already have a bookmark file and want to restore it in your Chrome browser, that’s easy to do as well. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you restore your bookmarks in Chrome: **Step 1:** Open Google Chrome. **Step 2:** Click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner. **Step 3** : Go to  **Bookmarks and lists**  →  **Import bookmarks and settings** . ![Chrome menu steps to open Bookmarks and choose Import Bookmarks and Settings](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/go-to-bookmark-and-settings-chrome.webp) *Step 1-3: Open "Import Bookmarks and Settings"* **Step 4** : Choose **_Bookmarks HTML File_** from the dropdown. ![Chrome import dialog with Bookmarks HTML File selected in the dropdown](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/choose-bookmarks-html-file-chrome.webp) *Step 4: Choose "Bookmarks HTML File"* **Step 5** : Navigate to your local backup file (HTML format), select it, and click  **Open** . Step 6: Click  **Done**  to complete the import. > _Note:_  If you already have bookmarks in Chrome, the imported ones will appear in a new folder called "Other bookmarks" or "Imported." ### Alternative method to restore bookmarks in Chrome:  **Step 1:** Open Google Chrome. **Step 2:** Click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner. **Step 3** : Go to  **Bookmarks and lists**  →  **Bookmark manager** . Alternatively, enter **_chrome://bookmarks_** in your address bar. ![Step 1-3: Open Bookmark Manager](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/open-bookmark-manager-chrome.webp) *Step 1-3: Open Bookmark Manager* **Step 4** : In Bookmark Manager, click the three-dot menu (⋮) again. ![Step 4: Click three dots in Bookmark Manager](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/click-three-dots-in-bookmark-manager.webp) *Step 4: Click three dots in Bookmark Manager* **Step 5** : Click  **Import bookmarks**  and choose the exported HTML file from your computer. ![Chrome bookmark manager menu with the Import bookmarks option](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/click-import-bookmarks-chrome.webp) *Step 5: Click "Import bookmarks"* --- ### How to Restore Bookmarks in Any Other Browser Since all browsers use the same export format, you can easily restore your bookmarks on any browser. This means you can import your bookmarks from Chrome to Firefox, vice versa, or between any other browsers without any hassle. Below are step-by-step guides for all major browsers on how to restore your bookmarks using your exported HTML file: - [How to Restore Bookmarks in Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/chrome/how-to-restore-bookmarks) - [How to Restore Bookmarks in Firefox](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/firefox/how-to-restore-bookmarks) - [How to Restore Bookmarks in Edge](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/edge/how-to-restore-bookmarks) - [How to Restore Bookmarks in Safari](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/safari/how-to-restore-bookmarks) - [How to Restore Bookmarks in Opera](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/opera/how-to-restore-bookmarks) - [How to Restore Bookmarks in Brave](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/brave/how-to-restore-bookmarks) - [How to Restore Bookmarks in DuckDuckGo](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/duckduckgo/how-to-restore-bookmarks) - [How to Restore Bookmarks in Vivaldi](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/browser/vivaldi/how-to-restore-bookmarks) ## Import Chrome Bookmarks to Web Highlights Now that you have your bookmarks exported, you can easily import them into Web Highlights and organize them alongside your highlights and notes. Here is a step-by-step guide for importing your bookmarks to Web Highlights: **Step 1** : Open Web Highlights **settings** **Step 2** : Go to **Integrations** ![Step 2: Go to Integrations](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/go-to-integrations.webp) *Step 2: Go to Integrations* **Step 3** : Go to **Bookmarks Import** . ![Step 3: Go to Bookmarks Import.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/choose-import-browser-bookmarks.webp) *Step 3: Go to Bookmarks Import.* **Step 4** : Click  **Upload bookmarks file**  and select the HTML file you exported. ![Step 4: Click Upload bookmarks file](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/click-upload-bookmarks-html-file.webp) *Step 4: Click Upload bookmarks file* **Step 5** : Click  **Import**  to add your bookmarks to Web Highlights. ![Step 5: Click Import](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/click-start-import.webp) *Step 5: Click Import* ## Why Use Web Highlights for Bookmarks? Web Highlights is a Chrome Extension with hundreds of thousands of users and an average rating of 4.8⭐️. It's loved by users who want to keep their online research and saved pages in one place to stay better organized. Here are the main benefits of using Web Highlights as your bookmark manager: - **All-in-one research hub:**  Keep bookmarks, highlights, and notes together. - **Tag and organize:**  Easily find and group your saved pages. - **Cross-browser support:**  Import bookmarks from Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and more. - **Seamless workflow:**  Add notes and highlights to your bookmarks for better research and productivity. [Install Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/install) on your browser Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. > [**Install Web Highlights on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. ## FAQ ### Can I export bookmarks from Chrome to Firefox? _Yes! All browsers export and import bookmarks in the same HTML format. Export your Chrome bookmarks, then import the HTML file into Firefox (or any other browser) using the restore steps above._ ### Where are my exported bookmarks saved? _When you click "Export bookmarks" in Chrome, you'll be prompted to choose a location on your computer. The bookmarks are saved as an HTML file that you can store anywhere._ ### Can I export Chrome bookmarks with folders? _Yes. The HTML file keeps your folder structure for other browsers. In Web Highlights, imported bookmarks appear as saved pages you can organize with tags, highlights, and notes._ ### How do I export Chrome bookmarks on Android? _Chrome on Android doesn't have a built-in bookmark export feature. The best workaround is to sync your mobile bookmarks to your Google account, then export them from Chrome on a desktop computer._ ### Can I organize my exported bookmarks? _Absolutely. After importing your bookmarks into Web Highlights, you can organize them with tags, add highlights and notes, and access everything from one dashboard. This makes it easy to manage bookmarks across all your browsers._ ### _Can I import bookmarks from Pocket to Web Highlights?_ _Yes! Besides browser bookmarks, Web Highlights also supports importing saves and annotations from Pocket. See our_  [_Pocket import guide_](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-pocket-saves-and-import-to-webhighlights)  _for details._ ## Final Thoughts Exporting your Chrome bookmarks and importing them into Web Highlights is quick and easy. With all your saved pages, highlights, and notes in one place, you'll never lose track of important information again. Ready to get started? [Install our Chrome add-on](https://web-highlights.com/install) and import your Chrome bookmarks to Web Highlights now! > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) > [**How to Export Pocket Data and Import to Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-pocket-saves-and-import-to-webhighlights/) — Pocket shuts down in July 2025. Learn how to export your Pocket saves & annotations and import them into Web Highlights—the best Pocket alternative. (Marius Bongarts) --- # How to Export Pocket Data and Import to Web Highlights > Pocket shut down in 2025 and its export closed. Already have your export file? Here's how to import your Pocket saves & annotations into Web Highlights. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-05-24 - Updated: 2026-10-01 - Tags: Tutorial - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-pocket-saves-and-import-to-webhighlights/ --- Pocket, Mozilla's read-it-later app, shut down on July 8, 2025, and its export closed on November 12, 2025. You can no longer download your data from getpocket.com. But if you exported your Pocket saves before then, that file still works: Web Highlights imports your saved pages from the CSV and your highlights from the annotations JSON. Here are the key dates, from [Mozilla's Pocket support page](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/future-of-pocket) : - Pocket shut down on **July 8, 2025** . - Its “export-only mode” ran until **November 12, 2025** (the original deadline was October 8, 2025). - Since November 12, 2025, the export is disabled and **all user data is queued for permanent deletion.** Below, we'll show you how to import your Pocket export into Web Highlights—the [perfect alternative to Pocket](https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-in-july-2025-the-10-best-alternatives/) . > If you haven't installed the Web Highlights browser extension yet, please do so. You can [install it here](https://web-highlights.com/install) . ## Step 1: Find Your Pocket Export File When Pocket's export was still running, clicking _"Export CSV file"_ on getpocket.com sent a file called `pocket.zip` to the email address linked to your account. That export can't be requested anymore, so look for the `pocket.zip` file you downloaded back then—it's often still in your Downloads folder. If you're not sure whether you exported, search your inbox for Pocket's export email. It looks like this: ![Email from Pocket with exported content](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/image-9.webp) *Email from Pocket with exported content* Once you've found your `pocket.zip` file, extract it—you’ll get a `.csv` file that you can use to import your data into other read-it-later tools. If you’ve used the Pocket highlighter to [make annotations](https://web-highlights.com/blog/practical-annotation-examples/) , the _pocket.zip_ file will also include an _annotations_ folder. Inside, there’s a `.json` file that contains all the highlights you’ve made. No export file? Then your Pocket saves can't be recovered, but you can still bring in the links you kept elsewhere, for example by [importing your browser bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-bookmarks-and-import-to-web-highlights/) . Next, we’ll show you how to import all your saved pages and annotations into Web Highlights—the [perfect alternative to Pocket](https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-in-july-2025-the-10-best-alternatives/) . ## Step 2: Import Highlights into Web Highlights Make sure to be signed in with your Web Highlights account and go to the integration settings at [app.web-highlights.com/settings/integrations](https://app.web-highlights.com/settings/integrations) . Here you’ll find two ways to import content from Pocket: - **Pocket Import (.csv):** Upload the .csv file you exported from Pocket to bring in all your saved pages. - **Pocket Annotations Import (.json):** If your exported zip file includes a .json file with annotations, you can upload it here to import your notes. ![Web Highlights integrations](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/webhighlights-integrations.webp) *Web Highlights integrations* In all cases, we recommend that you first perform the _CSV import_ , which imports all saved bookmarks to Web Highlights. The annotation import can then be performed. ### **Pocket Import (.csv) - Import all saved pages** 1. Click on _"Pocket Import (.csv)"_ 2. Click _"Upload Pocket .csv file"_ and select your pocket.csv file 3. If the file is valid, you will see an info on how many pages can be imported. Now, click _"Start Import"_ ### **Pocket Import (.json) - Import your Pocket annotations** 1. Click on _"Pocket Annotations Import (.json)"_ 2. Click _"Upload Pocket .json file"_ and select the .json file from the annotations folder 3. If the file is valid, you will see an info of how many pages & annotations can be imported. Now, click _"Start Import"_ --- Great news, you're done 👏 Your data is now successfully imported to Web Highlights, and you can start exploring all of the awesome features of our PDF & Web Highlighter Browser Extension. ## Step 3: View the Imported Pages & Annotations If the import was successful, you'll find your imported pages & annotations in your dashboard. Here is how our dashboard looks: ![Web Highlights Dashboard](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/web-app/dashboard-overview.png) ## Step 4: Install Web Highlights Extension Web Highlights' core features are available through our browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. So, make sure to [install it here](https://web-highlights.com/install) . > [**Install Web Highlights on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. Once installed, the extension lets you do lots of cool things, like: - Highlighting websites in multiple colors - [PDF Highlighting for online & local files](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) - Directly take notes on your highlights - Add tags to your highlights - [Save bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/) - ... and much more. Highlighting websites is as simple as visiting any website and selecting some text on the website: ![Highlight text in multiple colors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/image-10.webp) *Highlight text in multiple colors* Learn more about our tool in our simple guide: > [**Guide to Using Web Highlights for Online Text & Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) — Boost your productivity with Web Highlights. With the pdf & web highlighter, you can highlight on the internet just like you do it in books. (Marius Bongarts) ## Step 5: **Revisit your Pocket pages** If you’ve also imported your Pocket annotations, you can go back to the pages you marked up in Pocket. Just open a page you’ve highlighted, and your highlights should show up right on the page. ![Recreated Pocket highlights in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-13.02.18.webp) *Recreated Pocket highlights in Web Highlights* However, keep in mind that Web Highlights tries to recreate the highlights on the page, and this might not always work perfectly because Pocket uses a different annotation algorithm. Some highlights might not display correctly on the page, but they will always be accessible in the sidebar and the web app. You can learn more about [why highlights might not be visible here](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-are-my-highlights-not-visible-on-the-page/) . ## Final Thoughts Pocket is gone—Mozilla shut it down in July 2025 and closed its export in November 2025. If you still have your export file, Web Highlights lets you import all your content so you can pick up right where you left off. Just [install the Web Highlights extension](https://web-highlights.com/install) , create an account, and import your Pocket export file—it’s that simple. > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) > [**Top 7 Web Clipper Chrome Extensions for Capturing Websites**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-7-web-clipper-chrome-extensions-for-capturing-websites/) — Capture and save content with the top web clippers for Chrome. See the 7 best extensions to keep your online resources organized and accessible. (Marius Bongarts) --- # Pocket Shut Down in July 2025 - The 10 Best Alternatives > Pocket, the popular read-it-later app, is shutting down in July 2025. Discover the 10 best alternatives to save, highlight and organize web content - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-05-23 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: News - Reading time: 12 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-in-july-2025-the-10-best-alternatives/ --- In July 2025, the popular  [web clipper](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-7-web-clipper-chrome-extensions-for-capturing-websites/)  , read-it-later, and content discovery app Pocket, maintained by Mozilla, shut down for good — a move that caught millions of users off guard. Before it went dark, the website showed a banner saying: > "After much thought, we’ve made the difficult decision to close Pocket. Thanks for being part of the journey." The shutdown covered every part of the tool: Pocket Web, the Android, iOS, and macOS apps, and the browser extensions. If you’re reading this, you’re probably still looking for a proper replacement — or your old saves are sitting in an export file somewhere. Both are covered below. > [**Top 7 Web Clipper Chrome Extensions for Capturing Websites**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-7-web-clipper-chrome-extensions-for-capturing-websites/) — Capture and save content with the top web clippers for Chrome. See the 7 best extensions to keep your online resources organized and accessible. (Marius Bongarts) ## Why did Pocket shut down? Pocket said people don’t save and read stuff online like they used to. So instead of running Pocket as its own thing, Mozilla (the company behind it) decided to put its energy into features that fit today’s browsing habits. Firefox got things like Tab Groups and better bookmarks that let you keep track of articles without needing a separate app. And the content recommendations Pocket was known for still show up in Firefox. So while Pocket itself is gone, some of its best parts live on inside the browser. ## When did Pocket shut down — and can you still get your data? Mozilla announced that  _"Pocket will no longer be available after July 8, 2025."_ After that date, Pocket ran in an “export-only mode”, letting users download their saved content as CSV. Mozilla first set the deadline for October 8, 2025, then extended it to November 12, 2025. That window is closed:  **since November 12, 2025, the export is disabled and all user data is queued for permanent deletion**  , so there is no way to recover saves from Pocket’s servers anymore. > "As of November 12, 2025, user data export has been disabled, and all user data has been queued for permanent deletion."-  [Mozilla](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/future-of-pocket) The good news: if you downloaded an export file back then, it’s still perfectly usable. Several tools — including  [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/)  — can import that CSV (and the annotations JSON) today, so your saves and highlights don’t have to stay locked in a file on your desktop. Pocket wasn’t the first one to go: Omnivore shut down in November 2024. If you used both, see our [best Omnivore alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/omnivore-alternative/) too. ## The Best Pocket Alternatives in 2026 The shutdown stung, but honestly? It was also the push many of us needed to switch to something more modern. A year on, the dust has settled — and these are the tools that have actually replaced Pocket for readers, researchers, and bookmark hoarders. Tooltivity, a  [browser extension comparison platform](https://tooltivity.com/)  , rated Pocket’s Web Clipper at just 7.4/10 back then — so we weren’t the only ones who felt it was showing its age. Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. All ten picks below are alive and actively maintained (I re-checked each one in July 2026), and several can still import a saved Pocket export file. Here are our top picks for Pocket alternatives. ### [1\. Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) ![The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/webhighlights.webp) *The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store* [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a simple tool that lets you save and highlight anything you read online. **The best part?**  It can  [import your saved Pocket export file](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-pocket-saves-and-import-to-webhighlights/)  — both the CSV with your saves and the JSON with your annotations — so nothing you collected over the years is lost. > [**How to Export Pocket Data and Import to Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-pocket-saves-and-import-to-webhighlights/) — Pocket shut down in 2025 and its export closed. Already have your export file? Here's how to import your Pocket saves & annotations into Web Highlights. (Marius Bongarts) You can [highlight text on any website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) , save copies of websites, create bookmarks, and add tags or notes. Everything gets saved to your personal dashboard, so you always know where to find it. ![Saved websites in Web Highlights dashboard](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/image-6.webp) *Saved websites in Web Highlights dashboard* It also works like a web clipper and read-it-later app, and can save a copy of a website and open it in a clean, [distraction-free reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) : ![Web Highlights reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/image-3.webp) *Web Highlights reader mode* If you want a better way to save and organize what you read, Web Highlights is a solid Pocket alternative—especially if you like highlighting. It’s built for people who read, research, and learn a lot online. If you want to keep your highlights and saved pages in one place, this is a great pick. > [**Install Web Highlights on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. ### [2\. Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) ![100,000 users - 4.8 ⭐️ (432 ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/milanote.webp) *100,000+ users - 4.8 ⭐️ (432 ratings)* Popular among creatives and visual thinkers, Milanote is like a digital pinboard for all your ideas. Milanote isn’t just for notes — it’s for organizing thoughts visually. The web clipper lets you save images, links, and text into boards that feel like digital pinboards. It’s great if you think in a more visual, creative way. Not the best for reading articles later, but ideal if you're collecting ideas for a project or planning something big. > [**Milanote Web Clipper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) — Read our in-depth review of Milanote Web Clipper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Milanote Web Clipper. ### [**3\. Instapaper**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/instapaper) ![200,000 users - 3.8 ⭐ (529 ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-23-at-19.21.32.webp) *200,000+ users - 3.8 ⭐ (529 ratings)* Instapaper has been around for years and is one of the closest tools to Pocket in terms of features and design. It lets you save articles in one click and read them later in a clean, distraction-free layout. You can highlight text, add notes, and organize your saves into folders. It also supports offline reading, which is great for commuting or traveling. If you’re looking for a smooth switch from Pocket with a similar feel, Instapaper is a strong pick. > [**Instapaper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/instapaper) — Read our in-depth review of Instapaper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Instapaper. ### [4\. Recall | Summarize Anything, Forget Nothing](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/recall-or-summarize-anything-forget-nothing) ![70,000+ users - 4.3 ⭐️ (76 ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/07/image-1.webp) *70,000+ users - 4.3 ⭐️ (76 ratings)* With Recall, you can use AI to save, summarize, and organize articles, PDFs, videos, and more — with built-in spaced repetition, browser extensions, and strong privacy controls. Its key features include automatic content summarization, a self-organizing personal knowledge base, and smart review schedules to help you actually remember what you learn. Because it works with almost any type of content — from YouTube videos and articles to recipes, PDFs, and movie lists — Recall is a powerful alternative to Pocket, packed with even more advanced features. > [**Recall | Summarize Anything, Forget Nothing Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/recall-or-summarize-anything-forget-nothing) — Read our in-depth review of Recall | Summarize Anything, Forget Nothing. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Recall. ### [5\. Raindrop](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) ![300,000 users - 4.1 ⭐️ (724 ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/raindrop.webp) *300,000+ users - 4.1 ⭐️ (724 ratings)* One of the most polished and popular bookmarking tools out there, with over a million users. Raindrop lets you save anything from the web and organize it with tags and collections. You can add notes, use a clean reading mode, and even collaborate with others. It can also import a saved Pocket export file, so switching is easy. If you liked Pocket’s reading features but want more structure and control, Raindrop is a solid pick. > [**Raindrop.io Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) — Read our in-depth review of Raindrop.io. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Raindrop.io. ### [**6\. Save to Notion**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/save-to-notion) ![400,000 users - 4.4 ⭐️ (1.3K ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/save-to-notion.webp) *400,000+ users - 4.4 ⭐️ (1.3K ratings)* Notion has become super popular in recent years — and their web clipper is a handy way to save web content straight into your workspace. With the Save to Notion, you can save links, articles, or whole web pages into any Notion page. It’s flexible, and once the content is in, you can add notes, move it into databases, or link it with other parts of your setup. It’s great if you already use Notion for planning or journaling. Not the best for fast reading later, but ideal if you want everything in one place — tasks, notes, saved content, and more. > [**Save to Notion Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/save-to-notion) — Read our in-depth review of Save to Notion. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Save to Notion. ### [7\. OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) ![1,000,000+ users - 4.8 ⭐️ (68.3K ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/one-note-web-clipper.webp) *1,000,000+ users - 4.8 ⭐️ (68.3K ratings)* Part of the Microsoft ecosystem, OneNote is widely used for taking notes, and its web clipper makes saving content super easy. The OneNote Web Clipper grabs parts of web pages — full articles, text, or images — and saves them into your notebooks. It’s part of Microsoft OneNote, so if you’re already using that, it fits right in. Not focused on reading later, but great if you want to organize saved content with your other notes. > [**OneNote Web Clipper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) — Read our in-depth review of OneNote Web Clipper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to OneNote Web Clipper. ### [8\. Evernote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/evernote-web-clipper) ![2,000,000 users - 4.7 ⭐️ (129.6K ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/evernote-web-clipper.webp) *2,000,000+ users - 4.7 ⭐️ (129.6K ratings)* Evernote has been a go-to note-taking app for years, and its web clipper is one of the most powerful around. The [Evernote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/evernote-web-clipper) lets you save articles, simplified versions of pages, bookmarks, or screenshots directly into Evernote. You can tag everything and sort it into notebooks, making it easy to find later. It also supports importing from Pocket. If you already use Evernote, this is a smooth and familiar way to keep saving stuff online. > [**Evernote Web Clipper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/evernote-web-clipper) — Read our in-depth review of Evernote Web Clipper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Evernote Web Clipper. ### [**9\. Matter**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/matter) ![Matter - 20,000 users 4.1 stars (28 ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/matter.webp) *Matter - 20,000 users 4.1 ⭐ (28 ratings)* [Matter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/matter) is a newer read-it-later app that’s quickly gaining traction, especially among knowledge workers and deep readers. > "Matter improves vastly on earlier read-later apps like Pocker and Instapaper" - Matter It offers a beautiful reading experience with highlighting, note-taking, and syncing across devices. You can also follow writers and newsletters directly in the app. Matter supports Pocket import, making migration easy. It feels modern and focused — great for serious readers who want a calm space to read and reflect. > [**Matter Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/matter) — Read our in-depth review of Matter. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Matter. ### [**10\. Obsidian Web Clipper**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/obsidian-web-clipper) ![100,000+ users - 4.8 ⭐️ (247 ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/obsidian-web-clipper.webp) *100,000+ users - 4.8 ⭐️ (247 ratings)* If you’re already using Obsidian, this one’s for you (also, if you haven't - Obsidian is great!). The [Obsidian Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/obsidian-web-clipper) lets you save stuff from the web straight into your Obsidian notes. You can clip full articles, snippets of text, or just links — and they show up as simple Markdown files in your vault, so everything stays organized in one place. It takes a little setup at the beginning, but once it's running, it works great. Perfect for anyone who’s already using Obsidian to keep track of their thoughts, notes, or research. > [**Obsidian Web Clipper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/obsidian-web-clipper) — Read our in-depth review of Obsidian Web Clipper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Obsidian Web Clipper. ## Which read-it-later app should you pick? Ten options is a lot, so here’s the honest short version, depending on what Pocket actually did for you: **You mostly saved articles and read them later?**  Instapaper and Matter are the closest things to a true read-it-later app today — one-click save, a clean reading queue, offline access. Instapaper feels like Pocket’s calmer sibling; Matter is the modern, audio-friendly take. **You used Pocket as a bookmark collection that kept growing?**  Raindrop is the strongest pure bookmark manager on this list, and Web Highlights combines bookmarks with highlighting if you want your saves to be more than a pile of links. **You want to actually remember what you read?**  That’s the gap Pocket never filled — and it’s where  [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/)  takes a different path: highlight the parts that matter, add notes and tags, read saved pages offline in reader mode, and set email reminders to come back to a page. There’s no separate reading queue like Pocket had — the workflow is built around keeping and revisiting the parts you marked, not just the links. ## Final Thoughts Pocket shutting down might feel like the end of an era, but it’s also a great chance to try something new — and maybe even better. If you want a clean, fast tool for saving and organizing content across the web, we highly recommend giving [**Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/) a try — especially if you like highlighting and sharing key takeaways from articles. And if your main goal is simply to organize articles and come back to them later, **Instapaper** is a great alternative. It offers a clean reading experience, offline access, and works smoothly across devices. Whatever your needs, there’s a solid alternative out there — and now’s the perfect time to make the switch. > [**Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & Annotations**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) ## Frequently Asked Questions ### 1\. What is the best Pocket alternative? It depends on what you used Pocket for. For a classic reading queue, Instapaper and Matter come closest. For organizing a growing bookmark collection, Raindrop is the strongest pick. If you want to highlight and remember what you read — not just save it — Web Highlights is the one to try (yes, it’s ours, so weigh that accordingly). ### 2\. Is there a free Pocket alternative? Yes — most tools on this list have usable free plans. Web Highlights is free for unlimited highlights, bookmarks, notes, and tags on your device (cloud sync across devices is part of the paid plans). Instapaper and Raindrop also offer solid free tiers for basic saving and reading. ### 3\. Can I still export my Pocket data? No. The export window closed on November 12, 2025, and Mozilla queued all remaining user data for deletion. But if you downloaded your export back then, that file still works: Web Highlights can  [import the CSV and the annotations JSON](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-pocket-saves-and-import-to-webhighlights/)  today. ### 4\. What replaced Pocket in Firefox? Mozilla folded parts of Pocket into Firefox itself: content recommendations on the new-tab page, Tab Groups, and improved bookmarks. There’s no separate Pocket-style app from Mozilla anymore — for saving and reading beyond the browser, you’ll need one of the tools above. ### 5\. What is the best free read-it-later app? Instapaper’s free plan covers the essentials: save, read in a clean layout, offline access. If “read it later” for you really means “read it, highlight it, and find it again months later,” Web Highlights’ free plan covers exactly that workflow — highlighting, notes, tags, and reader mode — without an account. --- # How to Read Any Website in Distraction-Free Reader Mode > Read any website in distraction-free reader mode. Highlight text, take notes, and export annotations—free, online, and no installation required. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-05-22 - Updated: 2026-09-16 - Tags: Reading, Tools, Tutorial - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-read-any-website-in-distraction-free-reader-mode/ --- Want to turn any online article or website into a clean, easy-to-read format—without installing anything? You can do it instantly, for free, and no account is required. **_TL;DR:_** Paste any public webpage URL into our  [Free Online Website Reader](https://web-highlights.com/tools/open-website-in-reader-mode) , click “Open in Reader,” and enjoy a clutter-free reading experience—no install or signup needed. ## Introduction Reading online can be a challenge. Between popups, ads, and distracting layouts, it’s hard to focus on what matters: the content. Whether you’re reading a blog post, news article, or research paper, you deserve a clean, comfortable reading experience. With our Free Online Website Reader, you can instantly transform any webpage into a distraction-free, customizable reader mode—no browser extension or account required. > [**Free Online Website Reader**](https://web-highlights.com/tools/open-website-in-reader-mode) — Transform any webpage into a clean, distraction-free reading experience. Remove ads and customize text display with dark or sepia mode—no installation needed. ## Why Use Reader Mode Online? Reader mode isn’t just for eBooks. On the web, it helps you to: - Remove distractions: Hide ads, popups, and sidebars for pure reading focus. - [Customized reader](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/reader-mode#reader-mode-customization) : Choose from dark, light, sepia, or high-contrast color modes. - Improve readability: Adjust font size, line height, and content width for your comfort. - Read anywhere: No installation or account required—just copy, paste, and read! - Highlight content: You can also [highlight text](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) & take notes right in the article. For example, use a yellow highlighter to mark important parts & add your thoughts. - [Export your work](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) : Save your highlights and notes as PDF, HTML, or Markdown for study, sharing, or future reference. ## How It Works: Read Any Website in 3 Simple Steps ### 1\. Enter the Website URL [![Free online website reader tool with a field to paste the article URL](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/enter-website-url.webp)](https://web-highlights.com/tools/open-website-in-reader-mode) *1. Paste URL of the article you want to read* Visit our  [Free Online Website Reader](https://web-highlights.com/tools/open-website-in-reader-mode)  and paste the URL of any public webpage you want to read. > **Note** : The tool does not work for pages behind a login or paywalls. For those pages, you could [install our page marker extension](https://web-highlights.com/install) . Our highlighter app will then grab the content of the page, turn it into a clean, reader-friendly format, and open it in our reader, where you can highlight text and take notes right inside the document. ### 2\. Open in Reader Mode Click “Open in Reader.” The tool will fetch the page and display it in a clean, distraction-free reader mode: ![Exampel article showing in reader mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/image-2.webp) *Distraction-free reader format* You can now: - Switch between color modes (dark, light, sepia, high-contrast) - Adjust font size and line height - Change the content width for optimal reading Using our browser extension instead? This 48-second video opens a saved page in its reader from the sidebar and goes through the same settings: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OQBExBH17I) ## Try It Now—No Installation Needed Ready to get started?  [Open the Free Online Website Highlighter Tool](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-website)  and try it out: 1. Paste your article or webpage URL 2. Click "Open in Reader" 3. Enjoy distraction-free reading It’s that simple. **Want to use reader mode in private or paywalled pages?** 👉 [Install our browser extension](https://web-highlights.com/install) > [**Install Web Highlights on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Can I use reader mode on websites that require a login? For private or paywalled pages, we recommend [installing our browser add-on](https://web-highlights.com/install) , which works everywhere, including behind logins. ### Can I highlight text and take notes in reader mode? Absolutely! Select any text to highlight, choose your color, and add notes or tags. All your annotations are saved in your browser and can be exported to PDF, HTML, or Markdown. ### Can I open PDFs? Our free online tool doesn’t support PDFs directly. To read and highlight PDFs, use our [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) , or [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig/) add-on. It works with online PDFs and also with local PDFs saved on your computer. > [**How to Annotate Any Online Article (Free, No Installation)**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-any-online-article-free-no-installation/) — Use our free online page marker to highlight any website—no install or signup needed. Easily annotate webpages and export notes in Markdown. (Marius Bongarts) --- # How to Annotate Any Online Article (Free, No Installation) > Use our free online page marker to highlight any website—no install or signup needed. Easily annotate webpages and export notes in Markdown. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-05-12 - Updated: 2026-10-05 - Tags: FAQ, Tutorials, and Help, Note-Taking, Tutorial - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-any-online-article-free-no-installation/ --- Want to highlight text on any online article or website, without installing anything? You can do it instantly, for free - no account required. _**TL;DR:** Paste any public webpage URL into our_  [_Free Highlighter Tool_](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-website) _, click “Highlight,” and start marking up the page & take notes - No install or signup needed._ ## Introduction Highlighting isn’t just for books and PDFs. Sometimes you’re reading an article, blog post, or research paper online and wish you could mark important points, add notes, or organize your thoughts—right there on the page. With our page marker, you can do exactly that, and you don’t even need to [install our browser extension](https://web-highlights.com/install) or sign up for an account. > [**Free Online Website Highlighter Tool**](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-website) — Highlight and annotate any public webpage for free. Add notes, use multiple colors, and copy everything as Markdown—no signup needed. ## Why Highlight Webpages Online? Highlighting isn’t just for textbooks. On the web, it helps you: - Remember key points from articles, blog posts, and research papers - Organize your thoughts with our colorful highlighter - Copy your highlights as Markdown into your notes app for study, sharing, or future reference And with our online tool, you don’t need to install anything or create an account. It’s as easy as copy, paste, and highlight! ## How It Works: Highlight Any Website in 3 Simple Steps ### 1\. Enter the Website URL [![Free online website highlighter tool with a field to paste the article URL](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/free-highlighter-tool.webp)](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-website) *Paste URL of the Website you want to highlight* Visit our [free highlighter tool](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-website) and paste the URL of any public webpage you’d like to highlight. It works best with text-heavy pages like articles, blogs, or research papers. > **Note**: The tool does not work for pages behind a login or paywalls. For those pages, you could [install our free browser extension](https://web-highlights.com/install). Our highlighter app will then grab the content of the page, turn it into a clean, reader-friendly format, and open it in our reader, where you can highlight text and take notes right inside the document. ### 2\. Start Highlighting Given you have entered a correct URL, you can click "Highlight" on the article, and the website will parse the website into a [simplified reader format](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/) \- this can take a few seconds. Once the page loads, just select any text to use our page marker and pick your favorite color—yellow, green, pink, blue, and more. ![Screenshot of the Web Highlights highlighter tool showing saved highlights and notes on the left, and a webpage with highlighted text and color options on the right.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/highlighting-min.png) *Highlight in different colors in our reader mode* Once a highlight is created, you can see it in the sidebar where you can take  [notes](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/notes)  and add  [tags](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/tags-and-organization)  for better organization. Plus, if you click on a highlight, a toolbox opens where you can add notes and tags to that highlight: ![Screenshot of highlighted text on a webpage with a pop-up note explaining the CODE method: Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/take-notes.png) *Take notes and add tags in the popup* Our tool will save your highlights & notes in the browser storage, so your highlights reappear when you revisit the website. Also, you can find all of your pages you have ever highlighted in the sidebar. ### 3\. Export Your Highlights The tool does more than we can cover in this article. But one of the most useful features is that you can instantly paste all your highlights into any note-taking editor you like. With a free account, Web Highlights also exports [to Notion in one click](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) and [to Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) (one export a day to each on the Free plan). Without any account, you can use the [Markdown export](https://web-highlights.com/docs/integrations/markdown-export) to add your highlights to any Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tool. For example, here is how to export your highlights & notes to Notion: 1. Just click the three dots in the sidebar and select "Copy Markdown". This will copy your highlights, notes, and tags to your clipboard. ![Export menu with the Copy Markdown option for exporting your highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/click-copy-markdown.webp) *Choose "Copy Markdown" to export your content* 2. Paste the content into Notion. All highlighted information, including the website preview image, tags, and notes, will be parsed into a Notion page. ![Screenshot of a Notion page displaying pasted markdown content, including a blog post title, links, tags, highlighted quotes, and a summary of the CODE method with bullet points.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/05/notion-markdown-export.webp) *Exported Markdown content in Notion* Of course, this doesn’t just work with Notion — it works with any note-taking tool that supports Markdown. For example: Obsidian, Capacities, Logseq, Craft, and many more. ## Try It Now—No Installation Needed Ready to get started?  [Open the Free Online Website Highlighter Tool](https://web-highlights.com/tools/highlight-website)  and try it out: 1. Paste your article or webpage URL 2. Click Highlight 3. Select text and start marking up! It’s that simple. > [**Install Web Highlights on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Can I highlight websites that require a login? For private or paywalled pages, we recommend  [installing our browser extension](https://web-highlights.com/install), which also works on pages behind a login or paywall that you can open in your browser. ### Will my highlights be saved? Yes! Your highlights are stored in your browser and stay there until you clear your browser data. To keep them for good, you can  [create a free account](https://app.web-highlights.com/auth/sign-up) or use the extension. Syncing them across devices is free for your first 7 days and part of the paid plans after that. ### What colors can I use? Choose from a thoughtfully curated palette of [standard and pastel colors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlight-the-web-with-the-colors-of-your-beloved-stabilo-highlighters/) —yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink. You can even customize your own color-coding system. ### Can I highlight a PDF the same way? Yes. The [free online PDF highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/tools/pdf-highlighter) also works without an install or an account: open a PDF, highlight it, and download or print it with your highlights. The file is kept for one hour, so download it before the countdown runs out. --- # How to Use Reader Mode For Focused Article Reading > Learn how to read online articles without distractions using Web Highlights’ reader mode. Enjoy a clean, focused reading experience on any website. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-05-04 - Updated: 2026-09-16 - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-reader-mode-for-distraction-free-reading/ --- Reading an online article in 2025: Click away the cookie banner, accidentally open an ad, prove you're human by identifying 27 blurry traffic lights, and _then_ finally read. Sounds familiar? Reading online can be a mess. With the right tools, you can open any article, blog post, or webpage in a **clean, reader-friendly format** with just one click — and even save it for offline reading. ## What Is Reader Mode? [Reader Mode](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/reader-mode) makes websites easier to read by: - Removing ads and popups - Focusing only on the main text - Making the layout clean and simple - Reducing the page size for faster loading It's perfect if you want to stay focused, read faster, or save important articles for later. Below you can see an example: the original website is on the left, and the same page opened in a clean, distraction-free reader view is on the right. ![Original website (left) and reader mode (right)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/04/reader-mode-original-comparison.webp) *Original website (left) + Reader mode (right)* ## Why Use a Reader Mode? In addition to the obvious advantages of a reader, such as distraction-free reading, there are other things that are extremely helpful if you regularly use a reader mode. Here is a list of the main advantages: - **Focus better:** Remove all clutter and distractions. - **Save for later:** Save articles to read offline anytime and [get reminded](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) . - **Cross-device access:** View your saved pages from any device. - **Keep articles forever:** Even if the original page changes or is deleted. - **Eye-friendly mode:** Many readers have an eye-friendly sepia mode, which makes reading more comfortable for your eyes. - **Highly customizable** : Reader Mode lets you adjust the font size, line height, reader width, and background color, so you can read in the color scheme you like best. ## How to Open Online Articles in Reader Mode Some browsers, like Firefox, have a built-in Reading Mode that appears for certain articles. These readers work well but are fairly basic. Our Web Highlights browser extension offers a modern, easy-to-use reader mode, plus powerful features for [highlighting and note-taking](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) — perfect for anyone reading a lot online. ### **Step 1:** Install the free Browser Extension. The Web Highlights Browser extension is available for [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) , [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig) , and any other Chromium based browser like [Brave](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Vivaldi](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Opera](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , etc. You can also just [install it from the website](https://web-highlights.com/) . > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) ### **Step 2:** Open Article in Reader-Mode Once you installed the extension, you can directly get started. Simply visit any online article and click the Web Highlights icon from the browser extension toolbar. Here, you should see the following "Open in Reader" button: ![Open in reader button](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/04/open-reader-btn.webp) *Open in reader button* Simply click the button and the article gets transformed into a clean and distraction-free format: ![Distraction free reader mode with eye-friendly sepia colors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/04/reader-format.webp) *Distraction free reader mode with eye-friendly sepia colors* Prefer to watch? Here is the whole flow in a 48-second video, including the highlighting and styling from the next two steps: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OQBExBH17I) ### **Step 3:** Adjust Styles of Reader Web Highlights reader mode is highly customizable. By using the top-right toolbar, you can adjust the following settings to your preference: - **Font Size:** Make the text larger or smaller for easier reading. - **Line Height:** Adjust the space between lines to suit your reading style. - **Article Width:** Change the width of the content area for a better reading experience. - **Color:** Switch between these color modes: **Auto:** The color scheme adjusts based on your device settings. **Light:** A bright, clean background with dark text. **Dark:** A dark background with light text for low-light reading. **Sepia:** A warm, yellowish background that’s easy on the eyes. **Contrast:** High contrast dark mode for maximum readability. ### **Step 4:** Highlight Text & Take Notes The best part about Web Highlights is that it offers much more than just a basic reader mode. Web Highlights is a [powerful PDF & web highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/) that lets you highlight any website or PDF in your browser in multiple colors and take notes. The best part? When you reload the page, your highlights stay right where you left them. This works the same way in Reader Mode — simply select some text, pick from predefined highlight colors, or create your own custom color. Here is how this looks like: ![Highlight text in multiple colors & take notes](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/04/reader-mode-highlighting.webp) *Highlight text in multiple colors & take notes* Once you’ve made your highlights, they appear in the sidebar, where you can add notes and tags to them. Plus, the [formatted highlighting mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) lets you organize your highlights into paragraphs, headings, and more, helping you keep the sidebar neat and structured. With the three dots in the sidebar, you can even easily **export your highlights** to PDF, HTML, [Markdown](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) , [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) , and other note-taking or PKM tools. ### **Step 5:** Read Your Articles Offline & Across Devices Web Highlights offers a great free version that doesn’t even require an account. However, the Pro version, which you can try for free with a 7-day trial, unlocks all features, including cloud sync. With cloud sync, you can read your saved articles and access your highlights and notes **from any device** using the powerful web app, which also features an elegant dashboard displaying your saved articles and highlights. Here’s what the dashboard looks like: ![Web Highlights Dashboard](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/web-app/dashboard-overview.png) ## Final Thoughts The Web Highlights browser extension provides a simple and elegant reader mode, allowing you to read articles without distractions. In addition to its basic features, it offers many extra tools to enhance your reading experience. Web Highlights can be installed as a browser extension and is completely free to use. It's available for [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) , [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig) , and any other Chromium based browser like [Brave](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Vivaldi](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Opera](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , etc. > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) ## More About Reading > [**Spaced Repetition: Retain Your Readings Long-Term**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) — How to beat the “Forgetting Curve” and memorize things effectively using flashcard learning, spaced repetition and the SuperMemo algorithm (Marius Bongarts) > [**10 Practical Annotation Examples to Improve Your Reading Experience**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/practical-annotation-examples/) — Learn 10 practical annotation examples to improve your reading experience. Annotate texts effectively with tips on highlighting, text data labeling, and more. (Web Highlights) > [**The Best Way To Read Articles and Remember What You Learned**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-way-to-read-articles-and-remember-what-you-learned/) — Most people only retain 10% of what they read. Luckily there are strategies and tools we can use to remember more when reading and learning. (Marius Bongarts) --- # Raindrop vs. Web Highlights: Which Bookmark & Annotation Tool Is Better? > Discover the key differences between Raindrop and Web Highlights, two powerful tools for bookmarking, annotating, and organizing online content. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-03-10 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: comparison, Chrome Extension - Reading time: 11 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/raindrop-vs-webhighlights-which-bookmark-and-annotation-tool-is-better/ --- Let’s face it - we all save way too many articles and websites these days. Here’s the short answer before the details: Raindrop is the better pure bookmark manager, and Web Highlights is the better highlighter. Both save pages, both organize them into folders and tags, and both sync across your devices. The difference shows up after you save — Web Highlights lets you highlight and annotate the page itself, and then turns those highlights into flashcards you actually review. If you’re drowning in digital content, you need a good tool to save and organize everything. Raindrop and Web Highlights are two popular options, and I’ve spent time with both to help you figure out which one might work better for you. If you’ve been using Raindrop but are curious about alternatives, Web Highlights might be worth checking out. It offers a clean interface and lots of free features that might suit your needs better. ## What’s Raindrop All About? ![Raindrop.io Chrome Extension](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/03/image-1.webp) *Raindrop.io Chrome Extension - 300,000 users; 4.1 average rating (screenshot from March 2025; the listing shows around 400,000 users today)* Raindrop is basically a super-powered bookmark manager. It lets you save pretty much anything from the web - articles, images, videos, PDFs - and organize them in one place. You can get Raindrop as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and others. They also have apps for your phone and computer. ### Who Uses Raindrop? All kinds of people! Researchers collecting articles, designers saving inspiration, students organizing study materials, or just regular folks who want to keep track of interesting stuff they find online. ### What Raindrop Does Well - Saves anything from the web (articles, photos, videos, PDFs) - Lets you create collections and add tags to organize stuff - Sorts your items however you want - Searches through the full text of saved pages - Keeps copies of content even if the original disappears - Works well for teams - Available on pretty much any device - Connects with tons of other apps ### The Good Stuff - Really good at managing bookmarks - Clean, visual interface - Works on all your devices - Saves permanent copies of content - Good for team collaboration ### The Not-So-Good Stuff - Limited options for highlighting and notes - Not great for detailed annotations - No flashcard features - Less focused on academic research - Can get messy with lots of bookmarks ### Raindrop Pricing Raindrop keeps it simple with two plans (checked July 2026): - Free: $0 — unlimited bookmarks, collections, and devices - Pro: paid monthly or yearly (yearly runs about 20% cheaper) — Raindrop only shows the exact price at checkout The Pro plan adds an AI assistant and suggestions, full-text search (including spoken words in YouTube videos), permanent copies of your bookmarks, reminders, annotations, a duplicate and broken-link finder, daily backups, 10 GB of monthly file uploads (versus 100 MB on Free), and priority support. ### Customer Support - Help center - Email support - Community forum ## Web Highlights - A Superior Annotation Alternative to Raindrop ![The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/03/image-2.webp) *Web Highlights: 100,000 users, 4.8 average rating (3.3K ratings) — that screenshot is from March 2025; we passed 300,000 users and 5,000 ratings since* Web Highlights focuses more on annotation than just bookmarking. It lets you highlight text,  [add notes](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-online-articles/)  , and organize information across websites. You can also  [export your notes to Notion with one click](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  or  [copy them as Markdown for Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/)  . Right now, it’s available as a [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) , and [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig) extension but its integrated cloud sync lets access your highlights across different computers and even from your phone. > [**Guide to Using Web Highlights for Online Text & Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) — Boost your productivity with Web Highlights. With the pdf & web highlighter, you can highlight on the internet just like you do it in books. (Marius Bongarts) ### Who Uses Web Highlights? Web Highlights is great for people who need to remember and organize what they read online. Students, researchers, teachers, and professionals who read a lot of online content find it particularly useful. If you’re studying PDFs, writing papers, or doing research, Web Highlights might be just what you need! > [**How Juliene, a Law Student from the Philippines, Studies Smarter with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/user-interview/with-law-student-juliene) — Juliene, a Law Student from the Philippines, shares how our annotation & note-taking tool helps her to navigate digital content more efficiently. (Juliene Ebreo) > [**How Elie, a Solution Architect from France, Works Smarter with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/user-interview/with-solution-architect-elie) — Elie, a Solution Architect from France, shares how our annotation & note-taking tool helps him to navigate digital content more efficiently. (Elie Khairallah) ### What Web Highlights Does Well - Lets you  [highlight any website or PDF](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-online-articles/)  easily - Uses tags to help you find saved highlights - Files saved pages into  [Collections](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/collections)  — a folder tree in the sidebar, with sub-folders, drag-and-drop, and a folder picker in the save dialog - Supports  [formatted highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/)  with headings, bullet points, etc. - Lets you add notes to your highlights - Works offline for highlighting and bookmarking - One-click export to  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  and Capacities (Ultimate plan); PDF, HTML, and  [Markdown copy for Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) - Creates flashcards from your highlights - Gives you  [daily learning recaps](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-remember-your-kindle-books-using-spaced-repetition-learning/)  to build reading habits - [Imports your Kindle notes](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) - Sends  [email reminders](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/)  for important notes - Has keyboard shortcuts for faster work - Searches through all your content - Syncs across your devices - Lets you share research with others - Works offline for many features ### The Good Stuff - Easy to use - Multiple highlight colors - Works across your devices - Great free version - Tags and folders side by side - Works offline - Exports to many formats - Great for academic work ### The Not-So-Good Stuff - Cloud sync across devices is part of the paid plans - Can be slow with very big PDFs - No shared team workspace — you can share single pages with a public link, but folders stay yours ### Pricing - Basic: Free - Premium: Paid monthly, yearly, or lifetime - Ultimate: Paid monthly, yearly, or lifetime See current prices at   [web-highlights.com/pricing](https://web-highlights.com/pricing)  . ### Customer Support - [Blog articles](https://web-highlights.com/blog/) - [FAQs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/faq-web-highlights-pdf-web-highlighter/) - [Email support](mailto:marius@web-highlights.com) - [Tutorials](https://web-highlights.com/docs/introduction/helpful-settings) ## Why Web Highlights Might Be Better Than Raindrop ### 1\. Better Highlighting Raindrop is mainly about saving pages, but Web Highlights is all about highlighting and notes. With Web Highlights, you can highlight text in different colors on both websites and PDFs. Just select the text, pick a color, and you’re done. You can also use the keyboard shortcut “Alt + S” to speed things up. Raindrop has some basic highlighting, but it’s not as good or easy to use as Web Highlights. If you mainly want to highlight and take notes rather than just save pages, Web Highlights is probably better for you. > [**Guide to Using Web Highlights for Online Text & Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) — Boost your productivity with Web Highlights. With the pdf & web highlighter, you can highlight on the internet just like you do it in books. (Marius Bongarts) ### 2\. Formatted Highlighting Web Highlights lets you format your highlights with different styles (bold, headings, bullet points), which makes organizing information easier. Raindrop doesn’t have this - you just get basic highlighting. If you need more ways to organize your research, Web Highlights wins here. > [**Formatted Highlighting Will Change Your Highlighting Experience**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) — Discover how formatted highlighting transforms your reading experience. Learn tips and techniques to make your highlights more effective and organized. (Marius Bongarts) ### 3\. More Export Options Web Highlights lets you export with one click to Notion and Capacities (Ultimate plan). You can also copy as Markdown to paste into Obsidian or other note-taking apps, and export to PDF or HTML files for saving offline copies or sharing with others. Raindrop connects with lots of apps, but its export options for highlights and notes aren’t as good. If you use multiple productivity tools, Web Highlights probably fits better into your workflow. > [**Export Web Highlights to Notion with One Click**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) — In this article, I will show you how you can seamlessly connect Web Highlights to Notion and export pages and highlights directly to your workspace. (Marius Bongarts) ### 4\. Email Reminders We all find interesting stuff online and then forget about it. Web Highlights can send you email reminders about saved highlights and pages, so you don’t forget important information. Raindrop doesn’t have built-in reminders, so Web Highlights is better if you need prompts to revisit your research. > [**Say Goodbye to Forgotten Articles: Introducing the Snooze Reminder**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) — Never forget to read an important article again with the Web Highlights Chrome Extension. Set personalized reminders to be reminded of saved articles via email. (Marius Bongarts) ### 5\. Image Highlights Web Highlights lets you [save and annotate images directly](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) . You can add tags and notes to images, which helps track visual information. Raindrop is good at saving images as bookmarks, but doesn’t let you annotate them as well. Web Highlights is better for managing both text and images. > [**How to Highlight Images with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) — Discover the power of image highlighting with Web Highlights! Easily save images alongside text, bookmarks, and notes. Upgrade now to highlight images! (Marius Bongarts) ### 6\. Learning Tools Web Highlights has features specifically for learning: - Creates flashcards from your highlights - Uses spaced repetition to help you remember - Gives daily learning recaps - Integrates with Kindle for studying These make Web Highlights especially good for students and researchers who need to learn and remember information, not just save it. Raindrop is mainly a bookmark manager and doesn’t have these learning tools. If education is important to you, Web Highlights offers more. > [**The Best Way To Read Articles and Remember What You Learned**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-way-to-read-articles-and-remember-what-you-learned/) — Most people only retain 10% of what they read. Luckily there are strategies and tools we can use to remember more when reading and learning. (Marius Bongarts) ### 7\. Note-Taking & Organization Web Highlights lets you add notes directly to your highlights and import notes from other platforms like Kindle. Organizing used to be the one place where Raindrop clearly won: it had collections, we only had tags. That changed in May 2026, when we shipped  [Collections](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/collections)  — a folder tree in the sidebar with sub-folders, drag-and-drop from the grid, a folder chip on every saved page, and a picker right in the save dialog so new pages don’t pile up in  **Unsorted** . Tags didn’t go anywhere; a page now has one folder as its home and as many tags as you like. So folders aren’t the deciding factor anymore. What is: in Web Highlights, the folder holds pages you’ve actually marked up, every note sits on the sentence it belongs to, and those highlights can become flashcards. Raindrop’s filters are good, but its notes stay at the page level. > [**Summarize with Tiago Forte’s Progressive Highlight Technique**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-art-of-summarization-tiago-fortes-progressive-highlighting-2-0-technique-in-action/) — Do you ever make notes or highlights and never revisit them? It often feels like everything we read is crucial, but we’re encountering it at the wrong time. (Marius Bongarts) ### 8\. Offline Features Web Highlights works offline - you can highlight, add tags, and save bookmarks without internet. Everything syncs when you reconnect. Raindrop lets you access saved content offline through its apps, but with fewer features than Web Highlights. If you often work without internet, Web Highlights might be better. ### 9\. User Experience Both tools have clean interfaces, but they focus on different things. Web Highlights makes highlighting and annotation super easy, with keyboard shortcuts for almost everything. You can customize these shortcuts to your liking. Raindrop has a nice visual layout for bookmarks. Both are user-friendly, but Web Highlights is better for annotation, while Raindrop is better for visual bookmark management. ### 10\. Security & Privacy Both take security seriously, but Web Highlights emphasizes protecting your data. They store your highlights and notes securely and have strong data protection. Web Highlights doesn’t sell user information, making it trustworthy if you’re concerned about privacy. You can read their terms and conditions for more details. ## Quick Feature Comparison | Features | Web Highlights | Raindrop | | --- | --- | --- | | Highlights | ✅ | ✅ (Basic) | | Formatted Highlighting | ✅ | ❌ | | Flashcards | ✅ | ❌ | | Notion/Capacities Export | ✅ | ❌ | | Kindle spaced repetition learning | ✅ | ❌ | | Note-taking | ✅ | ✅ (Basic) | | Email reminders | ✅ | ❌ | | Intuitive interface | ✅ | ✅ | | Regular updates | ✅ | ✅ | | Visual bookmark organization | ✅ | ✅ | | Collections (nested folders) | ✅ | ✅ | | Public share links | ✅ | ✅ | | Shared team workspace | ❌ | ✅ | | Offline access | ✅ | ✅ (Limited) | | Cross-platform support | ✅ | ✅ | ## User Feedback and Reviews Let's look at what users have to say about Web Highlights and Raindrop. Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. - **Web Highlights** has a **4.8-star rating** from over **4,500 reviews** in the Chrome Web Store, with hundreds of thousands of users. People love how easy it is to use, the highlighting features, and how well it works with other tools. - Raindrop has a solid **4.1-star rating** from around **765 reviews** and roughly 400,000 Chrome users (numbers from the  [Raindrop.io review on Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io)  , checked July 2026). Users like its clean interface and bookmark management. > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) — Read our in-depth review of Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Web Highlights. ## Conclusion Both tools are good, but they shine in different areas. Raindrop is great if you mainly need to save and organize bookmarks with a nice visual interface. It’s perfect for collecting and accessing content across all your devices. Web Highlights is better if you need to actively engage with content through highlighting, notes, and learning tools. It’s especially good for students, researchers, and professionals who work with lots of online content. With its easy interface, powerful annotation features, and learning tools, Web Highlights is probably the better choice if you want to do more than just save bookmarks. Looking beyond these two? Raindrop and Web Highlights both feature in our comparison of [the 12 best Chrome bookmark manager extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-bookmark-manager-chrome-extensions/) , alongside Session Buddy, Toby, Diigo, and the rest of the field. Want to try Web Highlights? Get it for  [Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) , [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig) , or use it with Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera. ## FAQs 1. **What’s the main difference between Web Highlights and Raindrop?**  Raindrop is mainly for bookmark management and visual organization, while Web Highlights focuses on annotation, highlighting, and learning tools. Web Highlights helps you engage with content, while Raindrop helps you organize bookmarks. 2. **Can I import my bookmarks from Raindrop to Web Highlights?** Yes. Export your bookmarks from Raindrop as an HTML file, then use the bookmarks import in Web Highlights (Settings → Integrations) — it reads the standard bookmarks-HTML format every browser and most bookmark managers produce. Your Raindrop collections come in as tags, and from there you can move the pages into Web Highlights collections if you prefer folders. 3. **Does Web Highlights have collections like Raindrop?** Yes.  [Collections](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/collections)  are folders for your saved pages: a tree in the sidebar, sub-folders, drag a page card onto a folder on desktop, pick a folder while you save, and bulk-move several pages at once. Each page lives in one folder (or **Unsorted** ) and can still carry as many tags as you want. Deleting a folder never deletes the pages inside it. 4. **Which tool is better for academic research?** Web Highlights is generally better for academic research because of its highlighting, annotation, and learning features. The flashcards, one-click exports to Notion and Capacities, Markdown copy for Obsidian, and focus on retention make it better for serious research. 5. **Does Web Highlights have a free version?** Yes, Web Highlights has a free Basic plan with unlimited highlighting and bookmarking. You can upgrade to Premium or Ultimate for more advanced features like cloud sync and image highlighting. 6. **Can I use Web Highlights on my phone?** Yes, Web Highlights syncs across devices, so you can access your highlights and notes on desktops, tablets, and smartphones through its web app. 7. **Is Raindrop better for visual content?** Raindrop is great at organizing visual content like images and videos with its gallery-style interface. However, Web Highlights lets you annotate images better, adding highlights and notes to visual content. 8. **How much does Raindrop cost?** The free plan costs nothing and covers unlimited bookmarks, collections, and devices. Raindrop Pro is a paid subscription (monthly or yearly, with the yearly option about 20% cheaper) — Raindrop only shows the exact price at checkout, so open their Pro page from inside the app to see it for your region. For a feature-by-feature rundown of the tool itself, there’s the  [Raindrop.io review on Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io)  . 9. **Can you highlight with Raindrop?** Yes, Raindrop supports basic text highlights on saved pages, and annotations are part of the Pro plan. If highlighting is the main thing you do, though, a dedicated highlighter goes further: Web Highlights adds multiple colors, formatted highlights, notes on every highlight, and PDF highlighting. 10. **Is there a Raindrop Chrome extension?** Yes — Raindrop’s Chrome extension saves the current page into your collections, and there are apps for desktop and mobile too. Web Highlights takes the same one-click approach but is built around highlighting first: you mark the text that matters and the bookmark comes along automatically. 11. **Raindrop vs Pocket — which one should I use?** That question answered itself in 2025: Pocket  [shut down for good](https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-in-july-2025-the-10-best-alternatives/)  , and Raindrop became one of the main places its users migrated to. If you’re coming from Pocket today, the real choice is between a bookmark organizer like Raindrop and a highlight-and-remember tool like Web Highlights. 12. **What is the best Raindrop alternative?** Depends on what you’re missing. If Raindrop’s bookmarking is enough but you want your saves to become knowledge — highlights, notes, flashcards, spaced repetition — Web Highlights is the natural next step. If you mainly want a reading queue, look at Instapaper or Matter instead. --- # Why Was My Chrome Extension Turned Off? > Find out why Chrome turned off your extension, what it means for you, and how to choose the best alternative. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-02-20 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension, News, Tutorial - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-was-my-chrome-extension-turned-off/ --- Since the latest Chrome Update, Chrome started disabling extension that do not follow their latest standards. You can still turn them on, but they’ll probably be removed from the store soon. This action was taken after [several warnings](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-are-chrome-extensions-no-longer-supported/) over the last months. Chrome gave extensions a lot of time to adapt to their new V3 Manifest standard, which should make extensions more secure and privacy-friendly. > "To better protect your privacy and security, Chrome and the Chrome Web Store require extensions to be up-to-date with new requirements. With this, Chrome may disable extensions that don't meet these requirements." - [Chrome Web Store Help](https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/2664769) That's why you might see the following info on the chrome extensions page at _chrome://extensions/_ : ![Chrome warning that an extension was turned off because it is no longer supported](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/02/image-5.webp) *"This extension was turned off because it's no longer supported. Chrome recommends that you remove it. "* ## Which Chrome Extensions are affected? To see if any of your Chrome Extensiosn are affected, you can paste  _chrome://extensions/_  in the browser's address bar to check it out. If any of your extensions are affected, they will be listed at the top of your page in an info box. You can also go to Tooltivity to check, if your extension is in [their list of extensions that were turned off](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/why-is-my-extension-turned-off) . Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. > [**Why Is My Chrome Extension Turned Off?**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/why-is-my-extension-turned-off) — Learn why your Chrome extension was turned off by Chrome, and see a list of potentially affected extensions. Or simply go to the details page of each extension. If your extension is affected, you will see a warning. For example, the [warning of the Storage Area Explorer](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/no-longer-supported-v2-manifest/storage-area-explorer) looks like this: > "This extension may soon no longer be supported. Remove or replace it with similar extensions from the  [Chrome Web Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/chrome) ." ![Chrome notice that an extension may soon no longer be supported](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/02/image-6.webp) In this case, Chrome even recommends looking for alternatives to the given extension. If you're looking for an alternative, [Tooltivity.com](https://tooltivity.com/) has great extension reviews and organizes them into categories. You might find a good replacement there! > [**Best Productivity Browser Extensions | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/) — Discover and compare the best productivity browser extensions at Tooltivity. Explore our in-depth reviews of top tools to boost your browsing experience. (Marius Bongarts) ## Why are Chrome Extensions turned off? Chrome has recently updated the Chrome Web Store and its framework, introducing a new manifest version, V3. Developers and extension owners have had several years to switch their extensions to this new version. Chrome has been [warning that V2 will soon be unavailable](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-are-chrome-extensions-no-longer-supported/) , but now, for the first time, it’s taking action by actually disabling outdated extensions for users. This isn’t the final step yet—users can still enable these extensions manually. But it’s only a matter of time before Chrome removes them from the Web Store for good. So it’s best to start looking for alternatives now if one of your tools is affected. > [**Will adblockers be disabled in the future? : r/edge**](https://web-highlights.com/discover/page/66b5297a57621ee7efccd2a7) — This page does not exist (Web Highlights) ## Final Thoughts It’s great that Chrome keeps the Web Store up to date, making sure extensions stay compatible with the latest version. Developers had plenty of time to make the switch, but now the deadline has passed—extensions are disabled and will likely be removed from the store soon. Of course, our [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) Chrome extension is up to date with Manifest V3 for a long time and will always be available. You can install Web Highlights for [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and for [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) . Give it a try, it's free! > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter - Chrome Web Store**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter - Microsoft Edge Addons**](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) — Make Microsoft Edge your own with extensions that help you personalize the browser and be more productive. --- # How 3 Law Students Study Smarter with Web Highlights > Follow the journey of three law students as they share how Web Highlights boosts their productivity. Learn why they recommend it to all law students. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-02-14 - Updated: 2025-02-14 - Tags: students, Learning, Web Highlights, Education, Story - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-5-law-students-study-smarter-with-web-highlights/ --- Law school is challenging, with long hours of reading and case studies that can overwhelm even the most organized students. Fortunately, with [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) , students can manage their studies more efficiently by highlighting text on any website or PDF, taking notes, and organizing research across devices. We talked to three law students from around the world about how this tool has changed the way they study—helping them save time, stay organized, and improve their academic performance. Here's what they had to say: ### **1\. Juliene Ebreo, Law Student from the Philippines** ![Juliene Ebreo, Law Student from the Philippines](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/02/juliene-3.webp) Juliene is a law student in the Philippines who faces the constant challenge of managing the overwhelming amount of legal cases and rulings. She found Web Highlights to be a game-changer, allowing her to read and highlight directly on the web browser, saving her hours of manual work. We asked her how she uses Web Highlights every day to study for her exams and work toward graduation. **Juliene, how long you’ve been studying and which areas are you focusing on?** > _I'm currently on my first year second semester Juris Doctor program and I'm expecting it to finish in 4-5 years hopefully. > > I still have a long way to go, and I will be using Web Highlights during the whole program \[...\]. > > Juris Doctor is the entry level program for those who want to be lawyers. So we will be studying all kinds of laws in the Philippines. It takes at least 4 years to finish the said program._ **How do you use Web Highlights in your daily study routine?** > I use Web Highlights in reading Supreme Court cases, articles, and other similar reading prescribed by our professors. > > Professors in law school give us at least a hundred of cases to read on, and the mere compiling of the cases already consumes a huge amount of my time. Before discovering this chrome extension, I copy the cases online then paste them on MS Word, re-format the font and the size and then save it as pdf file. Since most of the cases have at least 15 pages, it would be a waste of paper and ink if I would print all of them. So I would read them on my iPad and use an app to [annotate on the pdf files](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-a-pdf/) . **In what ways has Web Highlights helped you manage your workload or improve your productivity?** > With the help of Web Highlights, I do not need to compile each case and convert them into PDF. I now read the cases straight from browser. If the font is small, I just have to zoom it in according to my liking. > > What I like the most is that the highlights stay even when I close the webpage. It is very convenient because I can just read back the notes and highlights I made anytime I re-visit the webpage of cases. **Can you share any specific examples of how Web Highlights made your law school studies easier or more efficient?** > The [advanced highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) is the most useful tool for me. I love the Headings option. It allows me to emphasize specific lines in court decisions which are important. Because I tend to highlight a lot of lines in the cases it would still take me time to search for the most important doctrine. I also love the bullet list option because there are specific doctrines enumerated in the case that needs to be emphasized and the bullet list helps me cite them easily because of the bullets. **Would you recommend Web Highlights to other law students? If so, why?** > Yes, I would definitely recommend Web Highlights. > > In fact, a few hours after using this extension I already recommended this to my friends. This is the kind of tool that I do not want to gatekeep. This is really helpful to students and also to the environment by reducing the use of paper. > [**Summarize with Tiago Forte’s Progressive Highlight Technique**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-art-of-summarization-tiago-fortes-progressive-highlighting-2-0-technique-in-action/) — Do you ever make notes or highlights and never revisit them? It often feels like everything we read is crucial, but we’re encountering it at the wrong time. (Marius Bongarts) --- ### **2\. Lucas** Maranhão **, Law Student from Brazil** ![Lucas Maranhão, Law Student from Brazil](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/02/lucas-photo-1.webp) Lucas is a law student from Brazil preparing to become a judge. He uses Web Highlights every day. He appreciates the discount Web Highlights gives to students for the Ultimate version so that he synchronize his work across devices, which makes a big difference in his studies. We asked Lucas how he uses Web Highlights to study for his exams: **Lucas, how long you’ve been studying and which areas are you focusing on?** > _I’ve been studying law for about three years now, focusing primarily on constitutional law and civil rights. The complexity of these subjects requires a lot of reading and understanding of various cases, which can be overwhelming at times._ **How do you use Web Highlights in your daily study routine?** > _Web Highlights has become an essential part of my daily routine. I use it to highlight important sections of Supreme Court rulings and legal articles. > > The ability to highlight directly in my browser means I can_ [_annotate as I read_](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-online-articles/) _, which saves me a lot of time. I often create tags for different topics, making it easy to revisit specific cases or concepts later._ **In what ways has Web Highlights helped you manage your workload or improve your productivity?** > Web Highlights helps me highlight important parts of cases and quickly access them when I need to refresh my memory for class. > > Before using Web Highlights, I would spend hours ciompiling notes from various sources. Now, I can highlight and take notes in real-time, which has significantly reduced my study time. > > The synchronization feature allows me to access my highlights from any device, so I can study on the go, whether I’m at home or in the library. **Can you share any specific examples of how Web Highlights made your law school studies easier or more efficient?** > _Absolutely! Just last week, I was preparing for a class on constitutional law. I highlighted key arguments from several cases and organized them by topic. When it came time to review, I could quickly filter my highlights by tags, which made studying for the exam much more efficient. The ability to export my notes to PDF also helped me share my insights with classmates._ **Would you recommend Web Highlights to other law students? If so, why?** > _Yes, I would highly recommend Web Highlights to any law student. It’s a game-changer for managing the vast amount of information we need to digest. > > The highlighting and tagging features make it easy to stay organized, and the ability to sync across devices means I can study whenever and wherever I want. It’s a tool that truly enhances productivity and learning._ > [**How to Create Study Guides and Summaries Using Web Highlight**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-create-a-study-guide/) — Learn how to create study guides using Web Highlights by highlighting, organizing, and summarizing key information. Simplify your study process now. (Web Highlights) --- ### **3\. Kumar Arjun, University of Delhi, India** ![Kumar Arjun, University of Delhi, India](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/02/kumar.webp) Kumar is a second-year LL.B. law student at the University of Delhi. In university, they have access to many legal databases, but keeping the information organized is difficult.  Web Highlights has helped him manage his reading materials more efficiently, making it easier to find key points in cases. He used the free version for some time, but he’s grateful for the discount on the Ultimate plan, since it lets him sync his research across devices and use the advanced highlighting feature to organize his highlights and notes better. We asked Kumar how Web Highlights helps him to make his study life more efficient: **Kumar, how long you’ve been studying and which areas are you focusing on?** > _I’m currently in my second year of the LL.B. program at the University of Delhi, focusing on criminal law and intellectual property rights. The breadth of material we cover can be daunting, and I often find myself juggling multiple cases and statutes._ **How do you use Web Highlights in your daily study routine?** > _Web Highlights has transformed how I approach my studies. I use it to highlight critical passages in legal texts and online articles. > > The ability to_ [_annotate directly on the webpage_](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-online-articles/) _allows me to capture my thoughts immediately, which is crucial when dealing with complex legal concepts. I also appreciate the_ [_multiple color highlighting feature_](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages/multiple-color-highlighting) _, as it helps me categorize information visually._ **In what ways has Web Highlights helped you manage your workload or improve your productivity?** > _Managing my workload has become much easier with Web Highlights. I used to spend a lot of time sifting through notes and trying to remember where I found specific information. Now, I can highlight and tag everything as I go, which means I can quickly find what I need when preparing for classes or exams._ > > [_The export feature_](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) _is also fantastic; I can easily compile my highlights into a document for review._ **Can you share any specific examples of how Web Highlights made your law school studies easier or more efficient?** > _Certainly! Recently, I was working on a project about the implications of a landmark case in criminal law. I highlighted relevant sections from various sources and organized them by theme. When it was time to write my paper, I could export all my highlights into a single document, which saved me hours of work. The ability to share my highlights with classmates also fostered collaboration and discussion._ **Would you recommend Web Highlights to other law students? If so, why?** > _Definitely! I believe every law student should use Web Highlights. It simplifies the research process and helps keep everything organized. The ability to highlight, take notes, and export information seamlessly makes it an invaluable tool for anyone serious about their studies. Plus, it’s environmentally friendly since it reduces the need for printing._ > [**5 Best Note-Taking Tools To Organize Your Digital Second Brain**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/5-best-note-taking-tools-to-organize-your-digital-second-brain/) — Discover the Best Tools to Build Your Digital Second Brain! Tiago Forte’s famous productivity system for ultimate organization and creativity. (Marius Bongarts) ## Conclusion In the demanding environment of law school, tools like Web Highlights are invaluable. Juliene, Lucas, and Kumar each demonstrate how this Chrome extension enhances their study routines—whether it's through efficient case reading, seamless synchronization, or effective organization of complex concepts. By streamlining research and boosting productivity, Web Highlights empowers law students to focus on mastering the law. If you're looking to study smarter, consider integrating Web Highlights into your routine and join the community of students transforming their academic experience. --- # Top 5 Note-Taking Browser Extensions in 2026 > The 5 best note-taking browser extensions in 2026, re-checked in October: what each one does, who it’s for, and which ones are still maintained. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2025-01-10 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension, Note-Taking - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-5-note-taking-browser-extensions-in-2025/ --- Most of what I read, I read in the browser — articles, docs, PDFs, papers. And most of it is gone a week later unless I write something down. Most of us barely touch a pencil anymore, so digital notes are how we keep up with an endless stream of information. That’s why you need a good tool to park ideas for your future self. > The challenge is knowing which knowledge is worth acquiring. - [Tiago Forte](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/tiago-forte/) In recent years, there’s been a clear shift toward using more applications in the browser instead of native apps. That’s why it makes sense to keep your note-taking tool within reach — as a browser extension. Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. There are thousands of note-taking extensions in the Chrome Web Store. Here’s my shortlist — checked again in October 2026 for ratings, users, and whether each one is still maintained: ### List of the Best Note-Taking Browser Extensions 1. [Web Highlights](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) 2. [OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper)   3. [Diigo Web Collector](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) 4. [New Tab Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-notes) 5. [New Tab Draft](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-draft) ### [1\. Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/) ![Web Highlights listing in the Chrome Web Store](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*LAl1b9b9a6Gd2PHPaV4yHA.png) *Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter* This online highlighter is the hidden gem you didn’t know you needed. What makes this tool special is that you can create visual highlights with multiple colors and annotations on any website or PDF, right in your browser. > _"Obsessed with this, I can just turn websites into my notes. I can even choose the colors I want to highlight in."_ \- _Amsal Shabeer_ Taking notes is as simple as selecting text on a website and adding a note to it. [Watch the video](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/media/2025/01/landing-notes-tags.EIDlPaU_.mp4) *Create Notes & Tags* The best part? Your highlights stay on the website, even after you reload the page. Plus, all your notes and highlights are saved in one central place, making it easy to organize your research with tags and quickly find information using full-text search. Here's an example of highlighted content in the app: ![Web Highlights content](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*nXxmXniZw6YDYRV6p4Sbow.png) *Web Highlights content* Web Highlights is known for its clean interface and is popular among medical and law students, professionals, researchers, and many others who want to organize what they read online. It’s free to use with no account needed, and more than 300,000 people use it today — with a 4.8-star rating from over 5,000 reviews. Alongside its core highlighting and note-taking tools, it offers a variety of features to help with learning, studying, and remembering what you read online. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Web Highlights an outstanding score of **9.8 out of 10.** Check out their [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) : > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) — Read our in-depth review of Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Web Highlights. --- ### [2\. OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) ![OneNote Web Clipper listing in the Chrome Web Store](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*mvukt2eGLTNa_d0QFgkDNQ.png) *OneNote Web Clipper* I loved OneNote for taking notes during university, but I hadn’t touched it since then. Recently, though, I discovered their super simple [web clipper](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-7-web-clipper-chrome-extensions-for-capturing-websites/) Chrome extension — and started to give OneNote another try. If you choose this extension, you’ll need to use OneNote as your central hub for storing notes (your so-called “ [Second Brain](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/second-brain/) ”), which is a great choice. If you go this route, their Web Clipper Chrome Extension is a great choice. It lets you save entire webpages to your OneNote space and even add notes directly to the webpage. Here’s what it looks like to save a website to OneNote: ![Saving a website using OneNote Web Clipper](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*aNAc3VyvAjVAGgUU) *Saving a website using OneNote Web Clipper* OneNote is widely famous for its powerful note-taking capabilities and is a go-to tool for students, professionals, and anyone looking to keep their notes organized.  If you use OneNote, this extension is perfect for saving notes directly from any website. It’s free, but you need a Microsoft account to clip to OneNote. With 1,000,000 users and 4.8 stars from 68,500 ratings, it’s by far the biggest tool on this list, and Microsoft still updates it (the latest version is from September 2026). [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave OneNote Web Clipper an impressive score of **8.8 out of 10.** Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) . > [**OneNote Web Clipper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) — Read our in-depth review of OneNote Web Clipper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to OneNote Web Clipper. --- ### [3\. Diigo Web Collector: Capture and Annotate](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/01/image-10.webp) *Diigo Web Collector* Diigo is a similar highlighting tool as [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) that lets you highlight text on websites and add notes to it. You can easily highlight text and a popup appears: ![Highlighting text with Diigo](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*84DpNUnLj4wSG_4O) *Highlighting text with Diigo* When clicking on the notes icon, you are able to add quick notes to your highlights: ![Note-Taking with Diigo](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*5gDrnWPO82cVlr8Y) *Note-Taking with Diigo* Diigo is great for highlighting and annotating, focusing on the core features. It’s a solid choice if you’re after a simple solution. On the other hand, [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) offers a modern design with more advanced features, making it a great alternative. One thing to know: Diigo still has 200,000 users and 4.6 stars from 2,300 ratings, but the extension hasn’t been updated since June 2024. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Diigo a good rating of **7.6 out of 10.** > [**Diigo Web Collector - Capture and Annotate Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) — Read our in-depth review of Diigo Web Collector - Capture and Annotate. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Diigo. --- ### [4\. New Tab Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-notes) ![New Tab Notes Chrome Store Entry](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/01/image-5.webp) If you’re looking for a more advanced notepad directly in your browser, this extension might be for you. New Tab Notes is a so-called [New-Tab extension](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-new-tab-chrome-extensions-for-2024/) and transforms your new tab into a distraction-free notepad. So, whenever you open a new tab in your browser, this simple notepad opens up: ![New Tab Notes notepad](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*rcDdhKJDYMxKPJBM) *New Tab Notes notepad* The great thing is that it supports rich-text formatting, task lists, and customization. Your notes sync through your browser, and you can export them as Markdown, HTML, or plain text. If you know Markdown shortcuts from Notion, you’ll feel at home right away. It’s a small extension — about 2,000 users and 4.7 stars from 41 ratings — but it’s actively maintained (last update: May 2026). [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave New Tab Notes an impressive rating of **8.6 out of 10.** ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*OwgJxvFgGw8Nx3HI.png) Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-notes) : > [**New Tab Notes Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-notes) — Read our in-depth review of New Tab Notes. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to New Tab Notes. --- ### [5\. New Tab Draft: Simple Note-Taking](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-draft) This [New-Tab extension](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-new-tab-chrome-extensions-for-2024/) works much like [New Tab Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-notes) , offering a notepad when you open a new tab in your browser.  The main difference is its simplicity. New Tab Draft is a very simple editor comparable to the Notepad app on Windows or TextEdit on Mac. It does not offer any formatting options, saving your text in local storage — which is great for privacy.  While it doesn’t have many extra features, its simplicity and strong ratings in the Chrome Web Store (4.8 stars from 1,200 ratings, 9,000 users) might appeal to those who prefer to keep it simple. Just know that it hasn’t been updated since November 2022 — it’s still listed in the store, but don’t expect new features. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave New Tab Draft a very good rating of **8.2 out of 10.** ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*uDY9iMgIdL2ys6ce.png) Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-draft) : > [**New Tab Draft: Simple Note-Taking Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-draft) — Read our in-depth review of New Tab Draft: Simple Note-Taking. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to New Tab Draft. ### Final Thoughts There are plenty of note-taking Chrome extensions to choose from, and picking the right one usually depends on personal preference. Try out a few and see which one works best for you. If you’re looking for more options, take a look at the complete list of [Note-Taking extensions](https://tooltivity.com/categories/note-taking-apps) on Tooltivity: > [**Best Note Taking Browser Extensions (2026 Guide)**](https://tooltivity.com/categories/note-taking-apps) — Compare the top-rated Note Taking extensions for your device. Hand-picked and reviewed for 2026. Find the perfect note taking tools to enhance your browsing experience. (Marius Bongarts) --- Thanks for reading! I always appreciate feedback — connect with me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mariusbongarts) . --- # Planting Trees Worldwide with The Web Highlights Extension > UPDATE: Web Highlights has decided to remove the Mellowtel library, as it doesn’t align with our Privacy Policy. We'll look for other ways to support the environment. My top priority was always to make sure that most features of Web Highlights are free for everyone around the world. I am proud that the free version is already helping over 150,000 users to learn, stay organized, and do research. At the same time, I want to keep this extension ad-free. To cover the running costs without affectin - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-12-29 - Updated: 2025-07-20 - Tags: Web Highlights - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/planting-trees-worldwide-with-our-browser-extension/ --- > **UPDATE:** Web Highlights has decided to remove the Mellowtel library, as it doesn’t align with our [Privacy Policy](https://web-highlights.com/legal/privacy-policy) . We'll look for other ways to support the environment. My top priority was always to make sure that most features of [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) are free for everyone around the world. I am proud that the free version is already helping over 150,000 users to learn, stay organized, and do research. At the same time, I want to keep this extension ad-free. To cover the running costs without affecting user experience—and to contribute to planting trees around the world 🌳—I’ve chosen to use the open-source [Mellowtel](https://www.mellowtel.com/) library. Mellowtel is a privacy-focused alternative to ads and helps to: - 💸 Keep this side project ad-free. Over 150K users enjoy the free version, and a small revenue share helps cover costs. - 🌱 Plant a real tree for every $2 earned through our verified reforestation partner  [tree-nation.com](https://tree-nation.com/) . Visit our forest  [here](https://tree-nation.com/profile/web-highlights) . ## How Web Highlights Plants Trees To plant trees we are using [tree-nation.com](https://tree-nation.com/) . Tree-Nation supports companies and citizens in planting trees around the world to offset their CO2 emissions. Tree-Nation is recognized internationally and became an official partner of the UNEP in 2007. Tree-Nation has evolved to help +17,500 companies and more than half a million users to plant more than 33 million trees in +70 reforestation projects on 5 continents. Tree-Nation combines reforestation with technology by creating virtual trees and online forests. That’s why we’ve created our own [Web Highlights forest](https://tree-nation.com/profile/web-highlights) , where you can track our reforestation progress and see how many trees we’ve planted so far. > [**The forest of Web Highlights**](https://tree-nation.com/profile/web-highlights) — Discover how Web Highlights is reforesting the world Each month, I’ll review the Mellowtel earnings and plant one tree for every $2 earned. These trees will appear in the online forest, which you can find [here](https://tree-nation.com/profile/web-highlights) . ## How Mellowtel Works Mellowtel is an open-source library that helps developers to monetize their browser extensions. Mellowtel let users decide if they want to support you by opting in to share a fraction of their unused internet bandwidth. Compared to other [unethical solution](https://github.com/extesy/hoverzoom/discussions/670) s, Mellowtel shares bandwidth only and doesn't collect, share, or sell personal information (not even anonymized data). It's even completely open-source in order to guarantee transparency. Anyone can view the [code on GitHub](https://github.com/mellowtel-inc/mellowtel-js) . > Mellowtel doesn't collect, share, or sell personal information (not even anonymized data) Enabling Mellowtel is **optional** : users are opted out by default and can choose to opt in if they want to support me. Settings can be changed at any time. Here are some facts about Mellowtel: - It doesn't collect, share, or sell personal information (not even anonymized data). - It's also highly regulated: Mellowtel keeps communicating with Chrome Web Store regulators to guarantee a safe experience. - It also provides CWS regulators with tools to monitor and enforce compliance. ## How Users Can Opt In I already began to ask new users to opt in to use the library with the following dialog: ![Mellowtel Opt-In Dialog](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/12/Screenshot-2024-12-29-at-13.21.48-min--1-.webp) *Mellowtel Opt-In Dialog* I am thrilled that out of **1,000** users asked to opt-in, **732** decided to use the library to support us and help plant trees. This gives us a strong opt-in rate of **73.2%** . > If you have been a Web Highlights user for some time, you can also agree directly by activating Mellowtel in the Web Highlights settings. You can also **deactivate** it from here at any time. We’re now starting to ask our existing users to opt-in, so we can drive more traffic and plant more trees. --- Let's save the environment and plant some trees 🌳 Should you have any feedback, feel free to contact me. Thank you again for using my extension 🙏🏻 ## FAQ ### Will Mellowtel negatively affect user experience? _The short answer is: No. The library uses array of optimizations under the hood to ensure that it doesn’t slow down the user’s browsing experience. The impact it has on bandwidth is basically like seeing an additional ad like those on many e-commerce or news websites. Another feature that helps keeping the library unobtrusive is Rate Limiting. If you want to delve deeper read the "Concepts" section of the docs._ ### Can I opt out of using Mellowtel later on? _Yes. By default everyone is opted-out. Users have to explicitly opt-in if they want to support and can opt-out at any time from the settings page. The core idea is that since it's their unused Internet bandwidth, users should decide if they want to share it or not._ ### How does Mellowtel address privacy concerns? _Privacy is a top priority for Mellowtel. It does not collect, share, or sell personal information (not even anonymized data). Requests are handled in an incognito tab and every node is assigned a random identification key, not linked to any account. Mellowtel helps developers as an alternative to ads so they don't have to sell their users data to keep the service afloat._ --- Find more information on the [Mellowtel website](https://www.mellowtel.com/) . --- # 10 Best Text Annotation Tools for Researchers and Academics > Learn the best text annotation tools for researchers and academics. Improve your research organization and productivity through tags, notes, and highlights. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2024-11-25 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Productivity, Education - Reading time: 17 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-text-annotation-tools/ --- The process of manual text annotation is time-consuming and overwhelming, especially when dealing with large volumes of information. No one wants to spend hours gathering and sifting through boring content!  Whether you're working through academic papers, articles, or PDFs, manual annotation and highlighting often leads to confusion and inefficiency. Not only this, manual annotation also involves the risk of making human errors and losing important documents.  This is where text annotation tools come in, offering an advanced solution that saves time, increases productivity, and helps researchers stay organized. By highlighting information, taking notes, and adding bookmarks, academics can organize their thoughts without losing important insights.  ## **List of the 10 Best Text Annotation Tools** [1\. Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) 2\. Glasp  3\. Weava  4\. Helperbird 5\. Scrible  6\. Kami  7\. Diigo  8\. OrbitNote  9\. Sumnotes 10\. Spade  ## **1\. Web Highlights** ![web-highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc6jYI4zlMCZFtHeFjuthcxKIToFfKENqxqeaK5uI9ofdcbtwrDAkzh3IDn5rL6N08_fA6yrks0Yrd-wFbUmCyrWnk_YuX19JcQYot_zSxdon0A0-A8xvL9-4dc2ppd3TC0JcM_?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is an advanced text annotation tool that is available on the web as well as a mobile app. This tool can help researchers and academics highlight text, take notes, and organize web-based research. With Web Highlights, you can easily capture important insights as you browse.  Its intuitive design and quick integrations with popular platforms like [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) , and [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) help users stay focused and organized. For researchers and academics who need an efficient and reliable tool to capture and manage their findings, Web Highlights offers versatile yet simple-to-use features that increase productivity.  ### **Features** - Annotate Websites and PDFs - Create Tags - Note-Taking - Multiple Export Format Options - [Flashcards](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) - [Learning Recap](https://web-highlights.com/blog/welcome/)  - [Kindle Integration](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) - Email Reminders - Keyboard Shortcuts - Text Search - Sync Across Devices - Sharing Options - Image Highlights ### **Top 3 Features** #### **1\. Formatted Highlighting** ![formatted-highlighting-1](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfy6bmyUPoCkCAPTXKqdO8h5hh3Tvg1C4OaH5v5ZFoHhrRSy4w9gTrFh0trjSJbGMb41yyk0drYrmSZzxEixECFx8o4P_R2978kOgsXrd6wV80d50fgs2lHqZNvKeNAd-ZKZcZanA?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) ![formatted-highlighting-2](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeb7nwl-hdGT1M8SaDrcYipqR31NhtU3z5WoOBrcCcLeOnWKs-r-TqKL2F3QkQQBwDu2DuG7YO8Ty0BMX8ojqEL8ESWo0jkCMBerezWwU7ih8kswtcfIbm-yzZANR6ZAJSvrXqJFw?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) This unique feature of Web Highlights allows users to apply different highlight colors and styles to text, making it easier to categorize and emphasize key points. You can add heading styles, bullet points, and much more with [formatted highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) .  #### **2\. Tags & Notes** ![tags-¬es](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeuMWuP_nfplVBrrrpFjYUFElAOC651cJ0VBnrHWV2fKN83ezNDCO_jrEqCrbD0KQW8HSGg1MCgVejTuY7Xm1fF5izlrn9xD19VZDz4hvUiG9bZKS2LMG0h_PN-4Ex0_OpWZLoX5Q?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) You can organize annotations by using customized tags and adding personalized notes. This helps with content categorization and retrieving key information later. Improve research efficiency by staying well-organized and keeping all notes easily accessible. #### **3\. Email Reminders** ![email-reminders](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfE9N-G1jrphX9ybpaJS5vE31rzGDar9y2arGnb6a43yE4SM4yMipNTGRD3Bn2gnc8IhX4E2Dp7bQZVYg8MTHaas0AVxjD2nwrVSCuKUsimLr5q77J_hTAHfoOfW0BR6bD0NOp6bA?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Use the [snooze reminder](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) feature to never forget about important annotations again! These reminders can be set for specific highlights, ensuring timely follow-up on relevant information. ### **Pros** - User-friendly interface - Multiple highlight colors - Cross-device sync - Excellent free version with numerous features - Great tagging system - Unlimited offline highlights and bookmarks - Offline access to multiple features - Supports multiple exporting format ### **Cons** - No shared team workspace — you share single pages with a public link - The AI features need Chrome or Edge with on-device AI ### **Pricing** Here are the  [pricing plans](https://web-highlights.com/pricing)  offered by Web Highlights: - **Basic:**  Free - **Premium**  and  **Ultimate**  plans available. See current prices at  [web-highlights.com/pricing](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . ### **Customer Support** - Blogs - FAQs - Email support - Tutorials ### **Final Verdict** Web Highlights is a great choice for researchers who need an easy-to-use tool for web-based annotations and organization. With most of its features available for free, Web Highlights advances your research process and makes online annotations engaging. It allows you to integrate with multiple other productivity tools and also offers different export options. The cross-device sync ensures that your highlights are always available when needed on any device.  Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by our company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) — Read our in-depth review of Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Web Highlights. ## **2\. Glasp** ![glasp](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcmYo0_TAIfttVo1XP60GxIiHDfx0yVD9vWbrnZkRVJhUMXOgNlA3_2bdmpgnWXdb2bOPADfEwcW6qqnGkUw9U-1dcjvMos3viJh5w6TEB9D9EhUULwqUXd7kKtkK8B_FS2ZO5CsQ?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) [Glasp](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/glasp-web-highlighter) is one of the many simple-to-use text annotation tools designed to help users highlight and annotate content on the web. With its ability to work with PDFs, online documents, and even YouTube transcripts, Glasp offers a flexible solution for researchers who need to collect, organize, and collaborate on text-based content.  If you’re choosing between Glasp and Web Highlights, here’s our [detailed Glasp alternative comparison](https://web-highlights.com/blog/glasp-alternative/). ### **Features** - Highlighting Web Content - Share & Collaborate - Kindle Integration - Cloud-Based Storage - Organize Highlights and Notes - Bookmarks ### **Top 3 Features** #### **1\. Highlight Options** ![highlight-options](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfZhXd0ipGp7ITa_11RwqDZfFizAvPDsfnVtwa1iyw0SV7IJt6lOZqs6q4KRCZy1NptpV4EfLjf8VwuZlcn0sbXQqb05Uh0860jB_dTApstaNOEqjiNgAAWRlHAqyL8ofx8T7nIdA?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Glasp offers easy-to-use highlighting tools that allow users to highlight important sections of web pages, PDFs, and other documents easily. It offers different color options to make the process fun. #### **2\. Organizing Annotations** ![organizing-annotations](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXetR5lNm9T3SwEhm3mAj_sQvnvlggOzeeA5Rgbkp5ZoHySwgDWGRpP3A3nqA_dQIg_isSmqUt0GGNncHqRCAeNTIu_MuiYctQAYrqEqG9dlSXsHs0DIkNOLimgl4nGvwMy3c3T0JQ?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) You can organize your annotations using custom tags and notes, making it easy to find and manage your research work. This feature ensures your annotation efforts are aligned and neatly categorized for future use. #### **3\. Bookmarks** ![bookmarks](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfyy-dJJQcFF4Gg8BghG2el4HoU6Zfp8dOZRCXHnQG98letWLbznR-tmN0UsXsczOMNP1D9uqWoZn8bBjwv_JUpWpb6wwGmydDmc3APOpTrcogwCgDR2vxhmeC11kP9bqCtsZp-Zw?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Glasp lets users save web content through its bookmarking feature, allowing quick access to important research materials. These bookmarks help you retrieve resources easily during the annotation process. ### **Pros** - Supports a wide range of content types - Cloud-based storage - Simple interface - Multiple collaboration features  ### **Cons** - Advanced features are available in premium plans only  - Limited customization options - Mobile app is slow sometimes ### **Pricing** - Free Plan - **Pro:** $10/ per month - **Unlimited:** $25/ per month ### **Customer Support** - Email support - FAQs and knowledge base - Live chat ### **Final Verdict** Glasp is one of the top options for researchers who need a tool that works across various content types. Its cloud storage and collaboration features make it a great choice for team-based research. However, most of the features require premium pricing.  ## [**3\. Weava**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) ![weava](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcC9fJPDoYSuaguYvYkTgg4tM1V8W3iWALBVeUNs146wJK1v3hASxk0gcZgPUkMNWUyVURzKQw1EmVu6Z0PtmxqbYwQjtJjd7fdnDa4uOtVLoZK4GWqFn82IXbo_xnUj2ZWpO2oOQ?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) [Weava](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) is an annotation tool designed specifically for researchers, students, and professionals who need a reliable way to highlight and annotate online articles, PDFs, and other digital documents. Whether you're working on academic papers, reports, or collaborative research, Weava makes it easy to organize and share your insights. ### **Features** - Web & PDF Highlighting - Organize with Folders - Cloud Sync - Export Options - Keyboard Shortcuts ### **Top 3 Features** #### **1\. Web and PDF Highlighting** ![web-and-pdf-highlighting](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe5k7bisdgeXZkSfLBMwofJeowUsaYJtBR5KhjanmuQ7sZ-EskB7mBWeipnhQ923L_SeRzLyeoEYplrBJmXPtquiD2XlZJiXWhNaPwt3RgSxZJhQ-H7K4srIHpaXAMhiYsToktU?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Weava’s ability to highlight web pages and PDFs ensures that researchers can annotate multiple sources, from online articles to scholarly papers, without switching between tools. #### **2\. Organize with Folders** ![organize-with-folders](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfYBWVm9EGgdltKGRcpyOweGRrA7QZVnnE7bxRRWidYkbDPTq98pArzp4loZJm17NZkoj7dwvT0oh2uc7U5-5SOcK3MrV7ug9KjiFtmTCfuzAhOs9Q12SSfMFw50m2v6bi3wZiZ1w?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) With Weava, you can organize highlights and annotations into customizable folders, making it easy to manage and retrieve research materials.  #### **3\. Export Options** ![export-options](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdjSIcuTqKbvgNC30A9byuiI8MwWNdyhAVvGm0B3SSXCPaY79KdCRPCPrvp-sUuQKbcV9ZmGWz6MSJvFunZKbfVW9DlEAHKANwyad5DC4O-nm6gD4OSQXCneUrjkwzsTMNMUDitGQ?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Weava offers multiple export options, allowing users to save their highlights and notes in formats like PDF, Word, or Excel. This feature makes it simple to integrate your annotations into academic papers or share them with others. ### **Pros** - Extensive web page annotation - Team collaboration - Cloud sync  - Customizable keyboard shortcuts ### **Cons** - Learning curve for users - Limited support options ### **Pricing** - **Free Plan** - **Premium Plan:** $3.99/month ### **Customer Support** - Email support - Knowledge base - Live chat ### **Final Verdict** Weava helps researchers stay efficient and organized in managing their projects, research, and other online work. It allows for both collaborative and individual annotation processes. While it’s most beneficial for users who can take advantage of its premium features, the free plan is still functional for those with basic annotation requirements. > [**Weava Highlighter: PDF & Web Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) — Read our in-depth review of Weava Highlighter: PDF & Web. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Weava. ## **4\. Helperbird** ![helperbird](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXerfxZ1UlxKFBpNLJ_3K49AtTc7cUGVjfxFNNosurKu-UA-e5BZrv6AE5zgBtzNAQ6VaxzR8qSZsHesO5TsOYTd0k2Na3o-m5_jrMuaoXPhdSnA7AzjM7-mVm2FieU2gIR-aqeuhw?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Another popular text annotation tool, [Helperbird](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/helperbird-accessibility/ahmapmilbkfamljbpgphfndeemhnajme) , provides a unique web browsing experience to annotate, highlight, and interact with text on web pages. It offers a range of annotation features, but the standout attribute focuses on accessibility. Helperbird provides tools to adjust the reading experience, making it an excellent option for researchers and academics working with online content, PDFs, and even eBooks.  ### **Features** - Text Highlighting and Annotation - Adjustable Text and Layout - Reading Mode - Text-to-Speech - Immersive Reader - Bookmarks - Note-taking ### **Top 3 Features** #### **1\. Adjustable Text and Layout**  ![adjustable-text-and-layout](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXertX5XoYScehaZTlFMFcM69IhINX902iZoWwWzWXutV-ORUVUAJ8C2teZ6wuAR58_vhkXI4Ja-c4brBCNcQ20-VAA_C0Q03OWdWgmApbOR-fiOyzyvzmGsVWPOWpX8-oCIsauOkw?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Helperbird allows users to change font sizes, adjust paragraph widths, and even alter text color and background for a better reading experience according to individual preferences. #### **2\. Highlight Text** ![highlight-text](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXea2cOd9CA7ZxqxJQnr7rrXVWlDz84yiMFNIr-Ch6Jzh7zZcTVM4GvdBQM6Du_dh73AodhO4eATqcYGXi5T4ZLkff4oblBPY8etlFujiASxcHHuZsdO6xJ_I9oHKmuRnzPxHBSi9g?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) You can highlight text on web pages, PDFs, and articles, making it easy to mark important information. Helperbird offers a range of highlighting options and colors. #### **3\. Note-taking** ![note-taking](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe022Gw_p6hRagd16UKJ8VNGcN1bDfdI6k8RSwD4ov5KajyEw_3wl5moN3JVFxzId3v_ZTU2RQbh9SbBxDv2r0xOO3hg7eXs-P7_tIHpYaSbkRAXK271lrd5sHf0wiesQUc_utCOw?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Helperbird allows users to add detailed notes alongside their highlights, providing additional context and insights. This feature makes it easier to capture important thoughts and reference them later in your research process. ### **Pros** - Most annotation features are available for free - Extensive reading features - Multiple color options ### **Cons**  - Learning curve for users - Browser glitches ### **Pricing** - Free plan - **Pro:** $30/ per year - **Pro Unlimited:** $1500/ per year ### **Customer Support** - Email Support - Help guides - Tutorials ### **Final Verdict** Helperbird is a unique tool that offers different annotation and highlighting features for web content. It benefits researchers and academics who require customizable tools to adjust text for easier reading and comprehension. However, if you don’t need the accessibility features, you might find other tools to be more advanced and easy to use. ## **5\. Scrible** ![scrible](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf4Hx6UmTadwEEipkb-xcnXNci251D4PRpVvkpHsE67_krUR-Wwt3vgn7BFCOBl06jozBpCUStuutUM0CktGBHBlD_FzmTxMxWXBalVdZ3S4NM_eyFBWUqW7IkKHlH_SJ6mpKskNQ?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) [Scrible](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scrible-extension/lijhjhlnfifgoabbihoobnfapogkcjgk) makes the research and writing process for students, researchers, and academics quick and engaging. It allows users to annotate web pages, PDFs, and other digital content, helping to organize and manage important information effectively. With its intuitive interface and advanced features, Scrible improves research workflow and manages large volumes of content efficiently. ### **Features** - Store files in the cloud - Search tags - Bookmarks - Direct comments on web pages - Drag and drop annotations ### **Top 3 Features** #### **1\. Collaborative Annotation** ![collaborative-annotation](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfUAPPez2eDGyomGmGNVEiH5kImAxsE2Fv7pJtNbevfEzY-BbqKpkOIop7Dn6Y8wAKxUkQ0xYTJ3cgvYiD58bR7-8MD1JCuMHy10I45R1sP0UFI8Dnqj1uD4MMEi5VXopK-D1Awog?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Scrible’s collaborative annotation feature allows researchers to work together in real-time, making it easier to share and discuss highlights, notes, and ideas with team members. #### **2\. Cloud-Based Storage for Easy Access** ![cloud-based-storage-for-easy-access](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcfxxVcS3SyDIkhFLB6N0anlbWwuNpLguAbSR8pU_0Vi1WfCye4NbXOgFeJPb9VFOUdSMxME2b8yAj4_mA_OCyWlVVNaXM5dqUMZoXW9Wzh7skl-Qb5YW4vuFiG4xg1pzelxm-Xkw?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) With Scrible’s cloud storage, all your annotations and documents are securely stored online, ensuring you can access them from any device, anywhere. #### **3\. Search Tags** ![search-tags](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf3yGsjO9WFmCZb7shHiyDQTDiLQMuGJfDqf6T8E46xaRVBy2hjOxnGiK2Bfg4JusKQA6KU97bgDt_sm4YKkdXt2A0sjE9Z-ccox8PGNIpmfP3MTyDv7i7iqpK7iipUT97fZNtSmQ?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Scrible helps you add customized tags to highlights and annotations to categorize them and quickly find them again for future reference. ### **Pros** - Easy collaboration  - Easy to use  - Allows you to bookmark websites  ### **Cons**  - Regularly times out - Advanced features available in premium only - One-time payments are not feasible for everyone ### **Pricing** - **Basic:** Free - **Edu:** Free - for K12 users only - **Edu Pro Student:** $35/year USD, $20/6 months, $12/3 months - **Edu Pro Teacher:**   $119.99/year, $69.99/6 months ### **Customer Support** - FAQs  - Email support - Online demos ### **Final Verdict** Scrible is a great text annotation tool for researchers and academics involved in continuous online information. Its ability to generate citations, cloud storage, and real-time collaboration features make it a great choice for individual users and research teams. While some features are limited in the free plan, the premium version offers advanced research capabilities. ## **6\. Kami** ![kami](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfHz1zxEogwmlp6PBMlVht-PvR3dfcdMX0ArrzCf0UOzro8bg51GnH_m-TsOAb4SoDsNh9icNDBX5VgandVih1gnwU7RnJo9ogaoSTkO_5dokeoJ_ZewKoGw8TeTD1H3zQJLMXC8g?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) [Kami](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/kami-for-google-chrome/ecnphlgnajanjnkcmbpancdjoidceilk) is an all-in-one text annotation tool primarily designed for educators, students, and researchers working with PDFs and other digital documents. Kami helps advance the annotation tasks and allows multiple users to work on the same document in real time. It helps academics and researchers collaborate on research papers, assignments, or academic projects while annotating and marking up digital files. ### **Features** - Web Annotation - Real-time Collaboration - Text and Voice Comments - Annotation Layers - Cloud-Based Storage - Whiteboard - Drawing and Shape Tools ### **Top 3 Features** #### **1\. Real-Time Collaboration** ![real-time-collaboration](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfw7ngbHXE3teNuDkOqtiEMLnbR1-HtPrepvsSVlXdXFOFTuj2_JO8KEO5cJe5JJBIfy2bxLFqg7QPMcVVPoYxC4fwlcR7KyKK5aOkz2QZLHd_0CXtIMfceD738JgjQlrIu42bmCQ?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Kami's real-time collaboration feature allows multiple users to annotate and edit a document simultaneously, making it helpful for team collaboration, group research, or peer reviews. #### **2\. Drawing and Shape Tools**  ![drawing-and-shape-tools](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcQsBUJYpumYBvBEVxaEZD7cVTo2V-hWTu4PHB3Nx8nj6SmbOqbC2y9SzFng9a-ak83gJAZoRHDYUSM9cqPTT1DjhujOvJQCstaT8ZhRu6wM9g-dU4PwLcybBUbJanE-gdWA4HiHQ?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Visually highlight important document parts by drawing and making shapes. This helps explain complex concepts or emphasize key points in research papers. #### **3\. Whiteboard** ![whiteboard](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe40YEWzHF7Uxbfdaap76IHJ3VmigN_3mJqbRV6xzluzcuGfgfcSsdRtiUahxVbb5NJ_RGISwrKYls1hcY1-GHmJmapJscRIhL3st7ooOKErxgZuI9EuxOxmQJgstrIJUQnYhw6Zw?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) The whiteboard feature allows users to draw, annotate, and collaborate on a virtual canvas, making it perfect for brainstorming or explaining complex ideas.  ### **Pros** - Ideal for collaborative research  - Allows a wide range of annotation types - User-friendly interface  - Cloud-based storage ### **Cons** - Some features are only available with the paid plan - Limited mobile app functionality  - The free plan is quite basic  ### **Pricing** - **Basic Plan:** Free - **School or District:** Custom pricing - **Teacher Plan:** $99/ year ### **Customer Support** - Email support - Web Support - Webinars - Blogs ### **Final Verdict** Kami offers many annotation features, making it a flexible option for team projects and group research. While the free version is somewhat limited, the paid plans offer a variety of features that enhance productivity and improve the research process. If you work extensively with PDFs and need to collaborate, Kami is a great option. ## **7\. Diigo** ![diigo](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcKXqB4Wh6jiA7eRDGSyIZohGV9TLIDT0tETjf23Z39w9PjjNZUKW1A4Gl8QXJ7I_oqPDYVtAy0RUAhQywV273qpPzCXxgAm2H4nJVy9eaMzFLMLW8Z0RusmKB7DAn92wlDovJUFA?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) [Diigo](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/diigo-web-collector-captu/pnhplgjpclknigjpccbcnmicgcieojbh) is a text annotation tool that helps researchers and academics collect, organize, and share online research materials. It goes beyond simple highlighting by allowing users to add sticky notes, tag web pages, and even save web content for later use. Diigo’s focus on information management and its collaboration features make it ideal for anyone involved in detailed research or content curation projects. ### **Features** - Annotate - Bookmarks - Tags - Personal library - Highlights - Sticky notes ### **Top 3 Features** #### **1\. Tagging and Organizing**  ![tagging-and-organizing](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeGS2CHK69VmEC6RKPq8UpWsTVO8kB8KHr7c_0_uELZG8zf43C9ycbwhE1ltB9Fh-BqncFmpBpjt6D9c7Uqo6j-U0-zvvMzn9RNKwCZYYUf76G8wWZXqnDomE7O4qXHXsB9hhaL?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Diigo’s tagging system allows you to categorize research material with custom tags. This makes it easy to organize your work and quickly find specific content when needed. #### **2\. Sticky Notes** ![sticky-notes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeLkcdAzTg29U7ZFwJVOby8JBHBbeyNGCArPEkf1FBJhjsrfAnZXIj7xr8YWAstJpBNEaU3J_CUzEmvoNtjxsogr04SGaXT8bTBzLDP4WisQ43tBQ1Ko3qD8sZZrGE_yepGikoTtA?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Add personal comments and informative examples for your research directly on web pages. Diigo’s sticky notes provide additional context to your research. #### **3\. Bookmark Feature** ![bookmark-feature](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf69q477Ba80gMXzW1whHInn390m3Ok6jOYiLwEyP5yvxnU1Twvd32jESe3zcMuLkLxYbIMQr9b96SQFQH3L0wpAVu1WmsZDIYC_TI4r1Kgw4mD55bR5Iak_4WlgqWLhb7UHxsD?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) The bookmarking feature in Diigo lets users save important web pages for future reference, ensuring quick access to valuable resources.  ### **Pros** - Easy extension installation - Easy sharing  - User friendly - Organizes large files ### **Cons** - Limited features in mobile apps - Not all features are saved automatically - One-time payments are not feasible  - Limited storage in the free plan ### **Pricing** - Free Plan - **Standard:** $5 /per month, $40/ per year - **Professional:** $6/ per month, $59/ per year - **Business:** $10 per month per user ### **Customer Support** - Email support - AOL customer service ### **Final Verdict** Diigo stands out for its ability to annotate and organize web pages and PDFs with a focus on information management. The tagging system and group collaboration features are helpful for team-based research projects. Although its mobile app is limited, Diigo's extensive web integration and ability to export annotations make it one of the great text annotation tools. ## **8\. OrbitNote** ![orbitNote](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeYl38DWoDpYG5DQveuioFlukVI1abKntIUh64MA4jIRnJsUQ9L-EKOhokL_KqV49wDkCQsZNTdJzPi8aIVpxcbwgP3sRxxC3kOgcOu_6rTbjxbdG4zDK4PmjzfUMeSQQoXKoBT?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) [OrbitNote](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/orbitnote/feepmdlmhplaojabeoecaobfmibooaid?pli=1) is a high-quality text annotation tool that improves the workflow of digital documents with its advanced features. It is useful in educational and professional settings, supporting document collaboration, annotation, and editing. Orbitnote's integration with other educational tools makes it ideal for researchers who need to collaborate on academic papers or share insights on complex research topics. ### **Features** - Web and Document Annotation - Text-to-Speech - Free-hand Drawing  - Customizable Toolbar - Highlighting - Reading and Writing Support ### **Top 3 Features** #### **1\. Free-hand Drawing** ![free-hand-drawing](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeOy25T0_K28UXqynuVVNFfuTmNHTuSUl97Aoh3ABOlOcQwqRZcaU6hk47IhKo_Usjijw6rW1cSaFtYB72qxNT4ab2QN1CiC3nuwtrb6ZpcLqZbFberirOLr31q9FYKpWt6D6Ab5g?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) With the freehand drawing tool, you can sketch and annotate directly on documents, providing a flexible way to emphasize key points. This feature is ideal for visual learners. #### **2\. Highlight Web Pages** ![highlight-web-pages](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcH8f92Ac3T8lCEBjNMca35PXmmo_FMq9bDkkXl8r7znJ697exLFyYCswU5jCFnnaFFGpf_WBm9w0mFFfR4vNx9Jk1styyO5mNV8gFRXWWFiaifQI_Go9PSyqswCUkq9RboQiJleg?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Easily highlight key sections of web pages, helping researchers mark important information for later reference. This feature ensures that essential content is quickly accessible. #### **3\. Multiple Collaboration tools** ![multiple-collaboration-tools](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcNzAwQsRlwO-lAiCGVZqdy-atppLKf-1N6i8kKtOiDX_Oe9OIysFMjkIAuCSs8zEacsRDcQrKKfKnuYMeX9MkDwVE5u8XeAiwDdup2ZMOsD1pGqoMD1aLDtCjeD-tjVM3dRzlEew?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Orbitnote’s collaboration tools allow multiple users to annotate and edit documents simultaneously, making it perfect for team research or academic projects. ### **Pros** - Extensive collaboration features - Customizable toolbar  - Speech recognition tools - Easy-to-use user interface  ### **Cons** - The full range of features is only available in the premium version - Limited functionality  ### **Pricing** - **K-12 Group:** $5.50/ annually per user - **K-12 District:** $1.75/ annually per user ### **Customer Support** - Email support - Online help guides and tutorials  - Web support  ### **Final Verdict** Orbitnote, as a text annotation tool, allows researchers and academics to collaborate on academic documents and work together on complex research tasks. The text-to-speech functionality and customizable toolbar further enhance its accessibility and user-friendliness. However, most of its features are targeted towards Google tools, which limits its functionality.  ## **9\. Sumnotes** ![sumnotes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeNRMdXiJN_lDISqtmV-0WzCHM_7vYQ637V6wDY0fRfOcvcgLQPm6KXvsQVPjpLll-nqFeHt7qTjY8FDmP439ohiJIosB-pyBc63NR7AXv__gQkNKB1QFZrEhqCgKyRAPHin0U2-Q?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) [Sumnotes](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sumnotes/jjaipjgpbjocbcljginmklhbkgmpcmfp) is another text annotation tool that simplifies organizing and managing highlights and notes from various digital sources. It is widely used by researchers who need to annotate PDFs, eBooks, or web pages and then keep their annotations in a single, easy-to-access location. With its simple interface and excellent export features, Sumnotes saves time for users during the research process. ### **Features** - Annotation of PDFs and Web Content - Tagging and Categorization - Customizable Highlights - Kindle Integration - Note-taking - Export Options - Search Functionality ### **Top 3 Features** #### **1\. Customizable Highlights** ![customizable-highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeO312XnQCROkBTyFj_5ruH5S3SsUxkThEUuqDO5tR10OTr9qPtwo5n84h4c9lKVTZGYh1Q9LiI7d_0J38M5fuOFN5TDp69ABeJ9xLoTbOJrrKP9e3iiOQHtljs1D206qn8mcplEA?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Sumnotes allows you to edit the color and context of your highlights, giving you more control over how you organize and present your annotations. #### **2\. Exporting Annotations to Multiple Formats** ![exporting-annotations-to-multiple-formats](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdt_xhqHCNFlBxP8yAvtEP9ul3gLMdLmeUtpZJ1VVQ1ajyEt6VKriXbYUrWWFdgk0I4VyjmRmfhT2Ks0YW1TtnM76FRRjnVoAYONlDDeBvHIslRFzmo64SWdJApPeC4NxW9q_YjRA?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) The ability to export annotations to formats like DOC, TXT, and XLS makes it easy to use your research in various academic or professional contexts without any hassle. #### **3\. Tags Organization** ![tags-organization](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcu33_-IS53nNoRGqju_5pgjEhx-WPsqlMLeuFxq8dZiX_vRrMNGxK8YYMgSTaB1eoT1hSPSkv69ZTW-reZLhYWTIYkPOeRcBeR0ebivSHdElEjUmfiysojfOji_zUB1YckgJ-h1Q?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Sumnotes' tagging feature allows users to categorize annotations with custom tags, making it easier to organize and retrieve relevant information.  ### **Pros** - Easy search interface - Multiple export options - Cloud-based storage for easy access  ### **Cons** - Limited integration with external platforms  - The export functionality sometimes lags - Basic features compared to other tools ### **Pricing** - Free Plan - **Pro Subscription:** $8.99/ month ### **Customer Support** - Email Support - Web Support ### **Final Verdict** Sumnotes is a straightforward and easy-to-use text annotation tool that helps manage annotations across multiple platforms. The customizable highlights make it easy to keep research organized, while the export options provide flexibility for sharing your findings. Though it may lack some features that other advanced annotation tools offer, Sumnotes works great for simple and quick research annotations.  ## **10\. Spade** ![spade](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdJMGptj7gHx9BGnTDrvfE9gOCLIpthRP6bDK99QZ8h0vWXKrYi9vyS8bLx2iB55lhbqIyofPqW4jLBNTX8ges8ywxW84foC6PbMW4Hg1lNtkJ5PAkKxq2e834wGUbOF_EPRAG-3g?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) [Spade](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/spade-draw-on-and-annotat/kamhfnamfpipghhnbaolbgemgnafkejo) is a simple text annotation tool designed to annotate PDFs and digital documents. It focuses on improving your annotation tasks with intuitive features, making it easy for researchers to add text annotations, highlights, and notes on multiple digital file formats. Spade is especially useful for academics and researchers who need a straightforward and efficient way to interact with PDF documents. ### **Features** - Note-taking - Download and Share annotated files - Pen Highlighter  - Text Boxes - Keyboard Shortcuts ### **Top 3 Features** #### **1\. Cloud Storage** ![cloud-storage](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcbYb8DKG73YNy7sZNPjarTklk7LPULGI5bOzlOUmnmV-lwiFzEVhVgtppyXE9Wt-v-tcWc_7hhI2Acj-lp8UOtCdfcJWz4mYa5BrWjrXhFS5R8EnGqNEpxdIG4Fsbd-hxop7JA8A?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) With Spade's cloud storage, your annotations are always accessible from any device, ensuring you can continue your research from anywhere at any time. #### **2\. Keyboard Shortcuts** ![keyboard-shortcuts](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdekqb4onaG9ekqHsHW07keezjmY0NXj1wMQqAoHwa-JvPD6zOWvVHCtYWrgiZuhmP009mGAFysMPCdKw-PJibucskNBu5-rq9H4ZmcxARmUBq6q5tSspxpRd74eYANbIu6Baui?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) Spade offers handy keyboard shortcuts that help speed up the annotation process, allowing you to navigate documents and switch between tools effortlessly. #### **3\. Web Annotation** ![web-annotation](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd6S6uyWgE1uJRj8lQdxjE3UQ8Zfjf7S1xFpsfr24h3ph4hVvfOBzZqXHoGJOsdsDon2YAoCcetAdHoSs8UV3vvP0m2fFxR4p7pdVcN5ckbBOx0dtd4AyMxX6quFAYeoqcopZtEng?key=me-JHYHvfu51FzFKi6wiig) As you browse websites for information for your articles, you may quickly annotate them. Use Spade to add comments, highlights, and shapes.  ### **Pros** - Easy-to-install tool - Easy to use ### **Cons** - Delayed support responsiveness - Basic features compared to other tools - Limited usage help available online ### **Pricing** - Free to use ### **Customer Support** - Web support  - Online blogs ### **Final Verdict** Spade is a simple tool that provides a cloud storage feature to ensure that your research is always available, and the mobile support is great for annotating documents while on the go. While it lacks some of the more advanced features found in other tools, it is perfect for users who need a simple, reliable solution for basic annotation tasks. ## **Key Takeaways** With the increasing trend in digital research, text annotation tools are invaluable for managing and organizing large volumes of information. Whether you need to highlight key text, organize annotations, or share them with a team, the right tool can make all the difference.  Tools like [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) offer a smooth annotation experience, with features like one-click export to Notion and Capacities, cross-device access, and easy organization of web and PDF content. This easy-to-use and intuitive tool is an ideal choice for researchers and academics.  Stay organized, improve productivity, and ensure your research is always at your fingertips with [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) . Try it today! > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. What are text annotation tools, and why are they important for research?** Text annotation tools help researchers highlight, add notes, and organize key points from web pages, PDFs, and documents. They advance the research process, improving organization and ensuring important insights are easy to find and reference. ### **2\. How can Web Highlights help with text annotations?** Web Highlights makes it easy to manage various types of annotations, such as highlights, notes, and tags, directly within your browser. Whether working with web pages, PDFs, or Kindle content, you can quickly annotate key sections with different styles and highlight them in multiple colors. Web Highlights improves research process and organization, making it easier to categorize and review your findings. ### **3\. Can Web Highlights help with organizing annotations from multiple sources?** Yes, Web Highlights enables users to organize annotations using tags and notes, making it easy to categorize content from various sources. This organization helps researchers retrieve important information quickly during their research process. ### **4\. What role does content moderation play in the annotation process?** Content moderation ensures annotation consistency and accuracy for team collaboration and research. By reviewing and managing annotations, individual users and teams can maintain high-quality, focused content throughout their annotation projects. ### **5\. Can I highlight and annotate PDFs with Web Highlights?** Yes, Web Highlights allows you to highlight and annotate text directly on PDFs, making it easy to mark important content and add notes for better organization and reference during research. ### **6\. How do tags and notes help researchers in Web Highlights?** Tags and notes in Web Highlights help researchers categorize and organize their annotations, allowing them to find specific information quickly.  ### **7\. Can Web Highlights be used across multiple devices?** Yes, Web Highlights syncs across devices, allowing researchers to access their annotations and highlights from anywhere, whether they’re using a desktop, laptop, or mobile device. This cross-device access ensures that your research is always at your fingertips. ### **8\. What are annotation blocks, and how do they help organize research?** Annotation blocks are sections of text that are highlighted and annotated separately, allowing researchers to group related annotations. This method helps organize research into manageable segments, making it easier to review and extract key information from large bodies of text. --- # Maximizing Productivity with Web Highlights' Chrome Extension > Learn how to use productivity tools like Web Highlights to increase your productivity. Organization with tags, take notes and optimize online learning. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2024-11-18 - Updated: 2026-04-04 - Tags: Productivity, Chrome Extension, Web Highlights - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/maximizing-productivity-tools-web-highlights/ --- Have you ever felt overwhelmed by all the information you come across online? With the increasing trend of online content, keeping track of what matters can feel like a complex task. Luckily, productivity tools like Web Highlights can help with that.  This [Chrome extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) lets you highlight and annotate any web page or PDF instantly, helping you keep track of valuable information. Whether you're a student, researcher, or professional, Web Highlights helps you stay focused and efficient. ![Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/11/image-30.webp) *Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter* In this blog, we’ll explore how to maximize your productivity using Web Highlights, diving into its key features and offering practical tips to help you get the most out of this tool. ## **What is Web Highlights' Chrome Extension?** The Web Highlights Chrome extension is a user-friendly tool that integrates easily into your browser. It allows you to instantly [highlight important text](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) , [images](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) , or [PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) , ensuring you capture all the important information you need for your research or projects.  It is one of the best productivity tools. It is easy to use and has an intuitive interface. Its extensive range of features not only helps you stay productive but also makes working fun! ## **Core Features of Web Highlights' Chrome Extension** ### **Highlight and Annotate with Ease** One of the standout features of Web Highlights is its ability to highlight text, [images](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) , and [PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-a-pdf/) effortlessly. You can choose different colors for your highlights, which allows for better organization of your notes. Plus, you can add customizable annotations to provide context for your highlights. ### **Cross Sync Abilities** Imagine this: you’re working on a research project at your desk, highlighting key information in your browser. Later, you head out and want to review those same highlights on your phone during your commute.  With Web Highlights, you can do just that! Your highlights and notes are automatically synchronized across all your devices. This means you can access your important annotations whether you’re on your laptop, tablet, or smartphone. This flexibility ensures that your productivity management software remains uninterrupted, no matter where you go. ### **Offline Access** What happens when you find yourself in a spot with no internet connection? No worries! Web Highlights offers offline access to multiple features, so you can keep working even when you’re not connected to an internet connection.  All your changes will sync automatically once you're back online so that you dont lose any valuable insights.  ### **Collaborate and Share** For those working in teams, sharing annotations is a breeze. You can easily collaborate on projects by sharing your highlighted content with others. This feature is especially helpful for students and professionals who need to work together on research or assignments. Web Highlights allows you to export your annotations with one-click API export to  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  and  [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/)   (Ultimate plan). You can also use  [Copy Markdown](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/)   to paste your research into tools like Obsidian. These export options help you save time when working with fellows and peers.  This collaboration with team members ensures effective team communication and improves workflow visibility. ### **Learning Enhancement** If you're a Kindle reader, you’re in for a treat with Web Highlights!  This Chrome extension integrates with your Kindle, allowing you to [import all your highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) with just a few clicks. You have all your key takeaways from your favorite books organized and ready to use whenever needed. But it doesn’t stop there. Web Highlights takes it further by allowing you to transform those imported highlights into [study flashcards](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) . This feature is perfect for teachers and students who want to stay productive in their learning and deepen their understanding of a subject.  By using [spaced repetition techniques](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) , you can revisit your flashcards at optimal intervals, which improves your memory retention. This method helps reinforce what you’ve learned, ensuring those important insights stick with you longer. ## **How to Get Started with the Web Highlights Chrome Extension?** Setting up the Web Highlights Chrome extension is simple and quick! Here’s how: ### **Step 1 - Search For The Extension** ![search-for-the-extension](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdCUPZiFEG4rwBXW56BcEgJ4r3vZDnKTuTBy68taV0DLazJHqMG7Zep2pOFS4V22r-UqxnzDHxik4JYg5vgdZyqcUne_6OTDUl2ObX3cRpRMTOSXKpanoo9FbHraxIyZiSpOfkt6X6aLUvzvtejyA7CDXQ?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) Go to the Chrome Web Store and search for Web Highlights. Or just [open this link](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . ### **Step 2 - Add To Chrome** ![add-to-chrome](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcotZUisJrsFec1QOms81dW-Ox-IYHDuBJd-P3ku2g-EEposvOansWLqCucSx-dvvppVZRTkBMm2Pu0OxOPaaUAL6jmisOsfjN2m-OZHSIyPCL7IaUyN2tNCFTwy-rsUKMK6EF7y-ukrG_iYM9wcRfzVQE?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) Click on “Add to Chrome” to install the extension. ### **Step 3 - Check The Extension Icon** ![check-the-extension-icon](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdKObdW0ThiMbxGPwMW6OPW0XOt-z1-CAH64-ql07B2ZQirsQDzKkKPf3RrNxuUWnETO1iBo9ni3TvrWJsHPAKAIcEz2TWxsG5JyVaXA_r49pAdFRLAr4nHgX1WmUqztwHOtfubdW47RTiYXp642CLcaCun?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) Once the Web Highlights extension has been installed, click on the extension icon at the top right of your browser search bar. ### **Step 4 - Enable The Extension** ![enable-the-extension](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcHqQwfZs2PGf46ufGg9guhUahkUM3FUmaFGdzD472gXAl-lj0BiIPKHSHqF19wZdlUpZiq5cIshdEONN0fbHS3QzEKzInHFTPHFq31AGFkVd6jCGkrHlhYRD1Qn8XNQkVaOc3jioA5Onjw1Rwsa4ae5_qi?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) Keep your Web Highlights extension visible at all times by pinning it in your Chrome browser. This makes it convenient for future use. If you need further assistance, you can read our [onboarding guide](https://web-highlights.com/blog/welcome/) . This will help you understand where to begin, guiding you through the key features and how to use the tool effectively. Once set up, you can start highlighting and annotating content immediately. Simply select the text or image you want to highlight, choose your color, and add any notes you need. ## **Tips for Maximizing Productivity with Web Highlights** Now that our productivity tool is installed and ready to use let's explore some practical tips to help you maximize productivity with its features. ### **Effective Organization** ![effective-organization](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXenTGpmCWRjZ13TVUmBemgTtaZcC5Fah1ggEYU48iNAa3psjZHVQlvW5rfuurPoYfG-EWoGBMv_R3fKOWGmapvpROEwppRtIid1g0mBFlNlpfhOZJi90JUD-mOVvlAxqjY1KhVTY02y1OZbSPLM6tZSrOKY?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) Organization is important to stay productive as it helps you save time and work more efficiently.  Start by creating a tagging system that makes sense for your workflow. Consider the topics or themes you frequently [research and set up tags](https://web-highlights.com/blog/efficient-research-with-web-highlights/) accordingly. This way, when you revisit your highlights, and quickly find what you need without wasting time. Additionally, jot down brief [notes alongside your highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) . This extra detail can provide context and save you time recalling specific information later. ### **Create Summaries** ![create-summaries](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXel_yhXOh2DV7RrnOiWwjE2huEq63Xdy_0xCF2veTo2aS1y3byXprZAxwbDDSVx4yGGgmh5Go0rncp8nvDNX3kkMHPFI8DBZgqEiff9MdA6AQ6QmtowtI4dUxzudHclYxKOy2prMlr1OPiho2J67qLQxLo?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) After you’ve highlighted, added notes, and organized with tags, it's time to summarize all the information.  Web Highlights allows you to generate quick summaries that capture all the important points of your article and PDFs. You can also format your summaries using the [formatted highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) method.  This feature not only saves you time but also helps reinforce your understanding of the material. You are able to summarize multiple pages of information into a concise overview in just a few clicks!  Read our blog on [how to create summaries and study guides](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-create-a-study-guide/) using Web Highlights to increase productivity.  ### **Integrating into Daily Workflows** ![integrating-into-daily-workflows](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeF-5Jiadg9zM7Jax6JP4HpevhuZzDIR8FPUVAXkBnTRrRmNi-Cx2NuYIwMDIARgzeZST_99Qpap06oG3WVjhhwWEvG5Eew8r_lgAHnx7R0StYocn7OUKztMMp0xW_W6oRyfRLxXKCOdJReJl-v853WRlhz?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) Web Highlights easily fits into your daily routine. You can use the export and sharing feature to send your highlights to tools like Notion or Obsidian, where you can manage your projects more effectively.  Want to save your annotations in a file? No issue. Web Highlights allows you to save your notes, summaries, and highlights in HTML, [PDF files](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) , or Markdown. This allows you to share them with friends and even upload them to other productivity tools.  ### **Email Reminders** ![email-reminders](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfeO8Kuyv7Jm7WHpqZ_4zmuQUGGZ0klHUiqwXZNqdMfOA0Kl8YPJoKwoDyElUjPPoyqmndHV7suYfE_nle3hVD8cTlFwUtQkK_Jd_ufsOaMbvF6GpSlbSzo0zDtlvSvNabfoNc8yBveH1Yhg_dMNNXl526O?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) Never worry about forgetting important highlights again! With the [Snooze reminder](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) feature, Web Highlights ensures you never lose track of important web pages and PDFs that you have saved for later use.  You can set personalized reminders in your email inbox for specific highlights or notes you want to revisit later. This is especially useful for deadlines, upcoming tests, or even just revisiting your summaries or study guides to keep them fresh in your mind. Think about how easy it is to get sidetracked with everything happening in our lives. Having an email remind you at just the right moment can serve as a helpful nudge to stay on track. This feature turns Web Highlights into your personal productivity assistant, keeping you organized and focused on your priorities. ## **Pro Tips for Optimizing Usage** ### **Keyboard Shortcuts** ![keyboard-shortcuts](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcL55hCuHItuWG5ugwYA-fMgC9lTz7PLiJZtlue7tkQ2uYZRGD19ONK6sFpKHGWiDifVhKx-6hixonvBHo6AWC-aPuWNP3SyYPJWYHp7iYzpFPnY35sZhuayZgI0SYs1xaDon0U7VJEWn46jWmTxR6JMaJr?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) Learn and use Web Highlights’ keyboard shortcuts to save time while highlighting and annotating. Familiarizing yourself with these shortcuts can speed up your workflow. Instead of clicking through menus to highlight or annotate, you can perform actions instantly using simple key combinations.  You can assign your own shortcuts for different highlight options or quickly toggle annotations on and off. This saves precious time and lets you focus on your reading and research without interruptions.  ### **Productivity App** ![productivity-app](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcwm9KWaJ0JCW9o42AJ_hDXtCY5hfN9kDaJ1GT_Yu6SSXXd0ZXgzl44Bv8lN3zWSV2lv_FpwS3WE36F-LnJfHa4dYZTjGVmWDo4qTqO30YUvaj7tIm1UNTQA-dLssX9WU2K8kKKw6QSG0NSaar9F-iZXLKL?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) You can also use [Web Highlights as a productivity app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) by downloading it on your phone or tablet. Doing so will help you access your annotations from any device and [save bookmarks on your phone](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/) . When you open the app for the first time, you’ll need an internet connection. After that, you can access your research even when you're offline. ## **User Experiences and Success Stories** ![user-experiences-1](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdyBQjU2Fo6g0wU5hs8R08rAzpSaACpV6A9n2qWbZqzVguTretL21kEr5B6mTdP1-CSrGH3q2CedfIrI_qYR4SNY2OsRmpociT7et0ACkA9THx23FQhHBQRgI4YDJotkqiFWEQ2r2__UaVxd8umzIQ4TVjq?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) ![user-experiences-2](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeG11WQGI31cweU8LuufKD2kyl6kuCtZX6MyAhMtme2INf_g1M07qe9r_iJfN7MV-UwBq5t_uRv1sN_QTXExai1dPyKwEgnTx5Lc_dCpOkhWS0EKD8cUh9gt7eH3rcDcfvwQtLqHtR4N_EYCsUk-8l_5QA?key=tsLjvn5BaUIL6P2DktjXzQ) ## **Conclusion** Web Highlights' Chrome extension offers a powerful solution for anyone looking to improve their online research experience and task management. With its intuitive design, advanced features, and ability to collaborate with team members, Web Highlights stands out from other productivity tools.  Start using Web Highlights today to transform the way you work and study. With this digital note-taking app, you'll not only save time but also improve your overall productivity.  Try [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) today! ## **Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)** ### **1\. What are productivity tools?** Productivity tools are applications or software designed to help individuals and teams manage workflows, improve collaboration with team members, and advance repetitive tasks.  ### **2\. How does Web Highlights enhance productivity?** Web Highlights boosts productivity by allowing users to highlight and annotate web pages and PDFs, create summaries, and sync notes across devices. Its wide range of features makes it a valuable productivity app. ### **3\. Can Web Highlights be used offline?** Yes! Web Highlights offers offline access, allowing you to highlight and annotate even when you’re not connected to the internet. All changes will sync automatically once you’re back online. ### **4\. How can I organize my highlights with Web Highlights?** You can effectively organize your highlights by creating a tagging system based on the topics you frequently research. This way, you can easily find your needs without wasting time, ensuring better workflow visibility. ### **5\. What platforms can I export my highlights to?** Web Highlights allows you to export your highlights to various platforms, including Notion, Obsidian, and Google Workspace. This flexibility increases your productivity by integrating with your existing productivity management software. ### **6\. What are some advanced features of Web Highlights?** Web Highlights includes advanced features like keyboard shortcuts for quick actions, Kindle flashcards, and the ability to create summaries from your highlights to improve your workflow. ### **7\. How does Web Highlights support remote teams?** Web Highlights enhances productivity for remote teams by enabling easy sharing and real-time collaboration on highlighted content. This ensures that all team members stay informed and aligned, improving overall project efficiency. --- # 5 Helpful Tips For Efficient PDF & Web Highlighting > Get the most out of Web Highlights with 5 powerful highlighting tips! Learn to disable the popup, use shortcuts, customize your sidebar, and more. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-11-12 - Updated: 2026-06-11 - Tags: FAQ, Tutorials, and Help - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/5-helpful-tips-for-efficient-pdf-web-highlighting/ --- [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/)  got a lot of features. Here are 5 powerful tips and tricks — plus two bonus tips for the PDF viewer — to make sure you get the most out of our PDF & Web Highlighter: ### Tip 1: Disable Automatic Popup 💡 The popup highlighter is super simple and easy to use. However, it might pop up when you least expect it—that’s why you can also disable it. ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/11/highlight-popup-options.CIHcsKis.webp) So, in case you find the automatic popup distracting, you can disable it in the settings: 1. Open the settings (or just click the eye icon next to the marker to open the settings) 2. Toggle off the “Show Highlighter Popup” option. ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/10/image-9.webp) Read more about this [here](https://web-highlights.com/docs/introduction/helpful-settings#how-to-disable-automatic-popup) . ### Tip 2: Highlight with Keyboard Shortcuts & Right-Clicking 💡 If you disabled the highlighter popup, you can use keyboard shortcuts instead. 1. **Select Text** : Select the text you want to highlight. 2. **Press keyboard shortcut** : Once you selected the text, press the keyboard shortcut  `Alt + S`  for Windows or  `Option + S`  for Mac to highlight the text. - Pro Tip: If you are using formatted highlighting, you can also press  `Alt + A`  or  `Option + A`  to highlight the text in the same format as the last selected text. You can configure your shortcuts by pasting this URL  `chrome://extensions/shortcuts`  into your browser address bar. Read more about keyboard shortcuts [here](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages#highlight-text-using-keyboard-shortcuts) . As an alternative to keyboard shortcuts or the popup marker, you can also use the right-click highlighter instead. Here is how you can use it: 1. **Select Text** : Select the text you want to highlight. 2. **Right click** : Once you selected the text, right click on it. Then choose the _"Highlight selected text"_ option next to the Web Highlights icon. ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/10/image-11.webp) Read more about right-click highlighting [here](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages#highlight-text-by-right-clicking) . ### Tip 3: Customize Sidebar 💡 The extension sidebar is your main hub for highlights,  [bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/save-bookmarks-with-web-clipper) , and  [tags](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/tags-and-organization) . Since everyone has different preferences—left or right side, large or compact—our sidebar is fully customizable. ![Customize Sidebar](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/11/image-24.webp) - To **resize the sidebar** , hover over the edge until it turns blue, then click and drag. - To **align it left or right** , use the icons at the top of the box that appears when you hover over it. - By default, the sidebar **pushes the webpage to the side** , but if you'd prefer it to **float over the text** , just adjust this with the icons at the bottom. ### Tip 4: Change Default Highlight Color 💡 The default highlight color is applied if you click the popup marker directly, or when using keyboard shortcuts or right-click to highlight. So, it's essential to update the default color to your preference. Here are two ways to do that: **1\. Change Default Color from Highlighter Popup** : - Highlight some text. - Hover over the color you wish to be your new default color. - Click the star icon that shows up. ![Change default color](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/11/image-11.webp) **2\. Change Default Color from Settings** : - Open the sidebar. - Go to "Settings". - Click the color palette icon under  _Default Highlight Color_ . ![Change default color from settings](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/11/image-12.webp) ### Tip 5: Disable on Specific Websites 💡 You can disable Web Highlights on specific websites where you don't want the extension to be active. There are two options: 1. **Use the power icon** [​](https://web-highlights.com/docs/introduction/helpful-settings#disable-using-the-power-icon) ![Disable Web Highlights on a website](https://web-highlights.com/docs/assets/disable-website.BhhLK63v.png) To re-enable the extension for a website, simply open the sidebar and click the power icon again. 2. **Use the Excluded Domains list** This option is much more flexible. Go to  _"Settings" > "Excluded Domains"_ , add the URLs of the websites where you want to disable the extension. Use a wildcard like  `example.com/*`  to exclude multiple websites under the same domain. Here is an example of how to exclude specific URLs and also exclude multiple websites under the same domain: ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/11/image.webp) In this example, Web Highlights will be disabled for the following URLs: - `https://www.example.com/page1` - `https://www.example.com/page2` - `https://x.com/home` But, it will be enabled for: - `https://x.com/profile` ### Bonus Tip 1: Share the Annotated PDF Itself 💡 Need to send your findings to someone? Don't screenshot your highlights — send the annotated file itself. The  **Download button**  in the Web Highlights PDF viewer saves the PDF with your highlights embedded as  **genuine PDF annotations**  — the colors come along, and your notes arrive as comments. The downloaded file opens in Adobe Acrobat, macOS Preview, Edge, or any other standard PDF reader, so whoever you send it to can read, edit, and reply to your annotations right where they are — the text underneath is still text, not an image. Prefer paper? The  **Print button**  (or your browser's "Save as PDF") bakes the highlight colors directly into the pages. Read more about downloading and printing PDFs with your highlights  [here](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/download-print-pdf-with-highlights) . ### Bonus Tip 2: Start From Your Existing Acrobat Highlights 💡 Already have PDFs you highlighted in Adobe Acrobat, macOS Preview, or another PDF editor? You don't have to start over. Open the file in the Web Highlights PDF viewer, and a callout offers to import the highlights it found — one click, and they appear as regular Web Highlights — same colors, notes included. A few things that make this import safe to rely on: - Reopening the same PDF never imports anything twice. - If the file changes later — say a colleague adds or edits highlights in Acrobat — the viewer offers the new and updated ones as a quick sync. - Annotations deleted from the file never delete your highlights. Note: the import works with highlight, underline, strikeout, and squiggly annotations on selectable text, and imported notes come in as plain text. Scanned image-only PDFs and password-protected PDFs are not supported. Read more about importing PDF annotations  [here](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/import-pdf-annotations) . --- That's it! I hope these tips and tricks will help you get the most out of Web Highlights. Thanks for reading! > [**Guide to Using Web Highlights for Online Text & Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) — Boost your productivity with Web Highlights. With the pdf & web highlighter, you can highlight on the internet just like you do it in books. (Marius Bongarts) > [**How to Highlight PDFs in Your Chrome Browser**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) — Easily highlight local and online PDFs in Chrome, Edge, and Brave using Web Highlights. Keep your research organized and accessible on any device! (Marius Bongarts) > [**The Best Way To Read Articles and Remember What You Learned**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-way-to-read-articles-and-remember-what-you-learned/) — Most people only retain 10% of what they read. Luckily there are strategies and tools we can use to remember more when reading and learning. (Marius Bongarts) --- # 10 Practical Annotation Examples to Improve Your Reading Experience > Learn 10 practical annotation examples to improve your reading experience. Annotate texts effectively with tips on highlighting, text data labeling, and more. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2024-11-03 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Education, Reading, Active Reading - Reading time: 9 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/practical-annotation-examples/ --- Reading is more than just going through words on a page. To get the most out of any text, you need to interact with it.  This is where annotation comes in. Annotation transforms reading from a passive activity into an interactive experience that helps you engage with the material.  It helps you ask questions, connect ideas, and highlight key points, turning a simple read into something much more meaningful.  Whether you're a student trying to improve your reading for a college task or just someone who loves books, learning how to annotate effectively can change the way you read. Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by our company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. > [**The Best Highlighter Extensions in 2024**](https://tooltivity.com/categories/highlighter) — Discover the best Highlighter extensions for your browser. We’ve manually reviewed the top Highlighter add-ons to boost your online workflow and efficiency. In this article, we’ll explore 10 practical annotation examples that can take your reading experience to the next level.  ## **Practical Annotation Examples** There are multiple ways to annotate text using apps to annotate PDFs or websites, but let’s look at how it can improve your reading experience. For each way, we'll discuss how they help and how you can apply them. ### **1\. Highlighting Key Information** **Purpose:** Quickly identify main ideas and important details. **How to Apply:** Use [different colors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlight-the-web-with-the-colors-of-your-beloved-stabilo-highlighters/) for various categories, like pink for main points, yellow for supporting details, and blue for unfamiliar terms. This is especially useful if you’re a teacher reading an online assignment and want to analyze the areas the student has missed or not touched on.  ### **2\. Writing Margin Summaries** **Purpose:** Summarize sections to capture the essential information. **How to Apply:** Jot down a one-sentence summary in the margins for each paragraph or section. It’s a simple way to ensure you’re following the text’s flow and can later review your notes for quick recall. If you're reading on your [Kindle](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) , you can highlight a passage and add a note to it. ### **3\. Asking Questions** **Purpose:** Promote critical thinking and deeper engagement with the text. **How to Apply:** As you read, write down questions in the margins—questions about the author’s intent, the meaning of a word, or how this information connects to other things you've read.  This makes reading a “thinking-intensive” process, which can improve your understanding and lead to meaningful learning experiences. ### **4\. Marking Vocabulary and Definitions** **Purpose:** Improve vocabulary retention and comprehension of challenging words. **How to Apply:** Circle or underline new words, then write their definitions or synonyms next to them.  This approach is particularly helpful when you are reading for college or preparing for an exam requiring detailed vocabulary knowledge. It helps you save time when you are reviewing information later. ### **5\. Identifying Themes or Motifs** **Purpose:** Track recurring themes or symbols for deeper analysis. **How to Apply:** Use symbols, like stars or colors, to highlight recurring themes or motifs throughout the text. Doing so can help you track important themes for class discussions. ### **6\. Noting Personal Reactions** **Purpose:** Create a personal connection with the material. **How to Apply:** Write down your thoughts, emotions, or reactions triggered by specific passages. Whether you're an avid reader or a student trying to keep track of how a text affects you emotionally, noting personal reactions can lead to deeper connections with the material. ### **7\. Connecting to Other Texts or Ideas** **Purpose:** Develop connections between different texts or ideas for richer understanding. **How to Apply:** When something in the text reminds you of another book or an idea you've encountered elsewhere, make a note of it. This can help students, researchers, or even book readers connect across different readings, leading to better understanding. ### **8\. Highlighting the Author's Arguments or Evidence** **Purpose:** Identify the structure and support of the author’s argument. **How to Apply:** Highlight the author's claims and underline the supporting evidence. This is particularly effective for students or researchers working with text data labeling in their analysis. By identifying key arguments and labeling data points in the text, you can better organize your findings and make more accurate conclusions. ### **9\. Tracking Character Development (for Literature)** **Purpose:** Follow character arcs and relationships in fiction. **How to Apply:** Use symbols or colors to mark major changes or interactions between characters. Literature students and book lovers alike can benefit from this annotation technique, which is helpful for book lovers or students studying literature, as it keeps track of how characters evolve throughout a story. ### **10\. Annotating Tone and Style** **Purpose:** Understand the author’s attitude and stylistic choices. **How to Apply:** Highlight words or phrases that reveal the author’s tone, and jot down brief notes like “sarcastic” or “formal” in the margins. Doing so helps students in class discussions or anyone interested in understanding the author’s writing style. ## **How Web Highlights Can Help Annotate** If you're wondering how to put these annotation examples into practice, [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is there to help you! Web Highlights is designed to make the process of annotating quick and exciting, especially when dealing with online content. If you’ve ever struggled to stay engaged while reading long articles or research papers online, Web Highlights has the right features for you.   Here’s how this easy-to-use and efficient tool can improve your reading experience: #### **1\. Highlighting directly on web pages and PDFs** ![highlighting-directly-on-web-pages-and-pdfs](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc6pJUVbX7J0yay-Sg44yIQSH5An1BC375tEcCmzLL4AMZRSgkOOf-bA3zy_TweZ3crh-1aoQoPsOfbBToDgWfbe8HVeqQfxd9ohIdNySAt6eWZO8uk4DGH532yHROOS12I_mZ5SDuaRDtyxHt3JSTQ2GE?key=avtwnlg1upYGiN6rrOWYyA) One of the main elements of annotation is highlighting.  With Web Highlights, highlighting is smooth, easy, and also fun!  By playing around with [multiple colors](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages/multiple-color-highlighting) , you can categorize different types of information - like main points, supporting details, or unfamiliar terms.  > **_Tip:_** Be careful not to over-highlight!  It’s easy to get carried away and end up highlighting everything, which defeats the purpose. [Formatted highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) helps you mark only the most important points or concepts that truly stand out. Less is more when it comes to effective annotation! #### **2\. Adding personal notes or comments**  ![adding-personal-notes-or-comments](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe8aYR0qmShS7baoZ6ZKd9sAlHHIuSRkH1uYSDgCDziyHwLplLqLJ9rYg1ddULSI6dQ90BgCQeQQ2EaxlMD953uulUmdzhYqCgGgMMZJvAaJjVGYlppgL8vIiRNNzJzEDscOb3Gk_zyjcemYXuKLxs7i14?key=avtwnlg1upYGiN6rrOWYyA) Web Highlights takes your annotation process a step further by allowing you to add personal notes or comments in your highlights. You can summarize sections, ask questions, or note down personal reactions as you read.  This is especially helpful when reviewing material later, as it enables [better recall and a deeper understanding](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-way-to-read-articles-and-remember-what-you-learned/) of the text. #### **3\. Organizing with tags** ![organizing-with-tags](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdS8IBvcUH0zzJV2Q68YYVpeTgTPgiEOHjiIcfrLyWsUwgvT2h9NNrjvl7ekQ2pHmFzKGDo-f8Eg0fBBXnquTQwhiXyBz9GaSDnBdByDpmBIB2qUtdj_PvL9geuIxRJXu9yWaQgFDM1e0Y7KDbq9PbA70U?key=avtwnlg1upYGiN6rrOWYyA) Having multiple highlights and annotations is useless if they are not well organized.  Web Highlights makes it easy to [categorize your notes and highlights with tags](https://web-highlights.com/blog/efficient-research-with-web-highlights/) . This not only helps you stay organized but also allows you to find and review key points later. With the help of tags, you can trace back any important information or inspirational quotes that you found during your reading. #### **4\. Export and save annotations** ![export-and-save-annotations](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXesnsWnWdVKf0wWvEjUvJkfPciRMFWSELtJD7WSKNKtCxhsmTJHkDO3wExh2gWSOKs3XPsiHNBuFJy3iutONP8N4G7pWg_y4XTXWIN3r9axI2j3yJxLAMhuuGIwHVHkC0qvyqHec0qF87YlIkuK?key=avtwnlg1upYGiN6rrOWYyA) Have you ever wished you could take your carefully crafted annotations and use them across different platforms without losing track? With Web Highlights, you can!  This tool makes it incredibly easy to export and save your annotations. Send highlights directly to  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-notion-with-web-highlights/)  or  [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/)   with one click, export as PDF, HTML, or Markdown, or copy as Markdown and paste into  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) .  After you've annotated text, you can easily share everything—your highlights, comments, and tags with just a click. This means no more manually copying over notes or worrying about losing your valuable insights.  For example, you just read an inspiring book on [Kindle](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) and highlighted some motivational quotes in it. Now, if you want to share them with your friend - you can easily do it by saving it as a PDF file, markdown, or HTML. You can also share your annotations publicly through the [Web Highlights Discover feed](https://web-highlights.com/discover) . #### **5\. Cross-device sync** With Web Highlight’s [cross-device sync](https://web-highlights.com/docs/introduction/getting-started#cloud-sync-mode-access-your-highlights-from-anywhere) , you can access your highlights and tags from any device, no matter where you are.  If you've read a book on Kindle and made notes or highlighted text, you can easily access those annotations on your phone, ensuring your reading and research are always at your fingertips.  Web Highlights automatically syncs all your notes and highlights across all devices, which makes it perfect for managing reading assignments or gathering research. > **_Note:_** Make sure you have created an account and are logged in from the same account across all devices. #### **6\. Flashcards for learning** ![Flashcard Learning](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/11/image-13.webp) *Flashcard Learning* Web Highlights goes beyond Kindle exports and annotations.  One standout feature of Web Highlights is its ability to [convert your Kindle highlights into study flashcards](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) . This is particularly useful for students and researchers engaged in [spaced repetition learning](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-way-to-read-articles-and-remember-what-you-learned/) and extensive reading. Flashcards help you retain information more effectively by turning your annotations into bite-sized learning aids. #### **7\. Keyboard shortcuts for quick annotation** ![keyboard-shortcuts-for-quick-annotation](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXchsGCPyZsua0BJJh5DErwqnmVzlxABRyjXbAFg6qlqaamlsGMnoxTqCm7xoYOSa75S1Sy-Ex7_ig3NQVN1GmruM15BH7_DPryzsIXiPa7xm6SLM58ZJmM1o-NmdeIKQnivOQV34ucbljqQ0Ly0UchU2Xk9?key=avtwnlg1upYGiN6rrOWYyA) Want to highlight or add a note without interrupting your reading flow?  Web Highlights has [keyboard shortcuts](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages#highlight-text-using-keyboard-shortcuts) that allow you to quickly annotate your text without having to switch tools or disrupt your focus.  Whether you are highlighting key information or jotting down a comment, these shortcuts save time and make the annotation process smoother. They help maintain efficiency when reading lengthy documents or complex research.  The best part is that these shortcuts can be customized to your preferences. #### **8\. Email reminders for revisited annotations** ![email-reminders-for-revisited-annotations](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcWcmAf4N0lmoHO9LF2Gn62gHOt7hBJ6Ml_Rpr_jB0tWGH3bPBvvBBRMvbdsGbpGmmv5CvalCJNTxGZrCM2mWDO_hcLv87s_dIJcbij4SYR8FU5z83ndwlVFLqm6yc3vnhgzPRRkHRVA-bk8NqTs1qfN7fx?key=avtwnlg1upYGiN6rrOWYyA) It is common to highlight something and then forget about it later.  Web Highlights solves this problem by offering [email reminders](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) for your annotations. You can set reminders to revisit specific notes or highlights, ensuring that no important information slips through the cracks.  This helps students and researchers engage in long-term projects to keep their reading organized and on track. #### **9\. Image annotation** ![image-annotation](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeNmoZDFqte13hlkoRxBi7YbpXummxDPc83piPALF7aM_ARA-AAiPRXdd1OcWssHatS9MiJugoCx_WW8MNihMPxR8Zf9uUZcNeCgs1ZSl_1VgsVTh447ktCD65PrwQy_MfP4KvSlHKnPXe7luoion2nUXM?key=avtwnlg1upYGiN6rrOWYyA) You may often come across graphics, pictures, or charts when reading. But what if you want to add notes to an image or highlight for later access? No worries! Web Highlights’ [image annotation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) helps you to analyze charts, diagrams, or visual data and organize them for later use. This feature makes learning much more fun, allowing you to save important diagrams and visuals. ## **Pricing** Most of Web Highlights is  **free** . Create unlimited highlights, bookmarks, notes, and tags. Backup your data and export research to platforms like Notion. For more benefits, subscribe to [Premium or Ultimate plans](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) to sync highlights to the cloud and access them in our webapp. ## **Conclusion** Annotations can transform how you interact with any text, making reading more thoughtful and productive. By applying the 10 practical annotation examples outlined above, you can easily improve your reading comprehension, retention, and critical thinking.  And if you're looking for a tool to help you implement these techniques, Web Highlights is the perfect solution.  With features like cross-device sync, personalized keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to export your annotations to multiple platforms, Web Highlights takes the hassle out of annotating.  Try [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) today and experience how easy it is to turn passive reading into an interactive, organized, and meaningful experience.  ## **Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)** ### **1\. What are annotations?** Annotations are notes, comments, or highlights added to a text to provide extra insight explanations, or to emphasize important information. They help readers engage more actively with the material.  ### **2\. How to annotate a text from Web Highlights?** Annotations on Web Highlights is easy. [Install the Web Highlights extesion in your browser](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights/install) and you can directly highlight key points, add margin notes to summarize sections, save bookmarks, and add tags for organization.  ### **3\. What are some examples of annotations?** Annotation examples include highlighting main ideas, underlining key arguments, writing margin summaries, marking unfamiliar terms, or adding personal reactions to the text. ### **4\. What are some annotation tips for beginners?** Start by focusing on key ideas, and don’t over-highlight. Use different colors or symbols for categories like main points, questions, or definitions. Organizing your annotations with tags can also be helpful for easy reference. ### **5\. What are some effective annotation techniques?** Effective techniques include color-coded highlighting, writing margin summaries, asking critical questions, and marking connections to other texts. These help improve understanding and retention. ### **6\. How to highlight with a keyboard?** In tools like Web Highlights, you can use [keyboard shortcuts](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages#highlight-text-using-keyboard-shortcuts) to quickly highlight text sections without interrupting your flow. Web Highlights also allows you to customize keyboard shortcuts, making it easier for you. ### **7\. What is image annotation?** Image annotation is the process of adding notes, highlights, or tags to images. This feature helps researchers analyze visual data, and students study diagrams and charts. > [**The Best Note Taking Extensions in 2024**](https://tooltivity.com/categories/note-taking-apps) — Discover the best Note Taking extensions for your browser. We’ve manually reviewed the top Note Taking add-ons to boost your online workflow and efficiency. > [**The Best Education Extensions in 2024**](https://tooltivity.com/categories/education) — Discover the best Education extensions for your browser. We’ve manually reviewed the top Education add-ons to boost your online workflow and efficiency. --- # Top 10 Web Clipper Chrome Extensions for Capturing Websites > Capture and save content with the top web clippers for Chrome. See the 10 best extensions to keep your online resources organized and accessible. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-10-30 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-7-web-clipper-chrome-extensions-for-capturing-websites/ --- Web Clipper extensions are popular productivity tools, making it easy to capture, organize, and save online content for future reference. I think everyone should have a web clipper in their browser to save interesting articles to read later. I’ve personally tested and reviewed a variety of web clipper extensions available on the Google Chrome Web Store to make your decision of picking the right one easier. If you used Edge’s built-in Collections as your clipper, Microsoft removed it in Edge 149. Here’s [how to get your Edge Collections back](https://web-highlights.com/blog/microsoft-edge-collections-removed/) or move them somewhere else. Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. Here are my favorites: ### List of the Best Web Clipper Chrome Extensions 1. [Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) 2. [Matter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/matter) 3. [Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) 4. [OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) 5. [Notebook Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper) 6. [Joplin Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/joplin-web-clipper) 7. [Save to Notion](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/save-to-notion) 8. [Obsidian Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/obsidian-web-clipper) 9. [Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) 10. [Evernote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/evernote-web-clipper) ### [1\. Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) ![Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter web-highlights.com Featured 4.8 (5K ratings)](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*LAl1b9b9a6Gd2PHPaV4yHA.png) *Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter* This PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension isn’t directly a web clipper, but it offers all the core features you’d expect from one. The fact that Web Highlights solves the web clipping functionality even better than other popular solutions and at the same time offers [many super practical features](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) makes it by far my favorite web clipper browser extension.  Just open its sidebar, click the bookmark icon, and the page is added to your website collection. ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*JWX-9-79OcTN-Cdt) It saves websites directly in the sidebar, complete with metadata like titles, descriptions, images, and more. If you created an account, it also gives you a nice dashboard in their web app that you can access from anywhere. ![Web Highlights Dashboard](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/web-app/dashboard-overview.png) Here is that flow on video, from the bookmark icon to the dashboard, in about 40 seconds: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xehF5eKwICM) Web Highlights is fantastic because it lets you not only take notes on saved websites, but also highlight text directly on the page: ![Highlighting with Multiple Colors](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*LmVIn3-UK2Cdh37e) *Highlighting with Multiple Colors* Your highlights and notes then get added to your saved content. And you can also find them in your dashboard.  Here is how this looks like: ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*nXxmXniZw6YDYRV6p4Sbow.png) [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Web Highlights an outstanding score of **9.8 out of 10.** Check out their [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) : > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) — Read our in-depth review of Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Web Highlights. One thing worth adding here: if the reading part matters more to you than the filing part, we also build [Reader Mode + Notes & AI Summary](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/reader-mode) . It strips a page back to clean text and keeps a full offline copy you can still open years later, even if the original disappears. AI summaries, highlights, tags and Notion export need no account. It is new and still small — around a thousand users — so I mention it as a companion to the list rather than a contender on it. --- ### [2\. Matter](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/matter) ![Matter (Rating: 4.0, Users: 20,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/matter.webp) *Matter* Matter is the odd one out here: it saves articles, but its real trick is reading them back to you in a voice that does not sound like a robot, and turning podcasts and YouTube videos into text you can skim. Highlights you make flow onward to Kindle, Gmail and the usual note apps, and the free tier covers most of what you would want. It is also the smallest tool on this list — around 20,000 Chrome users against OneNote's roughly 900,000 — so treat it as a bet on a nice reading experience rather than a safe default. There is still no Android app. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Matter a score of **9.0 out of 10.** --- ### [3\. Raindrop.io](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/raindrop-io) ![Raindrop.io (Rating: 4.1, Users: 500,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/raindrop-io.webp) *Raindrop.io* Raindrop.io starts as a bookmark manager and quietly becomes a clipper: save a page and it keeps a permanent copy of it, PDFs included, then searches the full text rather than just the title. That is the part people stay for — a bookmark that still works after the original page dies. Nested collections, tags and highlights sit on top, and it syncs across Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Worth knowing before you commit: those permanent copies and the full-text search are Pro-only. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Raindrop.io a score of **8.9 out of 10.** --- ### [4\. OneNote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) ![OneNote Web Clipper onenote.com 4.8 (568K ratings) Extension Workflow & Planning 900,000 users](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*mvukt2eGLTNa_d0QFgkDNQ.png) *OneNote Web Clipper* Back in university, OneNote was my favorite tool for taking notes, but I hadn’t touched it since then.  Recently, though, I discovered their super simple web clipper Chrome extension — and I loved it! OneNote makes saving websites easy, and honestly, it’s just super simple and beautifully designed.  Here’s what it looks like to save a website to OneNote: ![OneNote Web Clipping functionality preview](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*aNAc3VyvAjVAGgUU) When you clip something, a preview is created right away, and you can edit it on the spot — like rewriting or highlighting text — before it syncs with OneNote.  Besides saving the whole page, you can also save specific text highlights and take full-page screenshots. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave OneNote Web Clipper an impressive score of **8.8 out of 10.** Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) . > [**OneNote Web Clipper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/onenote-web-clipper) — Read our in-depth review of OneNote Web Clipper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to OneNote Web Clipper. --- ### [5\. Notebook Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper) ![Notebook Web Clipper Notebook Web Clipper zoho.com Featured 4.2 (1K ratings) Extension Workflow & Planning 70,000 users](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*lp079bbReMUuUj3e_cBtMQ.png) *Notebook Web Clipper* Notebook Web Clipper doesn’t have the largest user base and not even the best rating with 4.2 stars, but I really like this tool for its simplicity and great features. The web clipping feature is simple to use and makes saving websites easy. You can also highlight sections of text or take screenshots to add to your collection. What’s also super cool is its clean view feature that can save a website with a clean reading mode without distractions. ![Clean Reading Mode](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*csvY0qF03RQLwkuV) *Clean Reading Mode* [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Notebook Web Clipper an impressive rating of **8.8 out of 10.** Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper) . > [**Notebook Web Clipper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/notebook-web-clipper) — Read our in-depth review of Notebook Web Clipper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Notebook Web Clipper. --- ### [6\. Joplin Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/joplin-web-clipper) ![Joplin Web Clipper (Rating: 4.4, Users: 90,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/joplin-web-clipper.webp) *Joplin Web Clipper* Joplin Web Clipper is the one to pick if you would rather your notes never touched someone else's server. It saves full pages, simplified articles, selections or screenshots straight into your local Joplin notebooks as clean Markdown. It is free, open source and entirely offline. The trade-off is mechanical: the Joplin desktop app has to be running to receive a clip, so it fits people who already live in Joplin rather than anyone looking for a standalone clipper. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Joplin Web Clipper a score of **8.6 out of 10.** --- ### [7\. Save to Notion](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/save-to-notion) ![Save to Notion Featured 4.3 (1.3K ratings) Extension Workflow & Planning 400,000 users](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*87EA-tdn9arwTQttHVWOkw.png) *Save to Notion* While other extensions like Web Highlights offer an integrated Notion export on the Ultimate plan, [Save to Notion](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/save-to-notion) is primarily built to save content to your Notion workspace. It has an intuitive one-click save feature that lets you quickly capture information without disrupting your workflow. Plus, with options like highlighting, tagging, taking screenshots, and organizing content, it makes it easy to find what you need later. There are several web clippers out there helping you to save websites to your Notion workspace, and I found this one to be the simplest and best. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Save to Notion an impressive rating of **8.5 out of 10.** Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/save-to-notion) : > [**Save to Notion Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/save-to-notion) — Read our in-depth review of Save to Notion. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Save to Notion. --- ### [8\. Obsidian Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/obsidian-web-clipper) ![Obsidian Web Clipper (Rating: 4.8, Users: 1,000,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/obsidian-web-clipper.webp) *Obsidian Web Clipper* If you keep an Obsidian vault, this is the clipper you want. It drops pages, selections and highlights into the vault as Markdown, shaped by per-site templates — so a recipe site and a research paper can each land in their own format, with metadata filled in automatically. It is completely free, and at 4.8 stars across roughly 570 Chrome reviews it is among the best-rated extensions on this list. The templating engine does choke on deeply nested data, which you will only notice if you push it hard. [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Obsidian Web Clipper a score of **8.6 out of 10.** --- ### [9\. Milanote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) ![Milanote Web Clipper Featured 4.8 (465 ratings) Extension Workflow & Planning 100,000 users](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*WtIrZBUUbwD53VeyJRX9QQ.png) *Milanote Web Clipper* Milanote has built a solid user base with over 100,000 users and holds a 4.8-star rating on the Chrome Web Store. Although I don’t use this tool myself, I can see why it’s so popular. Along with its intuitive web clipping features for images and text highlights, it offers a well-designed dashboard that gives a great overview of all your saved content.  Here’s a look at the board within the app. ![Milanote Board](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*H5M1_Fk_GaL656a8) [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Milanote Web Clipper an impressive rating of **8.5 out of 10.** Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) : > [**Milanote Web Clipper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/milanote-web-clipper) — Read our in-depth review of Milanote Web Clipper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Milanote Web Clipper. --- ### [10\. Evernote Web Clipper](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/evernote-web-clipper) ![Evernote Web Clipper — 4.7 (129.7K ratings) Extension Workflow & Planning 2,000,000 users](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*j5aTpoD_UletZN_DrF32Gw.png) *Evernote Web Clipper* Evernote is a very popular personal knowledge management (PKM) tool which has been a key player in this area for many years. > Business Model INC. reports that Evernote has “an impressive **250 million users** worldwide, with over 6,500 businesses relying on Evernote Business for collaboration.” Given the tool’s popularity, it makes sense to have a Chrome Extension that lets you save content directly to your PKM tool. With over 2 million users and a 4.7-star rating, the extension enjoys an excellent reputation. Evernote offers all the features I expect from a web clipper: Easy web content saving, simple bookmarking, adding highlights, creating screenshots and creating tags. ![Saving Web Content to Evernote](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*R0VwrRFAszTJMcg8) *Saving Web Content to Evernote* I believe that if you primarily use Evernote for your digital organization, there is no way around this extension. If you’re not an Evernote user like me, try more general options like [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) . [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) gave Evernote Web Clipper a good rating of **7.4 out of 10.** Check out the [full review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/evernote-web-clipper) : > [**Evernote Web Clipper Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/evernote-web-clipper) — Read our in-depth review of Evernote Web Clipper. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Evernote Web Clipper. --- ### Discontinued: Save to Pocket Save to Pocket used to sit on this list, and for years it was the default answer for saving a page to read later. Mozilla shut Pocket down in July 2025, so it is no longer a tool we can recommend — but enough people still search for it that leaving it unmentioned would be unhelpful. If you are coming here looking for a replacement, we wrote up [the 10 best Pocket alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/pocket-shuts-down-in-july-2025-the-10-best-alternatives/) , and most of the extensions ranked above will do the job. --- ### Final Thoughts There are many web clipper Chrome extensions available, and choosing the right one often comes down to personal preference. Give a few a try and see which one feels best for you.  If saving the link matters more to you than copying the page, the neighbouring category is worth a look — we ranked [the 12 best Chrome bookmark manager extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-bookmark-manager-chrome-extensions/) , several of which double as clippers. When the thing worth keeping is a video rather than an article, that is a different toolset again — [the 10 best video downloader extensions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-video-downloader-chrome-extensions/) covers it. If you’re looking for more options, take a look at the [complete list of Web Clipper extensions](https://tooltivity.com/categories/web-clipper) on Tooltivity: > [**The Best Web Clipper Extensions in 2024**](https://tooltivity.com/categories/web-clipper) — Discover the best Web Clipper extensions for your browser. We’ve manually reviewed the top Web Clipper add-ons to boost your online workflow and efficiency. --- Thanks for reading! I always appreciate feedback — connect with me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mariusbongarts) , or drop a comment. --- # How To Show A Beautiful Link Preview On Any Website > Easily add link previews to any website using the open-source Previewbox library. Works with any framework, fetching Open Graph data automatically. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-10-29 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Web Development, SEO - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-show-a-link-preview-on-any-website/ --- Recently, I stumbled upon a problem: I wanted to preview a simple URL on my website.  This turned out to be much harder than I thought, so I built an [open-source component library](https://previewbox.link/) that anyone can easily use on their website to preview links. In this article, I’ll explain how to **easily add link previews to any website** , regardless of the framework — be it React, Vue.js, or just plain HTML. #### TL;DR 1. [Install Previewbox script](https://previewbox.link/docs/getting-started/installation) 2. [Select component](https://previewbox.link/docs/components/previewbox-link) and add to your website like this: ![Previewbox link component](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*1cadiTR-wCz8ryMNqlpmaQ.png) Check out this [CodePen](https://codepen.io/marius2502/pen/eYqJMwp) for a demo. ### Introduction We all know how simple it can be: you paste a link on social media or in an online editor, and a beautiful preview appears.  For instance, if I just add my website [web-highlights.com](https://web-highlights.com/) here, it will create a nice preview: > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) The prerequisite for this is that so-called **Open Graph metadata** is set on your website, which is fetched to display the title, description, image, etc. when the preview is created. #### What is Open Graph Metadata? The Open Graph is a protocol created by Facebook to standardize the use of metadata on web pages for describing content.  With Open Graph tags, we can specify which image to use as the preview when sharing our posts on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. > To turn your web pages into graph objects, you need to add basic metadata to your page. We’ve based the initial version of the protocol on [RDFa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDFa) which means that you’ll place additional `` tags in the `` of your web page. The four required properties for every page are: > > `og:title` - The title of your object as it should appear within the graph, e.g., "The Rock". > > `og:type` - The [type](https://ogp.me/#types) of your object, e.g., "video.movie". Depending on the type you specify, other properties may also be required. > > `og:image` - An image URL which should represent your object within the graph. > > `og:url` - The canonical URL of your object that will be used as its permanent ID in the graph, e.g., "https://imdb.com/title/tt0117500/". > > **Source:** [**ogp.me**](https://ogp.me/) In case your website doesn’t show an image, you should first make sure to set these meta tags. You learn more about this in the article [How To Make Your Website Have a Beautiful Thumbnail](https://web-highlights.com/blog/turn-your-website-into-a-beautiful-thumbnail-link-preview/) : > [**Make Your Website Have a Beautiful Thumbnail Link Preview**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/turn-your-website-into-a-beautiful-thumbnail-link-preview/) — A thumbnail image of your website can be essential to attract new users. Understand the Open Graph protocol to have a beautiful preview image for your website. (Marius Bongarts) #### Why is it so hard to preview a link? In theory, it sounds so simple: 1. Fetch Open Graph Metadata 2. Show data in frontend The problem lays in the fact that we can not fetch the Open Graph data from another domain without a server. Browsers have strict security rules that limit what JavaScript on a webpage can access. For example, if you try to get data from another domain (like [https://example.com](https://example.com/) ), the browser will block it due to the Same-Origin Policy. This policy is there to protect users, making sure scripts can only access resources from the same site. To get around this, you need a server that fetches the data for the URLs you want to preview. The server acts as a middleman, allowing your app to access and show the information without breaking browser security rules. > To show a link preview for another domain, we need a server that provides the metadata we want to display. Good news: My component library does all that for you! ### How To Add A Preview Link On Your Website We just learned that we need to fetch the Open Graph data from a website first to display it on our site.  I wanted to build a solution that enables you to simply create a link preview on any website, even without deploying a server. > Simply pass an URL to the Previewbox components, and everything else happens automatically. Simply pass an `href` attribute to the component, and the data gets fetched automatically: ![Previewbox link component](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*1cadiTR-wCz8ryMNqlpmaQ.png) Previewbox supports different [components](https://previewbox.link/docs/components/previewbox-link) : ![Previewbox components](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/10/image-7.webp) *Previewbox components* To use them, we only need to follow two steps: #### 1\. Install Previewbox script The Previewbox components are built with [Web Components](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/web-components/) , so you can use them on any website. > Web Components are reusable client-side components based on official web standards and supported by all major browsers. To use our components, you only need to add this script to your website: You can also load our components individually if you only need one. Check out the installation guide in the documentation for more details. > [**Will Web Components Replace Frontend Frameworks?**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/will-web-components-replace-frontend-frameworks-they-are-built-to-solve-different-problems/) — Web Components will not replace frontend frameworks but they can enhance those frameworks by replacing their component layer with a native solution. (Marius Bongarts) #### 2\. Add component to HTML Web Components are based on [custom elements](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/the-complete-web-component-guide-part-1-custom-elements-a627af805df8) , which enable you to define your own HTML elements. > “Custom elements provide a way for authors to build their own fully-featured DOM elements.” —  [html.spec](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/custom-elements.html) Currently, Previewbox supports two components: [**`previewbox-link`**](https://previewbox.link/docs/components/previewbox-link) The previewbox-link component provides a simple link preview, just like the ones you see in articles. It’s great for placing in the middle of an article’s text or on any website to show a preview of another URL. Simply add this HTML to your website to use the `previewbox-link` component: ```html ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/d09e2367bf9228f2d440610989d7ea8d) The data gets automatically fetched and you should see this link preview: ![Link Preview component](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*ug5OHv3OnqQUOzVXchWjRw.png) *Link Preview component* [**`previewbox-article`**](https://previewbox.link/docs/components/previewbox-article) The previewbox-article component is perfect for showing a preview of an article. Simply pass the URL of the article and we will fetch the data for you. Simply add this HTML to your website to use the `previewbox-article` component: ```html ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/49c5a9952cabc27d8e80643015c0fb73) ![Previewbox Article](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*EcQAKoyIO4WtohfAhOwxSQ.png) *Previewbox Article* ### Final Thoughts The Previewbox components should make it very easy to add a simple link preview to any website. As the components automatically fetch the data, you don’t need a server and you can directly use them. For more information, check out the [official documentation](https://previewbox.link/docs/) . --- Thanks for reading! I always appreciate feedback — connect with me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mariusbongarts) , or drop a comment. With over 100,000 users and an average rating of 4.8 stars in the Google Chrome Store, **Web Highlights** makes digital organization simple. It’s free to use, and no account is required. You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights/install) . Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. ![Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*2oNgnDklsLynueivBEvN7Q.png) *Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter* ### Most Loved 🔥 > [**Forget About Marketing. Focus on Building The Best Product.**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/forget-about-marketing-focus-on-building-an-awesome-product/) — I completely focused on building the best PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension and stopped marketing for 3 months — here is what happened. (Marius Bongarts) > [**3 Unusually Painful Mistakes on My Side Project Journey to 100K Users**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-unusually-painful-mistakes-on-my-side-project-journey/) — Discover the three unusually painful mistakes I made on my side project journey and how to avoid them. Get tips for smoother project execution. (Marius Bongarts) > [**3 Instant Ways to Increase Your Google Ranking**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-instant-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking/) — Anyone can implement these three essential points to make their product visible on Google, Bing, and Co. (Marius Bongarts) --- # Turn Obsidian Into an AI-Powered Second Brain Using Cursor > Transform your Obsidian into an AI-powered second brain using Cursor! Learn how to integrate AI for smarter note searching and management. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-10-27 - Updated: 2024-10-27 - Tags: Second Brain, AI - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/turn-obsidian-into-an-ai-powered-second-brain-using-cursor/ --- Imagine having an AI that can search all your notes and instantly provide the best answers from your Obsidian second brain. I’m a big fan of [Tiago Forte’s Second Brain framework](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) and always on the lookout for the simplest way to integrate it with AI. In this article, I’ll show you how I use the AI Code Editor, Cursor, to make my Obsidian Second Brain fully searchable with AI. --- If you prefer using an Obsidian plugin, I recommend [checking out this guide](https://web-highlights.com/blog/run-ai-locally-against-your-obsidian-notes-smart-second-brain-plugin/) instead. This approach uses the **Smart Second Brain AI Plugin** along with a locally installed Large Language Model (LLM) on your computer. > [**Smart Second Brain AI Plugin for Obsidian Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/run-ai-locally-against-your-obsidian-notes-smart-second-brain-plugin/) — Learn how to run AI with the Smart Second Brain plugin for Obsidian. Improve your note-taking by using advanced AI features within your own system. (Marius Bongarts) ### What is Cursor? Cursor is a code editor powered by AI. It’s been getting a lot of hype on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms recently, so I couldn’t resist giving it a try. ![Cursor: The AI Code Editor](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*vpSQJW_22loZKTdRD8x_Eg.png) *Cursor: The AI Code Editor* It’s similar to GitHub’s Copilot, but much more advanced because it **embeds your entire codebase** .  > “Started using Cursor yesterday & i’m blown away. it’s how Copilot should feel.”  **— Sam Whitmore** That way, it knows everything about your code, allowing you to chat with your entire codebase. You might be asking: Why should I use a code editor to chat with my notes? ### Why Use a Code Editor to Chat with My Second Brain? With Cursor, I can interact with powerful language models like gpt-4o, claude-3.5-sonnet, and others directly within my code editor. While it has revolutionized my coding workflow, I realized that I can also misuse it for everything I was using ChatGPT for.  > Cursor isn’t limited to coding; you can use Cursor for any type of question. So, I had this idea: **Why not open my Obisidian Vault directly in Cursor?**  What makes Obsidian great is that its notes are just simple Markdown, easily read by any language model. By opening my Obsidian Vault in Cursor, it instantly integrates my entire knowledge base. Now, I can ask any question, and Cursor will search all my notes to find the best answer. I was so impressed that I upgraded to the Pro version and canceled my ChatGPT Pro subscription.  Cursor not only handles my daily ChatGPT prompts, but it also gives better results by having access to my entire knowledge base. ### Why Not Simply Use ChatGPT? While ChatGPT is easy for simple tasks, there are limitations on how much context you can provide.  For example, if you add a very large paragraph, at some point it will give you an error saying that the message you submitted was too long. ![ChatGPT Error: The message you submitted was too long, please submit somethign shorter.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*rlQQL9X6UIl8i3m8O3blpQ.png) On the contrary, Cursor is capable of embedding your whole knowledge database by creating vectorized data. Then, if you ask a question, it will generate all the necessary data for it.  By doing so, it leverages your entire knowledge base and provides a good response using the most modern LLMs like gpt-4o or others. ### How To Chat With Your Obsidian Vault Using Cursor Setting up Cursor to chat with your Obsidian Vault is straightforward. 1. **Download Cursor** : Go to [cursor.com](https://www.cursor.com/) and click _“Download for Free”._ 2. **Install Cursor** : Once downloaded, run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation. 3. **Create an Account** : To use Cursor, you’ll need an account. It’s free to use, but you can also try out the Pro version for free for 2 weeks. 4. **Open Your Obsidian Vault** : Launch Cursor and open your Obsidian Vault by navigating to the folder where your markdown files are stored. 5. **Embed Your Notes** : Cursor will automatically start embedding your notes.  6. **Start Chatting** : By default, Cursor Chat is in the AI pane, opposite your main sidebar. Press **_Ctrl/⌘ + L_** to toggle it, then hit **Enter** to send your message. Learn more in the [Cursor documentation](https://docs.cursor.com/chat/overview) . I can recommend following the startup tutorials in the editor, which helped me a lot to understand the basic features. Let me give you a practical example of how Cursor saves me hours each week by helping me respond to customer request emails quickly and accurately. ### Example: Answering Customer Requests Whenever I reply to customer requests for Web Highlights, I save the conversation in my second brain for future reference. This way, I can refer back to previous answers for similar queries. With AI, I can take it a step further: it analyzes past responses to create personalized answers for each new request.  So, for example, today I got this email with a question of how to delete all highlights on a page: ![Hello, How can I quickly remove all highlights in the text? Not one by one but all at once? Thanks.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*0cfnr6d5YWdKyS5jPd7JOw.png) *Customer Request Email* #### 1\. Ask ChatGPT to answer customer request ❌ Now, let’s first go ahead and paste the question with a bit of context to ChatGPT: ![ChatGPT question: I received this customer request email for my Web Highlights Chrome Extension. Please create a response email for me (Marius): Hello, How can I quickly remove all highlights in the text? Not one by one but all at once? Thanks.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*UQFoymk0GNGy8lh0sU28Jg.png) *ChatGPT response* Here is the response of **ChatGPT** : ![ChatGPT response: Subject: Re: How to Remove All Highlights Quickly Hi Customer’s Name , Thank you for reaching out! To remove all highlights at once, you can simply click on the “Clear All Highlights” button located in the extension’s settings or on your dashboard. This will remove all your highlights in one go, saving you time. If you need any further assistance or run into any issues, feel free to let me know. I’m happy to help! Best regards, Marius Web Highlights Team](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*_-ICSRAvtQtVLDSQuaxD8g.png) *ChatGPT response* Well, you might not know, but I do —  **This response is completely wrong.** There is no “Clear All Highlights” button in my extension. ChatGPT simply doesn’t have the context to answer the question correctly. #### 2\. Ask Cursor to answer customer request ✅ Now let’s go ahead and ask the same question to my Cursor Editor having my Second Brain Obsidian Vault embedded. I can simply add the same question and then submit the question using **_Ctrl/⌘ + Enter_** to ask this against my whole knowledge database. ![Cursor AI question: I received this customer request email for my Web Highlights Chrome Extension. Please create a response email for me (Marius): Hello, How can I quickly remove all highlights in the text? Not one by one but all at once? Thanks.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*5Ko3o2d9aLdTXTC56GJt0A.png) Now, Cursor will analyze all your existing files and generates a response for you based on the information it can find. Here is the response: ![Cursor Response: Hello, Thank you for reaching out about Web Highlights. I understand you’re looking for a way to quickly remove all highlights from a text at once. Currently, there isn’t a single-click option to remove all highlights from a specific text. However, you can remove all highlights associated with a particular webpage by deleting the bookmark for that page. Here’s how: 1. Open the Web Highlights sidebar 2. Navigate to the webpage you want to clear highlights from 3. Click on the](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*HPQ29Uu4iwwzMCxt9miTEg.png) *Cursor Response* This response is very accurate and correct.  Cursor has found similar questions like this in my customer requests in the past and has generated a response which would have taken at least 5 minutes for me to write. --- Thanks for reading! If you’re interested in a great extension for **highlighting websites and PDFs** , check out [my extension](https://web-highlights.com/) ! It’s free, easy to use, and you don’t need an account to get started. ![Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*VO2p8FxebvhqWNHWnJ1qnA.png) *Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter* Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to hundreds of thousands of users as a solopreneur? Follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . ### More About Second Brain > [**Master Your Creativity by Building a Digital Second Brain**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) — Unlock your creative potential with Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain” digital system. Discover the transformative ‘CODE’ technique and ‘PARA’ method. (Marius Bongarts) > [**Organize Your Second Brain: How to Use the PARA Method**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/master-your-second-brain-part-1-how-to-use-the-para-method/) — Feeling overwhelmed by digital chaos? Explore the PARA Method by Tiago Forte and learn how to organize your digital second brain for a more productive life! (Marius Bongarts) > [**Master Your Second Brain: Part 2 - How to Use the CODE Technique**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/master-your-second-brain-how-to-use-the-code-technique/) — Unlock the power of Tiago Forte’s CODE method and organize your second brain for better productivity using the Web Highlights Chrome Extension (Marius Bongarts) --- # Master Your Second Brain: Part 2 - How to Use the CODE Technique > Unlock the power of Tiago Forte's CODE method and organize your second brain for better productivity using the Web Highlights Chrome Extension - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-10-20 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Second Brain, Tiago Forte - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/master-your-second-brain-how-to-use-the-code-technique/ --- In the [the first part](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/organize-your-second-brain-part-1-how-to-use-the-para-method-1ec663ba4f66) of this Second Brain article series, we learned how Tiago Forte’s PARA method can help us collect and manage digital information more effectively. > [**Organize Your Second Brain: How to Use the PARA Method**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/master-your-second-brain-part-1-how-to-use-the-para-method/) — Feeling overwhelmed by digital chaos? Explore the PARA Method by Tiago Forte and learn how to organize your digital second brain for a more productive life! (Marius Bongarts) In this article, we’ll dive into a method introduced by Tiago Forte called the ‘CODE’ technique, which helps us to build up our second brain and to make the information we collect more useful for us in the future. _To put it simply: The ‘CODE’ technique ensures that we **understand our own, often cluttered, notes in the future** ._ But before we get into how the CODE technique works, let’s quickly recap what a Second Brain is. ### What is a Second Brain? When I first began reading “ [Building a Second Brain](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) ,” I thought it was just another method for organizing my digital life, so I didn’t expect much from it. To my surprise, Tiago Forte really changed my perspective on how I manage my digital world. > Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. — David Allen (Author of Gettings Things Done) The main idea of using a “Second Brain” is to **organize** your information **by actionability** rather than by topic. > _💡 **Example** : Instead of placing an internet bill into a general invoices folder, you would put it into “Taxes 2024” so that it’s readily available when you need it._ Another advantage is that having a “Second Brain” lets your “First Brain” focus more on creativity, rather than struggling to remember everything. > _💡 **Example** : Instead of keeping track of all the project details yourself, you can store them in your second brain and use your mental energy for brainstorming new ideas._ > [**Master Your Creativity by Building a Digital Second Brain**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) — Unlock your creative potential with Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain” digital system. Discover the transformative ‘CODE’ technique and ‘PARA’ method. (Marius Bongarts) ### What is the CODE Technique? The ‘CODE’ technique is an easy four-step method, by Tiago Forte, that helps us manage the overwhelming amount of information we encounter daily.  > CODE is a proven process for consistently turning the information you consume into creative output and concrete results.  **—**  [**fortelabs.com**](https://fortelabs.com/blog/basboverview/) Simply put: The ‘CODE’ technique ensures that we can make sense of our often cluttered notes in the future. ### What does CODE Stand For? The CODE technique is an acronym that stands for **four essential steps** , with each letter representing a specific action.  Here’s what **CODE** stands for: - **Capture** : Keep what resonates - **Organize** : Save for actionability - **Distill** : Find the essence - **Express** : Show your work ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*mch0VjJXcP2lCWT0.png) Following these four steps, we can efficiently capture, organize, distill, and express our ideas, ensuring that our digital second brain remains a valuable resource rather than a cluttered mess.  > _Our notes are things to use, not just things to collect. —_ [_Tiago Forte_](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/tiago-forte/) This technique not only helps us stay clear-minded but also frees up mental space, letting us focus more on creativity and productivity. Let’s look closely at each step: #### 1\. Capture: Keep What Resonates The first step is capturing ideas and insights that are noteworthy. ![Capture: Keep what resonates](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*nZz_3arqfKDdeWzS_u774g.png) The main idea of this step is to **eliminate the worry of forgetting** something and free up our minds for more creative tasks.  This process shouldn’t require much mental effort. Tiago emphasizes this step with the slogan _“Keep What Resonates,”_ highlighting that it’s not about spending a lot of time or energy analyzing what to keep. > In deciding which passages, images, theories, or quotes to keep, don’t make it a highly intellectual, analytical decision. —  [fortelabs.com](https://fortelabs.com/blog/basboverview/) Don’t overcomplicate things in this step. **Just capture it and save anything that “resonates” with you intuitively!** Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. > _💡 **Example** : You come across an interesting article but don’t have time to read it thoroughly right now. Instead, you can use a_ [_web clipper_](https://tooltivity.com/categories/web-clipper) _to save the page to your reading list or highlight important sections with a_ [_web highlighter_](https://web-highlights.com/) _so you can return to it later._ #### 2\. Organize: Save for Actionability After capturing content, it’s important to organize it efficiently. ![Organize: Save for actionability](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*7mQy3rDjqRdw9NDP1LfYUg.png) As we learned from the [PARA-Method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/master-your-second-brain-part-1-how-to-use-the-para-method/) , the Second Brain framework suggests organizing our content for **actionability** . What does that mean? For decades, computers have taught us to organize everything in a folder hierarchy. So it is tempting for many to stick with it.  Still, it would be much better to focus on what we currently need information for. That’s why we should rather structure our information into **active projects.** > _💡 **Example** : If you want to save an invoice, instead of just putting it in a folder called "Invoices," place it in the project where it will actually be used, like "Tax Report 2024." That way, it'll be right where you need it when it's time to do your taxes._ #### 3\. Distill: Find the Essence The third step of the ‘CODE’ method is to distill. This means turning the content we’ve captured into a clear message by removing what’s unnecessary and focusing on the key points. ![Distill: Find the essence](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*qa07C9T1vd52VB2pva0OYg.png) Lao Tzu said, _“To gain wisdom, remove things every day.”_ Like summarizing in school, we cut out the fluff and keep only what’s important. Forte calls this [Progressive Summarization](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-art-of-summarization-tiago-fortes-progressive-highlighting-2-0-technique-in-action/) : highlight the key ideas, then highlight the highlights, layer by layer, making it easier to understand later. Think of it like preparing your notes for your busy future self — focus only on the essentials to make them quick and easy to use. > 💡 **Example** : After taking notes on a long article, instead of leaving them as-is, you go through and highlight the main points. Then, you review those highlights and further narrow them down to the essential takeaways. Now, when you come back later, you only see the most important ideas, saving you time and effort. #### 4\. Express: Show your Work The last part of the ‘CODE’ technique is to express and show your work to others. ![Show your work](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*fMYomjBaqQXi7rJvZUyE_Q.png) Forte believes that we all have a natural desire to create — to bring something good, true, or beautiful into the world. He says it’s one of the most fulfilling things we can do, and it also positively impacts others by inspiring, entertaining, or educating them. > The word “productivity” comes from the Latin verb producere, meaning “to produce.”  So, don’t let your knowledge, notes, or ideas go to waste. Turn them into something actionable and create something valuable. > _💡 **Example** : I_ nstead of just reading the Second Brain book by Tiago Forte, I turned my notes and highlights into an article. This not only added value for others but also helped me better understand the book’s content. ### Using Web Highlights with the CODE Technique The [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , Web Highlights, is the perfect tool for using the CODE technique. ![Item logo image for Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter web-highlights.com on the Chrome Web Store](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/10/image-6.webp) *Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter* With hundreds of thousands of users in the Chrome Web Store, it's popular for its simple approach. Here’s how it can help you with each of the four steps of the CODE technique. #### 1\. Capture: Highlight Websites & PDFs In the capture phase of the CODE-method, we focus on simply adding content to our second brain so that we don’t need to remember it. ![Highlight website with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*rfOnqhE8aoCWbZtX) *Highlight website with Web Highlights* Web Highlights is perfect for this as you can easily highlight any website or PDF in your browser. You can choose from different colors, take notes, and organize your highlights with tags. > 💡 **Example** : You find an interesting article on a website but aren’t sure how it might be useful later. To save it for future reference, you highlight the important parts and store it in your Web Highlights collection, knowing you can easily find it whenever you need it. #### 2\. Organize: Use Tags to Organize Research Web Highlights allows you to create tags and take notes, making it easy to sort your highlights into Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives. ![Create tags & notes with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*CGVKMrltRoI3ngMD) *Create tags & notes with Web Highlights* For instance, I recently wrote an article about Web Components. I searched for sources on the Internet and marked text passages from articles using Web Highlights. I tagged them with “project + Web Components Article” and could easily find all the crucial details I needed in one spot. > _💡 **Example** : If you’re working on a project, you can highlight important information with Web Highlights and add tags like “project + \[project name\]” or “area + \[area name\]”. Later, you can filter for those tags to find all related content. This makes it incredibly easy to keep your research organized and accessible._ #### 3\. Distill: Use formatted highlighting and export features In the distill step of the CODE method, the goal is to make the content we’ve captured more useful for the future.  ![Formatted Highlighting with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*bATenZaLqDdsRBCN1MPDZw.png) *Formatted Highlighting with Web Highlights* Web Highlights is great for this because it lets you easily use the [Progressive Highlighting technique](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-art-of-summarization-tiago-fortes-progressive-highlighting-2-0-technique-in-action/) directly within the tool. With the [advanced highlighting mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) , you can format your highlights as headings, bullet points, or quotes, making it easier to distill the essence of your notes.  This structured approach helps you focus on the key points and makes your notes more readable and organized. > 💡 **Example** : After highlighting key points in an article, use the advanced highlighting mode to format the most important sentences as headings or bullet points. This not only makes your notes visually appealing but also ensures that when you revisit them, you can quickly grasp the essential information without wading through unnecessary details. > [**Formatted Highlighting Will Change Your Highlighting Experience**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) — Discover how formatted highlighting transforms your reading experience. Learn tips and techniques to make your… #### 4\. Express: Share your highlighted content with others The final step of the ‘CODE’ technique is to express your work by making it useful for others.  In Web Highlights, your content is private by default, but you can choose to share it. By doing so, you can post an interesting article to our discover feed and share your highlights to inspire others. > 💡 **Example** : You’ve read a fascinating article and highlighted insightful sections using the advanced formatting options. With Web Highlights, you can share this page to our [discover feed](https://web-highlights.com/discover) . This not only helps others benefit from your research but also reinforces your understanding by teaching others. --- Thanks for reading! I hope Tiago Forte’s CODE-Method helps you make organizing your Second Brain more helpful. With hundreds of thousands of users and an average rating of 4.8 stars in the Chrome Web Store, **Web Highlights** makes digital organization simple. It’s free to use, and no account is required. You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights/install) . > [**Install Web Highlights on Your Browser**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights/install) — Web Highlights is available for Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Edge Store, Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera. Choose your browser… --- # Web Highlights as Weava Alternative: A Detailed Review > Discover why Web Highlights is the top Weava alternative in this detailed review, offering a secure and customizable annotation tool customized to your needs. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2024-10-14 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: comparison - Reading time: 12 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/webhighlights-weava-alternative/ --- With so much online content, having the right tools to highlight, annotate, and categorize key information can make a huge difference.  Two of the most popular tools people use for annotations are [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) and Weava. Both extensions let you [highlight text on any website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) and come back to it later. They also allow you to [highlight PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) directly in your browser. If you’ve been using [Weava](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) for your highlighting and note-taking needs but are curious about an [advanced Weava alternative](https://tooltivity.com/alternatives/weava) , then Web Highlights is a great choice. Web Highlights has a much simpler and easy-to-use interface, with most of its features available for free. Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by our company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. This blog will walk you through a detailed comparison, exploring how Web Highlights can serve as an alternative to Weava.  ## **Overview of Weava** ![Item logo image for Weava Highlighter - PDF & Web Weava Highlighter - PDF & Web weavatools.com Featured 4.1 (2.7K ratings) Extension Workflow & Planning 300,000 users](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/10/image-3.webp) Weava is a popular online annotation tool used by students, researchers, and professionals. It helps you organize, highlight, and review different types of digital content.  With Weava, you can highlight web pages, PDFs, and other digital files, making it easier to return to important information later. This tool is available as a highlighter Chrome extension and offers a clean, simple interface for managing personal notes, annotations, and highlighted entries over time. ### **Who Uses Weava?**  Weava is primarily used by students and researchers who need to manage large volumes of reference material easily. It's especially beneficial for those engaged in literature reviews, academic reading, or essay planning.  ### **Key Features of Weava**  - Highlight any websites, online articles, and PDFs with Weava - Annotate your highlighted texts for more depth - Folder organization helps you categorize all highlights and annotations - Folders have subfolders, which gives further options to organize your highlights under different sections - Team collaboration can be achieved by sharing and saving your annotations  - Export notes to different file formats to save them for later access  ### **Pros**  - Includes both web and [PDF highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) - Cloud syncing across devices ### **Cons**  - Interface cluttered with ads - Limited highlighting in free version - Lacks ongoing support and updates - Requires an account to use - Outdated and clunky design ### **Weava Pricing** - **Free:** $0 /month - **Premium:** $3.99 /month ### **Customer Support**   - Web Support  - Tutorials - Email Support ## Web Highlights - The Superior Weava Alternative ![The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/03/image-2.webp) *Web Highlights: 100,000 users, 4.8 average rating (3.3K ratings)* Web Highlights is a highly functional online annotation tool that allows users to highlight, [annotate articles](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-online-articles/) , and organize information across the web. It offers easy integration with different tools and allows you to export annotations to multiple platforms.  Its wide variety of features and easy interface make it a suitable Weava alternative. It is available as a  [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)  ,  [Microsoft Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn)  , and  [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig)  extension, allowing users to keep their annotations accessible across devices. > [**Guide to Using Web Highlights for Online Text & Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) — Boost your productivity with Web Highlights. With the pdf & web highlighter, you can highlight on the internet just like you do it in books. (Marius Bongarts) ### **Who Uses Web Highlights?**  Web Highlights is widely used by individuals working with online content. This includes students, academic researchers, teachers, and professionals who need to manage and recall large amounts of online information. If you are studying PDFs, writing research papers, or conducting literature reviews, Web Highlights is the perfect solution for you! ### **Key Features of Web Highlights**   - Annotate any website or PDF in just a few clicks - Create tags to find saved annotations easily - [Formatted highlighting with headlines, bullet points, etc.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) - Make notes to keep track of any additional information - Unlimited offline highlights and bookmarks make your annotation journey unstoppable  - [One-click export to Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  and  [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/)  (Ultimate plan), plus Copy Markdown to paste into  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/)  or any other note-taking app - [Flashcards](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/)   in Kindle  - [Learning recap](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-remember-your-kindle-books-using-spaced-repetition-learning/)   (10 per day) helps you develop a constant reading habit - [Import Kindle notes and highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/)  - [Email reminders](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/)  are there to remind you of important notes and web pages - Keyboard shortcuts save time when annotating content - Powerful full-text search helps you find annotations instantly with any keywords that you may remember  - Sync across devices to access annotations from anywhere on any device - Share your research and explore others’ work  - Works offline to highlight, add tags, and save bookmarks without the need for an internet connection ### **Pros**  - User-friendly interface - Multiple highlight colors - Cross-device sync - Excellent free version with numerous features - Great tagging system - Offline access to multiple features - Supports multiple exporting formats ### **Cons** - No shared team workspace like Weava’s groups — sharing works page by page, via public links - Cloud sync across devices needs a paid plan ### **Pricing**  - **Basic:**  Free - **Premium:**  Paid monthly, yearly, or lifetime - **Ultimate:**  Paid monthly, yearly, or lifetime See current prices at  [web-highlights.com/pricing](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . ### **Customer Support**  - Blogs - FAQs - Email support - Tutorials ### **Feature Comparison: Why Web Highlights is the Top Weava Alternative** #### **1\. Highlighting Capabilities** Both Web Highlights and Weava offer multiple highlighting features, but they approach this core function slightly differently. With Web Highlights, you can easily [highlight text on PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-a-pdf/) by saving them in the Web Highlights space and on browser web pages. It allows for customizable highlight colors, helping you organize information visually.  The process is straightforward - just select the text and choose your preferred color. You can also use the keyboard shortcut _“Alt + S.”_  [Weava](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) also allows users to highlight text on web pages and PDFs. Similar to Web Highlights, Weava provides customizable highlight colors, which can be helpful for categorizing different types of information. Highlighting in Weava is also a simple process, done through their highlighter Chrome extension. #### **2\. Formatted Highlighting** ![formatted-highlighting](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXchb8Z47gQ4GNCe3QNY9IKPs4GMvQ5BkQset3PT-rXQaUf4Y4RKyJdvaMbKn7YObbsonAsHAEg8YtFNIhfnQOaZOMj4MsV0uNpn5ip1JpsTGsJEiJPS64y_YvPAx4dADBQq-C_hIxluxJbLKrcF2Z_JOlLs?key=ZKidcln_wi3nojXltqnyLQ) While Weava and Web Highlights both have highlighting options, Web Highlights offers [formatted highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) . This feature allows you to apply different text styles to your highlights (e.g., bold, H1, bullets).  Formatted Highlighting adds an extra layer of customization, making it easier to categorize and emphasize important information. ![extra-layer-of-customization](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdqxXGIiq_N3_VRz4qd_7I9RUwTG8a2fY-VHpqTo1sB-9g9w08LGU1mD3KaKx_JJYBzZSsr7hhqF4aeNbbPUjgg4yDDL8Dcv6O_qdRWG0rrK8rTGfUaARp9bK7pf-MHlbC1Z-NagrfmxDihiprc-KdSCrYB?key=ZKidcln_wi3nojXltqnyLQ) However, this feature is not available in Weava. Weava offers simple highlighting with multiple colors available to it.  > [**Formatted Highlighting Will Change Your Highlighting Experience**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) — Discover how formatted highlighting transforms your reading experience. Learn tips and techniques to make your highlights more effective and organized. (Marius Bongarts) #### **3\. Unique Integrations** ![unique-integrations](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfyVqRYiKTh36doPe3pNUKLsfIHAx94Uk5lEtFIQz15KaArndNpDM28xlOEINuhHDXFRWtjBBpUXxJvFHhNmp6nux79e3687mnXZBcIWUAwPZq6k4WNg4jNnCjVw6F_4nRv4kne8w3lanj-LVhexQcebUUP?key=ZKidcln_wi3nojXltqnyLQ) One of the top features of Web Highlights is its exporting and integration capabilities! It supports one-click API exports to productivity platforms like  [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  and  [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/)   (Ultimate plan). You can also copy your highlights as Markdown and paste them into  [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/)   or any other note-taking app.  You can also [export annotations to markdown](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) and a PDF or HTML file, which are useful for creating offline records or sharing them with others. The Markdown export lets you send notes and highlights to any Second Brain or PKM tool.  The sharing process is straightforward, with options to send direct links or share via the mobile app. Weava offers similar exporting features, including exporting highlights as PDFs and syncing with Google Drive. However, integration with other tools and platforms like [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) is not supported.   It supports sharing, with options to share highlights and notes with other users through integrated platforms like Google Docs. While the functionality is similar, some users report that the process is complex. > [**How to Export Your Research to Notion with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-notion-with-web-highlights/) — A central organized tool helps to structure your research. Export highlights & notes to Notion using the Web Highlights Chrome Extension. (Marius Bongarts) #### **4\. Email Reminders** ![email-reminders](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeZMGr2Nzm5pRiOR23M36zJuvyCd2KhM4OKvQ-JKL94HleC0qbAyfxksJ0OsIWNI_Jpair75RKcEcuiBCo_pwWLg1MP5RC4vgBL89PkpyTyqe9VKisqfRL7dAWARsSpq4ZGThhMKETGMTrg7bJYypmB_np0?key=ZKidcln_wi3nojXltqnyLQ) With so much content and research to deal with, it is natural to forget or miss out on important web pages and articles. But don’t worry! Web Highlights has a feature that allows you to set [email reminders](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) for saved highlights and web pages. This ensures that important information is revisited and not forgotten over time. Weava lacks any such reminder feature, making Web Highlights more suitable for users who need regular prompts to revisit their research and notes. > [**Say Goodbye to Forgotten Articles: Introducing the Snooze Reminder**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) — Never forget to read an important article again with the Web Highlights Chrome Extension. Set personalized reminders to be reminded of saved articles via email. (Marius Bongarts) #### **5\. Image Highlights** ![image-highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdWOg8vML9iC51UzvTEKJnmm1xHtFWsR-ZQqZvvMmK6f-kljGoDpG268aKH3XCB0ovBaU7pYLEEXpqdH3ep7Ui6oEElqNlQjRKuD5fcZWwu_JhcAUCuopzM7RjqVZFZcmUXWUP9MeQUoNbh9mmOhO21DNtu?key=ZKidcln_wi3nojXltqnyLQ) Web Highlights offers a unique  [image highlighting feature](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/)  . It allows for images to be annotated and highlighted directly by saving them in the Web Highlights space while also adding tags and notes to them. This feature helps capture and track important details in images. All the saved images can be accessed later from the web app. Unlike Weava, which does not support image highlighting, Web Highlights provides a more advanced toolset for managing both textual and visual information. > [**How to Highlight Images with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) — Discover the power of image highlighting with Web Highlights! Easily save images alongside text, bookmarks, and notes. Upgrade now to highlight images! (Marius Bongarts) #### **6\. Ease of Use and Flexibility** Users find Web Highlights intuitive, especially when organizing and retrieving highlighted content. The ability to sync highlights across devices adds to its flexibility, making it a reliable Weava alternative.  Weava offers a similarly easy-to-use interface. However, some users find it less flexible in terms of organization. While it does allow for customizable colors and tagging, the overall experience might feel more rigid compared to Web Highlights. #### **7\. Note-Taking & Organizing Information** Web Highlights allows you to make personal notes directly to your highlights. You can also import notes from other platforms like Kindle into Web Highlights. It offers tagging and bookmarks, making it easier to categorize and retrieve information later. You can also create flashcards from their notes, particularly useful for students and researchers. Weava also allows you to add notes to your highlights. However, its organization relies heavily on folder structures, which might require extra setup time for users to get the most out of it. #### **8\. Browser Extensions & App Support** Web Highlights offers a browser extension compatible with Chrome and Microsoft Edge, ensuring broad accessibility. It supports both [web apps](https://app.web-highlights.com/) and mobile apps, allowing you to manage your highlights on the go. Weava is primarily designed for Chrome users but also works on Microsoft Edge. It offers decent support across devices, including desktops and mobile. #### **9\. User Interface & Experience** Both tools are simple and easy to use for technical and non-technical users. Web Highlights, however, is more intuitive and beginner-friendly than Weava.  It offers [simple keyboard shortcuts](https://web-highlights.com/blog/welcome/) that are short and available for almost every feature it has. These shortcuts can also be customized to your liking! ![user-interface-and-experience](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdT8t4NwSslmmAYHVK6Uvr-w0B6SmrVY9gZpSl7qZGklRAiBfenDQk8zFtGDfyOEPBBWmHAVzU9ShRC-XCSRGy8TTxx-ljYv3UJlbr6U4YiU9slON5se2Lau4g06nvhkwlh-MtPlGQxAbFSLF3PprwBbplf?key=ZKidcln_wi3nojXltqnyLQ) Meanwhile, the Weava keyboard shortcuts are only available for activating and disabling the extension and its features. It does not offer any keyboard shortcuts, particularly regarding the features. #### **10\. Customizability** Customization is the key to managing digital content. Web Highlights has multiple options for tailoring your highlights and notes, allowing for personal knowledge management.  It allows you to customize highlight colors, organize your notes with tags, and even convert your Kindle highlights into flashcards for [spaced repetition learning](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-remember-your-kindle-books-using-spaced-repetition-learning/) . ![customizability](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcIVqVo-d2VDxvaX49gH5yN_ZSPl67ekMeng0hnay27ITnzlyv66p1n5PcGmAza8v10piG80T-yXxia4U9Krgdnba6N05Q30izPJ2K7m7WUrI74qTfU3lRErQWxoLo7qTNED_h8Zvgfe5KV2FHYDZFhDx_r?key=ZKidcln_wi3nojXltqnyLQ) Weava also provides some customization features, like highlight colors, but it falls short compared to the depth and flexibility offered by Web Highlights.  For users who require a high level of customization to manage their workflow effectively, Web Highlights is the best Weava alternative. #### **11\. Security & Privacy** Data security and privacy are important, especially for users dealing with sensitive information. Web Highlights strongly emphasizes protecting user data, ensuring that your highlights and notes are stored securely.  While Weava also offers standard security measures, Web Highlights implements more stringent data protection protocols. This gives users peace of mind, knowing that their information is secure and private. Web Highlights' commitment to privacy, including not selling user information, makes it a more trustworthy option for those concerned about data security. Read their [terms and conditions](https://web-highlights.com/legal/terms-of-service) to learn more. #### **12\. Pricing** Both the tools offer affordable paid plans. Weava offers a single paid plan, whereas Web Highlights has multiple plans. See current prices at  [web-highlights.com/pricing](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . Whether you're a casual user or a power user, Web Highlights provides better value and more options to fit your specific needs, making it the most suitable Weava alternative.  ### **Quick Feature Comparison**

Features

Web Highlights

Weava

Highlights

✅

✅

Flashcards

✅

❌

Notion/Capacities Export

✅

❌

Kindle spaced repetition learning 

✅

❌

Note-taking 

✅

✅

Email reminders

✅

❌

Intuitive interface 

✅

❌

Regular updates

✅

❌

### **User Feedback and Reviews** Let’s have a look at what people have to say about Web Highlights and Weava. While Web Highlights stuns with an average rating of 4.8 stars and more than 2,500 ratings, Weava only has 4.1 stars with the same amount of ratings. #### **Web Highlights** ![It works perfectly and really helps when I need to read a lot of materials at the same time and don't have time to take a note for everything immediately.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/10/image-4.webp) ![Stephanie Bautista Oct 12, 2024 It's REALLY helpful. Its interface is clean and friendly. There's a paid version, but it never bothers you to pay for it. Very demure, very mindful, very respectful of the user's choice to not buy it. You can choose up to 5 colors of highlighters, which is convenient. It has more if you pay, but unless you're meticulous, you wouldn't need that much colors. I personally only use one, and two if I'm feeling extra fancy and studious. Additionally, you can add notes to it, and I think even bookmark sites? So, very helpful. However that part is heavily limited I believe, but I'm not exactly sure. I've used this extension for months of informal academic research now, and it had never let me down. Not glazing, but I would rate this the best highlighting extension in the chrome web store. 10/10 would recommend to everyone.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/10/image-5.webp) #### **Weava** ![user-feedback-and-reviews-Weava](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfDVrnPIKqRS4emXToOqy7PcAab_TWa16ExTxEV330UmGRqYaM0JYo_wO8RyMybrw5P9wxVtEJFnQEzHDlHtrGnAbtaFVbOJv4tRMVSLTJzGHxJDbBfUK17-t-zFs-a4ETmHKCy7W7SygOw0TZ93uxQkEUN?key=ZKidcln_wi3nojXltqnyLQ) ![user-feedback-and-reviews-Weava-2](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdiww4zoYOA4T1acBGroKg8ZwY_3QKWHykGO3CHysRYUmjRIkLH1UccXN3IyWqwiLGKdNTeqSDh-jGjmFUh-cEwvc8IjkMbxQgKMvW_I8xFSa8yBy7Wfq4f-tnNHlHa49AE-mugZ1UKOf2xVjAn6vTH-A6t?key=ZKidcln_wi3nojXltqnyLQ) ### **Conclusion** When comparing Web Highlights and Weava, it's clear that both tools offer valuable features for online annotation, but Web Highlights can be a superior choice.  With its intuitive interface, faster performance, and extensive customization options, Web Highlights is the best Weava alternative for beginners and advanced users. Web Highlights' strong commitment to security and privacy ensures that user data is protected, giving users peace of mind. While Weava is a good option, Web Highlights provides a more comprehensive, flexible, and secure solution, making it the best Weava alternative.  Coming from Glasp instead? We compared those two as well in [Glasp alternative: Web Highlights vs Glasp](https://web-highlights.com/blog/glasp-alternative/). Want to switch to Web Highlights but are hesitant to leave behind your previously annotated content from Weava? Worry not! Here’s a detailed guide on [how to import highlights from Weava to Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/import-research-from-weava-highlighter-to-web-highlights/) . Web Highlights is available in the Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Edge Store, and Firefox Add-ons, with additional support for Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera via the Chrome Web Store. You can  [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights/install)  . > [**Install Web Highlights on Your Browser**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights/install) — Web Highlights is available for Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Edge Store, Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera. Choose your browser and install Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter today! ## **FAQs** ### **1\. What is the main difference between Web Highlights and Weava?** The main difference lies in the features and customization options. Web Highlights offers more advanced features, including flashcard creation, better integrations, and superior cross-device syncing. While effective, Weava has fewer customization options and integrations. ### **2\. Is Web Highlights more secure than Weava?** Yes, Web Highlights prioritizes security and privacy, implementing encryption and giving users full control over their data. Their terms of service ensure that user information is not shared with third parties without consent, making it a more secure option compared to Weava. ### **3\. Can I use Web Highlights on multiple devices?** Yes, Web Highlights supports cross-device syncing, allowing you to access your highlights and notes on desktops, tablets, and smartphones. ### **4\. Which tool is better for students and researchers?** Web Highlights is generally better for students and researchers due to its features like flashcard creation, export options, and strong organizational tools. It offers more flexibility and tools that cater specifically to those involved in extensive research or study. ### **5\. Does Web Highlights offer a free version?** Yes, Web Highlights offers a free basic plan with unlimited highlighting and bookmarking features. You can upgrade to the Premium or Ultimate plans for more advanced features. ### **6\. How does the user interface of Web Highlights compare to Weava?** Web Highlights offers a more intuitive and beginner-friendly interface, making it easier for users to navigate and organize their notes. It is designed to be straightforward, reducing the learning curve for new users. --- # How to Create Study Guides and Summaries Using Web Highlight > Learn how to create study guides using Web Highlights by highlighting, organizing, and summarizing key information. Simplify your study process now. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2024-10-04 - Updated: 2026-03-23 - Reading time: 9 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-create-a-study-guide/ --- Studying can be overwhelming, especially when dealing with a lot of material. Web Highlights simplifies this process by allowing you to highlight important text, take notes, and organize everything quickly.   If you're a student, researcher, or just someone who prefers a personalized learning approach, Web Highlights is the ideal tool to help you quickly and easily create study guides and summaries. It's a great way to enhance your learning experience. Let’s have a look at how to create a study guide and summary using Web Highlights.  ## **Step-by-Step Guide to Using Web Highlights for Summaries** Creating a summary in Web Highlights is not just easy—it’s actually fun! You can experiment with [different colors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlight-the-web-with-the-colors-of-your-beloved-stabilo-highlighters/) , fonts, and other cool features this annotation tool provides. Here are some simple steps on how you can create summaries on Web Highlights: ### **1\. Highlight Key Information** ![highlight-key-information](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdIl9CcEZwBG4qypRaKqUDfM-rCJjcCpm1Jv5p7z5FJKMwehe_l9nkiI4jFj4C3BUFJpD4qvGvz19aVXsQDDnmoQylTh9V4qc-IqFiEQHO25YE-1CXwSrwl0yj7B90AYLjUrGxkBz7BOA9twP4DVEof_K6N?key=Atfqa_zpk7x-KzuQeX71Dw) The first step in creating a summary is identifying and highlighting the most critical information. Web Highlights allows you to [select and highlight text directly from web pages](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) or PDFs, making it easy to gather important points. #### **_Here’s how:_** 1. **Start by skimming** **the material:** Skimming is important, whether it's a website, an article, or a PDF document. Find and select the main points, definitions, or key concepts to help you understand your topic better. 2. **Click and drag to highlight** : Once you find an important section, simply click and drag your cursor over the text to highlight it. Web Highlights will automatically save this selection for you in the sidebar. 3. **Highlight multiple sections** : Unlike traditional methods, you’re not limited to just one part of a page! You can highlight separate sections across different web pages or PDFs. It helps you collect all the information in a single place. This is very useful when pulling together information from several sources or chapters. > [**Brighten Your Web Pages with Stabilo Highlighter Colors**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlight-the-web-with-the-colors-of-your-beloved-stabilo-highlighters/) — Highlight web pages with Stabilo Boss colors using Web Highlights, a free Chrome extension. Customize colors and highlight text online easily. (Marius Bongarts) #### **Keep it simple and smart! Don’t over-highlight.** It’s easy to fall into the trap of over-highlighting, which can make your notes cluttered and difficult to review later.  Here are some tips on how to avoid over-highlighting: 1. **Key concepts** : Only highlight the fundamental concepts of the topic. Don’t highlight long passages or full paragraphs unless the entire section is essential.  2. **Look for keywords:** Focus on highlighting important words, definitions, and concepts relevant to your topic.  3. **Limit your highlights per section** : A good rule is to highlight no more than two or three key points per single section or page.  4. **Avoid highlighting fluff** : Sometimes, content can contain unnecessary details, fillers, or overly descriptive text. Ignore these parts and focus on the core information related to your topic. These tips can help you ensure your highlights focus on the key information, which is helpful in creating a visual study guide. ### **2\. Organize with Tags and Notes** ![organize-with-tags-and-notes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeQFGOmy7m5vqrNG48eB2QNA7GCPYw8SuPJ9UFJQhAz1JyDkoDW_I6cTiwUaTrDkzHSOwxyFR3LV-dgCV3Y-vXHBpEfsftdI8MUUR9BaZDzBRCZyo57NCR5W6ztDOGrDNR0M_bC1B2LylVOvCXbcUexfgou?key=Atfqa_zpk7x-KzuQeX71Dw) Get organized with Web Highlights’ tags and notes! Once you’ve highlighted key information, it’s time to get everything in order. Web Highlights lets you add tags and notes, making it easy to sort your highlights by topic. #### **_How to use tags and notes:_** For example, if you’re preparing for your science exam, you can use tags as titles of sections or themes like “photosynthesis” or “energy transfer.” This helps you keep highlights related to similar topics under one section.  Accessing tags from the sidebar will direct you to the relevant highlights that fall under it. This helps in time management and keeps your study material organized.  You can also add short lecture notes next to your highlights to give yourself context or personal insights. This makes it easier to recall what you’ve learned later. Adding notes also helps track any additional information you may need when revising content.  ### **3\. Creating Summaries with Web Highlights** Now that your key points are highlighted and organized let’s create a summary. By combining the highlighted text, you can make a detailed yet to-the-point summary that will also be your study guide. #### **_Follow these simple steps to create a summary:_** 1. Review your highlights and extract the most important ones. 2. Combine these highlights into a simple summary paragraph. Make sure you cover all the key terms. 3. This combination of all the highlights will be automatically saved into your Web Highlights space.  **_Tip:_** Keep your summaries concise, focusing on understanding rather than just repeating content. ![create-a-summary](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdRrzvc9IwMO22qt3x5iiWG1T39E4_8WyUT3MfGhe8DtetQYFVotYIeh5IeELwC_xbSVl9jbPNWnm8zU0YJop1a5jX5FqZkfTNw3NIpPO982dDNv8U2AS5bmnfnXYieFx4njpDpeLp8J2AxAkvaXq82rvAW?key=Atfqa_zpk7x-KzuQeX71Dw) Here’s what your summary will look like in the web app.  You can also format your summary and add bullet points where relevant. Use different heading sizes to give your summary a more organized and personalized look. ![give-your-summary-a-more-organized-and-personalized-look](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcawYniZbRY74In9KmUOZUwwC8TvPhusAb9r49oHxPXevWmfC1dBwuVFXOyfq6vcmWVkitTgSa8LZTty_bPBjbktMRzx_YmitwPFCQHiOWvb5TlCXL9nFO6luJMUWGCnkVEe1WJ7qBOfI2NYs8dWmW_uTg?key=Atfqa_zpk7x-KzuQeX71Dw) The summary can be used on your web app. You can also use it as a digital notebook for quick reference and revisions when needed! ![digital-notebook](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfuvX-1rQT92444lXQTjfgkhE_w3cRXXwz6JatrDTE2A3klFp-k1O2QkOXkeS-5ZJdWRcDFaJRtx5ww6lfoRbSRRytvwToRReoTdqYshtEURuLSx5yLRN2UCnn7unHyPZqFBxBAA_o7ZiEdbk__oLbAl2I?key=Atfqa_zpk7x-KzuQeX71Dw) ### **4\. Exporting Summaries** ![exporting-summaries](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcpvBw-2RMWd0gavcySUSeIxGhF8fJAJ4IfanMjK6JQpCz2RwG6XoNmJHUf5uD5RiiSBjNCls8WmIHR6lGbk6mZHmXlYuOmjtuN7DgKY-eJnCsNWP_RjkJrQf8c5JrlBc7VgwBCtNQ3qv9Urpg1oc8efQ-g?key=Atfqa_zpk7x-KzuQeX71Dw) With Web Highlights, exporting summaries is easy. It allows you to export your notes and highlights into platforms like [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-notion-with-web-highlights/) , [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) , or [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) . This helps you further organize and share your study guides. #### **_Steps to export:_** 1. Go to your Web Highlights dashboard from the app or the extension. 2. Open the summary saved in the Web Highlights space. 3. Select the three dots that appear in the sidebar. 4. Choose your preferred platform or format - Notion, Markdown, etc. 5. Your study guide will be transferred instantly and ready for further review or use. ![steps-to-export](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdw9XFE5O__Zf4vIKyDRplYNHwISDUIimC3vnPvhJYEU55LU5pQbbQn71aaInnuS8A0FgSm3gvAM4QDru02YtZBBTfUNUF-ydt6xyJ19QCLXkKRm4jU3Wxyye48EHBVyu2SkF2viXr65OoRrnEzYXUA5KRm?key=Atfqa_zpk7x-KzuQeX71Dw) ### **5\. Share Study Guides for Group Study Sessions** The export feature lets you share your summaries and study guides with peers. This is great for group study sessions and further collaboration.  You can decide whether to create a private link that your study colleagues can access or share it publicly with the [Web Highlights discover feed](https://web-highlights.com/discover) . Not only this, Web Highlights also has an auto-sync feature. This means all notes and bookmarks are saved across all your devices automatically. By sharing your study guides, you can collectively build a more engaging learning resource and exchange ideas missed during individual study. > _**Note:** Make sure you are logged in from the same account across all devices._ Picture this: you're sharing your "ecosystems" and "energy flow" summaries with your study group as you prepare for a science exam together. Everyone can pitch in, adding insights and diagrams to make the guide even more useful. ## **Highlight Images for Visual Learning** ![highlight-images-for-visual-learning](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd5ggmoGe_rPoXxIbyj_GO5ddgQ8vm2CV4RdJYjPVFqM2ADF4mrgbg3zbTHJ780Lxghwtwr66SUTHa58mLBTzQK17BR-3oy-W043HvOSWxim9u-5f0Fd6-wUSgbdFBG8QhsJCiWkj_1h6cF9ZhdWxaCTmbv?key=Atfqa_zpk7x-KzuQeX71Dw) **Web Highlights is not just limited to text!**  It also supports [image highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) , which is perfect for visual learners. If you're studying subjects that include diagrams, charts, or other visual content, this feature is perfect for you. With Web Highlights, you can highlight images directly from websites or PDFs.  Visual learners benefit from studying words and images, and Web Highlights ensures you don’t miss out on those essential visual elements. You can make your study guides more engaging by including text and other interactive visuals.  [Using image highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) with your text summaries creates a more exciting learning experience. Image highlighting helps you to understand visual concepts and diagrams! **Example** : If your science topic includes diagrams of the food chain or energy pyramids, you can use Web Highlights to highlight those images for your study guide. You can add tags and notes to the image as well. This creates a more comprehensive learning experience. > [**How to Highlight Images with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) — Discover the power of image highlighting with Web Highlights! Easily save images alongside text, bookmarks, and notes. Upgrade now to highlight images! (Marius Bongarts) ## **Using Web Highlights to Build Study Guides** Wondering how to create a study guide using Web Highlights? Let’s have a look! ### **1\. Topic Organization** Study guides work best when they’re well-organized.  Web Highlights lets you organize your study materials by topics or chapters using tags. Then, with the search feature, you can easily find related highlights and bookmarks for specific topics. This makes it quick and easy to find what you need, saving you time and effort! You can copy and paste all the relevant highlights and create a practical study guide. ### **2\. Flashcards for Review** ![flashcards-for-review](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXexYcVBI7pKJ0c6gj76t2SiRi1E9--pybCdwFFPnesbxTUkHKpIje49GwDVBH5FWryBICH1NT-kxaObfffl5Ht49oF0DF_NXd3EdOy4RMgC9T8VZk6NEB95ICf0Cjj86kp0TJ_bydkhicrRlVH8WfKQnUhU?key=Atfqa_zpk7x-KzuQeX71Dw) Web Highlights can turn your highlights into flashcards! This unique feature is perfect for [spaced repetition learning](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-remember-your-kindle-books-using-spaced-repetition-learning/) , a method proven to boost memory. Each learning session presents 10 flashcards — a mix of items due for review and new ones — to help you focus on consistent, bite-sized recall. #### **_Here’s how you can create exciting flashcards:_** 1. Highlight important definitions or concepts. 2. Convert these into flashcards within Web Highlights for spaced repetition practice. 3. Review 10 flashcards per day for better retention. Each card can hold a real question and answer, so you quiz yourself instead of just re-reading — and if you’d rather not write them, the on-device AI can draft the Q&A (or a whole deck) from your highlights. The [spaced repetition guide](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning) has the full walkthrough. Prefer to start from ready-made cards? Browse our free [flashcard learning paths](https://web-highlights.com/learning) — for example the five-level [IELTS vocabulary path](https://web-highlights.com/learning/english-vocabulary/ielts-vocabulary) — and practice any deck instantly in the browser. If you’re coming from Quizlet, here are the [best free Quizlet alternatives](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-free-quizlet-alternatives/) and what each one does well. And if you want your browser to do some of the work, these are the [best Chrome extensions for students](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-chrome-extensions-for-students/) — for writing, citations and focus. **_Tip:_** For Ecosystems, you can create flashcards with questions like: > **“What is the primary role of producers in an ecosystem?”** Answer: To convert solar energy into chemical energy for the rest of the food chain. ## Pro Tips for Effective Summarizing and Studying Here are some tips on how you can make summarizing and studying more exciting and productive: - **Use Color Coding:** Create a color code key to assign different colors to different types of information. It helps you visualize and remember information better. - **Review Regularly:** Don’t wait until the last minute. Review your highlights and summaries regularly to reinforce what you’ve learned. - **Edit Your Notes:** As you review, update your highlights and notes to reflect any new understanding. - **Use bullet points** : Bullet points help you condense complex information into easier pieces. For example: - _Ecosystems are sustained by energy flow._ - _Biodiversity increases resilience to environmental changes_ . - **Use your own words** : Don’t copy and paste the content.  Rephrase key ideas in your own words. This helps reinforce your understanding of the study material. - **Set Email Reminders:** You can set up email reminders to revisit your highlights and notes. The [Snooze-Reminder](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) feature helps you set personalized email reminders to review important articles and notes. Choose when you want to revise or revisit any webpage or highlights.  ![pro-tips-for-effective-summarizing-and-studying](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcZOnHeOMvPccY9LNcBwKftApLT5rGVWtlvDvOLDkVi0kG-7qXCViRcl6PH5QVu7rk40vHuLn_ocZ67TnPVHq1aDI7V91-C59ACnRuNSYA1s0RoOGXLMQljKymfMYkgFhzr7PixsMLlA4pRcno6nDHHwJtL?key=Atfqa_zpk7x-KzuQeX71Dw) _**Did You Know?** You can download the_ [_Web Highlights app_](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/) _on your phone to review notes and highlights anytime, anywhere!_ ## **Conclusion** Web Highlights can create effective study guides and summaries. It allows highlighting key ideas, organizing information with tags, and converting notes into summaries or flashcards. It is an excellent personal study tool.  You can organize study guides by subjects or chapters and create visual elements like flashcards. This dynamic approach allows you to structure your study materials according to your learning goals and personal learning style. Now that you know how to create study guide, start using Web Highlights today to simplify your study process, better manage your time, and create summaries and study guides that align with your learning objectives.  Try it now and take the first step in building a more organized and effective study routine. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. How to create a study guide?** To create a study guide, highlight key points from your material using Web Highlights, organize them with tags, and then combine the highlights into a summary. Add tags and relevant notes, and you will receive a digital study guide. ### **2\. How can Web Highlights help create summaries?** Web Highlights lets you highlight important information, organize it with tags and notes, and then export it into summaries. This makes summarizing faster and more efficient. ### **3\. How can I save time when making study guides with Web Highlights?** You can quickly organize and find relevant information using the tagging and search features, saving time when compiling your study guides. ### **4\. Can the Web Highlights app create study guides?** Web Highlights app allows you to highlight, organize, and summarize information from web pages and PDFs, making it an excellent tool for creating study guides. ### **5\. How do you turn highlights into summaries with Web Highlights?** Review your highlights, extract key points, and combine them into a concise summary. Then, you can export your summary to a tool like Notion or Obsidian for further use. ### **6\. Can Web Highlights be used to create flashcards?** Web Highlights allows you to convert your highlights into flashcards for spaced repetition learning, making it an effective study tool. --- # Organize Your Second Brain: Part 1 —  How to Use the PARA Method > Feeling overwhelmed by digital chaos? Explore the PARA Method by Tiago Forte and learn how to organize your digital second brain for a more productive life! - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-09-24 - Updated: 2024-10-20 - Tags: Tiago Forte, Second Brain - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/master-your-second-brain-part-1-how-to-use-the-para-method/ --- Do you ever feel like your digital world has become a “digital junkyard”?  [Tiago Forte](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/tiago-forte/) , author of _Building a Second Brain_ , says that most people overcomplicate their note-taking and knowledge management systems. That’s why Forte invented the [PARA Method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) , which is _“a simple, comprehensive, yet extremely flexible system for organizing any type of digital information across any platform” —_  [_fortelabs.com_](https://fortelabs.com/) _._ In this article, I will introduce you to Forte’s powerful second brain framework, explain the PARA method, and then use it with some practical examples and apps. Let’s dive in! This article is part of the Second Brain Framework series. You can find the second part, which dives into the CODE technique, [here](https://web-highlights.com/blog/master-your-second-brain-how-to-use-the-code-technique/) . > [**Master Your Second Brain: Part 2 - How to Use the CODE Technique**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/master-your-second-brain-how-to-use-the-code-technique/) — Unlock the power of Tiago Forte’s CODE method and organize your second brain for better productivity using the Web Highlights Chrome Extension (Marius Bongarts) ### What is a Digital Second Brain? When I first started reading “ [Building a Second Brain](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) ,” I figured it was just another tactic for sorting out my digital life, and I wasn’t anticipating much from it. To my surprise, [Tiago Forte](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/tiago-forte/) actually convinced me to rethink how I organize my digital life completely. The main idea of using a “Second Brain” and its [PARA Method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) , which I will explain in the next section, is to organize your information by actionability rather than by topic.  For example, instead of placing an internet bill into a general invoices folder, you would put it into “Taxes 2024” so that it’s readily available when you need it. > Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. — David Allen (Author of Gettings Things Done) Another benefit is that your “Second Brain” frees up your “First Brain” to focus on creativity instead of being weighed down by trying to remember everything.  For instance, instead of trying to recall all the details of a project, you can store them in your second brain and use your mental energy to brainstorm innovative ideas. > [**Master Your Creativity by Building a Digital Second Brain**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) — Unlock your creative potential with Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain” digital system. Discover the transformative ‘CODE’ technique and ‘PARA’ method. (Marius Bongarts) ### The PARA Method: What Does PARA Stand For? [Tiago Forte’s PARA method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) is a universal framework that functions with any note-taking tool and suits everyone.  PARA is an acronym and stands for: - **Projects** - **Areas** - **Resources** - **Archives** The great thing about the [PARA method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) is that it organizes information based on how **actionable** it is, not what kind of information it is.  > PARA can handle it all, regardless of your profession or field, for one reason: it organizes information based on how actionable it is, not what kind of information it is. The project becomes the main unit of organization for your digital files. —  [Tiago Forte in Building a Second Brain](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/tiago-forte/) This makes it incredibly versatile and practical for anyone, regardless of their profession or field. #### Projects Projects are the most actionable items. Whenever you want to save some information in your second brain, you can ask: - **Does the information have an end date or a specific time frame?** - **Is there a specific outcome that you’re trying to achieve with the information?** If you can answer “yes” to those questions, you should save the information as a Project in your digital second brain. > Our notes are things to use, not just things to collect. —  [Tiago Forte](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/tiago-forte/) _💡 **Example** : If you’re planning a vacation, you might create a project folder named “Summer Vacation 2023.” This folder would contain all your travel information, including itineraries and bookings, and it would have a clear start and end date with the specific goal of having a great holiday._ #### Areas If the information isn’t directly tied to a project, the next question to ask is: - **In which area will this be most useful?**  Creating an _Area_ for many things is tempting, so always try to create a project first. For example, adding an invoice to the Finance area might seem logical, but it might make more sense to put it into the Project “Taxes 2024.” > _Areas_ are long-term responsibilities and activities that you want to manage over time. This way, you’ll have the document readily available when you need it: during tax season for 2024. _💡 **Example** : If you’re managing your personal finances, you could have an area named “Finances.” This area would include all of your information for personal finance._ #### Resources If your information doesn’t fit into a project and also not in an area, ask: - **Which resource does this belong to?** _Resources_ are a catchall for anything that doesn’t belong to a project or an area and could include any topic you’re interested in. This could be a resource like productivity, note-taking, or studying. Similar to _Areas_ , you should always try to put information into projects first. _💡 **Example** : If you read a lot about improving your productivity, you could create the “Productivity Tips.” Then you can put everything you read about productivity into this folder._ #### Archives The Archive stores things that are either done or no longer in use. We usually archive projects because they have a clear end date, but resources often get archived too. > Remember, anything in the Archive isn’t lost!  In the digital world, you can still easily find everything with a quick search. So, it’s always a good idea to move things to the Archive to keep your Second Brain organized.  Forte even recommends starting by archiving everything to give yourself a clean slate. You’ll likely be surprised by how much-archived information you never need again. It is a good idea to regularly review your active projects, as some may have finished and need to be moved to the Archives. _💡 Example: Once you’re done with your “Summer Vacation” project, you can move it to the Archives since it’s finished. But if you ever need any info from it again, you can still easily find it._ ### Using Web Highlights with the PARA Method Now that you understand the [PARA method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) , let’s talk about how [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) can help you implement it seamlessly. #### What is Web Highlights? [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a powerful Chrome extension that allows you to [highlight text on any website or PDF](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) , take notes, create tags, and [save bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/) .  It’s the ideal app for organizing your second brain, designed to keep you on organized and boost productivity by helping you capture and manage information from websites and PDFs effectively. ![Highlighting Text on Websites using Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/0*a6-4qjd1rpMw6qQE) *Highlighting Text on Websites using Web Highlights* You can use it offline for free or sync your highlights to the cloud with a premium account, making it accessible from any device.  ![Create tags, notes and find your captured information](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/0*62II4vqdtfuDpssv.png) *Create tags, notes and find your captured information from anywhere* With features like multiple highlight colors, full-text search, and export options to tools like Notion and Obsidian, Web Highlights is the perfect tool for the capture phase of your second brain. #### Setting Up Web Highlights Firstly, you need to install the Web Highlights Chrome Extension. You can find it in the [Chrome Web Store](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) or [Microsoft Edge Store](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) . After installing, pin the extension symbol by clicking the “Extensions” symbol in the top-right corner of your browser and clicking the “Pin” icon to have it always reachable. > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) #### Using Tags to Sort into PARA Web Highlights offers a powerful tagging system that perfectly aligns with the [PARA Method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) .  You can create tags and notes either through the sidebar or by clicking on a highlight on the page. This will open a popup where you can easily add tags and notes to a specific highlight. ![Tagging System of Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/1*VQ1h4V_S3oYjKl8ZmKLuuw.png) *Tagging System of Web Highlights* Here’s how you can use the tagging system in Web Highlights to sort your articles and highlights into the [PARA method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) : - **Projects** : Tag your highlights with “project + \[project name\]”. For example, “project + Write Article About Second Brain”. - **Areas** : Tag your highlights with “area + \[area name\]”. For example, “area + Health”. - **Resources** : Tag your highlights with “resource + \[topic\]”. For example, “resource + Productivity”. - **Archives** : When you no longer need to work on a highlight actively, you can tag it with “archive + \[topic\]”. For example, “archive + Old Research”. You can then filter for these tags in the Web Highlights sidebar or the web app to quickly find all related content. ![Filtered content for the tag “mental-health”](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/0*62II4vqdtfuDpssv.png) *Filtered content for the tag “mental-health”* ### Exporting Highlights After you have created some annotations & notes, you may want to export them to other tools such as Notion, Obsidian, or Capacities.  Web Highlights offers different solutions to synchronize your notes with your favorite research tools: - [Copy Markdown & HTML](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) - Export to PDF & HTML files - [Export to Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-notion-with-web-highlights/) - [Export to Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) Simply click the three-dot menu and choose one of the options to synchronize it to a tool of your choice. ![Web Highlights offers several export options](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/1*_hlyYd-DKyv4WFnFMc0OtA.png) *Web Highlights offers several export options* Tiago Forte himself says that his Second Brain Framework is meant to work with many different tools out there. Therefore, Web Highlights is the perfect add-on for your favorite Second Brain app.  Many modern note-taking tools support the Markdown language. Therefore, you can easily export your highlights to Markdown with Web Highlights.  You could highlight important content, tag it, and then export it to your favorite note-taking app for further organization and action. For example, here is how some exported highlights look in the Capacities app: ![Exported Highlights in Capacities](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/0*saJQWPlYfgNGsfgr.png) *Exported Highlights in Capacities* ### Final Thoughts Building a Second Brain can drastically alter how you arrange your digital content. [Tiago Forte](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/tiago-forte/) introduces us to fantastic strategies like the ‘CODE’ technique and the ‘PARA’ method to optimize our digital content for practical use.  Web Highlights perfectly complements these strategies by making capturing, organizing, and exporting your research easy. > “Creativity is about connecting ideas together, especially ideas that don’t seem to be connected.” — Tiago Forte So, give the [PARA method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) a try with Web Highlights and see how it can enhance the organization of your digital world. Happy highlighting! Thanks for reading! 😊 I always appreciate feedback. Connect with me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mariusbongarts) , or drop a comment. **Read** [**More About Tiago Forte’s Second Brain Framework here**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/second-brain/) **.** > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) --- # Five Years to 100K Users: The Bamboo Tree Story for Side Project Growth > Discover how a bamboo tree can inspire solopreneurs to stay motivated on side projects. Learn the value of delayed gratification on the journey to success. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-09-22 - Updated: 2024-09-24 - Tags: My Journey, Story, Side Projects, Side Hustle - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/lessons-from-a-bamboo-tree-staying-motivated-on-my-side-project/ --- ### _From Seed to Success: The Bamboo Tree Lesson for Solopreneurs_ Have you ever heard of the tale of the Chinese bamboo tree? In my eyes, it is one of the best metaphors for patience, perseverance, and long-term growth I have heard. > The most powerful outcomes are delayed. — [James Clear](https://medium.com/u/528e9a6004d8) The story of the bamboo tree has inspired me a lot during my five years of working on my side project, so I decided to share it with you. ### The Tale of the Chinese Bamboo Tree The legend says that once, a Chinese farmer planted a bamboo seed and watered it every day without fail.  For the **first year** , nothing happened. His neighbors saw him go to the same patch of dirt day after day and began to whisper behind his back.  ![Generated by Dall-E: Showing man watering plant](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/1*odkaeX8-X1GMWsb0fhLikg.png) *Generated by Dall-E* By the **second year** , there was still no sign of growth. The whispers turned to laughter. _“Why waste your time?”_ they’d say, shaking their heads.  But the farmer didn’t stop. He kept watering that spot of earth, believing in the potential beneath the surface. By the **third and fourth years** , the mockery only got louder. Yet, the farmer kept going, putting all his energy into what everyone else thought was a hopeless effort. ![Generated by Dall-E: Showing man watering plant](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/1*Qu6kHTMNrDfllMXe6IduOQ.png) *Generated by Dall-E* And then, after **five years** , something incredible happened. In only six weeks, the bamboo shot up nearly 24 meters (80 feet) into the air.  The once-laughing neighbors were stunned.  ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/1*N24HH0ZDkfwaYIkzAWah_w.png) *Generated by Dall-E* #### **How is this possible? How could this tree grow 24 meters tall in six weeks?** The point is, shouldn’t the questions rather be: > Did that bamboo tree grow 24 meters tall in six weeks, or did it grow 24 meters tall in five years and six weeks? What the neighbors didn’t realize was that during those five years of seemingly no growth, the bamboo tree was developing a massive root system underground. ![Generated by Dall-E: Showing bamboo tree’s large roots](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/1*nDsPgAmf33u38u0iYlnjvw.png) *Generated by Dall-E* Thanks to the strong root system that developed underground over the past 5 years, the tree was ready for the rapid growth ahead. ### What We Can Learn From the Bamboo Tree The bamboo tree teaches us a vital lesson about success: it doesn’t happen overnight.  #### Delayed Gratification We live in a world with a delayed-return environment. Many of the choices we make today won’t pay off right away. For example, if you do a great job, you’ll get paid in a few weeks and maybe even promoted next year. If you exercise today, you might start seeing results next year. > The ability to delay gratification is a great predictor of success because it teaches discipline, patience, and long-term thinking.”  > > —  [James Clear](https://medium.com/u/528e9a6004d8) in Atomic Habits On the other hand, eating a chocolate bar or scrolling through social media gives you **“instant gratification,”** but it pulls you away from your long-term goals. Staying focused on long-term goals can be challenging in a world where instant gratification is just a TikTok scroll away. > At some point, success in nearly every field requires you to ignore an immediate reward in favor of a delayed reward. > > — James Clear A good rule of thumb is to avoid things with **“instant gratification”** where the immediate outcome feels good (like smoking 🚬), but the long-term outcome feels bad (like lung cancer 🏥).  Instead, focus on things where the immediate outcome feels hard (e.g., eating broccoli 🥦), but the long-term outcome feels good (e.g., being fit & healthy 💪). > Most people will spend all day chasing quick hits of satisfaction. The road less traveled is the road of delayed gratification. If you’re willing to wait for the rewards, you’ll face less competition and often get a bigger payoff.  — [James Clear](https://medium.com/u/528e9a6004d8) in Atomic Habits Then, if you stay focused for years, you could experience exponential growth — just like a bamboo tree that grows 24 meters in just six weeks.  You’ll realize that your success didn’t just come from those final six weeks, but from all the hard work you invested over the years. > “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.” > — Jacob A. Riis #### Overnight Success Entrepreneurs How often do we see super successful people and think: How did this person make millions overnight? What we often don’t see is the work that was done before. Take **Steve Jobs** , for example. He built Apple into a tech powerhouse, but it took many years of innovation, setbacks, and hard work. He was even fired from Apple, only to return and lead its transformation into a tech giant. Another famous example is **J.K. Rowling** . Before becoming the world’s first billionaire author, she spent years living in poverty, writing Harry Potter in cafés, and facing rejection from publishers before her work became a global phenomenon. Many successful entrepreneurs face early struggles that often go unnoticed, as people tend to focus only on their “sudden success.”  While I’m not anywhere close to being the next Steve Jobs, I feel like the work I’ve put in over the past five years is finally paying off.  Next, I want to share with you my personal bamboo story. ### My Personal Bamboo Sideproject Story Both the bamboo tree and my journey with [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) are stories about patience. #### First Year I remember when I first published my [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-%20-bookmark/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) Chrome Extension in the Chrome Web Store in 2019. After half a year, I had **eight** users: myself, my brother, my mum, and five friends. And it took almost a full year until I reached a **humble 100 users.**  I hadn’t made a single cent from the application at that point. Still, I continued because I enjoyed the work and believed in the idea. #### Years 1–4 In the following years, I continued improving my online highlighter.  Growth was still very slow, but I worked consistently on my extension. I probably spent thousands of hours building this tool and working weekends to get the application to a state where I was actually happy with it (I will never be there 😅) Even though I am making good money with the extension today, my hourly rate would still be far below minimum wage. Luckily, after the third year, my hard work was finally beginning to pay off. At the end of the fourth year, I had almost 20,000 users, and that was only the start.  The application finally took off in the next year 🚀 #### Year 5 In the fifth year, I finally felt that my hard work was paying off. After spending four years getting the extension to about 20,000 users, it jumped to over 100,000 active users in the fifth year.  It might not have grown in just six weeks like the bamboo tree, but I couldn’t help but show the similarities in a graph! 😄 ![Comparison of Bamboo Tree Growth and Web Highlights Growth](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1440/1*Angh5AT1XC1rtBBN4vPUZQ.png) *Web Highlights Growth vs. Bamboo Tree Growth* Just like the growth of the bamboo tree, we can ask:  > Did Web Highlights gain 100,000 users in one year, or did it reach over 100K users in five years?  Of course, it’s the latter. All the hard work — like building an awesome product, creating great content for SEO, and sharing on social media — finally paid off. > Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. —  [James Clear](https://medium.com/u/528e9a6004d8) Setting up the blog on my website and regularly publishing articles there and on my Medium blog is finally paying off, providing a solid foundation for my extension’s organic traffic today. It all just takes time! ### Final Thoughts Exponential growth can be misleading. Many successes look like they happened overnight, like a bamboo tree growing 26 meters in six weeks. What we often overlook is the hard work behind that success, leading us to expect immediate results from our efforts. We need to remember that sometimes it takes years of hard work and patience to achieve great success.  I hope my story encourages you to stay focused on your personal side project. Don’t give up — just be patient and give it time.  I’m sharing my journey on [Twitter](https://x.com/MariusBongarts) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) . If you enjoyed this story, be sure to follow me there! > [**About Me | Creating Web Highlights | My Story & Mission**](https://web-highlights.com/about) — Hi, I’m Marius, the creator of Web Highlights. Learn how I build this tool since 2019, my mission to organize digital info, and why I stand behind every feature. --- Oh, and if you’re interested in a great extension for highlighting websites and PDFs, check out [my extension](https://web-highlights.com/) ! It’s free, easy to use, and you don’t need an account to get started: > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) --- # How to Annotate Online Articles in 5 Simple Steps for Researchers > Learn how to annotate online articles in 5 simple steps using Web Highlights. Get features like tags, notes, and export tools for researchers. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2024-09-19 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Education, Reading - Reading time: 10 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-online-articles/ --- If you’ve ever read a long article and realized afterwards you can’t remember half of what it said — you’re not alone. I’ve been there many times, especially when doing research for  [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) . The fix that worked for me? Annotating as I read. Not just highlighting random sentences, but actually engaging with the text — writing notes, asking questions, connecting ideas. It sounds simple, but it completely changed how much I retain from articles. In this guide, I’ll walk you through what article annotation actually is, the different ways to do it, and a step-by-step workflow I use with Web Highlights to annotate online articles. ## **What Is Article Annotation?** Annotation is just a fancy word for marking up a text as you read. You highlight key parts, write notes in the margins, ask questions, summarize sections. The point is to interact with what you’re reading instead of passively scrolling through it. Why bother? Because it actually helps you: - **Remember more**  — when you actively engage with a text, you retain way more than when you just read it. - **Think more clearly**  — separating arguments from evidence forces you to understand the structure. - **Build a personal reference**  — your annotated articles become a searchable library you can come back to. - **Write faster**  — if you annotate well, your notes become the starting point for your own writing. ## **5 Types of Annotation** Not every annotation looks the same. Depending on what you’re reading and why, you might use one or more of these approaches: - **Highlighting**  — Marking key passages, definitions, or evidence. The trick is to be selective — if you highlight everything, nothing stands out. - **Marginal notes**  — Short comments or reactions next to specific passages. I use these a lot to capture my first reaction to an argument. - **Summarizing**  — Writing a brief summary at the end of a section in your own words. This is the best test of whether you actually understood it. - **Questioning**  — Writing questions about things you don’t understand or want to dig into later. - **Connecting**  — Linking what you’re reading to other sources, your own experience, or things you already know. ## **Why Annotate Digitally?** I used to annotate with pens and sticky notes back in university. It works fine for physical books, but for online research it’s a dead end. You can’t search through your sticky notes. They don’t sync to your phone. And good luck finding that one note you wrote three weeks ago on page 47 of some printed article. With a browser extension like   [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/)  , you can highlight any web page or  [PDF](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs) , attach  [notes](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/notes)  and  [tags](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/tags-and-organization) , search across all your annotations, and export to   [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  ,   [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/)   , or copy as Markdown for   [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/)   . Everything stays organized and accessible. Let me show you how I do it, step by step. ## Step 1: Install the Web Highlights Extension — No Sign-Up Needed First, you’ll need to [download the extension for Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/web-highlights/install) .  This browser extension is available on [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) and [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig/) , and it works on Brave, Vivaldi and Opera too. You can [install it from here](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/web-highlights/install) . To add it to your Chrome browser, simply launch the Google Store and click the “Add to Chrome” button. You can pin the Web Highlights extension for easy access by clicking the extension icon at the top of your browser.  ![browser-extension-is-available](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcyRobDn9rO1GqWj-HmxOI8pp0RSdRC41eiYIbNiJsjeGOSI2JTmYjOB_neKDjQ9I5NqnumXal1jdLTkYncjZRYtgbx57HFWC2KML1VC0FmiH1wK0Zvvg_Pwb6vccKROTj9f4MvZ850sNzeUnTfjMfFJgvt?key=8DD24Lry4n8WmlpV5NcKaA) ![install-the-web-highlights-extension](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdze1W810ezj0kdS_B9dKRnTOortVC-hEYi7fvudN6RAaxYDTsET0GJbSY0BcFQmsYFTpMBw36BVo9M7XxQNxpRIBhk_HrU-eAphcG10aJoWPXanGMFF8cZudT2WwFaEW3VUUznnIfPqOsy1yQ48qZIxd51?key=8DD24Lry4n8WmlpV5NcKaA) Similarly, you can download the app from the web on your phone. Check out our blog on ‘ [Saving Bookmarks From My Phone Using Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/) ’ for a better understanding of our mobile web app app.  And with just a few clicks, you can start annotating articles immediately!  > **Pro Tip** : The installation process takes less than a minute, and once it's done, you can access the annotation toolbar from any web page or PDF. ## Step 2: Highlight Key Information in Your Articles ![highlight-key-information-in-your-articles](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcTlSHCW8HUzYW1ARxzlORXQ19LtQOihGLqQjLjcQ-dbS0y3dhhfUCpV4nlx3YXrppO6cy_fBfEDHwN-w6VYQJYNt7HSXV8bU_CzzAixbIA4k9DLd3_si4SV2d82vcWFI0fYxz_g9EZt3CRx7ZE1jOu7D2S?key=8DD24Lry4n8WmlpV5NcKaA) Use Web Highlights to capture key points from the abstract, like objectives, findings, and conclusions, directly on the webpage or the PDF file. This makes it easier to reference these important insights during your own study. If you're working with academic or literary texts or any other digital documents, Web Highlights lets you use color-coding to separate important definitions, key arguments, and supporting evidence, keeping your highlights organized and meaningful. > But don’t fall into the trap of over-highlighting!  Over-highlighting can clutter your notes. A smarter approach is to use Web Highlights' tagging feature to categorize your highlights. This keeps your research organized and easy to manage. This ensures that you can find exactly what you need with a few clicks instead of shuffling through multiple highlights.  > **Sync Tip** : All your highlights are synced across devices, so you can access them from anywhere - whether on your computer, tablet, or phone. This ensures that no matter where you are, you can pick up your research right where you left off. This is especially valuable for field researchers or those working in remote locations as it ensures your work is always accessible and up to date. With Web Highlights, researchers no longer need to worry about losing track of their notes or missing key highlights when switching between devices. ## Step 3: Add Detailed Notes and Comments ![add-detailed-notes-and-comments](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcJK7vtKEelzSJFaGhCWVhYsNk9BPochWzlp4EHqCCPSNi7bzWNuItLtRMVU_NlfgNcXAtSSJzcHDjIfRdz4noylGDkQg0Gmyq3jIS9zAFetDmCfG4rvGdxyWEUGwuZAPhIBbAPgUBFCwJdn0npffI3Rr_a?key=8DD24Lry4n8WmlpV5NcKaA) As a researcher, analyzing the key ideas in texts is important.  Web Highlights makes this easy as it allows you to add detailed [notes and comments](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) directly to your highlights, especially as you go into the methodology section. This feature is invaluable when comparing methods across multiple studies and referencing them easily later when drafting your research.  Here is what that looks like in a 45-second video, from writing the first note to finding it again in the dashboard: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_2iy3Rw2Wk) For example, you can create an annotation box for each highlighted section, adding personal insights or linking it to other pieces of content within your research.  This creates a complete annotation workspace that’s organized and easy to reference. Making these detailed notes improves your reading comprehension and ensures that your research remains thorough and insightful. > **Pro Tip:** Use the annotation feature to build a collection of notes that you can later export or share with your colleagues for collaborative annotation. This is perfect if you are working with remote teams or research projects. You can also do [formatted highlighting with Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) ! Read our blog to learn more. > [**Formatted Highlighting Will Change Your Highlighting Experience**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/) — Discover how formatted highlighting transforms your reading experience. Learn tips and techniques to make your highlights more effective and organized. (Marius Bongarts) ## Step 4: Organize Your Annotations for Easy Access ![organize-your-annotations-for-easy-access](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdS2DBJJER9LhPauU_rLK3ktgm6nEuO37OVS6LLctN6ECfQTjbxetXQYL9cabyL07hWPD5ri2UDa6N2sgBbOL8rHaDSzYOvwQJ_881tCuCtIoCr4wtwsSdsgy5abUFNoL6_f-tpx1hI0W8ip9-V5XT7wM6z?key=8DD24Lry4n8WmlpV5NcKaA) The next step in this guide on annotating online articles is **organization** ! As a researcher, you must manage a large volume of highlights and notes across multiple academic texts and digital documents. This can be overwhelming.  But when you have Web Highlights, you can shoo all your worries away! You can tag important findings in the Results section and organize them with Web Highlights for quick access. For the Discussion part, tag key insights or suggestions for future research. These organized highlights will support you when analyzing your own research outcomes. > **Pro Tip:** Create multiple tags based on topics like "Key Findings" for the Results section or "Future Directions" for the Discussion to easily locate relevant information when revisiting your notes." With the annotation toolbar, you can easily add tags and organize your highlights into specific categories for future reference.  Instead of endlessly scrolling through previous highlights, you can filter by tags or keywords to quickly retrieve the exact information you need. This not only saves time but helps you stay focused on key research steps without getting lost in piles of information. ## Step 5: Share and Export with Web Highlights ![share-and-export-with-web-highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXel-3Yu7lvK7oFBydVadPn3qh4IA-12meuamLIohD_zEPHbXq4zdEpct4aP2UHn3XXHPBL-b54M6scf35UKv71CYLOqyl9Xml3L73AqpCD9sqvOl913Sw7MKNABkxdhEJzfG4D5rqaWq_xDXM-CPCG0URk?key=8DD24Lry4n8WmlpV5NcKaA) As you work through multiple articles, highlight sections of text related to important references. With Web Highlights, you can organize these citations and easily export them later for your bibliography. Send them to a colleague or save them in a different format; Web Highlights supports painless file sharing! Export your highlights to popular platforms like [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) , and [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/run-ai-locally-against-your-obsidian-notes-smart-second-brain-plugin/) , which are commonly used for research management. This allows you to share your research with others or keep it for personal use for future projects. Exporting your annotations as PDF documents can save your research in an easily accessible format for future reference. It is also easier to submit your research to professors or share it with peers in PDF file format.  _Here is what your annotations will look like once they are exported in a PDF file:_ ![annotations-will-look-like-once-they-are-exported-in-a-pdf-file](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdYz81NEb2Y4B6-HuZaqDWC0ucVZbtR2r3Xm8T9xqpPtZ73wFB0EAnuwclbR71bEaWXnPeI947nCtCHMD_ktA0gXTolWRV6ExK5b1vanPdzUlIPEGq-WhdTnYtWplplOnEhxIpcl3wYeo44YHftq6CJyZHt?key=8DD24Lry4n8WmlpV5NcKaA) ## User Testimonials  See how people use Web Highlights to improve their research workflow and stay organized!  ![user-testimonials-1](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdwUrx_SaFLuNIOJL1wWWIjvemR5-piZQdXHzuedqJE9YeE7mhkk_w16vnihiPAJjc3aYCneFf1ackgeCmH_7HNR3xmtw4gWpBpoR04j3eZZ7oeEhl1jsdfqLPirb7imN0ceo4DffFRrcnPQ-EBRTlIyYCB?key=8DD24Lry4n8WmlpV5NcKaA) ![user-testimonials-2](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeZYr1EupdiZT8jDe4X6cqdA9uvZKk24boo3Zn61WtR8wuqjA8Ws51J6wok5798M6j8dVeZ4uZ931G6603d5u6UTBDhWessITkbgmt90rZqzIo8qHasvw9lLMYF7nA_tsy30yMiUImZRN8UFMkDRK2usyE?key=8DD24Lry4n8WmlpV5NcKaA) You can have an experience as great as these users! Just follow the simple steps above on how to annotate online articles with Web Highlights.  [Find our wall of love](https://web-highlights.com/testimonials) with many great user testimonials here: > [**Wall of Love ❤️ Web Highlights Testimonials**](https://web-highlights.com/testimonials) — Explore the Wall of Love at Web Highlights. Read testimonials and experiences shared by our users. Discover how Web Highlights has made a difference. ## Conclusion Annotating online articles doesn’t have to be a chore.  With Web Highlights, you can easily [highlight, organize, and export your notes, transforming your research process](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) . Its user-friendly interface offers accessible solutions for managing your digital content. This tool can improve your research workflow in just a couple of clicks! Ready to annotate online articles? [Try Web Highlights today](https://web-highlights.com/) and enjoy our simple annotating process! It's free and easy to use without signing up! > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) ## Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) ### **1\. What are highlighting notes?**   Highlighting notes means marking important sections in an online article or book to easily reference later. ### **2\. How much does Web Highlights cost?**   Web Highlights offers a free version with many useful features. However, it also has affordable paid versions with more advanced features. The current [prices for the Premium and Ultimate versions can be found here](https://app.web-highlights.com/pricing) . ### **3\. How to annotate online articles?**  Install a browser extension like Web Highlights, highlight the text, and add comments or notes to organize your research. > [**Guide to Using Web Highlights for Online Text & Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) — Boost your productivity with Web Highlights. With the pdf & web highlighter, you can highlight on the internet just like you do it in books. (Marius Bongarts) ### **4\. Why do researchers need to annotate articles online?**  Annotating helps researchers retain key information, organize their thoughts, and easily reference important points later. ### **5\. What is the benefit of using Web Highlights?**  [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) simplifies the annotation process, offers tags for organization, and supports export options to platforms like [Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) , and [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) . > [**Export Web Highlights to Notion with One Click**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) — In this article, I will show you how you can seamlessly connect Web Highlights to Notion and export pages and highlights directly to your workspace. (Marius Bongarts) > [**How to Export Your Research to Obsidian with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) — Web Highlights allows us to easily copy all highlights with all necessary metadata and information into, e.g., Notion or Obsidian. (Marius Bongarts) > [**How to Export Your Research to Capacities with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) — Learn how to export your research data to Capacities using Web Highlights. Follow our step-by-step guide to improve your workflow and productivity. (Marius Bongarts) ### **6\. How do I share my annotated articles with Web Highlights?**  You can [export annotations to Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) , and other platforms or share them directly with collaborators. You can also share your highlights to our discover page. Check it out to find what Web Highlights users shared with our community: > [**Discover | Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/discover) — Discover what other Web Highlights users shared. Navigate throught different websites, notes, and tags. --- ## Looking for More Productivity Tools? At [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) , we review the top productivity browser extensions. Read our detailed reviews here: Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by our company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. > [**Best Productivity Browser Extensions | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/) — Discover and compare the best productivity browser extensions at Tooltivity. Explore our in-depth reviews of top tools to boost your browsing experience. (Marius Bongarts) --- # How Can I Save Bookmarks From My Phone Using Web Highlights? > Learn how to save bookmarks from your phone using Web Highlights. Our web app will help you bookmark any important content and keep track of it. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2024-09-02 - Updated: 2026-09-29 - Tags: Tutorial, FAQ, Tutorials, and Help - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-can-i-save-bookmarks-using-web-highlights/ --- Most of us know how to use bookmarks inside Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or any other browser. If you are like me, you probably sometimes feel that the organization of bookmarks inside the browser gets overwhelming and soon you can not find the page you are looking for. > 💡 Web Highlights’ bookmarking feature works like sharing a website to your messenger. Just share the link, choose Web Highlights, and it will be saved to your account. Web Highlights offers a solution that lets you add bookmarks and helps you save, organize, and access them quickly when needed. You can even save and access your bookmarks from your smartphone. ## **What is Web Highlights?** [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a productivity tool for highlighting websites or PDFs, taking notes, and staying organized. While its main functionality lies in [highlighting websites and PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) , it also has an integrated bookmarking functionality. ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/09/Screenshot-2024-09-02-at-09.42.42.webp) *Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter* For example, if you are reading an interesting article on the internet you can use Web Highlights bookmarking functionality which works much like other web clippers that let you save websites to a "pocket." After bookmarking, you can easily find all your saved pages either in the sidebar or on the Web Highlights dashboard, which looks like this: ![Web Highlights Dashboard](https://web-highlights.com/images/screenshots/cypress/web-app/dashboard-overview.png) ### **Setting Up The Web Highlights Extension** Before you start saving your bookmarks, you need to [install the browser extension](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/web-highlights/install) which is available for [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) . Let's say, you want to add it to Chrome. Once you’re taken to the Chrome Web Store, click the _“Add to Chrome”_ button to install the extension.  ![web-highlights-extension](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdEbvLTp-8ZnSCvVfpNr0fxreTPHo9SLMHaJIhst97JBDKRiLhnYid8QwuRbNUNg3YlXjWqnEpv2MWgLv0n7ryWKk5kXW27W7N84Cg6_XH5S_DMvLUGmbVGIrEM_qwpPNFCp1fARRvRT6EFgdvO5jCYTzM?key=eBDyJ97WFqdetaZJIWUFNA) Click on the ‘extensions’ icon on the top right side of your browser search bar.  ![click-on-the-extensions-icon](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcmVdfJwdrqKnc2Js923DstZv4vJDtQwcHBKCZJzAO5mCCyXOoKkAPiOV4emNiCQDpl-ryNTNn0cjD9oElKOFKWcKTelIO91GpSm7pwdF5roLpXRhgh9NS5zQuJcxpEq22zEhb08ujbaC3qchAnx9MoyNM?key=eBDyJ97WFqdetaZJIWUFNA) Pin your Web Highlights extension so that it stays visible at all times on your Chrome browser. This also makes it easy to use it in the future. ![pin-your-web-highlights-extension-to-chrome-browser](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXefpFymPdjy1KXiGcxM2z74c9ROA_Aju9YYeRQqN8bnnlKiMNOHmmgWv1XusDESEVUUlf_pVY-vKhJEhEvP6qFkodmanK60ee_lVKstNjUVZCQ5eYxu_U5LJh35bZz94AMulIklmJI5wvFlIDAwg29tXivM?key=eBDyJ97WFqdetaZJIWUFNA) Now that your extension is all set up and ready to be used, we can go ahead and save our first bookmark. ### Save & Access Your Bookmarks Navigate to the website or page you wish to save. It could be an online article, a website, or any web content you want to refer back to later. Click on the Web Highlights icon that appears next to your search bar. ![web-highlights-icon-that-appears-your-search-bar](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeYYwF4LKCx9Wc3jBjMCzp8ix-Mk28TIRBMmHFILGsAUIMoT7IKrLuxxX28Ih_nfdMeGAVXAn85ucUv0flCaXcbgPign1XMqoMgbcw-GTpEPJ3PgSrMrNCpkOiTp8mkybFCYvRAV1ewxXDBIkZVqUBrdKFk?key=eBDyJ97WFqdetaZJIWUFNA) A sidebar opens with bookmarking and highlighting options appear. Click on the bookmark icon to save the site in your Web Highlights extension.  ![use-the-keyboard-shortcut](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfIWR3yn_zkPSZ4QHcpzOv80isE4j-H6CzIbe-4jIhsSSk18dAIhXS0CwpEy-J3DrZF1NxB33XB7a12cEqkS9Uq4mRWlrXMAVftWxUyLct23ypbHOl0nj95lH5wIzpCCEEAUa8PSYIz_-zDrd6ASK5YQuEs?key=eBDyJ97WFqdetaZJIWUFNA) > **Pro Tip:** Prefer the keyboard? Give the “Save Bookmark” command a shortcut at chrome://extensions/shortcuts and save pages without reaching for the mouse. When the bookmark icon turns green, it means that your bookmark has been saved successfully! ![bookmark-icon-turns-green](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXerjcguFwcyPhBEPMrMtRsfoxM1ZBR2oiFy5a3pV_QEfsLKOO5HGP7eHvI0GdT3f7jTnL4uaYiBoaxfaIqhQvZwKP2Huh0HDHJi86fT8rWtft83Hvpu7HZpxd8dJqXFs9IuKI8uof0AsN8E-00ZG1RjCkC7?key=eBDyJ97WFqdetaZJIWUFNA) You can now find your bookmarks either in the sidebar or the web app. Note, that you need to create an account to see your bookmarks in the [web app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) dashboard. Prefer to watch? This short video walks through the same steps, from the bookmark icon to your dashboard: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xehF5eKwICM) ### Save Bookmarks from Your Phone Web Highlights also allows you to access and save bookmarks on mobile devices. All you need to do is to install the web app in your browser. > ℹ️ The Web Highlights app is a "Progressive Web App," which means you can install it directly from your browser like a mobile app. It lets you access your research offline without needing to download a separate app from the Android or Apple store. Want to highlight on your phone as well, not just save? On Android, the extension runs in Microsoft Edge, as I explain in [how to install Chrome extensions on Android](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-install-chrome-extensions-on-android/). On an iPhone it doesn't, and [this article](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-browser-extensions-on-iphone/) explains why. ### Install Web Highlights on your phone 1. Launch the [Web Highlights website](https://web-highlights.com/) in your mobile Chrome browser or simply visit the web app directly at: [https://app.web-highlights.com/](https://app.web-highlights.com/) . ![follow-these-steps-on-your-mobile-phone](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/follow-these-steps-on-your-mobile-phone.webp) 2. Click on the “Open App” option. You can skip this step if you have directly opened the web app at: [https://app.web-highlights.com/](https://app.web-highlights.com/) . ![open-app](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/open-app.webp) 3. Login or sign up with your Web Highlights account. Make sure that you log in using the same credentials on your desktop and your smartphone.  ![log-in-or-Sign-up](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/log-in-or-Sign-up.webp) 4. Go to your browser settings and click the _**“Install App”**_ button to download the Web Highlights app on your phone. If you don’t see _"Install App,"_ look for _"Add to homepage"_ or something similar. This will install the progressive web app, allowing you to use it offline. ![install-app](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/install-app-1.webp) Once the app starts installing, a pop up will appear in your notifications bar.  ![a-pop-up-will-appear-in-your-notifications-bar](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/a-pop-up-will-appear-in-your-notifications-bar.webp) After the installation has completed, you can easily access the app from your home screen.  ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/access-the-app-from-your-home-screen.webp) Now you can launch the app on your mobile phone and find all your research you have made so far. If you open the app for the first time, a internet connection is required. Afterwards, you can even access your research offline without internet. ### Save a website as a bookmark to your Web Highlights App Not that we have set up the app successfully on our phone we can save bookmarks to Web Highlights directly from our phone. > 💡 The bookmarking feature of Web Highlights works just like sharing a website to your messenger. Simply share the link, select Web Highlights, and it will be saved to your account. Here is how to save a bookmark from your phone: 1. Open any URL in your browser and click on the three dots that appear in the top-right corner:  ![save-the-website-as-a-bookmark](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/save-the-website-as-a-bookmark.webp) 2. Click on the “Share” option that appears.  ![open-any-url-in-your-browser](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/open-any-url-in-your-browser.webp) 3. Find the Web Highlights share option in your apps that support sharing and choose the option. ![click-on-the-share-option](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/click-on-the-share-option.webp) 4. You'll see a brief loading spinner, and if it's successful, your saved website will appear in Web Highlights. ![url-to-your-web-highlights-app](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/url-to-your-web-highlights-app.webp) Your URL is directly saved as a bookmark through your smartphone! With Web Highlights, your bookmarks are accessible from any device where you’re logged in. Just head to your dashboard, and you’ll find all your saved pages neatly organized. --- ### Find your Bookmarks in the Dashboard As you just saved your bookmark from your phone, you can re-find it anytime from the web app at [app.web-highlights.com](https://app.web-highlights.com/) from any device. Another option is to open up the browser extension sidebar. Here your bookmarks are also synchronized between all devices. > 💡 Web Highlights saves all your bookmarks in a digital library so you can access them anytime!  Here is a step-by-step-guide of how you can find your bookmarks from your phone: 1. Launch the app, and click on the three bars at the bottom.  ![launch-the-app](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/launch-the-app.webp) 2. Click on the pages option that appears in the menu. This is where you can access all your bookmarks. ![](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image12.webp) 3. Find the overview of your saved bookmarks and highlighted pages: ![bookmarks-in-a-digital-library](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/bookmarks-in-a-digital-library.webp) ## **Common Issues and Solutions** If your highlights and bookmarks aren’t syncing across devices, here’s what you can do: - Check that you are having cloud sync enabled - Cloud sync is part of either the [Premium or Ultimate plan](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) - You can try it for free for 7 days - Ensure you are logged into the same Web Highlights account on all devices ## **Conclusion** Web Highlights is not just a simple bookmarking tool. It is an all-in-one solution for saving, organizing, and accessing your favorite web content. Whether you’re researching, studying, or just keeping track of interesting pages, Web Highlights makes the process simple and quick.  Web Highlights offers a range of benefits for managing bookmarks and improving your online research. It allows you to easily highlight and annotate web pages and [PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/faq-web-highlights-pdf-web-highlighter/) while also organizing your bookmarks with tags. It has instant syncing that automatically updates your information across multiple devices.  The app’s intuitive interface and powerful features make it a valuable tool for students, professionals, and anyone looking to advance their digital workflow. [Install the extension now](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/web-highlights/install) and enjoy saving bookmarks today! ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. How can I save bookmarks using Web Highlights?** To save a bookmark, visit the webpage you want to save. Click on your Web Highlights pinned extension icon. A bookmark icon appears in the left sidebar, click on it and your bookmark is saved.  ### **2\. What is the keyboard shortcut to save a bookmark using Web Highlights?** You choose it yourself: open chrome://extensions/shortcuts, find Web Highlights, click the pencil icon next to “Save Bookmark” and press the keys you want. From then on, that shortcut saves the page you are on as a bookmark. ### **3\. Can I share my bookmarks and highlights with others?** You can easily share your bookmarks and highlights via email or export them to platforms like Notion, Obsidian. You can also convert your bookmarks to PDF or HTML format using the share menu in Web Highlights. ### **4\. How do I ensure my bookmarks are synced across devices?** Enable cloud sync in the Web Highlights settings and make sure you are signed in to the same account on all devices. This will ensure your bookmarks are synced and accessible on all your devices. ### **5\. How secure are my bookmarks in Web Highlights?** Web Highlights takes your privacy and security seriously. All your data, including bookmarks, is stored securely and can only be accessed by you or those you choose to share it with. ### **6\. Is it possible to highlight and annotate web pages which are saved in bookmarks?** Absolutely! Web Highlights lets you highlight specific sections of a web page and add annotations, which are automatically saved in your web highlights space along with your bookmark. --- # 10 Best Highlighter Extensions for Chrome > Looking for the best Chrome highlighter? Explore our top 10 picks to highlight text, add notes, and manage highlights. Organize your work today! - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2024-08-26 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Reading time: 17 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlighter-extension-for-chrome/ --- Highlighting text online has improvised the way we study, research, and organize information. From students to professionals, the shift from highlighting physical documents to marking up digital content has made information management more dynamic and accessible. With the right highlighter extension for Chrome, you can mark important details, save them for later, and stay organized.  Here are the 10 best highlighter extensions for Chrome. These extensions can help you make the most of your browsing experience by offering features like cloud storage, collaboration, and more.  Read on to find out which one fits your needs best! ## **List of the 10 Best Highlighter Extensions for Chrome** 1. Web Highlights 2. Weava Highlighter 3. Highlighty 4. Helpbird 5. Glasp 6. Highlight This! 7. Diigo 8. Scrible 9. Snippet 10. Hypothes.is ## [**1\. Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/) ![Web Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd4-9fGIKiiJn0r-p9i1v4FgdsmcrXkFSMixS9gC5IleGYOirNSNQ4pYkuxCajnklU2KkEFiQmeCret_xXREEK0JF2xmRMza56Qxxfafx4M1KTeaDZoj6SW784s7zRTjPqs5fgZbj4bJjQslznfyfw9CZ3x?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a must-have Chrome and Microsoft Edge extension for anyone who needs a powerful tool for highlighting text on web pages and PDFs. Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by our company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. > With hundreds of thousands of users and an impressive 4.8-star rating on the Chrome Web Store, it's clear that  [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/)  is **the best online highlighter available** . - [Tooltivity.com](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) The latest update includes features like a sidebar with a cover image, light and dark modes, editable titles, organized history, and popover views for highlighted websites.  It supports offline and cloud-sync modes to access your content anywhere. You can highlight PDFs and search highlights, all offline. Your documents and highlights stay private and secure, visible only to you unless shared. ### **Features** - Highlight text on any webpage/PDF - Organize with tags - Take notes - Export to Notion, Obsidian, and more - Import your Kindle highlights - Use Keyboard shortcuts - Set email reminders - Bookmarks - Learn and recall your highlights with spaced repetition - Share your research - Explore & discover what others shared - Powerful full text search bar - Works Offline - Sync across devices ### **Top 3 Features of Webhighlights** #### **1\. Highlight text on any webpage/PDF** ![Highlight text on any webpage/PDF](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfN3F8it2WXZO0nqASp09qR_lZU-fOzQvj1L6dS7IprMXDAg9-Pg6v5NNRwjlsq6hwZdWRJ0tcqcPwy4bc23Fp41MEFyb8i6tyZZgK1vvKM-bIDO-7VRqLivkccHJyM6ADSEMc_qRVYPxPdqjuQpFr3uyAb?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Web Highlights lets you use different  colors to highlight text. By using various  colors, you can quickly see what is important, making it simpler to review and study your notes. To see it in action, this short video goes from selecting text to finding your highlights in the dashboard: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsjHgjO5SQc) #### **2\. Export Highlights to Other Formats** ![Export Highlights to Other Formats](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcWkbxK8_Wk0pHydEyAojI0B9Ga7L5twNX0TtJlHCeMNgH5TTw3MBHZkcpOcB4Ws29anRtrjPvv2J_YMcOJf4dgOq4WMlLXSPIicaHb9-KuZU2XfYu1YXerD0fPx7etJdE102PINbDkbsqpXFhQQeT89U4?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) With several export features, you can easily [transfer your research to Markdown editors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) such as Notion, Obsidian, and other PKM tools. This allows you to conveniently store all your research in the centralized tool of your preference.  You can also export to PDF and HTML files. Plus, Web Highlights [integrates fully with Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) and [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) , so you can directly export your research to those platforms. #### **3\. Bookmarks** ![Bookmarks](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-35.webp) Web Highlights has a handy bookmark feature that lets you save web pages quickly. You can tag and organize these bookmarked pages, making it easy to find important articles or content later. This keeps all your favourite web pages in one place and accessible whenever you need them. ### **Pros** - Excellent free version with numerous features - User-friendly interface - Multiple highlight  colors - Cross-device sync - Great tagging system ### **Cons** - No iOS app yet — on iPhone and iPad the web app installs as a PWA (the [Android app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.webhighlights.app) is on Google Play) - Scanned PDFs without a text layer can’t be highlighted ### **Average Rating** ![Average Rating of Web Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc54dzb8LJjVQ7tXFJHjtToswwDzoodf2f5_D0aDuWonVpUR1MI6IbXauhzcwiG8jz3Vap8QJl-utNtyxXz4s7i2DuJ_3F3rqjzfQBjFBNrmodNy4-opYnRbOIXCWmY3HT0aU9191MiPx2SM_7BodPXvyyf?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) *The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store* ### **Pricing** Web Highlights offers the following  [pricing](https://web-highlights.com/pricing)  options: - **Free version**  with many features - **Premium**  and  **Ultimate**  plans available. See current prices at  [web-highlights.com/pricing](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . ### **Customer Support Options of Web Highlights**  - [Blogs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/) - [FAQs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/faq-web-highlights-pdf-web-highlighter/) - Email support - [Tutorials](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/faq/) ### **Final Verdict** Web Highlights is an excellent Chrome extension for highlighting and organizing text on web pages and PDFs. It's easy to use features like  colors coding, tagging, bookmarking and note-taking options, make it ideal choice for students, researchers, and professionals.  Web Highlights is available in the [Chrome Web Store](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and in the [Microsoft Edge Store](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) . You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights/install) . > [**Install Web Highlights on Your Browser**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights/install) — Web Highlights is available for Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Edge Store, Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera Add-ons Store. Choose your browser and install Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter today! ## [**2\. Weava Highlighter**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/weava) ![Weava Highlighter](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd654uFBUiZPEkCia7Bl5_PJQNBa37guCvIzRt9g1xZWRa4Rfc826t0HwKx1wIzr0C-xUYIyLWgg3w9UhrFf0pbyRxto67nyLUTIS4InagOhOujNxsOy42vkFPXaq3Z8vyW2AHnODR9SMXAoZcBfoxUhXhq?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) [Weava](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/weava) is a go-to Chrome extension for staying organized and efficient online. It lets you highlight, annotate, and organize your research all in one place.  Save time by reducing browser tabs and auto-saving your work, making it accessible from any device. Weava increases productivity and saves hours each week. ### **Features** - Highlight  - Annotate  - Organize - Collaborate - Auto-save work - Access work from any device - Customize highlight  colors ### **Top 3 Features of Weava Highlighter** #### **1\. Highlight Websites and PDFs** ![Highlight Websites and PDFs](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcTHblYdjE9IDOfRUJWBb19G3MpUPxlojv9gR8WqS_uRwRoDVOg9gkMIrrnS8CW3RfvvXKdQxQB9HuZnJS9P_uSYHWIM8PoFsM-YalOK-KFSc00DO7UP1hg0NfGINyHji5gPY4mPY6Wqc5sATT98QpAKTAI?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) With Weava, you can highlight text on any website or PDF. Choose different  colors to customize your highlights and make important information stand out. #### **2\. Organize Research into Folders** ![Organize Research into Folders](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc1_8O4Hd7vG0Nvvf4oMhHUUhn_XbdbonsKPBQiwakMUovcIoPCqLsSJuT_ICHi1Gl6HpBfgkjdTr-BDH9Ywa0PTUCE0ZJOYXxhjr0zgT7jqQnLPvJzbI6O0b59xclUnW-IoAtPLx8Ya5_rMp5uij7qshU?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Weava allows you to save your highlights and organize them into folders. This makes it easy to keep your research structured and find what you need quickly. #### **3\. Collaborate with Your Team** ![Collaborate with Your Team](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfPg0NBbD_yiTZjd1L9ElHwr8S6Sn1PKdVVgGu0wdtRoYcoB2CWgjAjSjkpibnck7y3Fzl7DHA-wS7nnqVFiAdBTzQA7SFT1je8JUPphHUrAkcjSjjTvHOcOt9340S9eYE_R6cVHJ06PhW89N4ymJku2Et5?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Weava lets you share folders with your team, making it simple to work together on research projects. Everyone can add and view highlights and notes in one place. ### **Pros** - User-friendly interface - Collaboration options - Syncs across devices - Customizable ### **Cons** - Highlight  colors customization requires a subscription - Many ads are disturbing user experience - Some features are limited to online use - Limited support ### **Average Rating**  ![Average Rating weava](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcVhLZnKbHHgI9AVkfhMoXMyk5skROnoaO27nVWG6_zk6-GoIxq9_sUX1n_R02efyWTyfg_LU33QMDLIAdiJO0ht7RiXQ9I12hvHJOdYke2GyTBN1XBnRV4irQNwr0a2elYsi-NeGxcPMFC0YonfnrVZVU?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) ### **Pricing** Weava offers the following pricing plan: - **Free Plan** : $0.00/month - **Premium Plan** : $3.99/month ### **Customer Support** - Email support - Knowledge base - Live chat ### **Final Verdict** Weava is excellent for highlighting and organizing your research with features that boost productivity. It’s especially useful for tagging and managing information.  However, advanced features like  colors customization and full PDF support are only available in the premium version, which might be a limitation if you need these options. Check out our detailed review here: > [**Weava Highlighter: PDF & Web Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/weava) — Read our in-depth review of Weava Highlighter: PDF & Web. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Weava. Weava is available in the Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Edge Store, Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera Add-ons Store. You can  [**install it here**](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/weava/install) . ## **3\. Highlighty** ![Highlighty](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdgEjHAV1_ywhRLz5BHsmaTY4TY-fUCd2mSrbWiqc8U32CrN7NKZmqXna1pw04IiF7C23A1DTdKQFq_7CQlQt8F23J-4xl0riH5I3trI_KcevI0grOFrFTOCRHYthhEdSKB3Vyq5igg8qaZtwYzPrsnfoM?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Highlighty is a user-friendly Chrome extension that simplifies browsing by allowing you to highlight, find, and navigate text on any website.  Its features like multi- colors highlighting, customizable searches, and instant notifications, help you stay organized and productive online. It's perfect for students, researchers, and professionals who want to save time and increase efficiency. ### **Features** - Multi- colors highlighting - Customizable searches - Functional customizability - Keyboard shortcuts - User-friendly interface - Instant search results ### **Top 3 Features of Highlighty** #### **1\. Multi- colours Highlighting** ![Multi- colours Highlighting](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfZXaHRiqmBIliKAfZ9H8A9X8l-QeU_fVX-kwZUqPoMSm8bi3oimCoSKA-IjUA7T-q1n2fAkOlS9pBEZLRVqYELZow8tBaS4NCHv92RC_4zlMHfd_7Tnv766nM0WebPWLNkzV612J2h4OYNonfgI1CyYhZ0?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Highlighty lets you choose from an infinite range of  colors to highlight text on any website. This makes it easy to categorize and organize information visually. #### **2\. Instant Search Results** ![Instant Search Results](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfk3PzkCyqsohwgpfp2JPqALlGN1x1DnsnXtPEskYWBpo8a-fDDO4oTMBfEG5aw9uVnQ0KRE8IzzsCM5Fo_y8NAgX-ApGYtvyW94Bd3bOHcllZp-6oNeqNhU1Q8IAqph-gyL-ZyuWu2ArBsBviCuNjDa1ZA?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Highlighty provides instant notifications for searched terms on every page you visit. It automates text searches and adapts text  colors based on WCAG 2.0 specifications. You can disable notifications with hotkeys if needed. #### **3\. Keyboard Shortcuts**  ![Keyboard Shortcuts](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeBoMayRN2e-3a1lDH0Yjfya6Fd0HtSEFHEXm9FohNPn1TSXQdpNERvIdFAvhawAFB6vYkbqI7Qa6yx84CCR1IxoReXSD6gsVHO8SyNwhodXclSvvB4y16txY5VgRBBBsrddJJyHohKWRTiiaEfZ2rTK7vE?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Highlighty helps you highlight text quickly using keyboard shortcuts, making it faster to save important information. This is great for users who want to optimize workflow and avoid using the mouse. ### **Pros** - Very easy to use - No account needed - Customizable  colors - Offline functionality ### **Cons** - Limited advanced features - No cloud sync ### **Average Rating** ![Average Rating highlighty](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXek-c9sXjm15_lbF_BiAoBm7Vh9-3sPTQXhs2EgC49pGnJv176KDJgaXNbd4sQ8_P_OKZ6gxERAAUx33fT_GtSU2dfmjArPoB0mRku7qXEe24zyDsdJo6yWRiNIjdCJVHeRB2aKWJBLjXN_I5yUcUcivQNo?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) ### **Pricing** Highlighty offers the following pricing plan: - **Free** : $0/month - **Pro** : $3.69/month (VAT excluded) - **Enterprise** : Custom pricing - **Student** : 100% discount (FREE) ### **Customer Support** - Limited to online FAQs and community forums ### **Final Verdict** Highlighty is a helpful tool for highlighting and searching text on websites with customizable  colors and instant results.  It's great for students, educators and professionals looking to save time and stay organized. However, it may be overwhelming for casual users who only need basic highlighting features. ## **4\. Helperbird** ![Helpbird](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfxG1OKsurAwK9GR0H0QTZNEP8Y7CaXGb0nBSNbi79s_o_tN_RwTXxnmT1fk16GBExFhosvhoHhSXyzm10LHo13nHLGD5Q8FDAyFXew5bsgr7TtR1TSWP8I1n1rPZsu6gQ3V9a5JYovMAp9DdcIaQPYlz1D?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Helperbird is an all-in-one accessibility tool that makes browsing, reading, and writing on the web easier. Offering features like text-to-speech, dyslexia support, and customizable reading settings.  So if you’re reading, writing, or just browsing, Helperbird helps make your online experience better. ### **Features**  - Highlight  - Customization (fonts,  colors, spacing, borders, images) - Picture Dictionary - Text-to-speech - Voice typing - Spelling and grammar checker - Word prediction - Note-taking ### **Top 3 Features of Helpbird** #### **1\. Highlighter** ![Highlighter](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdPgoVRmfQGMpxMCek4IsfbenmpFz38ApOLi6IdMrs_LIOsyD1GBPI8erhx6yZQ8-SrMkD1TNUo3IiRkmn3n5bvaHSDWH1pKRX8BgHtAWD9uCEKTTy-0l9Ey8K5vULox2qi9w3cOBNTqH4fGTf5vP1OOcnN?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) The Highlighter tool allows you to mark and save key points from any web page or document. It's perfect for organizing your notes and making sure you don’t miss any key details. You can highlight different sections in various  colors for easy reference. #### **2\. Note Taking** ![Note Taking](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdxKQ97cbM0gP_Zv3ugiBkEF1BSO8WBFRqNg4gmnkQUYdCFapEz6KkFyd-eZ2BVYnMiEM4axyFrHzyi-xPPE7VOit7ulkmbGGJP_Q3Upj9sUH8cgBCuUACNhTYy1tNWT6p9Y0uNbFirMQDYnW9XwAd6iaUJ?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Helperbird's note-taking feature allows you to quickly jot down important information, ideas, or thoughts while browsing the web. It helps you keep all your notes organized and easily accessible in one place.  #### **3\. Custom  colors** ![Custom  colors](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd7_-K4ZBwf88SMJxbxZpgYcYx9h04OowryCnl0JCF2_Tth1YIkmNqHjKyc4TGhx2y8uiTQ7JbP8wNwrq5Fc21vqj5e73ItriiOLh7naELADa9RizvzzNysfI4Qd_xiOf-_vMekves7XIZ4-cZKRNJrqc1O?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Adjust font, background, and link  colors to improve your online experience and make websites work for you. ### **Pros** - Wide range of accessibility tools - Customizable features - Supports multiple browsers ### **Cons** - The full feature set can be expensive - Some features might take time to fully understand - It can be resource-intensive on older hardware. ### **Customer Support** - Contact via website or email - Sales assistance available - Quick response, usually within an hour ### **Average Rating** ![Average Rating Helperbird](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeH2uqCozwWsslCMrc8QJE0G9S30kgOb9Sca1ffPFdigwd4j7uv1xCb0iD6u-fO9lRyRaJTlyKWKm6EVuAzm4sR9FynGIz6NY10Ewf_2TlFFWB1IcGdcMC6HE8UrfX2HAoy3DyJCSyHcCR6ecOQ8vTfdvo?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) ### **Pricing**  Helpbird offers the following pricing plans: - **Free Plan** : $0/Monthly - **Helperbird Pro:** $30.00/Yearly - **Pro Unlimited:** $1500/Yearly - **Pro Unlimited +:** Contact Sales ### **Final Verdict**  Helperbird is a useful tool for improving online accessibility and productivity. It offers a variety of customizable features, making it suitable for users with different needs, including those with dyslexia or visual impairments.  The support team is responsive and helpful, which is a plus. However, the full feature set might be expensive for many users.  ## **5\. Glasp** ![Glasp](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfyMOVzIbrZBA45Jhlr07gzBzmfUfC-EAKSnB-iOJKCNX55tKkk_HtpRE8iPQFqPLLw748vIjPuplqWhtOqD87sY5ZpuiPzSIXJCcVYSxoFO9Qg7WiC-Jv3r_5y9TzoOa2sYkReixT0KkX8R8Si6sin4e8L?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Glasp is a handy tool for highlighting and organizing quotes and notes from websites and PDFs. It lets you highlight text, add personal notes, and view highlights from others with similar interests. You can also export your highlights to your favorite note-taking apps effortlessly. Weighing it against Web Highlights? Our [Web Highlights vs Glasp comparison](https://web-highlights.com/blog/glasp-alternative/) covers privacy, PDFs, AI and exports side by side. ### **Features** - Highlight PDFs & websites - Organize highlights & notes  - Collaboration - Export highlights & notes to note-taking apps - Import Kindle highlights - Accessibility ### **Top 3 Features of Glasp** #### **1\. Highlight PDF** ![Highlight PDF](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcJAYuDTCmVcDslIl9WUMCMY5P80BxUj97pLFj4-0YUuhfi6oXBkhrY8B7AGDzw-TMorvOOnwHBdJ9XjIHHCud6BznKGi9MlvHUYGpBLdhJWJiezcMxkgdTgmWCS_bZIO3XkcrGhY9SYxgKTGdgU3JzK9k?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) With Glasp, you can easily highlight text on any website or PDF directly from your browser. It also allows you to add notes to your highlights.  #### **2\. Organize Your Highlights & Notes** ![Organize Your Highlights & Notes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcbGMApCAMwRPEvegPz_kXicj-D5hHhd2R5xwzUhcWoLDFq1GQG42mdN7jUw_P0o8YQ-sI6YtP6YJWHdocz_j7qAJ8i-l7FHvPa2tBAsmHuTAxunphgs8ZxbQmdjtKh7cpsN3SsiDorf8LMf_0E2E9V5Qs?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Glasp lets you organize your highlights and notes efficiently using tags and authors. This makes it simple to search your highlights and notes later. #### **3\. Export Highlights & Notes**  ![Export Highlights & Notes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcCcy2qhG1Df4OnTuOnNGmGE7Wxb3Jd_1AT5KWQh2qxfh6N-EAbRTJWXZVLO5nH14LmcFUHdVyDJ3KIDXhwkKZDJuVwseeGXcTooikGYU0wRCRpzGxsIs-EL6hrmQTBTbBTaVP7ivQmrN5LH2-R2sy9CAkk?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) You can effortlessly export your highlights and notes to popular note-taking apps like Notion and Obsidian.  ### **Pros** - Accessibility-focused - Wide range of features - Customizable - Offline functionality ### **Cons** - Privacy concerns - Some features require a subscription - Can be complex for basic users ### **Average Rating**  ![Average Rating glasp](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc3DB1Lmgbjg07KDj2p747QANYc6hZMQMmb0Mwz7xKmLhoZWCzf4JJ-PR-lWp-9CZ9rrSfNsieZYJY1XGES3U7fNVLzsp28ukBRkUvS_EqYWGg_UMAovraVJjzLKsDsjWEs8adOjBcZYtp0XNcfv9zhu4zC?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) ### **Pricing** Glasp offers the following pricing plans: - **Free Plan:** $0 per month - **Pro Plan:** $12 per month ### **Customer Support** - Email support - FAQs and knowledge base - Live chat ### **Final Verdict** Glasp is a tool for highlighting and organizing text from PDFs and websites. It makes your research and note-taking efficient and accessible, especially with features like tagging, exporting to various note-taking apps, and smooth integration with Kindle.  The downside is that its advanced features might not be affordable for all. ## **6\. Highlight This!** ![Highlight This!](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe1JNhsX58o4BY1XHkYF9Q-1yjodedwWpQZ33FH0t4OtIOdMleMieOPkFwtQhI7yGhMGi8P9VvkGgnv4K0app1TU_bmH1eXCEgp7m5oVeg_91urxlYzC9V_nPBZv7-BE-5PD7qXbAd4UPqSPO7sSE-tVa8?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Highlight This! is a browser extension for Chrome that highlights words you choose on any webpage. You can create and manage word lists, assign  colors, and set specific pages for highlighting.  Customize your settings for a smooth browsing experience. This tool is ideal for anyone who wants to quickly find and highlight important information online. ### **Features** - Export and import options - Assign  colors - Specify pages - Sync lists - Import word lists - Set styles - Highlight in editable fields ### **Top 3 Features of Highlight This!** #### **1\. Highlight in Editable Fields** ![Highlight in Editable Fields](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcujLGrQRBbDY3PncrWt5JLcpe_UlK_tdu0iXs3qXCXohoone5fgFpWnqVLh3HUageJl5tJAxATFzV3ezQixGBeurivGsv44qUGxCgoMhGl6dFqLIoEsuDmPlfvRqZcvTKisOGw2oPvXa2LSwcVSjHchX2F?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Highlight This! allows you to highlight words, even in editable fields, like email bodies or text boxes. This feature makes sure that your important terms are always visible, no matter where you are working. #### **2\. Export and Import Options** ![Export and Import Options](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfKb5UttpuX9TbjcVY7yHdnPP3BoVGr8PHPFOJwAJabuqN1itpEyg8w2MVtt50hOVnpg62FaPmJueE4iytUkReGJYbYZ1nSxi7M7Qq-Ryu0Haw8ijtBwbfzEyaEFejlPWaaKwDzf4a3tPCPNjywZydFKkO5?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) It supports exporting and importing settings and keyword lists. This feature allows users to back up their data and transfer it between different devices or share it with others. #### **3\. Assign  colors** ![Assign  colors](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfSu6LAhAkhaXOwDHrmbUNgwyLbO4d2DdNvfaQB2fD_WK1meBoX3SZDurZcjhGR-V1VII_wS5bpHooyKW1S0ioQqsrE7Ca4V8Ss23cIWSsTkjN5MZSCyWtOp4-nH6fOq8KIAaRr3YPYuIG7r7AGFVApWyA?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) You can assign different  colors to your highlighted words. This helps to easily distinguish between various categories of terms and makes your browsing experience more organized. ### **Pros** - Custom word lists - Assign different  colors - Sync across browsers ### **Cons** - Initial setup time - Admin restrictions - Import problems - Limited free version ### **Average Rating** ![Average Rating highlight this](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeBYi4GVUaF3XYBF0w3xZTlkEND9AY6vzbAvFFImOle7sILY_8XWqmFVKJhyJ9Xd00WGMlOWzRBML0J4RbHcJ0KKTSMWit36XCJfRfaXZM6zctmqjABjVQpWtoJD_Mw3PtSp0NbWwCUS9Wx1_wmbG8HxBdA?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) ### **Pricing** Highlight This! offers the following pricing plans: - **Basic Plan** : $13.10 per year - **Premium Plan** : $21.83 per year ### **Customer Support** - Email support - FAQs and knowledge base - Community forums ### **Final Verdict** Highlight This! is a useful extension for highlighting specific words on web pages. It allows you to set different lists and  colors, offering an easy way to mark and track text, which is handy for research and reading. However, the extension does not support highlighting words shorter than three characters, which may limit its usefulness for some specific needs. ## [**7\. Diigo**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) ![Diigo](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdnGNG0XMPBwAMM3cFWl-x-Y5VVCN7Uvh1rN8HUedMfYNI7lUUPsnWjo8Xp47ccWRRAStbPA2qZfb3RPBJZ1DOYUxJf8M-BzUZDB7ZFexIYP2VR1tXyywddMdkMIZrM-hx3WYvw4an9fjM7WWj6kNASWp_z?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) [Diigo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector)  simplifies managing online resources by offering tools to collect, annotate, organize, and share. You can easily save and tag web pages for quick retrieval and add highlights and notes directly to web pages and PDFs.  Organize your links and references into a structured research base with Outliner. Share your research with friends, classmates, and colleagues.  ### **Features** - Collect - Annotate - Organize - Bookmarks - Tags - Personal library - Highlights - Sticky notes - Outliner ### **Top 3 Features of  Diigo** #### **1\. Highlights** ![Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdeCZCS0l-OxGwcfdm_rbViqqHiYlWIlhRTuf7uPHJEwKR-WK8cv8u_yZ95xdHcDzU5o2Wz6iy8gbbD1_qkjB9njDvEW1WtCzQFNw_c1D8BzEiNdzvR8SI-P9hmY0QDrRJToJwEeFQ1u1lA6oykHZImnatX?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Diigo’s highlight function lets you emphasize key text on web pages or PDFs. This makes it simple to pinpoint important information and find it when needed. #### **2\. Bookmarks** ![Bookmarks](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc0uqa8FH4kg-vo-YwjhKpmZvYreU2xCBeuitPBh-aku9y5D16NurlxN4R0YYLjwnowr2YmYadv2NvLQYxluGN1zJ88H957TUNYU-4idwvB0t8D4H-LGZ_mEEnUhr-ywslDxVeodAlKA-0UtV-akCjudJSH?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) With Diigo, you can easily bookmark and organize web pages. This helps you keep track of your important sites and find them whenever you need. #### **3\. Sticky Notes** ![Sticky Notes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXerbVczQPuxIoqRD2Or7UCj_oUR9fCGixO1dyVcSseRushjVnaYPDQc1tL6ptNbK7biVd-UvPccrAYMsaFt_7lDwAv8TD0qGzLt1gBMGKjWPTb72httAVubFPoUb6PFdwzvcboNE6sdk-RjanEVZU-xN2nd?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Sticky notes enable you to insert comments, reminders, or extra information directly onto web pages. They’re useful for noting down ideas or making brief notes while you browse. ### **Pros** - Complete feature set - Integration with other Adobe products ### **Cons** - Can be expensive - Complex for basic users ### **Average Rating**  ![Average Rating Diigo Web Collector](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXenLVSgS0r3KucqS7ahLK5d5Q5ARx9r0H5qCcJuz8BKvTORbRMje35cCuP66xMbgAh6ubO-h1gg-OqaRmSf4M-OW7KQIIWu0lu_6IMkMjCum0yoN9viHvU93wgxtIjnX9gOcDTJCVBtLhVOKB9d9CgPEo0q?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) ### **Pricing** Diigo offers the following pricing plans: - **Free:** No cost - **Standard:** $40/year - **Professional:** $59/year - **Business:** $10/month/user ### **Customer Support** - Email support - Phone support - Online resources  - Community forums ### **Final Verdict** Diigo’s Chrome extension is a great tool for students and researchers. It makes it easy to collect, tag, and organize online resources. It offers features like web page and PDF annotation, highlights, sticky notes, and group sharing.  Unfortunately, some users often find that highlights disappear, and synchronization may be slow, leading to difficulties in tracking and viewing saved work. Diigo is available in the Chrome Web Store, Vivaldi, Opera Add-ons Store, Brave, and Microsoft Edge Store. You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector/install) . > [**Install Diigo on Your Browser**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector/install) — Diigo is available for Chrome Web Store, Vivaldi, Opera Add-ons Store, Brave, and Microsoft Edge Store. Choose your browser and install Diigo - Web Collector today! ## **8\. Scrible** ![Scrible](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdAIt8Kfy3jI-iSIVAeU6KQqUfGOoRx7yAr1Xm33cezqdXFWHEtix_leueaufBgzCDb4I9ExSzqWZp6B4xpGCDBUdbY4tv0ErxG2LKMLlfKEMi2b5QUAABjNOn1CfalJ6p_MpA-thxqHOSJ0SWU8SBqhJwl?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Scrible is a modern research and writing platform designed for students and professionals. It provides an extension for saving, managing, highlighting, and sharing web content.  With Scrible, you can archive web pages, bookmark sites, store files in the cloud, and build your library of articles. The platform also lets you organize your library with tags, perform full-text searches, and annotate articles directly in your browser. ### **Features** - Archive - Highlight - Bookmark websites - Store in the cloud - Build library - Organize with tags - Search - Annotate - Comment - Share ### **Top 3 Features of Scrible** #### **1\. Highlighting Tool** ![Highlighting Tool](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdufa1pFT2oS48R-g5bf_JoE1chxbvHkcYotVQZOj2P-DkGpRck3mv63zWuUw3dKfbbH3-dCK2HElfLOKZGa6yNzIWmbkzzwOzFOlZT_X0sotDob_RsvbrE7cjYrAirmrShVV7cC7mvNvt97dGYO-pWSbM?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Scrible allows you to highlight key sections of web pages and documents directly in your browser. This makes it easy to mark and review important information as you research. #### **2\. Annotate** ![Annotate](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfkM0SKdiXmYmM-ppnUph0Id38rPkf0cfSJLiFEjX3NKfLX1fS0owGgFLZHjiqkFSQvayRxYaS7QSugLe-A1aks3BT2WklanzOF3F605cI5-eTrniC85CAhWETYrTWdmgQiKo9FRqSrDkPXpRA0-7zd0RL9?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) With Scrible's annotation tools, you can add notes and comments to highlighted text. This feature helps you capture detailed thoughts and insights while studying or working on projects. #### **3\. Organize with Tags** ![Organize with Tags](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcE5VCV0xUxgQGvP1vEUEIYL6b4aMENV2etO7rO1euFETr-lh01_EUirQ5kGvIWYAsaQ2axHB_eomGXGrN_e0SnlJ6CJSAC43xO2RXdhRTDPhhF-iRwfFvyhxGgrmDae6FdeFv7GxJTrVPsnibKTzOe8MpW?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) After highlighting and annotating, you can use tags to organize your marked content. This system helps you categorize and retrieve information quickly, ensuring a well-structured research library. ### **Pros**  - Ease of use - Easy conversion - Efficiency improvement - Affordable ### **Cons** - Compatibility issues - Font issues - Font limitations ### **Average Rating** ![Average Rating scrible](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfmjpZLimgAhOfGITDq-u0_wsu5KU2lSK8wdN1ltYp02ax-OkkY00sJdB7goJpC0603W40aSWxCEGZrppnBEoSS7pbZMOt127efeg2klSwt-zMiBnSPcwDvb4ZXT7hW0RlFbSxoTWdNk66ZzVHu_8ED7Tyo?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) ### **Pricing** Scrible offers the following pricing plan: - **Basic:** Free - **Edu:** Free (K12 users only) - **Edu Pro Student:** $35/year USD (Annual) $20/semester USD (6 months) (Higher Ed users only) $12/quarter USD (3 months) (Higher Ed users only) - **Edu Pro Teacher** $119.99/year USD (Annual) (K12 users only) $69.99/semester USD (6 months) (K12 users only) - **Grade, Department, School, District & Higher Ed Plans:** Incorporates volume pricing ### **Customer Support** - Email support - Online resources and tutorials - Community forums ### **Final Verdict** Scrible’s Chrome extension is a valuable tool for students, educators, and professionals. Its highlighting, bookmarking, and cloud storage features make managing and accessing information easy. The platform is user-friendly and improves efficiency in handling research and writing tasks.  ## **9\. Snippet**  ![Snippet](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfsPVTSASuDPI8b72fqTOHYk6YMEpDOgc1lqylgdMlPKmKHKTD8jV05Ff58koFmGx74NoU8XCDnKhsy9uVF4BbpvSW8RKindiOWJJ6-SEEUwtDrOPinepqNSiVf4Ut1pHU5JSpjH3yJab_zpGqyEdUWpvqQ?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Snippet help you collect, organize, and share important information with friends and colleagues. Highlight web articles, import Kindle highlights, and add favourite book quotes.  Organize snippets any way you like with collections, filters, and  colors. Connect and share your snippets with apps like Evernote, Slack, Facebook, and Twitter.  ### **Features** - Easily collect snippets - Highlight web articles - Import Kindle highlights - Organize your snippets - Connect apps - Backup highlights - Share on different platforms ### **Top 3 Features of Snippet** #### **1\. Highlight Web Articles** ![Highlight Web Articles](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdv1qwMWm5Z5sIbBCA3O9OeLzFP7I7CU4zUVegM_qdFDVIva5j4ZLqkKekYWfNJ4s-p6MP0jGat9yGG7KFDUtkgZUHYIO1DBkFH6sRNZzkHYuU6eaBrrbaum7goNHzX5mTg0Ov6X6cm2WlZRaLydqX3mKAD?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Easily highlight important points directly from your browser using the simple extension. Capture and save key information quickly and efficiently while you browse. #### **2\. Import Kindle Highlights** ![Import Kindle Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeCpl-tPmHTT48Z642gNHsguL4vu6E5ku7kTF_UO-Ave4FjBO3RzFT4EZeBD98VHU0SlI0kaa1acet1HTZgbA9xYiejurt2KhPNToglmE77V0Pig0oLXjiBYc0i7e7skDwH_li8Q8Uyf2vNQD5fgsXfU6Jx?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Snippet helps you import highlights from any device. Sync highlights from other sources easily and keep all your important information in one place. #### **3\. Share On Different Platforms** ![Share On Different Platforms](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfaVLvgFX9u7fySMUa62WZQ84vpP9xEvQ25b-sjnZhvyedGTt-9xXLSRjtmVizOQnw_yHpbg0yRz6vRNhxpWAWQ6NUtvECWJ4S53X1JU6tCFtaCfsfAu-uzm8XBoVSPhwS49oDWWjKGgAiGaq7FLPbIcG5H?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Back up and organize in Evernote, share inspiring snippets on Twitter, collaborate on Slack, post on your Facebook profile, and add content to your Wordpress blog easily. ### **Pros** - Highlight web articles. - Import Kindle highlights. - Backup in Evernote. - Share on Twitter, Slack, Facebook, and Wordpress. ### **Cons** - Limited offline use. - Extra steps for syncing other sources. ### **Average Rating** ![Average Rating snippet](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXclpT8Y2vuz2ftIKiKdLCeKZ_jK0mvFjiqLm5LF9RWl0BhwVuwEX4ZpcHSuNYnenTOa6uOnnFP5oaxUkh8aWf2EduXm84uE7LWkTWXJfBQTqX5eWXJafJEwh2TvDhtglf4vJTTVzZXU9osxaMqpmnNRgxXf?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) ### **Pricing** Snippet offers the following pricing plans: - **Basic Plan:** Free - **Pro Plan:** $3.99/month ### **Customer Support** - Email support - FAQs and knowledge base - Video tutorials ### **Final Verdict** Snippet is a useful tool for collecting, organizing, and sharing highlights and snippets from various sources. It offers features like web article highlighting, importing Kindle highlights, and integration with apps like Evernote and Slack.  However, the basic plan has limited features, and some users may find the upgrade to the pro plan necessary for full functionality. ## **10\. Hypothes.is**  ![Hypothes.is](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXext7y1P7H7YnpwRYRP3Bd2dkjnH8EDsMRh5pOhiKu81cekr9EEtKD4HzPBOYhkq1u622JnNoa5HZ198KCPNg8Z0mGskucV6_50a9XCdXHyWLoYxR--rWR7tDcxNgwAqppWEJ0S3J4ssF2jf7frkoJr9E7C?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Hypothes.is is a tool for anyone who wants to improve their online reading and collaboration experience. It enables you to annotate web pages, blogs, and documents, turning them into interactive spaces for discussion and note-taking.  ### **Features** - Highlight  - Annotate  - Note-taking - Collaboration - Share annotations - Manage highlight ### **Top 3 Features of Hypothes.is** #### **1\. Highlight**   ![Highlight](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd4Ymhp5mpZB0XIt-4ypLR-0VV1hlJCbw9mghTvi25xAffdWBXD1iKYichyIVTHnNOz5NHcbAhpuvO3FMsJfZUNmzI5pWZRP9NHNYpZc4PTSf08FY7-K4rCL4HsAF61Pw15PTRsPSa8U_R-1tNtU6u9QaGe?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Hypothes.is allows you to easily annotate a wide range of online content, including pages, videos, blogs, books, and documents.  #### **2\. Note-Taking** ![Note-Taking](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeb2VBOCwJfOjsJMx2RgS2sGXyJX863bQVe2bJxQm2dheGy0bFPAVQHQgotFRT7Hh3M5mZjMBMtW-rk4ufhrCvUuKtGsw9okjJdEdIKLqhxLP_f2OsSgredBz1fxjWryaewBBi_MOxO-hKelsppsNxrIhfE?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) Hypothes.is supports efficient note-taking by allowing you to make and organize notes directly on web pages and documents. #### **3\. Manage Your Annotations** ![Manage Your Annotations](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfqo1qg09tuA3WEUhJsuEuNw9FVz-WySUeh65VY1FKwc5v5d4Xhfio79QgHHqLkeAYBgjU2eF4fo7Sb4K3dV8y1no2lJrLL7oIByWAGVFLDgewdfiQ2XSCZp7G1ELC9proWa_c7_-UINYnXfslbKnke-njP?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) With Hypothes.is, you can keep all your annotations organized in one place. This feature allows you to view and filter your notes and comments easily. ### **Pros** - Easy collaboration - Organized - Free  ### **Cons** - Experiences occasional bugs -  Requires manual activation for each page ### **Average Rating**  ![Average Rating  hyothesis](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXebDJnGqANF278xhqcBS9QpvJ_4QC99dEFo7ruE5Lg5yzbR3C-SjaZmygHD2YPtmVaTsbfaQtJe5PS2_bSQvUyhpH7yziZldE2OIu3YdGExc9Znwr38s4vgQucUlkhMlvR34F5tKEFGZ3M-tw8HJ5ehgiJM?key=8lMa7BlgzlFQWtpKbMvudA) ### **Pricing**  - Free  ### **Customer Support** - Guides and FAQs - Email assistance - Community Forum ### **Final Verdict** Hypothes.is is a strong option for highlighting and discussing online content. It provides useful tools for highlighting and making notes, and you can interact with others or keep your comments private.  Some users find it inconvenient to activate on each page and occasionally encounter bugs. . ## **Conclusion** Selecting the right highlighter extension for Chrome can improve how you interact with online content, whether you're a student, researcher, or professional.  Key features to look for include the ability to save highlights, organize them effectively, and access them across devices. Extensions that offer cloud storage, collaboration options, and advanced annotation tools can greatly improve your productivity and workflow.  Among these options, one extension clearly provides a complete set of features, ease of use, and smooth integration. For the best overall experience, [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) should be your go-to choice. ## **Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)** ### **1\. What is a highlighter extension for Chrome?** A highlighter extension for Chrome is a browser add-on that allows users to highlight text on web pages and PDFs. These extensions often come with additional features like note-taking, organizing highlights, and exporting annotations. ### **2\. What features should I look for in a highlighter extension?** Look for features like text highlighting, cloud storage, organization options (like tags and folders), annotation tools, and collaboration capabilities. ### **3\. Are highlighter extensions compatible with all websites?**  Most highlighter extensions work on a wide range of websites. However, some may be limited to certain types of web content or specific sites. Browser extensions also stop at the browser — if you want colored highlights in a note-taking app instead, that takes a different trick, which I wrote up in  [how to highlight in Apple Notes with different colors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-in-apple-notes-with-different-colors/) . ### **4\. Can I access my highlights from different devices?** Many extensions offer cloud storage, allowing you to access your highlights from multiple devices. Check if the extension supports synchronization across devices. ### **5\. How do I manage and organize my highlights effectively?** Use tags, folders, or collections to organize your highlights. Some extensions also offer advanced search options to help you find specific highlights easily. ### **6\. Is it possible to export my highlights for offline use?** Yes, some extensions let you export highlights as PDFs, text files, or other formats for offline use. Try [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) for an easy way to export and manage your highlights. ### **7\. How can I collaborate on highlights with others?**  With the 'Export to Markdown' feature, you can easily transfer your research to platforms like Notion, Obsidian, and other PKM tools, keeping everything centralized in your preferred tool. You can also export your content to PDF or HTML files. ### **8\. What should I do if my highlights don’t appear or disappear?** Ensure your extension is up-to-date and check your internet connection. If issues persist, contact the extension’s support team for assistance. ### **9\. How does Web Highlights differ from other highlighter extensions?** Web Highlights excels with features like customizable highlight  colors, cloud storage, and an easy-to-use interface. It also includes an 'Export to Markdown' option for easy transfers to tools like Notion and Obsidian. --- # The Best Chrome Extensions To Power Up Your Second Brain > Discover browser add-ons that enhance Tiago Forte’s Second Brain system, to streamline your digital organization and capture information effectively. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-08-19 - Updated: 2024-08-19 - Tags: Second Brain, Tools, Tiago Forte - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-chrome-extensions-to-power-up-second-brain/ --- Tiago Forte's concept of [building a second brain](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) has revolutionized digital organization. Since the release of his book “Building a Second Brain” in 2022, many tools have claimed to be the best for organizing your second brain. Most of these tools use the powerful [PARA method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) to organize your digital life. > [PARA](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) , which stands for **P** rojects, **A** reas, **R** essources, **A** rchies, works for everyone, no matter your profession or field, because it organizes information by how actionable it is, not by the type of information. While Tiago Forte claims his system works with any digital note-taking app and lets you switch between them, we've put together a list of our favorite Chrome Extensions to help you easily apply the powerful Second Brain framework. These Chrome Extensions aren't meant to be your primary tool for organizing your Second Brain; instead, they're useful add-ons to help you gather information into your digital brain. Forte defines this step as the **“Capture” layer** in his [progressive highlighting method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-art-of-summarization-tiago-fortes-progressive-highlighting-2-0-technique-in-action/) . > In other words, instead of “one app to rule them all,” which was never realistic and is getting even less so, we’ll have dedicated “capture apps” \[...\] that specialize only in  _capturing_  and  _organizing_  content, alongside other kinds of apps \[...\] that specialize in  _distilling_  and  _expressing_  new ideas. > \- Tiago Forte --- Here are our top 5 Chrome Extensions helping you to organize your Digital Second Brain: [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) ![Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter (Rating: 4.8 (2.1K ratings) Users: 100,000)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-16-at-06.49.00.webp) *Rating : 4.8 (2.1K ratings) Users : 100,000* Web Highlights is a universal tool that offers many integrations with popular Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tools like Notion and Obsidian, making it an ideal choice for capturing information into your Second Brain. This productivity highlighter is perfect for websites and PDFs, and it’s free and easy to use without requiring any sign-up. - Highlights websites and PDFs. - Save Bookmarks. - Note-taking. - Organizes content using tags and full-text search. - Supports various formats (paragraphs, headings, etc.). - Allows export to platforms like Notion and Obsidian. - Offers offline and sync modes. - Provides daily highlights recap and learning. - Imports Kindle highlights and notes. [**Evernote Web Clipper**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/pioclpoplcdbaefihamjohnefbikjilc) ![Rating: 4.7 (129.8K ratings) Users: 2,000,000](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-16-at-06.49.35.webp) *Rating : 4.7 (129.8K ratings) Users : 2,000,000* Evernote has been a key player in personal note-taking for many years and remains one of the best tools available. Tiago Forte himself has praised Evernote as a reliable and robust option. > Evernote is in a much better position than I expected > \- [Tiago Forte](https://web-highlights.com/discover/page/66b9b017f4b519f6db779ebb) Its Chrome Extension allows for quick and easy saving and capturing of websites into your Evernote space. - Quick saving of websites into Evernote. - Robust note-taking and organizational features. - Reliable performance and trusted by many users. [**Save to Pocket**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/niloccemoadcdkdjlinkgdfekeahmflj) ![Rating: 4.2 (7.8K ratings) Users: 2,000,000](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-16-at-06.49.52.webp) *Rating : 4.2 (7.8K ratings) Users : 2,000,000* Pocket is an excellent choice if you’re simply looking to collect websites. It offers the easiest and fastest way to capture articles, videos, and more. With a single click, content is saved and accessible across all devices in a clean, distraction-free space. Pocket serves as a personal, quiet corner of the internet, perfect for spending quality time with content that matters. - One-click saving of articles, videos, and more. - Cross-device access in a clean, distraction-free format. - Easy tagging and organization of content. - Pocket Premium offers custom fonts, unlimited highlighting, and article listening. [**Save to Notion**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ldmmifpegigmeammaeckplhnjbbpccmm) ![Rating: 4.0 (687 ratings) Users: 300,000](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-16-at-06.50.28-1.webp) *Rating : 4.0 (687 ratings) Users : 300,000* Notion is undoubtedly one of the best PKM tools for organizing your Second Brain, and this extension is perfect for capturing content directly into Notion. - Saves web articles, emails, tweets, YouTube videos, and more. - Highlights portions of text directly from the web. - Maps data to Notion's database properties. - Captures screenshots and images from the web. - Offers custom forms for different use cases. [**Capacities Web Extension**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/jdliiagcaloddeneiaofnaifmckpgccd) ![Rating: 4.3 (21 ratings) Users: 2,000](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-16-at-06.49.16-1.webp) *Rating : 4.3 (21 ratings) Users : 2,000* Capacities is hailed by many as the best PKM tool for organizing your digital Second Brain. When used in conjunction with the Web Highlights Chrome Extension, Capacities enables a seamless workflow for saving website URLs, titles, and cover images directly to a Capacities space. - Direct saving of website URLs, titles, and cover images. - Smooth integration with Capacities space. - Streamlines the process of storing and managing online content. --- ### Learn More About The Second Brain Method If you want to learn more about Tiago Forte's powerful [second brain method, check out our articles:](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/second-brain/) > [**Master Your Creativity by Building a Digital Second Brain**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) — Unlock your creative potential with Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain” digital system. Discover the transformative ‘CODE’ technique and ‘PARA’ method. (Marius Bongarts) > [**PARA Method: The Secret To Digital Organization**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) — Discover the PARA-method: Tiago Forte’s revolutionary approach to a clutter-free, productive, organized digital life with an unleashed creative potential (Marius Bongarts) > [**5 Best Note-Taking Tools To Organize Your Digital Second Brain**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/5-best-note-taking-tools-to-organize-your-digital-second-brain/) — Discover the Best Tools to Build Your Digital Second Brain! Tiago Forte’s famous productivity system for ultimate organization and creativity. (Marius Bongarts) > [**Smart Second Brain AI Plugin for Obsidian Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/run-ai-locally-against-your-obsidian-notes-smart-second-brain-plugin/) — Learn how to run AI with the Smart Second Brain plugin for Obsidian. Improve your note-taking by using advanced AI features within your own system. (Marius Bongarts) > [**Summarize with Tiago Forte’s Progressive Highlight Technique**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-art-of-summarization-tiago-fortes-progressive-highlighting-2-0-technique-in-action/) — Do you ever make notes or highlights and never revisit them? It often feels like everything we read is crucial, but we’re encountering it at the wrong time. (Marius Bongarts) --- # 10 Best Article Annotation Tools for Researchers and Students > Struggling to find high-quality annotation tools? Check out our list of 10 advanced article tools, making annotations easy for researchers and students! - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2024-08-12 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Research, Tools - Reading time: 16 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/article-annotation-tools-for-researchers-and-students/ --- Keeping track of digital information can be a real challenge, especially for researchers and students. Highlighting important details, making notes, and staying organized are important for managing your workload effectively. The good news? There are plenty of tools designed to make your reading and note-taking process smoother and more efficient. But with so many options available, how do you choose the best one for your needs? In this blog post, we’ll introduce you to the top 10 article annotation tools that are perfect for anyone working digitally. Let’s find the one that fits your style and makes your academic journey a little easier by saving you time! Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by our company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. ## **List of the 10 Best Article Annotation Tools** 1. [Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)  2. Annotate 3. Helperbird 4. Scrible 5. Spade 6. NoteLedge  7. [Diigo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) 8. Hypotheses.is  9. Zoho Annotator 10. Super Annotate  ## [**1\. Web Highlights**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) ![Web Highlights](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXewK7QjwsMyDZNg-q9t-lVauLSvib_cccUUYBHJXDQMWnRf2_MMgbxRGuoj7kNFCctOdx08FgKm7xTEI9SUo9s0rd1cQt3RaILlODlkXE6Uc_9YQf_3b9FRfa2E1XO4702UT62WKdH4m1xDJAm1uMo8Xlc?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is one of the best article annotation tools you can find out there! Whether you want to improve your note taking as a student or a researcher highlighting relevant information from a browser, this tool has all the features you need.  Web Highlights makes your [learning experience](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/learning/) interesting by adding vibrant colors and bookmarks to your research article, PDFs, and Web pages. With its intuitive features, making annotations is extremely easy and quick.  > [**Guide to Using Web Highlights for Online Text & Notes**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) — Boost your productivity with Web Highlights. With the pdf & web highlighter, you can highlight on the internet just like you do it in books. (Marius Bongarts) ### **Features of Web Highlights** - Annotate any website or PDF - Create tags and make notes - Unlimited offline highlights - [Easy export to different platforms](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/)  - [Flashcards](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) - [Export to different formats](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) - [Email reminders](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) - [Import Kindle notes and highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/)  - Unlimited offline bookmarks - Keyboard shortcuts  - [Learning recap](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) (10 per day) - Powerful full-text search - [Easy Installation](https://web-highlights.com/blog/welcome/) ### **Top 3 Features of Web Highlights**  #### **1\. Extensive Highlighting Features**  ![Extensive Highlighting Features](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcjlsLxqjgOpZP75dVGL4ilqzCg7KRHPUVzbVjViCgVDgzWgy_vG10v3LuAsiA3PjuqSX8u_fGda8izyBvTgIXqAYCdH17Um9sgkdruQKNxdqkQsMZSI3b7JN03ACaEA6dswrY8zt67fi6MeVjlfDkVk6Fl?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) From Kindle books to PDFs, Web Highlights lets you highlight everything with ease using its extensive features. You can choose from a wide range of colors, and the sidebar makes it simple to keep track of all your highlights. #### **2\. Easy Storing And Sharing**  ![Easy Storing And Sharing](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfLPbLy1zScArfIAwXpwr-mAtbbzQOdBuuFsYSOzUzfS8q2PHnvE0jMg6lNa5rCoryvgbS5Ue4H1Dhsw8yZnx5imFXEeae0Q3vS2pSCAmcuY5VwMI10errsvbMcVVu_XFVAn8hGwqleMnWk2LLmcuSJ_D0?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Share and save all your annotations with just one click using the Web Highlights tool. Web Highlights lets you export your annotations and markups into multiple formats, such as PDF and HTML, and to various platforms, including Notion, Obsidian, and Kindle. It also allows you to share them via email. #### **3\. Adding Tags and Notes**  ![Adding Tags and Notes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc4ij31FjBaTIE3EgJpT4X95JgmEHUDq3TAFgzLIafTjkuraVW2lyu4YEqdPWdg8mmuO8gmii5BA0YQGol8-nMsWQdOHPMW_QZLSZo0FMeUdK7_j4EdoVbMjP-LEuT6hw7pfgYZmaZ3szRWgjMEfjavTz5i?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Write notes, add tags, and quotes on any webpage or PDF document as you highlight. Tagging helps you keep track of all the important information and notes that you can easily access later on.  By making notes or tags you can group relevant important information to save time and stay organized in your research or assignments.  ### **Pros of Web Highlights**  - Excellent free version with numerous features - Easily accessible from any device  - Offline access to multiple features  - Easy sync through all devices - Supports multiple exporting formats - Great tagging system ### **Cons of Web Highlights** - Scanned PDFs without a text layer can’t be highlighted - Cloud sync across devices needs a paid plan ### **Pricing of Web Highlights** Web Highlights offers the following  [pricing plans](https://web-highlights.com/pricing)  : - **Basic:**  Free - **Premium**  and  **Ultimate**  plans available. See current prices at  [web-highlights.com/pricing](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . ### **Customer Support Options of Web Highlights**  - [Blogs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/) - [FAQs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/faq-web-highlights-pdf-web-highlighter/) - Email support - [Tutorials](https://web-highlights.com/blog/tag/faq/) ### **Final Verdict on Web Highlights**  Web Highlights is an easy-to-use annotation tool that can be downloaded directly through the [Chrome web store](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and [Microsoft Edge Add-ons](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) . Its unique features include rapid access through a Chrome or Microsoft Edge extension and easy integration with platforms such as Notion and Capacities.  It is the perfect solution for all your annotation challenges! Its user-friendly interface makes it the best choice for students and researchers.  > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter - Chrome Web Store**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. ## **2\. Annotate** ![Annotate](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdLAdPNBR1UVRD5cLa2n91tOZjBYqlz6uOkWh3_lSPIhqyIWfS_K-uLqzY7HB0Q4n0vE2zIkSjZb7CFxWGNK-2s1zJIhuTKikEksrqJM50i9-B6cZLk-m2B7a9jAZfH9rRGgKAGduyu2tK6GOHVLp6bia0g?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) [Annotate](https://www.annotate.com/) is a powerful article annotation tool that allows users to make changes to all their text and image content. It's an excellent choice for researchers and students who want help with their academic projects. It allows teams of researchers or classmates to work together on the same document to save time and stay organized.  ### **Features of Annotate** - Document drafts - Multiple tags - Document management  - In-document collaboration - Easy integration - Freehand notes and side notes ### **Top 3 Features of Annotate** #### **1\. Multiple Tags Category** ![Multiple Tags Category](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe6wzL90v3CnBYyt2BY-oY3wFsoi__goHaArjjPtkpDXwe_jqEZxR_8zYd-tHrBsi7SEhyo3M_HnZaDSqWwFrhfdypwVVZHbvuAbLacm0ZFIi8WgoKwejQNCBw-mDi3VhH4ILTUjlOiZGbp87PgtPjUkn0k?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Add different tags to your documents and annotations you have made. This helps you track and easily find your annotations again.  #### **2\. Annotations And Side Notes** ![Annotations And Side Notes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd22bGWKMSXM9XwiW9zTrkqZ1FfqI4mjcAQlu792AW44P2VW75GuVUCoORplvIR_2UBr8fji7O8k4Q7IJ7-RRRBuLsKH_PTAWFou3RxJBvvSpmVMDaR4vdg0-79zmnhs4RrYTeQYTUX_aq2Z5anZkBBnC8-?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Easily highlight, underline, or mark your documents while also being able to add side comments for better collaboration and understanding. #### **3\. Document Management**  ![Document Management](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfUIO8v7YZapUI8ZYDC-5kHq4gpwIOiQTDzL0M94PtW0KsMRe68Oxp-pagsIg4Ig5teJ5ZePw2ugjIVfHOXpnkVcA-kKp-eTmY09rG3IFfxRCl_WzxY4KteMJAVDrsD-aHNe5UxNEw9zmMawKWtsZXZWHJF?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Annotate allows you to save all your documents in a single Annotate workspace so that you can easily access them from any device at any time.  ### **Pros of Annotate** - Excellent for team collaboration - Security compliance  - Easy interface  ### **Cons of Annotate** - Basic features compared to other tools  - Limited free plan ### **Pricing of Annotate** Annotate offers the following pricing plans: - Free plan for up to 3 users - **Standard:** contact sales team - for a minimum of 3 users with limited advanced features  - **Enterprise:** contact sales team - all features and unlimited storage ### **Customer Support Options of Annotate** - Email support - Demo Videos - Article Guides ### **Final Verdict on Annotate** Annotate is a diverse annotation tool that can help you collaborate with your team through annotations. It supports different document types and has different tools to cater to your annotation requirements and improve your annotation process.  ## **3\. Helperbird** ![Helperbird](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfQ3oUQvu9u02izBmxRAuAlkuDlufMlUDRubKh1FvVkPeQej53pnSqoxrhgUmGrJUH6DX7s_r5yC1A49zz_nBYs5XlEwNZxog6xfN87xQFe_aUVGZD0fszIslCJLRkDQm6_BT7sk3CHM-FY1YQgse9Fj8t3?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) With multiple article annotation features, [Helperbird](https://www.helperbird.com/features/annotation/) is a powerful tool that is great for students and researchers. It allows you to annotate designs and notes easily on multiple document types and websites. It allows you to draw, highlight, and customize fonts for your notes to make them organized and visually appealing.  ### **Features of Helperbird** - Custom annotation colors - Customizable font types and sizes - Dyslexia ruler - Customize paragraphs - Text alignment  ### **Top 3 Features of Helperbird** #### **1\. Multiple Font Types** ![Multiple Font Types](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfxRXzlFFN6PSsLykGZFQ9Vf4LL-PLLtT0ZxUAosIv0uKvUBb96KJTum4CeP3prWSZG0hfeG87_pz0p_2bt3SbfagRsNbwym7Xa6ZD8WnMY-46KwlIIhJLs0E8QApHr-SdtqAXJiPrSztUfjB08SiHyLQdt?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Helperbird offers different types of fonts that you can change on your website and in your files. This helps increase focus and improve readability for researchers and students.  #### **2\. Dyslexia Ruler** ![Dyslexia Ruler](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdJkcTKWO1ckSxdmNgGx38uqiMm1MA20xp3NACi9J12rWa8dEwWdgZcR6vWlPiCRTfGmlA8NcMW8CecPPUdLWI53ji6Kb-bZXZ2-FEya-GMZsxkgdGaq7kKbO_1awLneRjr5r1aKRLIGaa5NNJgVwgtt0D-?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) With Helperbird, you can place a dyslexia ruler to highlight your notes in multiple colors, being able to improve your focus and reduce distractions.  #### **3\. Customize Colors** ![Customize Colors](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXckUcvRjje7LOz4WMZbNTNOCHDmTP03RQnpNgs4r_WFMf460AdDdmC5vB8W30hgE2_GU8qNs9GY712jScm1Leck_7-hEsLriQr04sy7RhbgSzpS69-hcn9VxsF9S9Z-DttZ6DYsddP9i_PqH5dNFc1kUHF6?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Easily adjust font, background, and link colors in your files and websites to have a better reading and note-taking experience.   ### **Pros of Helperbird** - Most annotation features are available for free - Extensive reading features - Extensive color features ### **Cons of Helperbird** - Complex interface - Browser glitches ### **Pricing of Helperbird** Helperbird offers the following pricing plans: - Free  - **Helperbird Pro:** $3.50 /per month - **Pro Unlimited (for schools and businesses):** $129.99 /per month - **Pro Unlimited+ (for enterprises and districts):** Contact sales team ### **Customer Support Options of Helperbird** - Email Support - Help guides - Tutorials ### **Final Verdict on Helperbird** Helperbird is a great tool for anyone who constantly deals with documents and files. Its wide range of features and customization options make it a top choice for any student or researcher.  ## **4\. Scrible**  ![Scrible](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd9LghpyMAZrFd0Ob8BU20VKBOK2KFvye6X5fstfgNYLSxfoYGMXVK2hTMFxdQyJOhUSpSE43GFl1Q69zIErSpjEAQz8nW9-D0K3VY0YoXLlMg5i6gzP-7x22eQqM_O-oH4nFYVXMPwBq6Qh25wmPhOLPw?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) [Scribble](https://www.scrible.com/) is an extensive article annotation tool specifically designed for students, researchers, and educators. It makes your research process more optimized and collaborative by allowing you to save, annotate, and organize PDFs and web pages. ### **Features of Scrible**  - Store files in the cloud - Annotation tags - Bookmarks - Direct comments on web pages - Drag and drop annotations  ### **Top 3 Features of Scrible**  #### **1\. Cloud Saving** ![Cloud Saving](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe2bWxjbNRQNno6pUcXwJIiqi0me55v4DhL90v6vLUCLAM8w6C3J4vJAz0ZeJHnkwkXn8U8TXV8o-PS00HesQKEfpdPu0aB9R4YBpEztf-1ngcSv3KHML11EcrNkYoajE3YcFWAxKqfFMnxUbmmX5o8Lbk?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Scrible saves multiple file types including websites and databases instantly to your cloud library, so you do not lose track of important information sources.  #### **2\. Real-time Annotations** ![Real-time Annotations](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf-PX-DlDtE5CUNW5bTOqb3-HmWS1wYZPVgLheMvdKliBgMOUzuHaPbTYzK4OEaZTsv0duKhBcsV5VUGxqzWAlADqkRtyf77GZh7vUo2XfFtbGcP9kOGuHDRdGAyvv3LtE9dWYUpK-SQFzoUizMGrDrM-Q?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) With Scrible, you can add annotations directly to your web pages while also being able to share comments with your team members. #### **3\. Text Search Tags** ![Text Search Tags](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcManXnoz59z-Z07LYE-RmP5_7xCTYpJ2kIfpBoGhljJ4IJ72LEtDA9u-_U1yc-Y8F9etHj2swYe9MJ5e6yua4Gwd0q_bEOXdSZNpxqspBUBng2T9Xc5xShz4M1gwaMqeH9U9zyQ2wIMi_FGNqnR0Tkglk?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) You can add text search tags to your files and documents, to find important information later on. This helps save time and keeps your content organized. ### **Pros of Scrible**  - Easy collaboration  - Easy to use  - Allows you to bookmark websites  ### **Cons of Scrible**  - Regularly times out - Advanced features available in premium only - One-time payments are not feasible for everyone  ### **Pricing of Scrible** Scrible offers the following pricing plans: - **Basic:** Free - **Edu:** Free - for K12 users only - **Edu Pro Student:** $35/year USD, $20/ 6 months, $12/ 3 months - **Edu Pro Teacher:**  $119.99/year, $69.99/ 6 months ### **Customer Support Options of Scrible**  - FAQs  - Email support - Online demos ### **Final Verdict on Scrible**  Scrible is a highly useful tool, especially for academic study and research, because it records thorough annotations and allows you to highlight and comment on online articles. The free plans have limited storage but have all the basic features that a student or researcher needs for their articles and research papers. ## **5\. Spade** ![Spade](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdnTZCszs23RZOgVY67dGCygDuh_LOrFB4R_4tSuQb7Rq-cagbtR4v3bGpZT06W2OzL_YAcpQXH8V4_Y5TYD8emmmhPtE1LxuwYALYK78Iafg-00GpaUacslcys5bGNGkE7Jh_KIhRTOdamOwlZPl7bdkHS?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) [Spade](https://spade.tools/) is another annotation tool that allows easy marking on websites and web pages. It creates a toolbar for you with multiple features to support different annotate types, which helps students and researchers save time spent searching for different features.  This tool offers on-page collaboration with shareable annotation links for better collaboration.  ### **Features of Spade** - Note-taking - Download and share annotated files - Pen highlighter  - Text boxes - Keyboard shortcuts ### **Top 3 Features of Spade** #### **1\. Web Annotations**  ![Web Annotations](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeigrb2vdlcj80Xvvq8pACN4k4Fri3ZHKfZqPG3DKWb_1kG71vmwBAr1aIOoP6FZg83y-pFwOtq4o35YhIS-H1fauFM1KUnMD_hxvhJIgPxhjAn4SLPf7ywQPNBEmN8U1BhuRkLtozyS7q1nOEND3vQAA?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Easily annotate websites as you scroll through for information in your articles. Draw shapes, add highlights, and comments with Spade.  #### **2\. Work on PDFs** ![Work on PDFs](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeiKrM6sCbJS3yZy2FuYZvdvwF4L-8t7h9ENaPpPev5SbklS-sKrfuy_iFT4HG14mGEEzNKyZoIWNo9PvdOHpHg7IuKJro4UlgvIm1K4Lj1OZxER5AzMtKOoSxYBgQ0giAzez69QC1zaq78p5FdIMK5zQo?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) With Spade’s toolbar, you can add pen annotations freely along with shapes to highlight important notes and information.  #### **3\. Keyboard Shortcuts** ![Keyboard Shortcuts](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdtnPerE2deyktAXX2P3lnO7ExgZ1O1pB6uPrYlVDc0Cqr5MbuJ8jcokKy7vgsHk7xOt-jiZf05e4A_xo7KbW7AZpSr7xLw4G9w7fuu_2Hul7FShUGg7-gqaZ6VVYaIsLQiZwHhaL_RzJt-3Wnn7oyHYd9Y?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Spade has keyboard shortcuts that allow you to switch between tools, and also undo or redo your annotations. This saves time and helps make your annotation process more smooth.  ### **Pros of Spade** - Easy-to-install tool - Easy to use - Keeps data secure  ### **Cons of Spade** - Delayed support responsiveness - Basic features compared to other tools - Limited usage help available online ### **Pricing of Spade** - Free extension  ### **Customer Support Options of Spade** - Web support  - Online blogs ### **Final Verdict on Spade** With Spade, you can share and link ideas, information, and inspiration with annotations on any website. Annotations are arranged in folders and saved to the cloud, where they can be easily shared with other team members. ## **6\. NoteLedge** ![NoteLedge](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeJlwiuZsm6tgsiB6nuLgboJfc1y1k94Bn-o5dnHVcaQUJJtAxLBUdpIGZKefWGnGV_PLxMQtSfazy6mZGIu_R4vj9O8Cxgw9pzXDANLnqHeZihDA6DfkGmtv4kJNJz0psURDL_Wxu_9s9H53wL7cPOpuo?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) [NoteLedge](https://www.kdan.com/noteledge) is a free note-taking app that allows for easy article annotation. This tool is perfect for students and researchers who want to organize their notes and annotations while also keeping track of important stuff.   With this article annotation tool, you can highlight, take notes, and add mockups to your article.  ### **Features of NoteLedge**  - Content Organization - Easy Sketches  - Real-time collaboration - Note-taking  ### **Top 3 Features of NoteLedge** #### **1\. Note-taking** ![Note-taking](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe4Cs-Qu98px56x_Hai7EysTkFusOD36_wqgxrVfNg6kd4uEv-Rud5vKDERBOT54t6Qk5zIQd9Hzsa-7BRW0keAZ1wYINgAgie1G9O1TGethd0Illj_bET9yF5zyo0-wJtuX5XaXkQ8x_L5J1hc9pIMWVA?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Integrate text, videos, audio clips, and image annotation tools into your notes to make your study and research materials engaging.  #### **2\. Freehand Writing Notes**  ![Freehand Writing Notes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcB4rfbak1En8eO5pKX6CpUgtoTAX2NJ91DkIjUpuany-v50l1lMfY12luJUS_TsSFAN0L_4FQV6LdZuvDQqY105RNxCKVYJhQPfO8g0y1X-fMtIERPD0QrOj7slLQXXdSHV2SS3JH2EGOQ2EPTC-HXL-aW?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) You can write notes with your hands or a digital pen while being able to customize the fonts and colors of your text.   #### **3\. Content Organization**  ![Content Organization](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcqC4GMVpaJRFh4TcAshlBUvz5JgwITE7asTOfMiwp-fJR8AC6SpqJqb6XIo1b6WQroBaayXsK4tDKPHT8sNLtPSQ0JVmbr5fTVsWWvBD1tKtyPP7U38mp1cyseZiLbz7C_A38yP6s9TpPEZQcKsT62Prkf?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Organize your PDFs, articles, and other contents easily with NoteLedge’s style boards, annotations, and highlighting features. This will help you brainstorm ideas and key takeaways from your article.  ### **Pros of NoteLedge** - Multiple note-taking features - User-friendly interface - Aesthetic features ### **Cons of NoteLedge**  - Limited free version - Complex usage  - Advanced features available in the paid plan only ### **Pricing of NoteLedge** NoteLedge offers the following pricing plans: - Free plan  - **Pro Plan:** $2.49 per month  - **Creativity 365:** $4.99 per month ### **Customer Support Options of NoteLedge**  - Email support - Web support ### **Final Verdict on NoteLedge** NoteLedge is a powerful tool for those who want more than just text annotation. Its multi-media capabilities make it a great choice for students and researchers to take notes and make webpage annotations.  ## **7.** [**Diigo**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector)   ![Diigo](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeO0djFhREyvCR9OSEcBprTVnPCQTOr9Jjyxx1I8ClK244aFb58nTtusOK3Eo-SjsEaa8Y8sD22E3PrnLMFqODK7Q6iNOoMA_r1omVRIi2FG7dEcqQj37IFxsNvWqAugq5n0W6pfSB9JV253ToHcRKBu3TS?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) [Diigo](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) is a powerful research and knowledge-sharing annotation tool that helps you bookmark, annotate, and arrange your online files or websites.  It is perfect for students and researchers who want to keep their digital resources organized and easily accessible. ### **Features of Diigo** - Highlights and sticky notes on web pages - Bookmarks  - Tags for content organization - Easy sharing of annotations - Customizable outliners ### **Top 3 Features of Diigo** #### **1\. Easy Bookmarking**  ![Easy Bookmarking](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdPaJ0SKG-CuVaQNe6lND3NCP-bbJ9olvLjojQFjzmbMdmRZgGbBK0KGlQaj0bzfjOHbDpaq_8G4S08TkWJ-Ubvea_Xb1QvzKwgMYJXStBHC38Ja_zI7mHm0yhUEUOyRvVTcGzIYL7tl5p13WgBRuBCzBo?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) The instant bookmarking feature allows you to keep track of key points and sites that you want to get back to later.  #### **2\. Multiple Highlighting Features**  ![Multiple Highlighting Features](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeQpG1Y9IIW5Mnb6iBK80FNilju6C7gPK0mih7QlsiO6wG8gGpmV10ZWWfERDwmuaZRNzf86_kdlkBZsuOsJxw14LP6l6UWvDbhQcGeCOEGYlWjq3xAfe4-m_o5LJLBRX9T0o8qgdJaWbskA3FzBBOauAA?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) You can easily highlight any text in your file and also change its color and share it with your classmates or clients.  #### **3\. Annotating Screenshots** ![Annotating Screenshots](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfrhBjoQgYtftu7MrJDevJLdKlh94xerq19FsyYCcBrTXtiX0rq8gFOqtqOI9uiRqGVNqaeVccAxK9jDKMekZQRXSa1EAY1anNvdbHgfCciBWjrVID001E82BtZBINaXMgBKt2XTEuje-k7fiaiyrQS6x5a?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Easily capture live screenshots and add highlights or text to them. You can also share them with your team members as they are automatically saved in HTML and image format.  ### **Pros of Diigo** - Easy extension installation - Easy sharing  - User friendly - Organizes large files ### **Cons of Diigo** - Limited features in mobile apps - Not all features are saved automatically - One-time payments are not feasible  - Limited storage in the free plan ### **Pricing of Diigo** Diigo offers the following pricing plans: - Free Plan - **Standard:** $5 /per month, $40/ per year - **Professional:** $6/ per month, $59/ per year - **Business:** $10 per month per user  ### **Customer Support Options of Diigo** - Email support - AOL customer service ### **Final Verdict on Diigo**  Diigo is an easy-to-use article annotation tool that helps you add bookmarks and outliners to your files, allowing students and researchers to keep their work organized.  With the premium plans, you can store almost all annotations in your cloud for easy access and have access to more accurate annotation features.  > [**Diigo - Web Collector Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/diigo-web-collector) — Read our in-depth review of Diigo - Web Collector. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Diigo. ## **8\. Hypothes.is** ![Hypothes.is](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfMSaR9zi8oeuEi9-nIiv_nDNObrk9gUdHdQSEAKizGN8y9HoSbfu3TO-uW5okdhiCqvb7OQVoMewLMCxOSvca04Y7uAXfazrkMdllgZiBBTvw63V0S4aWGWMP-pjU6HcU7tD573byM8FQQ5f6pYRAjjXB9?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Another unique and free Chrome-based tool for annotating PDFs and webpages, [Hypothes.is](http://hypothes.is/) allows you to annotate documents socially and make both private and public notes. It adds a sidebar for annotations on any web content and has simple installation through the company website. ### **Features of Hypothes.is** - Social annotations - Reply to annotations - In-search notes - Public and private comments ### **Top 3 Features of Hypothes.is** #### **1\. Visual Annotations**  ![Visual Annotations](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcO5NoRT-omZnSAfmRgveazGYmQh5Z7Om614n6Mxe_JqFRx__NVQlCj2-LrXKmkATOz3jrLKn3LLVXuSSvim7OW1nIXQJaoApcKoJP0AP4d2bUYRtQNBR_cxKneK9khjCBfIq62-6crSjB0re3QkGdKDpNy?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Students can mark passages in Hypothesis and read comments with other students to validate ideas and establish new connections.  #### **2\. Social Annotation**  ![Social Annotation](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcf5aAAUIQz9_dqYfeWfwAX6jmAeC7ZO9ArF1L_xeh_nA-SeGpEwJPuVEeKd75auK7OsKaFFegQcSGc_xzmTMMlTGo-KQNVI1vUQFJKa1-CGMfbLd05PKKspL4k04xbUOboUlAwXHncNbfeQFQtrqjac7U7?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Social annotation makes students more responsible and forces them to read carefully while making notes and comments that can be accessed by teachers.  #### **3\. Replying to Annotations** ![Replying to Annotations](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfE_Pp3Wb_oKoEVkMe7YJb5rLs_dJz-VvTuBUDQYK-tPWN2E5Tm3gE1HD2yz2b7FKVtUxi0EuftnKM530Gtc6mYw5500gqT4Fu8qeSsmlJXGZwMCNSfg1Ixy_Ne7_9_Hpz5s41bD57CQnYgHdMwP0mwYl5v?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) With Hypothes.is, you can reply to your annotations to add further information to your articles and make important notes. This feature is also great when working with your classmates or team members.  ### **Pros of Hypothes.is** - Unlimited updates - Easy to use - Friendly interface for students  - Supports digital learning  ### **Cons of Hypothes.is** - Limited visuals - Technical glitches - Basic features compared to other tools ### **Pricing of Hypothes.is** - Free Web app - Customized plans are available too ### **Customer Support Options of Hypothes.is** - Support ticket - Web support  - FAQs - Online articles  ### **Final Verdict on Hypothes.is** This open-source annotation tool easily connects with other systems while capturing annotations, comments, highlights, and tags. Hypothes.is is a great tool for researchers and students as it promotes active engagement with texts. You can create a free account or buy a plan for more advanced features.  ## **9\. Zoho Annotator** ![Zoho Annotator](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfVefgwpQJI79m4Ml5zyJQVYKsafAsjzEqgdIAMSQ0d1gkDAlrP_CJSRvqROMdoVHEtFlOgbzWFeJ6jJLqHI2ECzlZQIwwX6ndWhiu5yYzyB1goGkzGKdHR8n6JadVsGvScoZQOtfO3rZD9_5yX4rnyc0lH?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) With the help of [Zoho Annotator](https://www.zoho.com/annotator/) , you can annotate web pages with context and save your edits as an image. This article annotation tool enables you to visually represent notes on online pages without ever leaving your computer browser.  ### **Features of Zoho Annotator** - Snapshots - Mark highlights - Comments and tagging - Smudge confidential data ### **Top 3 Features of Zoho Annotator** #### **1\. Highlight and Draw** ![Highlight and Draw](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe8_Xn9l_OuAENht_EctYuONMJZZqe7zh6pHgyr3TanIRB04VNHdSofrfNYRhnnfa9htkI9gS2jc9RC2Gskz0VCStD7dZAZ0uwhDd2tPWWqsK8hag977do45_nHj9Xa1sITetGkZZed-NSB2KFNrgRcJL4?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) To highlight important information, use the square and circle shapes in the Zoho Annotator. You can also circle spots with the freehand sketching tool. #### **2\. Organized Comments**  ![Organized Comments](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcXsrZvAXDR4_1TpCu3LPEo_64QvSmyAvsDc8bqZWDTaQHyxQEdLqCWuYC1OKoQuG1RZIQ0AmazWZZPL8Hiyc8CXz9e9as9IvT0gbDqkgYMcdEMwVYFqmH1oAgWOaBgju0hSBlgBQbFZLYXcNwV77bJxIrz?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) To add more annotations to your files, you can write comments next to the highlighted areas or utilize tagging features in any of your apps.  #### **3\. Blur Unwanted Information**  ![Blur Unwanted Information](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe7Z2Pz7YDtZe1t-9qDfmqVy0i49fXYePM8xXkZWtODn59eV1RKo0PQamtDGXG_x_5_6iWqngw9lz98H0htsgPLP39hnOxNAdtK2UY9kGLxgE9BehrMl-ev8xizp7iO-8csjb9M_U7Upw0kuruNDHsmyBM?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Smudge or blur private or irrelevant information without affecting the remainder of the article for you to annotate easily.  ### **Pros of Zoho Annotator** - Unlimited updates - Supports multiple content types  - Annotate without leaving your browser ### **Cons of Zoho Annotator** - Limited online support - Limited integration  - Learning curve for beginners ### **Pricing of Zoho Annotator** - Free  ### **Customer Support Options of Zoho Annotator** - Web support - Email support - Phone support ### **Final Verdict on Zoho Annotator** Zoho Annotator is a free article annotation tool that allows you to add, highlight and draw on different web pages. It is easy to use and understand for students who are interested in online reading and studying. ## **10\. Super Annotate** ![Super Annotate](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfuvRy50kykp5ZXHMT5h_MCWepdtSCWA34h4OcqfYCr34AKXaGzReo_HA2xtDWB2Bt-P-KUwz0-S0-PdEFCpTWlygM-nHUYZcARAk1ZbfOf0lRxaukGFZdrROFPs95KiEmMN7i_Yi8CyhhVJbbKSTlJ8Z9q?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) [Super Annotate](https://www.superannotate.com/annotation-tool) is a specialized annotation editor which helps you manage and organize your work. If you are a researcher or a student who frequently works with different document files, this tool will help you with a wide range of annotations.  ### **Features of Super Annotate** - Keyboard Shortcuts  - Add Comments  - Different Document version options - Export/Import Annotations ### **Top 3 Features of Super Annotate**  #### **1\. Annotate**  ![Annotate](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfbsEB7wOMhf0hDOUXuvdUC_hWlquQln6YatdwvuOHtOob4NLYoVc1TXcMjjzTWRqpwUdHlz_GuLflUbcSRMy3UEcRu91rUncgCf57WW2jD0X2UIEn8BlIn10Ki7JoKyLBhDjMShXnVy09nOjMp0jZZsPI_?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) With Super Annotate, you can highlight and add tags to your notes to identify relevant information.  #### **2\. Add Comments and Notes**  ![Add Comments and Notes](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcpHXecW3-n8V7GkT0Uq7I8xF3N4rMIxkA4Efl31rPg1zIavy_kBpkFc5DdNuHASV1jrOGgVOTc-BdLouQ8PmrGZTrWtleOmAtl7jYdymvNlr0MOWErLpH__BOX1XBEmJWLWB1xxEox9i3zyBaccYAeHhZ6?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) You can easily add notes or extra comments to your annotations for more clarity and better collaboration.  #### **3\. Keyboard Shortcuts** ![Keyboard Shortcuts](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc-MvSx20-AQmxZoJvbwEQ_-ksIdbjsRFgSSml-D7GnQNTBO0M9tPRfGJOlCqSg9SmyoPk8fjVFEyAxiaLjw8ze_7Vdo0g8cG_JSwxlVadUv6O2n1h8gEtd9_HtdZx8si9V0gMz5fFRff5ezoCpce54q_V2?key=xwEWfTbF6gY8RbdGuR5g8Q) Super Annotation offers multiple keyboard texts to add text, arrows, highlighters, icons, and more, which helps save your time and allows for a quick annotation process.  ### **Pros of Super Annotate**  - Extensive online support is available  - Multiple image annotation features  - User-friendly interface ### **Cons of Super Annotate** - Complex advanced features - Limited customization - Expensive for small businesses ### **Pricing of Super Annotate** Super Annotate offers the following pricing plans: - **Free:** Startup and Academic - **Pro:** Free features plus complex features - **Enterprise:** Contact Sales ### **Customer Support Options of Super Annotate** - FAQs - Help Blogs - Email support ### **Final Verdict on Super Annotate** Super Annotate is a great article annotation tool that can be used across multiple platforms, with most of its features available for free.   It has different annotation tools and also offers keyboard shortcuts for students and researchers to stay organized and save time. ## **Key Takeaways** Finding the right article annotation tool can be challenging. That's why  we have summarized the top 10 article annotation tools in this blog that will save you time and fulfill all your annotation requirements.  Among these, [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) stands out as it offers extensive features and easy integrations, making it an invaluable asset for both researchers and students. ## **Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS)** ### **1\. What are article annotation tools?** Article annotation tools are applications that allow users to add notes, highlights, and comments, and make other changes to digital documents and web pages. These tools help researchers and students stay organized, save time, and collaborate on their reading materials. ### **2\. Why should researchers and students use annotation tools?** Annotation tools will improve your studying and research process by making it easier to highlight important information, add bookmarks, organize notes, and collaborate with others. They save time and improve the accuracy of your academic work. ### **3\. Which tool is best to use for research and academic purposes?**  Most of these tools can be used for academic purposes as they have features like highlighting, note-taking, and tags. However, [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) can be the perfect tool for you as it offers unique features like flashcards and email reminders, which help you keep track of your assignments, deadlines, and important notes.  ### **4\. Is Web Highlights a free tool?** Yes, most of Web Highlights’ features are available for free, including unlimited offline highlights and bookmarks. However, it has affordable paid plans as well, which include more advanced features for experts and those working on a large scale. As a student or a researcher, the basic free plan will be able to fulfill all your annotation requirements.  ### **5\. Does Web Highlights offer any export options to other workspaces?** Yes, with Web Highlights, you can easily export your annotations and files to any other workspace. Web Highlights supports multiple workspaces, including Notion, Markdown, Capacities, and more. --- # The Best New Tab Chrome Extensions for 2026 > Discover the best New Tab Chrome extensions for 2026 to boost productivity, stay organized, and customize your browsing experience with ease. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-08-12 - Updated: 2026-10-12 - Tags: Tools, Chrome Extension, New Tab Chrome Extensions - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-new-tab-chrome-extensions-for-2024/ --- [New Tab Chrome extensions](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/categories/new-tab) are tools that customize your browser's default new tab page, transforming it into something more useful and visually appealing. Whether you want to boost productivity, stay organized, or simply add a personal touch to your browsing experience, these extensions offer a range of features like to-do lists, inspiring backgrounds, quick access to apps, and more. This list covers eleven New Tab Chrome extensions for 2026 — from bare link lists to full widget dashboards — plus one bonus that is not a new tab page at all. > [**Building Your Own New Tab Chrome Extension**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-your-own-new-tab-chrome-extension/) — How to build a beautiful New Tab Chrome Extension with plain HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Components (Marius Bongarts) --- Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. One entry, New Tab Landscapes, paid for its listing and is labelled as sponsored. The bonus entry at the end, Web Highlights, is our own extension. How this list was made: the extensions come from Tooltivity’s New Tab category. Tooltivity rates each extension from its Chrome Web Store listing, its ratings and what recent reviews report. The order below is an editorial selection, not a ranking by score, and New Tab Landscapes’ #4 spot is a paid placement. The descriptions summarize each listing and what its users report. Ratings and user counts come from the Chrome Web Store, checked on October 12, 2026. Here are the New Tab Chrome extensions on this list: ## [1\. Bonjourr](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/bonjourr-minimalist-new-tab) ![Bonjourr (Rating: 4.9, Users: 400,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/bonjourr-minimalist-new-tab.webp) *Bonjourr ( Rating: 4.9, Users: 400,000+)* [Bonjourr](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/bonjourr-minimalist-new-tab) holds 4.9 stars across more than 24,000 ratings on the Chrome Web Store, with 400,000 users — and it earns that with restraint. You get a clock, the weather, your quick links, a search bar, and photo and video backgrounds that change with the mood of the day. Nothing blinks at you. It is open source and needs no account, and there are custom fonts and CSS underneath if you like tinkering. One limit its reviewers mention: widgets sit in preset positions, so you cannot drop them anywhere you like. **Key Features of Bonjourr:** - Photo and video backgrounds that change through the day, plus a clock, weather and quick links. - Open source, no account required. - Custom fonts and CSS for anyone who wants to reshape it. ## [2\. PresentBoard - New tab dashboard](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/presentboard) ![PresentBoard (Rating: 4.2, Users: 6,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2025/01/Screenshot-2025-01-13-at-09.35.37-min-min.webp) *PresentBoard - ( Rating: 4.2, Users: 6,000+)* PresentBoard is a highly customizable dashboard built from widgets. Its Chrome Web Store listing names around 20 of them — calendars, to-do lists, weather, news headlines, stock prices, a Pomodoro timer — and you can place each one anywhere on the page, in any size. With about 6,000 users it is one of the smaller extensions here, but it is actively developed: the listing logs an update for every season since spring 2025. If you like having all your information in one place every time you open a new tab, this is the dashboard-style pick. The listing describes the widgets as free and also notes in-app purchases. **Key Features** : - **Customizable Widgets** : Choose from widgets like calendars, weather updates, and to-do lists. - **Enhanced Bookmarks** : The bookmarks widget gives you quick access to your favorite websites. - **Calendar Integration** : Connect your Google Calendar and iCal sources. Check out a [detailed review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/presentboard) here: > [**PresentBoard - New tab dashboard Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/presentboard) — Read our in-depth review of PresentBoard - New tab dashboard. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to PresentBoard. [PresentBoard](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/presentboard) is available in the Chrome Web Store. You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/presentboard/install) . ## [3\. Momentum](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/momentum) ![Momentum (Rating: 4.5, Users: 2,000,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-12-at-09.59.43.webp) *Momentum ( Rating: 4.5, Users: 2,000,000+)* [Momentum](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/momentum) turns your new tab page into a daily dashboard: a new background, mantra and quote each day, plus a to-do list and a Focus Mode. With 2 million users on the Chrome Web Store, it is the most widely used extension on this list. **Key Features** : - A new background, mantra and quote each day. - Focus Mode and built-in to-do lists. - The paid Plus plan adds unlimited Focus Mode, a vision board, and Notes AI. Check out a [detailed review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/momentum) here: > [**Momentum Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/momentum) — Read our in-depth review of Momentum. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Momentum. Momentum is available in the Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Edge Store, Mozilla Firefox Add-ons Store, and Safari Extension Store. You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/momentum/install) . ## [4\. New Tab Landscapes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-landscapes) **Sponsored:** New Tab Landscapes paid for its listing, which includes this spot. ![New Tab Landscapes (Rating: 4.5, Users: 700+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-26-at-07.34.33.webp) *New Tab Landscapes ( Rating: 4.5, Users: 700+)* [New Tab Landscapes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-landscapes)  swaps Chrome’s default new tab for a photo-first page. Each tab opens on an HD landscape from Pexels photographers — mountains, beaches, forests, sunsets — with a blurred preview while the full image loads. It’s a pick for people who want landscape photography first, with a few focus tools around it. Version 3.0.0, released in September 2026, added a Pomodoro timer, a habit tracker with weekly and monthly grids, and a task list that is stored locally on your device — all reached from a dock at the bottom of the page. You can also add your own site shortcuts and switch between a horizontal grid and a vertical sidebar. It’s still a small install on the Store, with about 700 users and 12 ratings. **Key Features**  : - **HD landscape wallpapers**  : High-resolution nature photography from Pexels on every new tab. - **Wallpaper categories**  : Mountains, beaches, forests, deserts, lakes, sunsets and more. - **Focus tools**  : A Pomodoro timer, a habit tracker and a local task list in a bottom dock. > [**New Tab Landscapes Review & Alternatives | ProdApps**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-landscapes) — Read our in-depth review of New Tab Landscapes. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Landscapes. (Tooltivity) [New Tab Landscapes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-landscapes)  is available in the Chrome Web Store. You can  [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-landscapes/install)  . ## [5\. A Fine Start](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/a-fine-start) ![A Fine Start (Rating: 5.0, Users: 2,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/a-fine-start.webp) *A Fine Start ( Rating: 5.0, Users: 2,000+)* [A Fine Start](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/a-fine-start) goes the opposite way to everything else here: no photography, no widgets, no clock. Just a plain text list of your links, sorted into groups you can fold away. If a new tab is a launchpad rather than a view, this is the most stripped-back option on the list. It is also one of the smallest — about 2,000 Chrome users and 20 ratings — so it is a niche pick rather than a safe default. Only cross-device sync sits behind the Premium subscription. **Key Features of A Fine Start:** - A plain text list of links in foldable groups, sorted by drag and drop. - No images or widgets, and no account unless you want sync. - Free apart from cross-device sync. ## [6\. Tabliss](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/tabliss-new-tab) ![Tabliss (Rating: 4.7, Users: 100,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/tabliss-new-tab.webp) *Tabliss ( Rating: 4.7, Users: 100,000+)* [Tabliss](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/tabliss-new-tab) fills each new tab with Unsplash photography you narrow down by topic, search term or collection — with widgets entirely optional. Its most unusual quality is what it asks for: no browser permissions at all. Be aware that development has stalled: the Chrome Web Store version was last updated in April 2022, and the community fork TablissNG is where the fixes are landing. **Key Features of Tabliss:** - Unsplash backgrounds chosen by topic, search term or collection. - Requests no browser permissions. - Widgets are opt-in, so it can stay completely bare. ## [7\. New Tab Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-notes) ![New Tab Notes](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-20-at-18.37.34.webp) *New Tab Notes* [New Tab Notes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-notes) turns your new tab into a distraction-free notepad with rich text formatting, task lists and auto-sync. Its Chrome Web Store listing shows 4.7 stars and 2,000 users. **Key Features** : - **Rich Text Formatting** : Use markdown and shortcuts for easy text styling. - **Auto-Sync** : Notes are saved and synced by your browser across devices, with no third-party servers involved. - **Customization** : Adjust fonts, zoom, and toggle between dark/light themes. - **Export Options** : Download notes as Markdown, HTML, or plain text. Check out a [detailed review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-notes) here: > [**New Tab Notes Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-notes) — Read our in-depth review of New Tab Notes. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to New Tab Notes. ## [**8\. Humble New Tab Page**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab) ![Humble New Tab Page (Rating: 4.7, Users: 30,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-12-at-09.58.30.webp) *Humble New Tab Page ( Rating: 4.7, Users: 30,000+)* [Humble New Tab Page](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab) offers a clean, simple interface for your new tab page, featuring your bookmarks, apps, most visited and recently closed sites in a customizable layout. It suits people who prefer simplicity and function over flashiness. The extension is also open source, so you can tweak it further if you wish. Its Chrome Web Store version was last updated in October 2023. The source code is available under the MIT license and can be found [here](https://github.com/ibillingsley/HumbleNewTabPage) . **Key Features** : - Customizable layout: drag and drop folders to create or reorder columns. - Fast loading and lightweight. - Open source, with customizable fonts, colors, and spacing. Check out a [detailed review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab) here: > [**Humble New Tab Page Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab) — Read our in-depth review of Humble New Tab Page. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Humble New Tab. [Humble New Tab](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab) browser extension is available in the Chrome Web Store, and Mozilla Firefox Add-ons Store. You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/humble-new-tab/install) . ## [9\. Infinity New Tab (Pro)](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/infinity-new-tab-pro) **Note** : When this list was first published in 2024, the Chrome Web Store warned that this extension [might soon no longer be supported](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-are-chrome-extensions-no-longer-supported/). That warning is gone, and the extension was last updated in July 2026. ![Infinity New Tab Pro (Rating: 4.9, Users: 300,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-12-at-10.00.09.webp) *Infinity New Tab Pro ( Rating: 4.9, Users: 300,000+)* [Infinity New Tab (Pro)](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/infinity-new-tab-pro) replaces your new tab page with a customizable dashboard: shortcuts, your bookmarks and most visited sites, wallpapers, and small tools such as weather, a to-do list and notes. An optional Gmail badge shows your unread count. Two things worth knowing from its store listing: the new tab may include a few partner shortcuts by default (the listing names eBay), which you can delete, and it is the only extension on this list whose store page lacks Chrome’s “Follows recommended practices” badge. **Key Features** : - Customizable shortcuts, wallpaper, layout and icon style on your new tab page. - Optional Gmail badge that shows your unread count and notifies you of new emails. - Additional tools like weather, a to-do list, and notes. Check out a [detailed review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/infinity-new-tab-pro) here: > [**Infinity New Tab (Pro) Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/infinity-new-tab-pro) — Read our in-depth review of Infinity New Tab (Pro). Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Infinity New Tab. Infinity New Tab is available in the Chrome Web Store, and Microsoft Edge Store. You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/infinity-new-tab-pro/install) . ## [10\. New Tab Draft](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-draft) ![New Tab Draft (Rating: 4.8, Users: 9,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-12-at-09.59.04.webp) *New Tab Draft ( Rating: 4.8, Users: 9,000+)* [New Tab Draft](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-draft) turns your new tab into a clean writing space for quick notes, ideas, or to-dos. All notes are stored locally in your browser, not in the cloud. Its Chrome Web Store version was last updated in November 2022. **Key Features** : - Simple, clean note-taking directly on your new tab page. - Local storage: your notes stay in your browser, not in the cloud. - Extras like calculations, font and background options, and auto-backup to a local folder. Check out a [detailed review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-draft) here: > [**New Tab Draft: Simple Note-Taking Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-draft) — Read our in-depth review of New Tab Draft: Simple Note-Taking. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to New Tab Draft. New Tab Draft is available in the Chrome Web Store, and Mozilla Firefox Add-ons Store. You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-draft/install) . ## [11\. Calendar New Tab (formerly New Tab Calendar with ChatGPT)](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-calendar-with-chatgpt) ![Calendar New Tab (Rating: 4.8, Users: 10,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-12-at-09.58.39.webp) *Calendar New Tab - ( Rating: 4.8, Users: 10,000+)* [Calendar New Tab](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-calendar-with-chatgpt) — the Meomni extension that was listed as “New Tab Calendar with ChatGPT” when this article first appeared — puts your calendar on the new tab page. It connects to Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook and adds task lists, a ChatGPT sidebar, Gmail notifications, notes and news feeds. Themes, wallpapers, colors, fonts and layout can be customized, and the store listing notes in-app purchases. **Key Features** : - Task management with Google Tasks, Todoist, TickTick, and Microsoft To Do. - Calendar integration with Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. - RSS news feeds, weather forecasts, and a ChatGPT sidebar. Check out a [detailed review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-calendar-with-chatgpt) here: > [**New Tab Calendar with ChatGPT from Meomni Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-calendar-with-chatgpt) — Read our in-depth review of New Tab Calendar with ChatGPT from Meomni. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to New Tab Calendar. The [Calendar New Tab](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-calendar-with-chatgpt) browser extension is available in the Chrome Web Store, and Microsoft Edge Store. You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/new-tab-calendar-with-chatgpt/install) . ## [Bonus: Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) ![The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-12-at-10.04.02.webp) *The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store* Web Highlights is our own extension, and it is not a new tab page — it is here as a bonus for people who read and research a lot online. It lets you highlight text, take notes, and save bookmarks on any website or PDF. The extension is free to use and needs no account. **Key Features** : - [Highlight websites and PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) , take notes, and create tags. - Cloud sync across devices is part of the paid plans, free for a 7-day trial. - One-click [export to Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) and Capacities, Markdown copy for [Obsidian](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) , and — on the Ultimate plan — [email reminders](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) . Check out our [detailed review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) here: > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights) — Read our in-depth review of Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Web Highlights. Web Highlights is available in the Chrome Web Store, the Microsoft Edge Store, and the Firefox Add-ons Store. You can [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights/install) . --- # The Best Ad Blocker Chrome Extensions for 2026 > Discover the best ad blocker Chrome extensions for 2026. Enjoy faster, safer browsing with top-rated ad blockers like AdGuard, Ghostery, uBlock Origin Lite, and more. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-08-06 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-ad-blocker-chrome-extensions-for-2024/ --- Browsing the web without interruptions is more important than ever in 2026. [Ad blockers](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/categories/ad-blocker) enhance your online experience by removing unwanted ads, improving page load times and protecting your privacy. In this article, we’ll highlight the [best ad blocker Chrome extensions](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/categories/ad-blocker/browsers/chrome-web-store) for 2026, ensuring you have a smooth and secure browsing experience. If you're looking for Ad Blockers for other browsers, take a look at our curated lists with in-depth reviews: - [Best Ad Blocker Extensions for Firefox](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/categories/ad-blocker/browsers/mozilla-firefox-add-on-store) - [Best Ad Blocker Extensions for Safari](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/categories/ad-blocker/browsers/safari-extension-store) - [Best Ad Blocker Extensions for Edge](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/categories/ad-blocker/browsers/microsoft-edge-store) - [Best Ad Blocker Extensions for Opera](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/categories/ad-blocker/browsers/opera) > [**Best Ad Blocker Browser Extensions | Tooltivity**](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/categories/ad-blocker) — Explore top ad blockers for a cleaner, faster browsing experience. Eliminate intrusive ads, and boost page loading times for a smoother online journey. #### Older Extensions and Google's Latest Requirements Google has introduced new requirements for Chrome extensions with the rollout of Manifest V3, aimed at enhancing security and privacy. > _Google has said that its new extension platform was built for "improving the security, privacy, performance, and trustworthiness of the extension ecosystem." -_  arstechnica.com That transition has now played out. Extensions still on the older V2 manifest are unsupported, and the blockers that survived did so by rebuilding — AdGuard shipped its Manifest V3 version after [a spell where it looked like it might disappear](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-is-my-adguard-adblocker-chrome-extension-no-longer-be-supported/) , and uBlock Origin was replaced outright by uBlock Origin Lite. As a result, it’s crucial to choose ad blockers that are up-to-date and ready for the future. --- Here are our [favorite ad blocker Chrome Extensions](https://tooltivity.com/categories/ad-blocker/browsers/chrome-web-store) : Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. ## [1\. AdGuard AdBlocker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/Adguard-adblocker) > ℹ️ We previously flagged this one as at risk from the Manifest V2 cutoff. It came through: AdGuard is still in the Chrome Web Store, still carries the store's Featured badge, and was last updated on 28 August 2026. [Learn more about deprecated V2 Chrome extensions here](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-are-chrome-extensions-no-longer-supported/) . ![AdGuard AdBlocker (Rating: 4.7, Users: 16,000,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/09/image.webp) [AdGuard Adblocker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/Adguard-adblocker) is a popular browser extension with over 16 million users. It blocks ads, boosts privacy, and helps guard against online threats. Key Features of AdGuard Adblocker: - **Ad Blocking** : Stops video ads, pop-ups, banners, and text ads on any websites - **Privacy Protection** : Blocks third-party trackers to keep your privacy safe. - **Customizable** : Lets you set up allowlists and create custom rules. - **Malware Protection** : Prevents access to harmful websites and spyware. - **Crypto-jacking Protection** : Blocks known crypto-jackers for extra security. Check out our  [detailed review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/Adguard-adblocker) : > [**AdGuard AdBlocker Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/Adguard-adblocker) — Read our in-depth review of AdGuard AdBlocker. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to AdGuard AdBlocker. AdGuard AdBlocker is available in the [Chrome Web Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/chrome) , Safari Extension Store, [Microsoft Edge Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/edge) , Mozilla Firefox Add-ons Store, and Opera Add-ons Store. You can  [**install it here**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/Adguard-adblocker/install) . ## [2\. Ghostery](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ghostery) ![Ghostery AdBlocker for Privacy (Rating: 4.7, Users: 2,000,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/ghostery.webp) *Ghostery ( Rating: 4.7, Users: 2,000,000+)* [Ghostery](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ghostery) goes after the trackers behind the ads, not just the ads themselves. It blocks banners and pop-ups out of the box, auto-rejects cookie-consent banners, and then shows you exactly which trackers each page tried to load — which is oddly addictive once you start watching the counter. It is open source, it does not sell your data, and there is no acceptable-ads deal in the background. Two honest caveats: YouTube coverage is patchy, and the interface is English-only. **Key Features of Ghostery:** - Blocks ads and the tracking scripts that ordinary ad blockers leave running. - Never-Consent automatically declines cookie banners for you. - A per-page tracker counter shows what each site actually tried to load. Check out our  [detailed review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ghostery) . ## [3\. AdBlocker Ultimate](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblocker-ultimate) ![AdBlocker Ultimate (Rating: 4.8, Users: 1,000,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-8.webp) *AdBlocker Ultimate ( Rating: 4.8, Users: 1,000,000+)* [AdBlocker Ultimate](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/adblocker-ultimate) is designed to remove all ads, ensuring a distraction-free browsing experience. It doesn’t allow any "acceptable" ads or whitelisted advertisers, making it a thorough ad-blocking tool. **Key Features of AdBlocker Ultimate:** - Blocks all ads on all web pages, including Facebook and YouTube. - Blocks malware and tracking, improving browser performance. - No "acceptable" ads or whitelisted websites, ensuring complete ad removal. Check out our  [detailed review](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblocker-ultimate)  here: > [**AdBlocker Ultimate Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblocker-ultimate) — Read our in-depth review of AdBlocker Ultimate. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to AdBlocker Ultimate. AdBlocker Ultimate is available in the [Chrome Web Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/chrome) , [Microsoft Edge Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/edge) , Mozilla Firefox Add-ons Store, and Opera Add-ons Store. You can  [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblocker-ultimate/install) . ## [4\. uBlock Origin Lite](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ublock-origin-lite) ![uBlock Origin Lite (Rating: 4.5, Users: 16,000,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/ublock-origin-lite.webp) *uBlock Origin Lite ( Rating: 4.5, Users: 16,000,000+)* [uBlock Origin Lite](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ublock-origin-lite) is the Manifest V3 successor to uBlock Origin, written by the same author. It blocks ads, trackers and miners the moment you install it — no account, no setup, no upsell, and no acceptable-ads programme. A per-site slider moves between Basic, Optimal and Complete, so you can turn the strictness up on one domain without touching the rest. Worth knowing before you switch: YouTube ads still slip through, and its rating over the last 100 reviews (3.92) sits well below its 4.5 lifetime average — the MV3 rebuild lost some of what long-time uBO users relied on. **Key Features of uBlock Origin Lite:** - Blocks ads, trackers, miners and pop-ups immediately, with no configuration. - Per-site Basic / Optimal / Complete filtering modes. - Built for Manifest V3, so it asks for far less access to your browsing than most blockers. Check out our  [detailed review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/ublock-origin-lite) . ## [5\. Stands AdBlocker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stands-adblocker) ![Stands AdBlocker (Rating: 4.8, Users: 1,000,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-7.webp) *Stands AdBlocker ( Rating: 4.8, Users: 1,000,000+)* [Stands AdBlocker](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/stands-adblocker) is a robust ad-blocking solution that enhances your browsing experience by blocking ads across various platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and more. It provides a free and comprehensive ad-blocking service to protect your browsing experience. **Key Features of Stands AdBlocker:** - Blocks ads on websites, pop-ups, and videos. - Allows customization of ad-blocking preferences through an intuitive interface. - Enhances browsing speed by eliminating unwanted ads. Check out our  [detailed review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stands-adblocker) : > [**Stands Adblocker Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stands-adblocker) — Read our in-depth review of Stands Adblocker. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Stands Adblocker. Stands Adblocker is available in the [Chrome Web Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/chrome) , [Microsoft Edge Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/edge) , Opera Add-ons Store, Safari Extension Store, Brave, and Vivaldi. You can  [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/stands-adblocker/install) . ## [6\. Poper Blocker - Pop up blocker for Chrome](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/poper-blocker) ![Poper Blocker (Rating: 4.8, Users: 2,000,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-11.webp) *Poper Blocker ( Rating: 4.8, Users: 2,000,000+)* [Poper Blocker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/poper-blocker) ensures a clean browsing experience by blocking pop-ups, ads, cookie requests, site notifications, and more. It offers extensive ad-blocking capabilities across various platforms, including social media and YouTube. **Key Features of Poper Blocker:** - Blocks all types of pop-ups and ads on any website. - Hides ads on social media platforms and YouTube videos. - Removes cookie consent requests and site notifications for a seamless browsing experience. By choosing any of these top ad blocker Chrome extensions, you can enjoy a faster, safer, and more enjoyable online experience in 2024. Check out our  [detailed review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/poper-blocker) : > [**Pop up blocker - Poper Blocker Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/poper-blocker) — Read our in-depth review of Pop up blocker - Poper Blocker. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to Poper Blocker. Poper Blocker is available in the [Chrome Web Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/chrome) , and [Microsoft Edge Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/edge) . You can  [**install it here**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/poper-blocker/install) . ## [7\. Adblock Plus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock-plus) ![Adblock Plus - free ad blocker (Rating: 4.4, Users: 37,000,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/08/adblock-plus.webp) *Adblock Plus ( Rating: 4.4, Users: 37,000,000+)* [Adblock Plus](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock-plus) is the one most people have heard of, and at 37 million users it is comfortably the most installed blocker on this list. It has been free since 2006, clears banners, pop-ups and video ads out of the box, and lets you right-click to hide anything a filter missed. The catch is Acceptable Ads: a whitelist of "non-intrusive" ads that is switched **on by default** . Turn it off in the settings and the extension gets noticeably stricter. Its recent reviews tell the same story as the rest of the MV3 transition — 3.54 over the last 100, against a 4.39 lifetime average. **Key Features of Adblock Plus:** - Removes banner, pop-up and video ads across most of the web straight away. - An Acceptable Ads toggle — on by default, and more useful switched off. - Custom filter lists, allowlisting, and right-click element hiding. Check out our  [detailed review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock-plus) . ## [8\. AdBlock Max - ad blocker](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock-max) ![AdBlock Max (Rating: 4.8, Users: 200,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-9.webp) *AdBlock Max ( Rating: 4.8, Users: 200,000+)* [AdBlock Max](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock-max) is a permission-less content blocker that removes ads, trackers, and more immediately upon installation. It is easy to use and significantly speeds up web page load times. **Key Features of AdBlock Max:** - Blocks all ads, including pop-ups, autoplay video ads, and audio ads. - Prevents trackers, protecting user privacy. - Uses Content Blocking Extensions for fast and efficient ad blocking. Check out our  [detailed review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock-max) : > [**AdBlock Max - Ad Blocker Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock-max) — Read our in-depth review of AdBlock Max - Ad Blocker. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to AdBlock Max. AdBlock Max is available in the [Chrome Web Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/chrome) . You can  [install it here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock-max/install) . ## [9\. AdBlock - block ads across the web](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock) [![AdBlock (Rating: 4.5 , Users: 59,000,000+)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-10.webp)](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/adblock) *AdBlock ( Rating: 4.5 , Users: 59,000,000+)* [AdBlock](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/adblock) is trusted by over 60 million users worldwide and is known for its comprehensive ad-blocking capabilities. It improves your browsing experience by blocking disruptive pop-ups, banners, and video ads. **Key Features of** [**AdBlock**](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/adblock) **:** - Blocks ads on YouTube, Facebook, and other websites. - Disables third-party tracking for enhanced privacy. - Protects against malicious ads containing malware. Check out our  [detailed review here](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock) : > [**AdBlock — block ads across the web Review & Alternatives | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/adblock) — Read our in-depth review of AdBlock — block ads across the web. Discover its key features, benefits, and the best alternatives to AdBlock. AdBlock is available in the [Chrome Web Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/chrome) , [Microsoft Edge Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/edge) , Mozilla Firefox Add-ons Store, and Safari Extension Store. You can  [**install it here**](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/adblock/install) . ## Worth Pairing With: Decentraleyes [Decentraleyes](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/decentraleyes) is not an ad blocker, which is why it is not ranked above — but it is the one extension we would add next to any entry on this list. It serves local copies of jQuery, AngularJS and other common libraries, so the big CDNs never see the request in the first place. It is free, open source, and built to sit beside your blocker rather than replace it. Coverage stops at the libraries it bundles, so treat it as a complement, not a second line of defence. ## [Bonus: Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) ![The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-12-at-10.04.02-1.webp) *The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store* [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is a productivity-focused extension designed for avid online readers and researchers. It allows you to highlight text, take notes, and save bookmarks directly on any website or PDF, helping you stay organized. It's perfect for students, bloggers, and lifelong learners. **Key Features** : - [Highlight websites and PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) , take notes, and create tags. - Sync highlights and bookmarks across devices with cloud backup. - Advanced features like [export to Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , Obsidian, and [automatic email reminders](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/) . > [**Install Web Highlights on Your Browser**](https://tooltivity.com/extensions/web-highlights/install) — Web Highlights is available for Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Edge Store, Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera Add-ons Store. Choose your browser and install Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter today! Web Highlights is available in the  [Chrome Web Store](https://tooltivity.com/browsers/chrome) , Microsoft Edge Store, Brave, and Vivaldi. You can  [**install it here**](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/web-highlights/install) . > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter - Chrome Web Store**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. --- # Why is my AdGuard AdBlocker Chrome Extension no longer supported? > Learn why AdGuard AdBlocker is no longer supported in Chrome and discover alternative ad blockers that comply with the latest Manifest V3 standards. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-08-06 - Updated: 2024-09-23 - Tags: Chrome Extension, AdBlocker, News - Reading time: 3 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-is-my-adguard-adblocker-chrome-extension-no-longer-be-supported/ --- Since the latest Chrome Update you might be seeing the following error message on the chrome extensions page for the [AdGuard AdBlocker Chrome Extensio](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/adguard-adblocker/bgnkhhnnamicmpeenaelnjfhikgbkllg) n: ![This extension may soon no longer be supported because it doesn't follow best practices for Chrome extensions.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-4.webp) *This extension may soon no longer be supported because it doesn't follow best practices for Chrome extensions.* On the extensions overview page at _chrome://extensions/_ you will also see the warning " [These extensions may soon no longer be supported](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-are-chrome-extensions-no-longer-supported/) " listing all of your affected Chrome Extensions. > [**Will adblockers be disabled in the future? : r/edge**](https://web-highlights.com/discover/page/66b5297a57621ee7efccd2a7) — This page does not exist (Web Highlights) ### Why is the AdGuard AdBlocker Chrome Extension no longer supported? Chrome has recently updated the Chrome Web Store and its framework, introducing a new manifest version, V3. > Google has said that its new extension platform was built for "improving the security, privacy, performance, and trustworthiness of the extension ecosystem." - arstechnica.com Developers have had several years to switch their extensions to this new version. However, the deadline is approaching, and [extensions still using V2 manifests](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/no-longer-supported-v2-manifest) will soon be unsupported. As a result, users with outdated extensions are being advised to find replacements before support ends. AdGuard AdBlocker is [one of those extensions not keeping up with the new requirements](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/no-longer-supported-v2-manifest) . If its developers don't update it soon, Chrome will remove the AdGuard AdBlocker extension from the store. > [**Why Are Some Of My Chrome Extensions No Longer Supported?**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-are-chrome-extensions-no-longer-supported/) — Google Chrome warns about Chrome extensions that may no longer be supported. Learn how to check if your extensions are affected and how to find alternatives. (Marius Bongarts) ### What can you do? If you are currently using the AdGuard AdBlocker extension, it is advisable to look for alternatives that are up to date with the latest manifest version. There are several ad blockers available on the Chrome Web Store that have already transitioned to Manifest V3. If you want to keep using AdGuard AdBlocker, you can install their MV3 Beta Chrome Extension, which uses the new Manifest V3. Remember, this version is still in beta testing. You can [find it here](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/adguard-adblocker-mv3-bet/apjcbfpjihpedihablmalmbbhjpklbdf) . ### Recommended Alternatives There are also many other AdBlocker Chrome Extensions in the Chrome Web Store. A popular alternative is **Stands AdBlocker** , which offers strong ad-blocking features and is regularly updated to meet the latest standards. There are still plenty of other great options. You can [find a list of our favorite AdBlocker Chrome Extensions here](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-ad-blocker-chrome-extensions-for-2024/) . > [**The BestAd Blocker Chrome Extensions for 2024**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-ad-blocker-chrome-extensions-for-2024/) — Discover the best ad blocker Chrome extensions for 2024. Enjoy faster, safer browsing with top-rated ad blockers like Stands AdBlocker, AdBlocker Ultimate, and more. (Marius Bongarts) ### Final Thoughts It’s crucial to keep your browser extensions up to date to ensure compatibility, security, and performance. Chrome’s introduction of Manifest V3 is aimed at enhancing security and privacy for users. While it might be inconvenient to switch from an extension you are used to, finding and adapting to alternatives will ensure a smoother and safer browsing experience. Our PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension is always up to date with the latest standards. You can [find our productivity tool here](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter - Chrome Web Store**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. --- # Why Are Some Of My Chrome Extensions No Longer Supported? > Google Chrome warns about Chrome extensions that may no longer be supported. Learn how to check if your extensions are affected and how to find alternatives. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-08-05 - Updated: 2025-02-20 - Tags: Chrome Extension - Reading time: 3 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-are-chrome-extensions-no-longer-supported/ --- Since the latest Chrome Update you might be seeing the following error message on the chrome extensions page at _chrome://extensions/_ : ![These extensions may soon no longer be supported](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-1.webp) *These extensions may soon no longer be supported* ## Which Chrome Extensions are affected? To see if any of your Chrome Extensiosn are affected, you can paste  _chrome://extensions/_  in the browser's address bar to check it out. If any of your extensions are affected, they will be listed at the top of your page. You can also go to Tooltivity to check, if your extension is in [their list of extensions that may soon no longer be supported](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/no-longer-supported-v2-manifest) . You can also visit the details page of a specific Chrome Extension. For example, the [Readwise Highlighter extension is outdated](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/extensions/no-longer-supported-v2-manifest/readwise-highlighter) an will show the error: **_"This extension may soon no longer be supported"_** . ![Readwise Highlighter may soon no longer be supported](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-2.webp) *Readwise Highlighter may soon no longer be supported* In this case, Chrome even recommends looking for alternatives to the given extension. A good alternative to the Readwise Highlighter might be [the annotation tool Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) , which offers similar features like highlighting text on any website or PDF. You can [install the website highlighter here](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) : > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter - Chrome Web Store**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. ## Why are Chrome Extensions no longer supported? Chrome has recently updated the Chrome Web Store and its framework, introducing a new manifest version, V3. Developers have had several years to switch their extensions to this new version. However, the deadline is approaching, and extensions still using V2 manifests will soon be unsupported. As a result, users with these outdated extensions are being advised to find replacements before support ends. > [**Will adblockers be disabled in the future? : r/edge**](https://web-highlights.com/discover/page/66b5297a57621ee7efccd2a7) — This page does not exist (Web Highlights) ## Final Thoughts It's good that Chrome keeps the Chrome Web Store up to date, ensuring extensions adapt to the latest version. Chrome has given developers plenty of time for this transition, but the deadline is now approaching, and some extensions will soon be unsupported. If you're using outdated extensions, we recommend looking for alternatives. You can also contact the developers to see if they plan to update to V3. Of course, our [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) annotation tool has been updated to Manifest V3 for a long time and none of our users have to worry, because our application will also be available in the Chrome Web Store in the future. Find our best-rated browser extensions with in-depth reviews at [Tooltivity](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/) : > [**Best Productivity Browser Extensions | Tooltivity**](https://web-highlights.com/browser-tools/) — Discover and compare the best productivity browser extensions at Tooltivity. Explore our in-depth reviews of top tools to boost your browsing experience. (Marius Bongarts) --- # How to Import Highlights from Weava into Web Highlights > Weava is a popular Chrome extension with over 300k users. Here's a quick guide on how to import all your annotations and notes from Weava into Web Highlights. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-08-04 - Updated: 2025-09-23 - Tags: Tutorial, Tools, Web Highlights, Research - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/import-research-from-weava-highlighter-to-web-highlights/ --- Weava is a popular Chrome extension with over 300,000 users. Similar to Web Highlights it allows you to annotate websites and PDFs. We've been getting a lot of requests to import highlights and notes from Weava into Web Highlights. So, we've created an easy integration that allows you to bring over all your highlights, notes, and pages from the Weava Highlighter Browser Extension. > If you haven't installed the Web Highlights browser extension yet, please do. You can [install it here](https://web-highlights.com/install) . Here's a quick guide on how to easily import all your highlights, pages, and notes to Web Highlights. ## Step 1: Export Highlights from Weava Open and log in to Weava. Next, open the folder you want to import. At the top right of the Weava page, you'll see the export icon. Click on it. ![Export CSV file from Weava](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.29.31.webp) *Export CSV file from Weava* In the modal, select the `.csv file` option and download the file. ![Select .csv file](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.30.01.webp) *Select .csv file* ## Step 2: Import Highlights into Web Highlights There are two ways to import your highlights into Web Highlights: 1. Use the extension sidebar on any website. 2. Use the web app at [app.web-highlights.com](https://app.web-highlights.com/) . Note that this requires a [Premium or Ultimate subscription](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . Click the extension icon to open the sidebar (You can skip this step if you are using the web app). ![Open Web Highlights Sidebar](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.31.22-1.webp) *Open Web Highlights Sidebar* Click on the `settings icon` in the bottom left side of the sidebar. ![Click on settings icon](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.32.03-1.webp) *Click on settings icon* On the  `Settings`  page, you can see  `Integrations` . Click on it to go to that section. ![Web Highlights settings with the Integrations menu item highlighted](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.33.15.webp) *Choose "Integrations" on the left* In the  `Integrations`  section, you can find the `Weava Import` option. Click it to upload the CSV file in the next section. ![Integrations screen with the Weava Import option outlined](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.33.39.webp) *Choose the "Weava Import" integration* Click `Upload Weava CSV File` and select the exported Weava CSV file from the first step. ![Upload Weava CSV file](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.33.57.webp) *Upload Weava CSV file* If the file is valid, you will see an info of how many pages and highlights can be imported. Now, you can click `Start Import` . ![Start Import](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.34.26.webp) *Start Import* Now, wait until the import finishes. If you have cloud sync enabled and are importing many highlights, synchronization may take some time. But don't worry, you can close the modal and continue working. The synchronization will keep running in the background. ## Step 3: View the Imported Highlights If the import was successful, you'll find your imported annotations in the history section of the sidebar. Click the left tab in the sidebar to see all your pages. ![View highlighted page history to see your imported highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.36.33.webp) *View highlighted page history to see your imported highlights* If you're using the web app, visit the dashboard to see all your imported highlights, pages, and notes. ![Find your pages in the web app](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-12.37.42.webp) *Find your pages in the web app* ## Step 4: Visit Highlighted Pages After importing your highlights, you can revisit the pages you previously highlighted using Weava. Just select a highlighted page, visit it, and your highlights should appear. ![Recreated Weava highlights in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-04-at-13.02.18.webp) *Recreated Weava highlights in Web Highlights* However, keep in mind that Web Highlights tries to recreate the highlights on the page, and this might not always work perfectly because Weava uses a different highlighting method. Some highlights might not display correctly on the page, but they will always be accessible in the sidebar and the web app. You can learn more about [why highlights might not be recreated correctly here](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-are-my-highlights-not-visible-on-the-page/) . ## Final Thoughts If you’re using Weava but want a more modern highlighter, switching is simple. Just [install the Web Highlights extension](https://web-highlights.com/install) for [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) , or [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/web-highlights-pdf-web-highlig/) , import all your Weava research, and you’ll be all set. > [**Install PDF & Web Highlighter on your browser**](https://web-highlights.com/install) — Install our browser extension to highlight & annotate Websites & PDFs – free, easy to use, no sign-up required. --- # 3 Simple Steps on How to Annotate a PDF > Learn how to annotate a PDF easily with these five simple steps using Web Highlights. Make your document review and note-taking more efficient and organized. - Author: Web Highlights - Published: 2024-07-24 - Updated: 2026-06-11 - Tags: PDF, Active Reading - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-annotate-a-pdf/ --- [Annotating a PDF](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) might sound tricky, but it's actually quite simple. It lets you highlight text, add bookmarks, and make notes directly on the document.  Whether you're a student, a professional, or just someone looking to make notes on a document, knowing how to annotate a PDF can be really helpful.  This can make studying, reviewing, or sharing feedback a lot easier. In this blog post, we'll walk you through three easy steps to get the job done. **One quick pointer before we start:**  annotating begins with highlighting. If you want the full click-by-click of  [how to highlight PDFs in Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/)  — including local files, colors, and downloading the PDF with your highlights — start with that complete guide. This article stays zoomed out: three simple steps to annotate any PDF. > [**How to Highlight PDFs using Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) — Highlight text & take notes in PDFs using Web Highlights. The pdf & web highlighter enables you to highlight text on the internet just like you do on books. (Marius Bongarts) ### **Annotating PDFs Versus Physical Documents** Annotating a PDF has several advantages over physical documents. With a PDF, you can easily edit, save, and share your notes. Annotation tools and other PDF editors offer a range of annotation tools that aren't possible with paper.  Using [digital tools to annotate PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) is also more environmentally friendly, saving paper and reducing clutter. Plus, with features like pop-up menus and intuitive interfaces, digital annotations are often easier to manage and search through compared to flipping through pages of a physical document. ## **Importance of Having a Clear Objective for Your Annotations** Knowing what you want to achieve with your annotations is key. Ask yourself why you are annotating the PDF and what information you need to highlight or comment on. Having a clear objective helps you stay focused and makes your annotations more effective.  For example, if you're studying, highlight key points and add notes for important concepts. If you're reviewing a document for work, focus on sections that need feedback or changes.  Now, let’s talk about the 3 simple steps on how to annotate a PDF.  ## **Step 1: Choose the Right Tool** There are many PDF annotation tools available that can make it easy to mark up a PDF document. Many of these tools also come in online versions and mobile apps, so you can annotate PDFs on the go. ## **Step 2: Open Your PDF Document** Opening a PDF file is straightforward. Most tools have a simple file menu where you can open documents from your computer.  You can also access PDFs from various sources like email attachments, downloads, or cloud storage services such as Google Drive. Just locate your PDF file and open it within your chosen PDF editor. ## **Step 3: Highlight Text and Add Your Notes** Select the text you want to mark and apply a highlight — in every good tool, this is a one-click action (here's  [exactly how it works in Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/)  ). The annotation part comes right after: attach a note with your own thoughts to the highlight, so future-you knows why that passage mattered. Using different highlight colors can help you organize information better and differentiate between various types of notes. It's common to lose track of important information in a sea of documents. Instead of using shapes and drawings to highlight key points, focus on how to easily find what you need later.  Start by using clear headings to organize your content, making it easier to scan and find specific sections. Adding bookmarks to important sections of your PDFs allows you to jump directly to the needed information.  ## **Bonus: Using Web Highlights for PDF Annotation** Web Highlights is a powerful tool designed for anyone who needs to  [highlight on PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs) , whether you're a student, professional, or casual user. It helps you collect your highlights and notes in one central place, eliminating the need for separate files.  With Web Highlights, you can access your notes and highlights directly from the app or the sidebar without having to open the PDF again. This makes annotating PDF documents easy and efficient, ensuring you'll never lose track of important information again. ### **Benefits of Using Web Highlights for Annotating PDFs** [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) offers many benefits, including an intuitive interface, access from any device, and effortless integration with other platforms.  You can highlight text and add bookmarks to annotate your PDFs. It also allows you to sync your work across devices, ensuring you never lose your annotations. ### **Step-by-Step Guide on How to Annotate PDFs Using Web Highlights** #### **Install the Extension and Highlight** Install the extension for  [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)  or  [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn)  , open any PDF in your browser — online or from your computer — and select the text you want to highlight. The  [complete guide to highlighting PDFs in Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/)  walks through every click, including the one-time setting for local files. ![Web highlights in the Chrome Web Store](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc3rCFLjIyH0vWNfXJrg4GLyIZT9jXPHdpOonrJvyWK8t5cGCXN7eBkzZeXfb5nT87N2U3xgyDSK2DXCcO3gsTYbMYo99J2o749yl8I8bu1NweA5pOk0bGoMgP9l_gRJrezw-HELfzfxGV2WhOayO3QQRcp?key=WZocFzzhtxvWBUyZyi3D0A) #### **Open Your PDF in the Browser** Open your PDF file directly from your computer in the browser.  #### **Use Web Highlights's Tools to Highlight** **Highlight text:** Select the text you want to highlight and choose your preferred highlight color. ![Highlighted Text](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeBlkejAuVF0YBjhO2RnKlOb22CsQnF9_KcEE-bWTlis6zille0B3uXFOysuVEAUZgPO8jdbIku1ryZSpTIYHo4f6GU9JksowfO26sAjauamxqyBq2NpF-eUYXBds_VN1giuNy-6BwsWG0mZn9KqMOaFQ8h?key=WZocFzzhtxvWBUyZyi3D0A) Two handy controls while you annotate: - **Toggle Sidebar:** Quickly access all your highlights and notes with a single click. - **Save Bookmark:** Bookmark important sections of your PDF for quick reference later. #### **Save and Share Your Highlights** After highlighting and annotating your PDF, your highlights and notes are saved to your Web Highlights space, not within the PDF itself. This ensures that your original document remains unchanged. You can access your saved highlights both in the web app and in the sidebar, making it easy to find and use your notes without reopening the PDF.  ![Save For Highlights](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe2v4kXVLp758Jf44IDxMSvfg5mhTwj0uBQ5w5d1v72QWF63CYDkeyUYRQuZdsQTTo3Cu-BlBBjJ-fxubmTyKXITMKdyY_0_nJNZ87wXD2BLHei0soCcZmipZt9irZh0NDjRUl2H2VHGkVTsoszVDCu2fpu?key=WZocFzzhtxvWBUyZyi3D0A) ![Share For Highlights](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcrL337-oLm7j4SLgPGkEZe9yN9ZHnlZmsrU_edSKbrKs_4Ek6LIUOnRC1XKLVCnwpNfke4mmCQhnQXInXrkgoJ6HL6MXMy3VUFWTwrrIwaExtUQI4bABN5b6IZSS8x3GDh1WUEOji9NP1mYfdjBDA6pgYo?key=WZocFzzhtxvWBUyZyi3D0A) Sharing your highlights is simple – you can easily share your annotated notes via email or export them to other platforms. ![Share your Highlights](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcNHflE7ifB-YJ2HWAyrtATRazWe7lzrQkQvzhwEh_FJhCyZs4etbc1lWCMZAlPg2H78VBuLumSGclHyLGzDt0WsLm23ZjrDX-OsODyb3o7I7zFfbCAsk2pElTjFJHhulMvUmFu-7T0GP8eFXz_7GmvmzDJ?key=WZocFzzhtxvWBUyZyi3D0A) ### **Unique Features of Web Highlights** #### **1\. Integration with Other Platforms** Web Highlights allows you to export your highlights, notes, and tags to tools like Notion, Obsidian, and Capacities using the Markdown export feature. This makes it easy to keep all your research in one place. #### **2\. Offline Access** Highlight offline without an account. Premium features are available with a 7-day trial, including reminders and unlimited learning sessions. #### **3\. Powerful Web App** Take notes and create tags to organize your research. Export your work to popular platforms and formats like PDF and HTML. #### **4\. Sync Across Devices** Your highlights and notes are automatically synced across all your devices, ensuring you can access your work anytime, anywhere. #### **5\. Web Extension** Highlight any website or PDF directly from your Chrome or Microsoft Edge browser. It's free and easy to install. Using Web Highlights simplifies the process of [highlighting PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) and offers many features to help you organize and share your work effectively. Give it a try and see how it can improve your workflow. ## **Tips for Organizing Your Workspace** A clean and organized workspace can make annotating a PDF much easier. Here are a few tips: - **Clear Clutter** : Remove any unnecessary items from your desk. - **Keep Tools Handy** : Have your computer, mouse, and any other tools you need within reach. - **Good Lighting** : Make sure your workspace is well-lit to avoid straining your eyes. - **Comfortable Setup** : Ensure your chair and desk are at a comfortable height. ## **Conclusion** Annotating PDFs can make your work or study much easier and more organized. Whether you're a student highlighting important points, adding bookmarks for document review, or just someone who wants to keep their notes in one place, learning how to annotate a PDF is very useful. Web Highlights offers additional benefits, including integration with platforms like Notion and Capacities and features like a Chrome extension for quick access. It's a great solution for anyone looking to take their PDF annotation to the next level. ## **Frequently Asked Questions** ### **1\. Can I annotate a PDF using any browser?** Yes, you can [annotate PDFs using online PDF editors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) that work with most browsers, including Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Just open your PDF file in the online editor and start annotating. ### **2\. How do I use Web Highlights to annotate PDFs?** First, visit Web Highlights and download the extension. Open your PDF file directly from your computer in the browser and use the tools to highlight text and bookmark important sections. Your highlights and notes are saved to your Web Highlights space, not the PDF itself, allowing you to easily share and access your notes without changing the original document. ### **3\. What are the benefits of using Web Highlights?** Web Highlights offers a range of features, such as [highlighting text](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) and [images](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) in different colors and saving bookmarks. It also syncs your work across devices, so you never lose your annotations. ### **4\. Can I access my Web Highlights annotations from any device?** Yes, Web Highlights syncs your annotations across devices. You can access your work from your computer, tablet, or mobile phone. ### **5\. What export options are available on Web Highlights?** Web Highlights allows you to [export your highlights and notes to Notion](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/) , [Markdown](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) , [Capacities](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/) , and more. You can also export to local files and other supported formats. --- # How I Grew My Chrome Extension to 100K Users Without Marketing Costs > Learn how I grew my Chrome Extension to 100K users without a budget. Explore growth hacks, SEO tips, user review strategies, and product-building insights. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-06-18 - Updated: 2024-09-01 - Tags: Web Development, SEO, Side Hustle, Marketing, My Journey - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-practical-growth-hacks-i-applied-to-scale-my-chrome-extension-to-100k-users-without-any-marketing-budget/ --- I’m not a Marketing expert. I’m a developer who picked up a few useful tips along the way that helped me grow my Chrome Extension to over 100K active users. Here are the three most important steps I took: ### 1\. Learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) In theory, we all know what Google, Bing and other search engines do — they help us find the most relevant websites for whatever we’re looking for. However, very few people know what power it can have if you use just a few simple SEO techniques to rank higher on Google. Understanding the importance of SEO was an eye-opener for me and the single most important factor in generating regular and free traffic. Leveraging SEO was most likely the biggest reason why more than 100,000 users are using Web Highlights today. SEO sounds complex, but it’s mainly about 3 things: - **Creating content** : For example, start a blog on your website and write about topics related to your niche. If your content is good, people will find you on Google and will also want to know more about your website. - **Get Backlinks** : A backlink is just an anchor link from a different site to your site. Make sure to get as many of them as possible to boost your site’s authority. - **Make your page fast** : Ensure your website loads quickly and runs smoothly on all devices. Google and other search engines prefer to show fast, user-friendly sites over slow ones. If you want to dig deeper, here are some resources that can help you to get started: - [3 Instant Ways to Increase Your Google Ranking](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-instant-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking/) - [3 Advanced Ways to Increase Your Google Ranking](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-advanced-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking/) - [SEO Strategies I Used to Gain 2,000 Users In Two Months](https://web-highlights.com/blog/seo-strategies-i-used-to-gain-2-000-users-in-two-months/) ### 2\. Asking for Reviews Have you ever wondered why books on Amazon are rated so high? I rarely see books with less than 4 stars on average, and most of them even have more than 4.5 stars on average. Why is that? I don’t have any data to back this up, but I bet one of the main reasons is that when you finish a book on a Kindle, you’re prompted to leave a review. If you read a book all the way to the end, it’s usually a sign you liked it, since you probably wouldn’t have finished it otherwise. So, why don’t we do this in product management too? One of the most important things I implemented for [Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) was the automatic prompt to rate my app. I am doing this once a user has highlighted more than 5 different websites. That’s my sweet spot where I believe that those users like the app. Asking only them ensures they are happy with the app, so they hopefully give 5 stars. ![Prompt to rate my Chrome Extension](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*VkJRAb7_WCopA71Ahox2dQ.png) *Prompt to rate my Chrome Extension* Since implementing this rating prompt, my Chrome Extension’s gets several ratings every day. Having lots of reviews not only adds credibility to your app, but also boosts its in-store SEO. ![Asking users for reviews is essential](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Uk664tG2L-2ZB-XzirXhYA.png) *My PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension with more than 1.6k ratings* For example, if many users mention that the app increases their “productivity,” Web Highlights will rank higher for the keyword “productivity” in the Chrome Web Store. So, if you’ve published an app, be sure to ask for reviews. Creating a prompt for reviews is simple, but it can significantly impact your growth. ### 3\. Building ONE Great Product I know what you’re thinking: Why would he include _“building a great product”_ in a list of growth hacks? The reason I’m pointing this out is that I see more and more people rushing to build something low-quality just to get rich quickly, believing that _“Marketing is what matters.”_ Marketing does matter, but so does building a great product. **Have you seen this new trend on Twitter of people who start building 12 products in 12 months?** How should this even work when even building one product is too much? Many people are experiencing what psychologists call Shiny Object Syndrome: > Shiny object syndrome (SOS) is a continual state of distraction brought on by an ongoing belief that there is something new worth pursuing. > \- productplan.com Just like a small child chasing after **shiny objects** . Once they get there and see what the object is, they immediately lose interest and start chasing the next thing. For you, rather than literal shiny objects, shiny objects may be side-projects, technologies, or programming languages. ![Comic](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*-vuzP4JAoPf9S6ZdHNR_Jg.jpeg) *Image source (commitstrip.com)* So, instead of rushing from side-project to side-project, try to focus on building one exceptional product that is helping others. > Your product should be so good that even your competitors recommend it. — Elon Musk --- Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to hundreds of thousands of users as a solopreneur? Follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . If you read a lot online, make sure to check out my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) loved by 100,000+ active user — it’s free (also [available on Microsoft Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) ). --- # Top 5 Productivity Chrome Extensions (4.8+ ⭐, 100K+ Users) > There are 137,345 Chrome Extensions, based on TrueList. I’ll show you the top-rated with over 4.8 stars and more than 100k active users. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-06-13 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Productivity, Education, Learning, Tools - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/5-best-rated-productivity-chrome-extensions-4-8-100k-users/ --- There are 137,345 Chrome Extensions, based on TrueList. In this article, I’ll show you the top-rated ones with over 4.8 stars and more than 100,000 users. While it’s simple to find Chrome Extensions with a perfect 5-star rating in the Chrome Web Store, these often have fewer users, making their ratings less reliable. The real challenge lies in finding those with ratings of 4.8 or 4.9 and over 100K users. Below, you’ll find my top picks for Chrome Extensions, all rated 4.8 stars or higher with more than 100k users: Full disclosure: I built Web Highlights, so keep that in mind when you see it on this list. ### [1\. Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) ![The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-12-at-10.04.02-2.webp) *The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store* Have you ever felt that something you read is important, but you don’t know yet why? Web Highlights can help you with that by [highlighting text](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) and [images](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/) on any website or PDF right in your browser. When you return to the site, your highlights will still be there. Also, you can easily find them in the sidebar or on the web app at [app.web-highlights.com](https://app.web-highlights.com/) . It’s a great tool for anyone who reads a lot online and wants to organize their digital content and research more efficiently. From all the highlighter tools in the Chrome Web Store, this one is the best. Web Highlights is also [available for the Edge browser](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) . > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Web Highlights) ### [2\. Scribe: AI Documentation, SOPs & Screenshots](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scribe-ai-documentation-s/okfkdaglfjjjfefdcppliegebpoegaii) ![Scribe: Ai Documentation](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*3g-0bcBc8fvzSex5W1rBQA.png) *Scribe: Ai Documentation* 4.9 stars and over a million users says everything: This tool is super helpful and makes you much more productive when creating documentation. Especially for solo entrepreneurs, it’s a time-saver for crafting business documentation. Just record your process, and it automatically creates a detailed guide for others to follow. > ⚡ The Scribe Chrome extension turns any process into a step-by-step guide, complete with text, links and annotated screenshots. —  [Scribe](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scribe-ai-documentation-s/okfkdaglfjjjfefdcppliegebpoegaii) If you’re thinking about delegating tasks to your coworkers, you definitely need this tool. ### [3\. Web Paint — Page Marker & Editor](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-paint-page-marker-edi/mnopmeepcnldaopgndiielmfoblaennk) ![Web Paint — Page Marker & Editor](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*oAC-l-f4bPUchX78JJCXLw.png) *Web Paint — Page Marker & Editor* If you’re like me, you take many screenshots and then use tools to add visual elements like arrows, text, etc. Why not skip this step and directly paint in the browser? Web Paint — Page Marker & Editor enables you to make annotations and modifications on websites. It allows you to draw, add text, insert lines, and highlight content directly on web pages and PDFs. ### [4\. Sider: ChatGPT Sidebar](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sider-chatgpt-sidebar-+-g/difoiogjjojoaoomphldepapgpbgkhkb) ![Sider: ChatGPT Sidebar](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*h9QcTV5vuDbfUgn_aUb54Q.png) *Sider: ChatGPT Sidebar* As Chrome’s Favorite Extension of 2023, Sider definitely deserves a spot on my list. It seems to have outshined other AI Chrome Extensions and offers a fantastic sidebar that lets you interact with all the top language models. With an AI toolbar that’s always accessible, I’m much more productive, and Sider is my top choice. ### [5\. StayFree — Website Blocker & Web Analytics](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/stayfree-website-blocker/elfaihghhjjoknimpccccmkioofjjfkf) ![StayFree — Website Blocker & Web Analytics](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*J4lUlkuQ8txXOIFwrgVY6A.png) *StayFree — Website Blocker & Web Analytics* You probably know the situation: you want to be productive, and before you know it, you lose control for a moment, and you’ve already wasted another 30 minutes on social media. Unfortunately, this happens to me all the time, which is why I use StayFree. StayFree helps you concentrate by limiting your access to distracting websites and offers customizable controls for watching YouTube. It also gives you analytics to help you understand and manage your internet usage. The best part: You can sync it with your mobile phone and other devices! --- Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to 100K+ users as a solopreneur? [Subscribe to my stories](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/subscribe) or follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . --- # How I Calmly Grew My Chrome Extension to 100K Users In 5 Years > Mind-changing lessons learned on my journey to build a stress-free side project. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-06-04 - Updated: 2024-12-19 - Tags: My Journey, Side Hustle, Side Projects - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-i-calmly-grew-my-chrome-extension-to-100k-users-in-5-years/ --- We all want to change the world, ideally earn a lot of money in the process, and preferably do it as quickly as possible. We tend to set the bar high for ourselves. Sadly, this often results in letdowns. This is where many of us throw in the towel. But, it’s crucial to realize that overnight success is rare. In this piece, I want to share a few tips that kept me going and helped my Chrome Extension reach 100K users in 5 years 🐢 ### Don’t Rush Most solopreneurs start their side hustle next to their full-time job. That’s why most of us have time. Still, many of us are rushing! > The day you stop racing is the day you win the race. — Bob Marley Nowadays, so many "overnight" success stories bombard us. We believe that if our side project doesn’t go through the roof in the next few months, we fail. However, it’s a fact that true success rarely happens overnight. I am building [Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) now for over 5 years, and it took me over a year to gain my first 10 users. **TEN users!** ![Weekly users over time — Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*mIOZY3nMFTcNp0rrh31qFw.png) *Weekly users over time — Web Highlights Chrome Extension* And honestly, all of those 10 users were friends and family! A few months later, the first unknown user signed up — I couldn’t be happier. It took me another whole year to [make my first $9.99](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/my-journey-to-the-first-9-99-with-my-side-project-3edc13dd1f2d) . > Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. > ― Bill Gates **If your financial situation doesn’t rely on your product, don’t rush; take your time.** Build habits around your side hustle. Improve your product every day and ensure to create an outstanding product your customers love. Growth will follow, it just takes time. > Instead of trying to be a Lion in business, I strive to be a Tortoise. —  [Cameron Scott](https://medium.com/u/3c68f7b89b81) To sum this up, [Paul Graham](https://medium.com/u/1753cee1bce5) would say: _“Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.”_ ### Don’t Measure Yourself Against An Ideal It’s deep in our genes that we always want more. We rush from milestone to milestone, but forget about what we already achieved. [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is bringing in about $1,000 every month. That’s awesome and beyond what I had hoped for. I’m really proud of hitting this milestone. But then I’ll glance at other Chrome Extensions with a similar user base and notice they’re making millions in revenue, with an entire team behind them. This realization brings me down and plunges me into a mental state that Dun Sullivan calls "The GAP": > There are two ways in which you can measure yourself: against an ideal, which puts you in what I call ‘the GAP,’ and against your starting point, which puts you in ‘the GAIN,’ appreciating all that you’ve accomplished. Whenever we are in “ _the GAP,”_ we are looking at all the things we could have achieved. This can lead to stress, demotivation, and feelings of sadness. Instead, we should transform our mental state into the _“GAIN”_ and look at all the things we have achieved. So, instead of looking at others, we should look at ourselves. > The GAIN creates freedom. The GAP makes you a slave to your unhealthy need. — Dan Sullivan This concept has helped me a lot. Whenever I start to compare myself to other businesses, I remind myself to turn my mental state to “the GAIN” and look at all the things I have achieved instead: - My [app](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) is making digital research easier for over 100,000 users worldwide. - I consistently receive heartwarming emails from users expressing their gratitude for how much the app helps them. - My [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) has an average rating of 4.8 stars with over 1,600 ratings, outshining most extensions in the store. Yes, true, it’s not making me a living yet. Still, it’s making me a decent amount of passive income every month. Reflecting on my past goals is helpful for me. Every time I do that, I realize that I have already achieved much more than I ever expected. So, here is my tip: Next time you feel stressed because you compare yourself to others, don’t focus on what you could do next. Instead, take a moment to appreciate what you’ve already accomplished. ### Build A Great Product First Marketing is important — but it’s not everything. Nowadays, you often hear statements like these: > _Even the greatest ideas need a megaphone. Without marketing, they’re just whispers in the wind. — Jeffrey Eisenberg in The Rice and Beans Millionaire_ or this one: > _Great products don’t sell themselves; marketing is the storyteller that brings them to life. — Seth Godin in This Is Marketing_ Many solopreneurs hear that and focus everything on marketing while forgetting to build a great product first. I have realized that for myself a few months ago. I was focusing on Marketing and SEO and gained millions of impressions on Google for [web-highlights.com](https://web-highlights.com/) . Still, I always knew that my product is not yet perfect. Recently, I saw this tweet about two paths we can take: either **make a better product** or **create a mediocre one with more marketing** . While both strategies are viable, I feel like doing marketing for a “shitty” product shouldn’t be something you should aim for. I am a true believer that, if you build an awesome product, it will be recognized sooner or later. Improve your product, create something incredible, and let time do its thing. --- Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to hundreds of thousands of users as a solopreneur? Follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . If you read a lot online, make sure to check out my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) loved by 100k+ active user — it’s free and no account is needed. --- # Export Web Highlights to Notion with One Click > In this article, I will show you how you can seamlessly connect Web Highlights to Notion and export pages and highlights directly to your workspace. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-06-03 - Updated: 2024-07-23 - Tags: Productivity, FAQ, Tutorials, and Help, Notion - Reading time: 3 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-highlights-to-notion-with-one-click/ --- [Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) is a tool that allows you to easily save highlights from any webpage directly into your Notion database: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpP2-pphFPw) In this article, I will show you how you can seamlessly connect [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) to Notion and export pages and highlights directly to your workspace. > To follow along, make sure to have the [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) installed. ### 1\. Connect to Notion First, we need to connect Web Highlights to Notion because the Chrome Extension will directly communicate with the Notion API. To do that, we need to open the settings and go to the integration sections of Web Highlights. You can find the settings by opening the sidebar and clicking the settings icon: ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*pP2EYlKRrmtNluS6.png) Open the integration settings and click on “Export to Notion”. Now click “Integrate with Notion”: ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*DcxHFkLT3ImIYxtb-oF5-Q.png) You will be redirected to Notion, where you need to grant access to your Notion account: ![Connect Web Highlights to Notion](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*p-9RDazLCz7aV8nATcR7LA.png) *Connect Web Highlights to Notion* Allow Web Highlights to view, edit, and create new content to transfer your highlights to your Notion database. Continue and select the pages you want to grant access to. ### 2\. Select a Page Once connected, go back to your Notion integration settings. Select the page where your highlights will be stored. ![Select Notion Page](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*nzw0VaqHMSMRipek4IzIUQ.png) *Select Notion Page* You can see above that I have selected my Notion page called “🚀 Web Highlights”. Once you selected a page, you can already see the created database in your Notion page. You can jump to the page by clicking on the Notion preview card. ### 3\. Export a Page Ready to go. Now, that we have successfully connected Web Highlights to Notion, we can easily export highlights of a page to Notion. Navigate to any highlighted page and click the three dots in the sidebar. Select “Export to Notion.” Within a few seconds, your Notion page will be created. ![Export to Notion](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*2PPGfkksr7DcRiSvj7hq5A.png) *Export to Notion* ### 3\. Open in Notion Once the page is created, an “Open in Notion” button will appear on your highlighted page. Click this button to directly open the Notion page in your browser. ![Open in Notion](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*0lqHDspvMdEO_qAeJZjOGw.png) *Open in Notion* You should now be redirected to the created Notion page, with all your highlights directly stored in your Notion database: ![Exported Notion Page](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*JY8fEKJclzeebIpgJ5qCSA.png) *Exported Notion Page* --- Enjoy this cool new feature, I hope you like it! Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to hundreds of thousands of users as a solopreneur? [Subscribe to my stories](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/subscribe) or follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . --- # Smart Second Brain AI Plugin for Obsidian Notes > Learn how to run AI with the Smart Second Brain plugin for Obsidian. Improve your note-taking by using advanced AI features within your own system. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-05-28 - Updated: 2024-09-24 - Tags: AI, Second Brain, FAQ, Tutorials, and Help, Obsidian, Tiago Forte - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/run-ai-locally-against-your-obsidian-notes-smart-second-brain-plugin/ --- I wanted to use AI to go through all my local notes without sharing any data with OpenAI or other external services.  Fortunately, I found an easy solution that anyone can use: the Obsidian Smart Second Brain Community Plugin.  [Smart Second Brain](https://github.com/your-papa/obsidian-Smart2Brain) is a **free** and **open-source** Obsidian plugin. It can directly access and process your notes, and it can operate completely offline, ensuring your data remains private and secure. Here is how to set it up: ### 1\. Install Ollama Ollama is an open source tool that lets you run large language models like Llama 3, Phi 3, Mistral, Gemma, and others locally on your computer. > ℹ️ You can skip this step if you prefer to use an OpenAI model with your local files. In this case, you’ll need an OpenAI API Key. ![https://ollama.com/](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*mzYKqussnNeuFajv036HFA.png) *https://ollama.com/* Ollama is available for macOS, Linux, and Windows. You can it [download it here](https://ollama.com/) . Once installed, Ollama should be running on port 11434. We can confirm that by running `curl http://localhost:11434`  : ![Check if Ollama is running](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*R5Jw8c2KyxPMqc4_Yhw_Mg.png) *Check if Ollama is running* And, more importantly, we can call any of the above mentioned language models by calling `ollama run llama3`  : ![Ollama running in terminal](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*dAiXtFFPaK0Vd2uD1R3zug.png) *Ollama running in terminal* Voila! We have a language model running on our local machine using the **llama 3** language model. If you are using [Oh My Zsh](https://ohmyz.sh/) , I can recommend putting an alias like this to your `~/.zshrc` file. Simply run: `echo 'alias ai="ollama run llama3"' >> ~/.zshrc` .  Now, you always have AI ready to serve you in your terminal by typing _“ai”_ . --- ### 2\. Install the Obsidian Smart Second Brain Plugin Now that Ollama is running, the next step is to integrate it with Obsidian using the Smart Second Brain plugin. To do that, we need to open the [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) settings and go to “Community plugins”.  First of all, make sure to ‘Turn on community plugins’ if you have never used them before: ![Turn on the Obsidian community plugins](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*yb3jN0fizRZ5liwCkdHx-Q.png) *Turn on the Obsidian community plugins* Once enabled, you can click **Browse** to find community plugins. Simply search for _“Smart Second Brain”_ and install the plugin. You can also find it by pasting this link into your browser: _obsidian://show-plugin?id=smart-second-brain_ . It looks like this: ![Obsidian Smart Second Brain Plugin](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*QLAgpwv8tdm7tyqMLJl5kw.png) *Obsidian Smart Second Brain Plugin* Just hit **install,** click **enable,** and click on **options** afterwards. In the options we can now configure the plugin to make it use either a locally running language model or a Third-Party Service like OpenAI. #### Configure Locale Language Models In the Smart Second Brain settings, you can set different options like autostarting the plugin or excluding files, which makes sense for large folders which are not relevant for your AI: ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*HiSDdXE0QkfayBpu5d3_nA.png) You can see that the Ollama Base URL is already pre-configured and that you need to select an embedding model. The pre-configured **nomic-embed-text** should work just fine. #### Configure ChatGPT If you prefer using ChatGPT, just click on third-party services and enter your OpenAI key. If your key is correct, you should be able to select from a language model and an embedding model: ![Using Obsidian Smart Second Brain Plugin with ChatGPT](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*fVk1zgtKX7oltL0qZBnQ5A.png) *Using Obsidian Smart Second Brain Plugin with ChatGPT* You can also configure some advanced settings, but let’s skip this for now. --- ### 3\. Start Chatting With Your Notes To continue, close the settings and open the command palette for Obsidian (Mac CMD + P, Windows/Linux CTRL + P). Then, type ‘ _Smart Second Brain_ ’ and choose **Open Chat:** ![Open Smart Second Brain Chat](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*iz59qd3LEFQcZTIpDshvkg.png) *Open Smart Second Brain Chat* You should now see the Smart Second Brain sidebar: ![Smart Second Brain Sidebar](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Zgf0a-pvsFtM-slYVRJIVA.png) *Smart Second Brain Sidebar* If you like to run it locally using Ollama, click on “Test” to check whether Ollama is configured correctly. If so, you will see a code snippet, which you need to paste into your terminal to set the Ollama origins.  ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*YfbvI5FWrLV-Ne61IF9lDw.png) *Set up Smart Second Brain plugin* Simply copy the command and paste it to your terminal. Then restart the Ollama service by clicking the Ollama menu bar and clicking **quit** . Then, click Test to check if everything works correctly. If so, you should see an option to install an Embedding model: ![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*KEiVAFy4gKzfMVYREePCcg.png) *Set up Smart Second Brain plugin* Just install it and click Start your Smart Second Brain afterward: ![Finish the configuration setup](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Rkr2S83h0-OvZ4AP0hM8Mw.png) *Finish the configuration setup* You should now see a chat window prompting you to install a language model. By default, the one you chose in the settings is set. ![Install a language model](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*yZx7cgq05GdjKl4VQq9amA.png) *Install a language model* Just hit install and wait for the download to complete. This might take some time as LLMs are often quite large. Once finished, we need to reinitialize the Second Brain: ![Reinitialize Smart Second](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Ix725r4AGewTFFVn9SkOig.png) *Reinitialize Smart Second* The plugin will now index your vault which takes some time depending on the amount of notes you have in your vault. ![Indexing your vault can take some time depending of the amount of notes you have](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*-6d1UC_yfn2etayYPWuRMw.png) *Indexing your vault can take some time depending of the amount of notes you have* --- ### Start Chatting With Your Notes When finished, we can finally start chatting with our notes and we can also configure two settings: 1. **Creativity** : Adjusts the level of originality in the model’s outputs to suit your preference. 2. **Similarity** : How similar the retrieved documents should be to the user query. You have to play around with it a bit and adjust it to your needs. For me, I have found that a ratio of 40% creativity and 28% similarity works best. ![Creativity and Similarity settings](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*3xfv6cMNI2pWSU7Zb1kb9w.png) *Creativity and Similarity settings* Keep in mind, there’s no right or wrong here. It always depends on the situation.  On the one hand, when writing a poem, boosting creativity is likely the way to go. On the other hand, when evaluating a legal document, creativity isn’t what you need. Now, let’s see how well the chat works by asking a question about my notes: ![Chatting with my Obsidian Vault](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*9yxmksOQtO1xPOvSXF3rAA.png) *Chatting with my Obsidian Vault* You can see that the plugin searches my notes and even links back to them in its answers.  I think that’s really cool, especially because it can even work with confidential local files since it doesn’t need to connect to external services. You could even use it offline. --- Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to hundreds of thousands of users as a solopreneur? [Subscribe to my stories](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/subscribe) or follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. --- # Remember Kindle Books with Spaced Repetition Learning > Remember what you read on Kindle with Web Highlights. Using spaced repetition, it reinforces quotes and facts at optimal intervals to boost your memory. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-05-21 - Updated: 2026-09-16 - Tags: Kindle, Productivity, Learning, FAQ, Tutorials, and Help - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-remember-your-kindle-books-using-spaced-repetition-learning/ --- I love reading books on my Kindle. I also like highlighting important passages. The challenge? Remembering what I’ve read and getting back at my highlights. Thankfully, I’ve developed a solution. [Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) can help you to remember what you’ve read by using **spaced repetition learning** . Whether it’s a profound quote or a fascinating fact, Web Highlights brings it back to you at optimal intervals to reinforce your memory. In this article, I’ll guide you on how to use the [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) together with your Kindle Reader to actually remember what you read. Let’s get started! Don't want to install anything yet? You can try it right in your browser. My free [Kindle Flashcards tool](https://web-highlights.com/tools/kindle-flashcards) turns a book's highlights into a deck you can start reviewing straight away — no account needed. Upload your `My Clippings.txt` file from an e-reader, or [import from your Kindle notebook](https://web-highlights.com/tools/import-kindle-highlights), and each book becomes its own deck you learn with spaced repetition. > [**Create Flashcards from Kindle Highlights — Free, No Signup**](https://web-highlights.com/tools/kindle-flashcards) — Turn your Kindle highlights into flashcard decks — one per book — and remember them with spaced repetition. Upload My Clippings.txt or import from read.amazon.com/notebook. Runs in your browser, no account needed. ### How Web Highlights Works with Kindle The great thing about the Kindle is that it offers a built-in highlighting mechanism. You can use it directly in your Kindle and even on your mobile phone and on a desktop device. #### Highlighting Text with your Kindle To highlight text on your Kindle, just select the text and click “Highlight.” You can also do this on the mobile Kindle app or the desktop app. #### Re-Highlighting Your Kindle Highlights Once you have highlighted different books, you can find all your highlights on the Amazon Read website at [read.amazon.com/notebook](https://read.amazon.com/notebook) : ![My Kindle books & highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*3XnI82O0sOodQnWki43joQ.png) *My Kindle books & highlights* The next step is to re-highlight them using Web Highlights. Just [**install the Chrome Extension here**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and you are ready to go. No account is needed, and most of the tool is free. You can also bring in all your Kindle highlights at once by [hitting the import button](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) in the top right corner. But, I’d suggest manually re-highlighting your passages to strengthens what you’ve learned.  Web Highlights acts as your digital second brain and makes sure your highlights are stored in a central place for easy access and review. > \[…\] creativity is about connecting ideas together, especially ideas that don’t seem to be connected. — Tiago Forte Now, let’s highlight our first book: ![Highlight Kindle Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*QVwzXegAPqcQM32IiK8x7Q.png) *Highlight Kindle Highlights* You’ve got lots of colors to pick from, and the sidebar helps you keep track of all your highlights. After you’ve made a highlight, you can write a note about it or tag it. Tagging is super handy for finding your highlights quickly. Let’s say you come across a really cool quote — just label it with ‘quote’. This way, you can quickly gather all the quotes you’ve marked in one convenient place for future reference. ![Tags help you to re-find your information](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Y3zJ3lpIkCn7oaHhrfbyng.png) *Tags help you to re-find your information* Now that we’ve got some interesting knowledge in our app, we can jump into a learning session to get what we’ve learned into long-term memory. ### Spaced Repetition and the Forgetting Curve The Learn & Recap feature in Web Highlights uses [spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) to help you remember what you’ve read. During your learning session, Web Highlights will show your highlights individually. You can go over each one, think about what it means, and choose when to review it again based on how well you remember it. This method is based on the so-called “Forgetting Curve” and strengthens your memory and ensures that the main ideas from your Kindle books stick with you. ![Halting the Forgetting Curve with spaced repetition (Image from: mindtools.com)](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*-ozvpUqP_LdCpTzdW1N8mQ.png) By reviewing your gained knowledge, you will significantly increase the chances of getting information into your long-term memory. So, as we know the importance of reviewing our learnings, let’s do exactly this. > [**Spaced Repetition: How to Make Your Readings Stick in Long-Term Memory**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) — How to beat the “Forgetting Curve” and memorize things effectively using flashcard learning, spaced repetition and the… ### Start a Learning Session With Web Highlights You’ve got two options to begin a learning session. You can use either the Chrome Extension or visit the web app at [app.web-highlights.com](https://app.web-highlights.com/) . For the latter, you’ll need an account to sync your highlights. Let’s start a learning session from the Chrome Extension. Simply open the sidebar and click the followoing “Learning” icon: ![Start a learning session](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*57hLMaV1jYGCbNIFp6_Oeg.png) *Start a learning session* The green number, labeled ‘10’, indicates there are 10 learning tasks awaiting completion. By tackling 10 cards each day, you help solidify your learnings in long-term memory. Now, if you start a learning session, your highlights will be brought to you one by one: ![Your highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*OuVzIW3K6fCRuWckq7y1ig.png) For every card, you have three choices: 1. **Discard** : If the highlighted info isn’t worth remembering, select this option to skip it in future learning sessions. 2. **Don’t remember** : Choose this if you can’t recall the given knowledge. This prompts the card to appear again sooner for review. 3. **I remember** : Click here if you know the info well. The algorithm will note this and revisit it later to reinforce it in your long-term memory. Here is a complete session in a 48-second video: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExU6mNx1Gg0) Want to test yourself properly instead of just recognizing a highlight? Turn any highlight into a real **Q&A flashcard** — add a question, flip the card for the answer, and grade yourself _Correct_ or _Incorrect_. You can even let the on-device AI draft the question and answer for you. The [spaced repetition guide](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning) walks through all of it. The algorithm used here is called the “Super Memo” algorithm. It remembers your choices and ensures that it presents the information back to you at the optimal time to effectively overcome the ‘Forgetting Curve’. --- There’s only one thing left to say: If you’re forgetting faster than you read, be sure to [install Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and aim to learn 10 cards daily. This simple habit will help your readings truly stick in long-term memory. Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to hundreds of thousands of users as a solopreneur? [Subscribe to my stories](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/subscribe) or follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . --- # Summarize with Tiago Forte’s Progressive Highlight Technique > Do you ever make notes or highlights and never revisit them? It often feels like everything we read is crucial, but we're encountering it at the wrong time. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-05-15 - Updated: 2026-04-09 - Tags: Productivity, Web Highlights, Learning, Second Brain - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-art-of-summarization-tiago-fortes-progressive-highlighting-2-0-technique-in-action/ --- Have you ever made notes or highlights on a book or article and never looked at them again? It often feels like everything we read is important, but we’re just encountering it at the wrong time. > What is difficult is not transferring content from place to place, but transferring it through time. —  [Tiago Forte](https://fortelabs.com/blog/progressive-summarization-a-practical-technique-for-designing-discoverable-notes/) In this article, I will show you how can you can use Tiago Forte’s Progressive Highlighting technique to make your highlights more useful and actionable for the future. ## Who is Tiago Forte? In his book Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte describes important concepts of how to better organize your digital life. Tiago believes that many people overcomplicate their note-taking and knowledge management systems because **they don’t have a framework** that helps them decide where things should go. That’s why he came up with several ideas to improve how you manage your knowledge systems. One of his inventions is the [PARA Method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) , which is described as _“a simple, comprehensive, yet extremely flexible system for organizing any type of digital information across any platform”_   —  [fortelabs.com](https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/) . Another technique is the Progressive Summarization Technique, helping you to get the most out of your notes. > [**PARA-Method: The Secret to Digital Organization I Wish I Knew Sooner**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) — Discover the PARA-method: Tiago Forte’s revolutionary approach to a clutter-free, productive, organized digital life with an unleashed creative potential (Marius Bongarts) ## **The Progressive Summarization Technique** The Progressive Summarization Technique is a technique _“to distill notes down to their most important points.”_ > It is a simple process of taking the raw notes you’ve captured and organized and distilling them into usable material that can directly inform a current project.  _— Tiago Forte in Building a Second Brain_ We can do that by taking advantage of a habit that we are all familiar with —  **highlighting** . The technique is easy:  - first, you highlight the main points of an article.  - then, you mark the key points within those highlights,  - keep doing this until you’ve compressed the note into multiple “layers.” Each layer uses a different style, so you can easily see the difference. Tiago Forte defines **four layers of Progressive Summarization** : ![1. Captured Notes 2. Bolded Passages 3. Highlighted Passages 4. Executive Summary](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*sSv_EWBC36YQSsUdpAsn-g.png) *The Four Layers of Progressive Summarization (Image from “Building a Second Brain”)* ### 1\. Capture Notes The first layer is to initially capture your notes. There are different tools to capture your content: - A browser highlighter such as the [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) - Highlighter for eBook readers (e.g. Kindle highlighter) - Built-in highlighter features, like those found on [Blinkist](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-remember-your-blinkist-book-summaries-using-spaced-repetition-learning/) or medium.com - Web clippers such as Evernote, OneNote, or Notion Web clipper  For example, when I read the book “Building a Second Brain” I used the Kindle highlighter to highlight and capture important information.  Back then, I didn’t know for what this information could be useful, I just knew that it could be at some point in the future. > what you read is good and useful and very important, you’re just reading it at the wrong time. —  [Tiago Fort](https://fortelabs.com/blog/progressive-summarization-a-practical-technique-for-designing-discoverable-notes/) e Now, when it came time to writing this article, I revisited my Kindle library at [read.amazon.com](https://read.amazon.com/) , where all my highlights and notes are stored. Then, I used the [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to re-highlight my highlights to get them into one central place. ![1. Capture Notes](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*JYJGnyz2z6FNR-v3bBDdVQ.png) *1. Capture Notes* Re-highlighting my Kindle highlights already helps me to refresh my memory about the topic. Plus, Web Highlights gives different  [formats](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages/formatted-highlighting)  like headings and blockquotes, which makes it easier to review them later when we’re putting them into our “Second Brain.” ### 2\. Bolded Passages In the next step, we are extracting our highlights to the note-taking tool of our choice. This can be any tool like Notion, Obsidian, Capacities, and more. In my case, I am using Notion as my “Second Brain” and I can easily extract all my highlights and notes to Notion using the “Export to Markdown” feature: ![Export Kindle Highlights from Web Highlights to Notion](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Mx56lE3kW-KBEE_xelOlNg.png) *Export Kindle Highlights from Web Highlights to Notion* Now, I can easily go through my highlights & notes again and emphasize the most important parts of the article by making them bold. ![2. Bolded Passages](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*PYU6SNAvvEmY85K9LyFtpA.png) *2. Bolded Passages* Can you notice how much simpler it is to review the main points now? Picture the gap between reading the original book parts, which might need five to ten minutes of focused reading, compared to just scanning through these bolded points, which would take less than a minute. During a hectic workday, this could rescue us some valuable minutes. However, we’re not done yet. Let’s incorporate the third layer to enhance the practicality of our highlights even further. ### 3\. Highlighted Passages Some of our bolder passages are still quite long. To make these parts even more actionable, let’s add another highlighting layer to our notes. We can use the highlighting feature of Notion to color the most important sections of our bolder passages.  Here is how this could look like in our example: ![3. Highlighted Passages](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*kbJNJVikLRbgp1fxS3C28w.png) *3. Highlighted Passages* The third layer makes it very easy to understand the main points of our research very quickly. We can grasp the main message of the section in seconds. Let’s get to the last point to make our highlights & notes as discoverable as possible by adding an executive summary. ### 4\. Executive Summary The executive summary is an extra step we can take to grasp the main idea of an article or book more quickly.  Tiago Forte suggests it’s not always needed, but it can be useful at times. Simply review the bolded and highlighted sections, then summarize them in your own words. You could also use ChatGPT to do that, but a personal touch makes it easier for your future self to understand.  You can place this summary at the beginning of your document. Here’s how it could look like in my example: ![Executive Summary](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*lILHwB0srQcb1lbQrsVUJA.png) *4. Executive Summary* --- That’s all! I hope Tiago Forte’s Progressive Highlighting Method helps you make your highlights and notes more practical. Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to 100K+ users as a solopreneur? [Subscribe to my stories](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/subscribe) or follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . > [**The PARA Method: The Simple System for Organizing Your Digital Life in Seconds**](https://web-highlights.com/discover/page/667122b072362cb6bfbf5792) — Learn how to organize your digital life in seconds. Stop wasting time looking for information and gain greater focus on what matters most. (Web Highlights) --- # Formatted Highlighting Will Change Your Highlighting Experience > Discover how formatted highlighting transforms your reading experience. Learn tips and techniques to make your highlights more effective and organized. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-05-09 - Updated: 2026-04-09 - Tags: FAQ, Tutorials, and Help, Web Highlights - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/formatted-highlighting-will-change-your-highlighting-experience/ --- Imagine if this article didn’t have any headlines or was just plain text. It would be much harder to read, right? Well, that’s what most highlighters do — they just highlight text in plain form. So, I had this idea: Why not highlight text in the same format as it appears on the page? The new formatted highlighting mode of [Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) does just that — it allows you to highlight in various styles, such as **headings** , **paragraphs** , **quotes** , **bullet points** , or **code** blocks. Here is how the advanced highlighter mode looks like in action: [Watch the video](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/media/2024/05/advanced-demo-short.mp4) *Advanced Highlighter Mode* ### Comparison of Highlighter Modes Let’s look deeper at how the new highlighter mode solves a problem I have had when I went through my highlights & notes of a large article or book. Here is how a highlighted article with many highlights looked like in the past: ![Normal Highlighting Mode](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*4MnQ0yGBxB2_A9f4TxneXg.png) *Normal Highlighting Mode* The points are not so fun to go through because they are challenging to read. Some of the highlights were headlines or bullet lists in the original article but they are formatted as plain text.  > There is a reason why articles and books have headings, bullet points and quotes. Here is how the article looks like when using the new  [formatted highlighting](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-webpages/formatted-highlighting)  feature: ![A proven Methodto Organise](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*9eoaUpYit66pZgx8gIQ1JQ.png) Much easier to read, right? Using **headlines** , **quotes** , **paragraphs** , and **bullet lists** in our highlights makes the article much easier to read. It provides a clear structure for our minds, similar to what we’re used to in articles. ### How To Use Formatted Highlighting First of all, you need to install the [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . Then you can find an option in the settings to switch between the two highlighter modes: ![Choose a highlighter mode](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*0iRPAw5j0JyS7YxYPdf8cg.png) *Choose a highlighter mode* 1. **Standard** : This is the standard highlighter mode, designed for simplicity and ease of use. It allows you to highlight any text, which will then be displayed in the sidebar in the color of your choice. This mode is perfect for those who prefer straightforward, color-coded highlighting. 2. **Formatted** : This mode offers a more advanced highlighting experience. It allows you to use various formats such as headings, paragraphs, quotes, bullet points, or even code blocks. This helps you to better organize and structure your highlights in the sidebar, making it ideal for those who want more control over their highlighting process. Once you have enabled the advanced mode, you can start using the formatted highlighter. > ℹ️ The new formatting feature is available to users during the 7-day free trial or with an active Ultimate subscription. You can check out the [current prices for the Web Highlights plans here](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . ### How does it work? There is no need to explain the basic mode as it is the standard highlighter. Let’s zoom in on the **Advancded Mode** . Just make sure you’ve turned on Advancded Mode in your settings, as explained in the last section.  Then, you can easily highlight any text on any website. Once you do that, a regular highlighter will appear. When you hover over it, you’ll notice a new formatting toolbar that lets you highlight your text in different styles. ![New formatting toolbar](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*aHEhxoc6cWycwdINV1Sjkw.png) *New formatting toolbar* Here are the different formats to choose from: - **Quote** : When you click the standard highlighter icon, your text will turn into a quote in the sidebar. That’s just what happens by default with the standard highlighter mode. - **Paragraph** : Click the “T” icon, and your text in the sidebar will look like a regular paragraph. - **H1** : Your text will become a bold and big headline. - **H2** : It’ll be bold but a bit smaller. - **H3** : It’ll be bold but the smallest. - **Bullet List** : Your text will show up as a bullet list item. - **Code** : This options transforms your text into a code block. Here’s what each of those formats looks like in the sidebar when you’ve highlighted text in different ways: ![Formatted Highlighting with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*bATenZaLqDdsRBCN1MPDZw.png) *Formatted Highlighting with Web Highlights* The highlighted texts are much more structured and easier to read in the sidebar. Here is how the highlighted article looks like in the [web app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) : ![Formatted Highlights in the app](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*HNWipvxSCnQXd2nrrgGOuw.png) *Formatted Highlights in the app* --- That’s it. Enjoy this cool new addition! If you haven’t already, be sure to [install the Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm?hl=de&authuser=0) and give this new feature a try for free during the 7-day trial. Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to hundreds of thousands of users as a solopreneur? [Subscribe to my stories](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/subscribe) or follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . --- # Remember Blinkist Summaries with Spaced Repetition Learning > Remember what you read with Web Highlights & Blinkist! Use spaced repetition to make it stick. Start a learning session today! - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-05-06 - Updated: 2026-03-23 - Tags: Learning, Web Highlights, students, books, Blinkist - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-remember-your-blinkist-book-summaries-using-spaced-repetition-learning/ --- I love reading books, but I also enjoy a good book summary. The challenge? Remembering what I’ve read. Thankfully, I’ve developed a solution.   [Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) can help you to remember what you’ve read by using **spaced repetition learning** . Whether it’s a profound quote or a fascinating fact, Web Highlights brings it back to you at optimal intervals to reinforce your memory.  In this article, I’ll guide you on how to use the [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) together with Blinkist to actually remember what you read. Let’s get started! ### How Web Highlights Works with Blinkist The great thing about Blinkist is that it offers a built-in highlighting mechanism. You can use it on your mobile phone and also on a desktop device. #### Highlighting Text with Blinkist You can start by highlighting text directly in the Blinkist app. Alternatively, you can navigate to your Blinkist highlights in the [web app](https://www.blinkist.com/en/app/highlights) and directly highlight in your browser:  ![Highlight Blinks from your browser or by using the app](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*M42Lv7u4Rr_BicQ2sN3R4Q.png) *Highlight Blinks from your browser or by using the app* #### Re-Highlighting Your Blinkist Highlights Once you have highlighted different book summaries, you can find all your highlights in the web app at [blinkist.com/en/app/highlights](https://www.blinkist.com/en/app/highlights) : ![Blinkist Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*GmaouqaZjT3dxRlcavK73g.png) *Blinkist Highlights* The next step is to re-highlight them using Web Highlights. Just [**install the Chrome Extension here**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and you are ready to go. No account is needed, and most of the tool is free.  Highlighting our Blinkist highlights again not only strengthens what you’ve learned — Web Highlights acts as your digital second brain and makes sure your highlights are stored in a central place for easy access and review.  > \[…\] creativity is about connecting ideas together, especially ideas that don’t seem to be connected. — Tiago Forte Now, let’s highlight our first blink: ![The Unfair Advantage](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*FZcWcaPPEpEAd2lmk48OOQ.png) You’ve got lots of colors to pick from, and the sidebar helps you keep track of all your highlights. After you’ve made a highlight, you can write a note about it or tag it. Tagging is super handy for finding your highlights quickly. Let’s say you come across a really cool quote — just label it with ‘quote’. This way, you can quickly gather all the quotes you’ve marked in one convenient place for future reference. ![Tags help you to re-find your information](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*XKiGuOnLOurWah8OOKnCQg.png) *Tags help you to re-find your information* Now that we’ve got some interesting knowledge in our app, we can jump into a learning session to get what we’ve learned into long-term memory. ### **Spaced Repetition and the Forgetting Curve** The Learn & Recap feature in Web Highlights uses [spaced repetition](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) to help you remember what you’ve read. During your learning session, Web Highlights will show your highlights individually. You can go over each one, think about what it means, and choose when to review it again based on how well you remember it.  This method is based on the so-called “Forgetting Curve” and strengthens your memory and ensures that the main ideas from your Blinkist summaries stick with you. ![Halting the Forgetting Curve with spaced repetition (Image from: mindtools.com)](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*-ozvpUqP_LdCpTzdW1N8mQ.png) By reviewing your gained knowledge, you will significantly increase the chances of getting information into your long-term memory. So, as we know the importance of reviewing our learnings, let’s do exactly this. > [**Spaced Repetition: How to Make Your Readings Stick in Long-Term Memory**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) — How to beat the “Forgetting Curve” and memorize things effectively using flashcard learning, spaced repetition and the SuperMemo algorithm (Marius Bongarts) ### Start a Learning Session With Web Highlights You’ve got two options to begin a learning session. You can use either the Chrome Extension or visit the web app at [app.web-highlights.com](https://app.web-highlights.com/) . For the latter, you’ll need an account to sync your highlights. Let’s start a learning session from the Chrome Extension. Simply open the sidebar and click the followoing “Learning” icon: ![Start a learning session](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*57hLMaV1jYGCbNIFp6_Oeg.png) *Start a learning session* The green number, labeled ‘10’, indicates there are 10 learning tasks awaiting completion. By tackling 10 cards each day, you help solidify your learnings in long-term memory. Now, if you start a learning session, your highlights will be brought to you one by one: ![Learning Tasks](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*OuVzIW3K6fCRuWckq7y1ig.png) For every card, you have three choices: 1. **Discard** : If the highlighted info isn’t worth remembering, select this option to skip it in future learning sessions. 2. **Don’t know** : Choose this if you can’t recall the given knowledge. This prompts the card to appear again sooner for review. 3. **Know it** : Click here if you know the info well. The algorithm will note this and revisit it later to reinforce it in your long-term memory. You can go a step further with a summary that deserves it: turn the highlight into a proper **Q&A flashcard**, flip it to check your answer, and score yourself _Correct_ or _Incorrect_ — or let the built-in AI draft the question and answer straight from the highlight. See the [spaced repetition guide](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning) for every option. The algorithm used here is called the “Super Memo” algorithm. It remembers your choices and ensures that it presents the information back to you at the optimal time to effectively overcome the ‘Forgetting Curve’. --- There’s only one thing left to say: If you’re forgetting faster than you read, be sure to [install Web Highlights](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and aim to learn 10 cards daily. This simple habit will help your readings truly stick in long-term memory. Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to hundreds of thousands of users as a solopreneur? [Subscribe to my Medium stories](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/subscribe) or follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . --- # 3 Unusually Painful Mistakes on My Side Project Journey to 100K Users > Discover the three unusually painful mistakes I made on my side project journey and how to avoid them. Get tips for smoother project execution. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-05-03 - Updated: 2024-09-01 - Tags: Side Hustle, Web Highlights, My Journey, Story - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-unusually-painful-mistakes-on-my-side-project-journey/ --- Mistakes are inevitable when building side projects. Learn from my 3 biggest mistakes to take a shortcut on your side hustle journey. > I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. — Yevgeniy Brikman in Hello, Startup The biggest mistake many people make is to believe that mistakes are bad. Yet they are a key reason for success. That’s why I’m not embarrassed by mine and I’m happy to share them with you. I assure you: You will still make many mistakes — but different ones. > Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.— Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad Poor Dad ### 1\. Never Questioning Growth You learn a lot when building on the side. Take Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), for instance — they’re crucial for any successful business. But here’s the thing nobody talks about: it’s not all about expanding all the time. Sometimes, the smart move is to focus on improving your product and making your customers happier. > _Your product should be so good that even your competitors recommend it. —  [_Elon Musk_](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.brainyquote.com%2Fquotes%2Felon_musk_949258)_ For me, learning about SEO was like an addiction. I dug deep into SEO and shared my learnings in  [my articles](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbettermarketing.pub%2F3-instant-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking-d36cf98a933e) . Soon I gained millions of impressions on Google and hundreds of thousands of clicks for  [web-highlights.com](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb-highlights.com%2F) : ![Google Search Performance for web-highlights.com.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*mfpCPWkyUuepAL5Z-3yyDQ.png) *Google Search Performance for web-highlights.com .* It was amazing to gain such traffic and my user base grew a lot. Best of all: It was free marketing. However, too much focus on marketing can lead to neglecting the improvement of the actual product. I was scaling a product that was not ready for the masses yet. I knew there were issues. But, as my time was limited, I couldn’t fix them because I focused too much on marketing. > Usually, the most useful thing to do is to stop giving a f\*ck about the outcome for a while and focus 100% on the actions required for that outcome. —  [Cameron Scott](https://medium.com/u/3c68f7b89b81)  in  [I Thought Abundant Thinking Was BS. Until I Made My First Million](https://medium.com/@thecameronscott/i-thought-abundant-thinking-was-bs-until-i-made-my-first-million-325ead99ceeb) I genuinely believe that if you build an exceptional product, it will sooner or later gain value and recognition. In  [Forget About Marketing. Focus on Building An Awesome Product](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/forget-about-marketing-focus-on-building-an-awesome-product-910039ded684)  I discussed in detail why you should first build an exceptional product before you focus on growth. > Sometimes the best plan is focused on your current customers’ success, not on chasing leads and growth. —  **Paul Jarvis**  in  **Company of One** Recently, I saw a great Tweet about it: > Want to do less marketing? > > Build a better product. > > Built a shitty product? > > Do more marketing. > > — Dan Kulkov (@DanKulkov) [April 15, 2024](https://twitter.com/DanKulkov/status/1779781729945030876?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) While both strategies are viable, I feel like doing marketing for a “shitty” product shouldn’t be something you should aim for. A few months ago, I figured out that marketing isn’t everything. So, I ditched all my marketing stuff and put all my energy into making my  [Chrome Extension](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchromewebstore.google.com%2Fdetail%2Fweb-highlights-pdf-web-hi%2Fhldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)  better. Pretty soon, it got much faster, more dependable, and a lot more fun to use. People loved it, judging by their feedback. Create something amazing and people will talk about it. Growth will follow. Slowly but steadily. > Trying to avoid mistakes at all costs, or pretending that mistakes never happen, is not a viable strategy. More realistic is having a plan for when they do happen. —  **Paul Jarvi** s in  **Company of One** ### 2\. Not Building An Audience Sooner Building a community around your business is one of the most important things you can do. I feel uncomfortable posting on  [LinkedIn](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fmarius-bongarts-6b3638171%2F)  and  [Twitter](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FMariusBongarts) . I don’t like putting myself out there and posting stuff about things most of my LinkedIn friends don’t even care about. At least that’s what it often feels like for me. If you’re a solopreneur like me, you might feel the same way. Still, I can only emphasize the importance of building an online audience. **Get out of your comfort zone and start creating value. Join the 1% on the internet!** > According to the 1% rule, about 1% of Internet users create content, while 99% are just consumers of that content. —  [wikipedia.org](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F1%2525_rule) I wish I had done this sooner.   Everyone has something to share that has value for others. If you’re building an AI tool, write about how to set up the OpenAI API. If you’re selling clothes, write about mode trends. For example,  [my very first Medium article](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/how-to-build-the-medium-text-highlighter-as-a-chrome-extension-with-web-components-b3feccddcd01)  was a guide on creating a Chrome Extension — because that’s what I do, building a  [Chrome Extension](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchromewebstore.google.com%2Fdetail%2Fweb-highlights-pdf-web-hi%2Fhldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . I like the idea of a 1000 True Fans by  [Kevin Kelly](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkk.org%2Fthetechnium%2F1000-true-fans%2F) : > To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans. —  [kk.org](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkk.org%2Fthetechnium%2F1000-true-fans%2F) It does not matter on which platform or what kind of content you create. Just make sure to create value for your audience. > A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. —  [kk.org](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkk.org%2Fthetechnium%2F1000-true-fans%2F) Soon you will have a follower audience trusting you and willing to buy your products. ### 3\. Not Documenting Everything I was 22 when I started building  [Web Highlights](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb-highlights.com%2F) . After one year, there were only 10 users. Why would you create documentation for a tool no one uses? I am not saying you should create documentation the moment you spin off your new side project and validate your idea. However, you should not miss the point when your idea turns into business. That’s the point where you should document every single process to not make your business completely rely on you. **I have missed that point.** > If you don’t document how your business works, how will someone be able to run it without you? Therefore, you must write down every single process as part of your company’s how-to guide. — The E-Myth Revisited (Blinkist Summary) I was naive. Probably like most solopreneurs it didn’t make sense to me to write documentation for a project only I was working on. Honestly, even if someone had told me, I likely wouldn’t have listened. The points I failed to grasp were that by not writing documentation: - **you’re shutting the door for others to work on the project** - **your business is much more valuable when well-documented, as it’s far more attractive to buy** - **documented processes help you save time and identify where things can be automated.** The first two points are crucial. Even if I’m not thinking about hiring others for the project right now, writing documentation significantly boosts the business’s value if you ever consider selling it. > If your business’s systems are designed to work in the simplest and most efficient way, anyone can run the business, and thus it is appealing to buy. — The  **E-Myth Revisited (Blinkist Summary)** **I am trying to catch up but it’s a lot of work.** I do now understand the importance of documenting every single step of a business and I am trying to catch up. It’s just that I could have saved so much time. Most solo entrepreneurs probably skip writing documentation when they start. That’s fine initially, but if you’re serious about growing your business, it’s best to begin as soon as you can. Perhaps you should, especially if your ultimate aim is to establish a lasting business that you might eventually consider selling. If you don’t document how your business works, how will someone be able to run it without you? Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my  [Chrome Extension](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchromewebstore.google.com%2Fdetail%2Fweb-highlights-pdf-web-hi%2Fhldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)  to hundreds of thousands of users as a solopreneur?  [Subscribe to my stories](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/subscribe)  or follow me on  [LinkedIn](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fmarius-bongarts-6b3638171%2F)  and  [Twitter](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FMariusBongarts) . If you read a lot online, make sure to check out my  [Chrome Extension](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchromewebstore.google.com%2Fdetail%2Fweb-highlights-pdf-web-hi%2Fhldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)  loved by 90,000+ active user — it’s free. --- # How to Highlight Images with Web Highlights > Discover the power of image highlighting with Web Highlights! Easily save images alongside text, bookmarks, and notes. Upgrade now to highlight images! - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-03-13 - Updated: 2026-09-16 - Tags: FAQ, Tutorials, and Help, Web Highlights, News, Tutorial - Reading time: 2 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-images/ --- From now on, with Web Highlights you can not only [highlight text](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-highlights-to-highlight-text-take-notes-on-the-internet/) and create bookmarks. Highlight images easily, save them to your sidebar, and find them easily in the [app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) . > ℹ️ All users with an active  **Ultimate**  subscription can enjoy highlighting images.  [Upgrade now](https://app.web-highlights.com/pricing)  to start highlighting images. Please note that currently, highlighting images in  [PDF](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs)  files isn't supported. However, highlighting images on the web is straightforward. Here's how to do it: ## 1\. Right-click any image 🖱️ If you're using Web Highlights version 9.2.0 or higher, simply choose any image on the web, and you should see a new option in the context menu labeled "Save image." ![Right-click images to highlight them](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/03/image.webp) *Right-click images to highlight them* Once you have saved an image you can see a dot indicator in the top-left corner of the image. You can click this indicator to add  [notes](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/notes)  and  [tags](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/tags-and-organization)  to your images or to delete the image again. ![Indicator to edit your highlighted images](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/03/image-1.webp) *Indicator to edit your highlighted images* If you’d like to see it in motion, this short video goes from the right-click to finding the image in your library: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-P2NywN6gU) ## 2\. Find your images in the sidebar Once you have highlighted images, you can find the images in your sidebar: ![Highlighted images will appear in your sidebar](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/03/image-2.webp) *Highlighted images will appear in your sidebar* Just like highlighting text, everything else should work in the same way: Click on the highlight to jump to that spot on the page. You can also attach notes to your images to jot down your thoughts, or create tags to make it easier to find your images later. ## 3\. Find your images in the web app After you've marked various pictures, you can quickly locate them all by going to [the app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) and selecting the image view in the app's sidebar. Your images will be neatly grouped and simple to retrieve: ![Find all your highlights in the web app](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/03/image-4.webp) *Find all your highlights in the web app* Simply click on any image to view it within its original context. You can then [export your highlight](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/) s, including the images, using Markdown, PDF, or HTML formats, allowing you to use your research in various locations and services. ## Final Thoughts I believe highlighting images will make Web Highlights much more powerful and enjoyable. I hope you like it as much as I do. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism and feedback. Feel free to contact me at any time! Get in touch with me via   [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) **,**  follow me on   [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) ,  [**subscribe**](https://medium.com/subscribe/@mariusbongarts)  to get my stories via email, or follow my posts on  [**Medium.com**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts) . --- # Forget About Marketing. Focus on Building The Best Product. > I completely focused on building the best PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension and stopped marketing for 3 months — here is what happened. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-03-04 - Updated: 2024-03-04 - Tags: Side Hustle, SEO, Side Projects, Story, My Journey - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/forget-about-marketing-focus-on-building-an-awesome-product/ --- If you’re just starting your entrepreneur journey to build an awesome product, I bet you don’t like this quote: > Even the greatest ideas need a megaphone. Without marketing, they’re just whispers in the wind. — Jeffrey Eisenberg in The Rice and Beans Millionaire or this one: > Great products don’t sell themselves; marketing is the storyteller that brings them to life. — Seth Godin in This Is Marketing Don’t we all wish to create a product without the extra hassle?  In this article I want to share the words every indie hacker dreams of hearing: **Sometimes, you just need to take a seat and BEGIN CREATING.** Improve your product, create something incredible, and let time do its thing. #### First, a quick side note: - I am a developer building projects **on the side** - **No shareholders** are dictating any roadmap - I **do not financially rely** on my product’s success To put it another way:  _I am not dependent on the financial success of my side projects and can let time play for me. Now, keep in mind that what I’m sharing here might not fit every company since **marketing is crucial, and I do wish I knew more about it** ._ > Generally, I don’t let my business make me too happy, so that it can’t make me too sad. — Sahil Lavingia in The Minimalist Entrepreneur ### What Made Me Write This Article? Isn’t it strange how quickly people can change their minds? Just a few months ago, I was emphasizing the [significance of SEO in my articles](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-advanced-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking/) , but now I’m suggesting that sometimes it’s better to concentrate on creating a fantastic product. > If you don’t change your mind frequently, you’re going to be wrong a lot. People who are right a lot want to disconfirm their fundamental biases. — **Jeff Bezos at the [MARS conference in Las Vegas](https://www.fastcompany.com/90360687/jeff-bezos-business-advice-5-tips-from-amazons-remars)** Don’t get me wrong, SEO and Marketing is essential to scale a great business.  However, if you’re a **“Company of One”** like me, you need to prioritize wisely. In the past, I spent too much time on SEO and marketing, neglecting the product itself. There were always a few things that weren’t working quite right but should have been fixed earlier.  If you have a full-time job, spend 30 minutes every morning writing an article for SEO, then post it on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) . Well, then there simply isn’t much time left to work on new features for a long time without interruption. That’s why, in the last few months, I dedicated all my efforts to improving the app for my users. I didn’t share any articles here, didn’t tweet or post on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) , and didn’t write blog posts to boost my SEO rankings —  **I simply sat down and built!** ### What are the results? I wouldn’t be writing this article if I regretted my choice to focus on building and putting marketing aside. The results are great and I wish I would have done it earlier. > “The most powerful marketing is the joy customers experience when using your extraordinary product.” — Jeanne Bliss in Chief Customer Officer 2.0 Here is what happened: - [Web Highlights](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) active users increased from **40,000 to over 70,000** - the average Chrome Store rating went from **4.6 stars to 4.8 stars** , with over 1,1K+ ratings.  ![Active users grew from ~46K to ~72K in only three months](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*PBzfwqSFa_bIVRyZpg_G_w.png) *Active users grew from ~46K to ~72K in only three months* I want to highlight that I’m developing a [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , and the cool part is, it naturally grows through the Chrome Web Store. Good reviews not only boost your extension’s ranking but also attract more traffic and enhance SEO scores on the platform. This also goes for apps in the Play Store or App Store. That’s why I would say this article is most relevant to indie developers creating apps on these platforms. **I believe attracting traffic to other SaaS websites could be quite challenging without any marketing efforts.** ### Why You Should Focus on Building An Extraordinary Product #### Robust Foundation for Scaling In ‘The One Thing’, Gary Keller says that whenever we have to decide what to do next, we should ask: > “What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” I have asked myself this question and came to the conclusion that some main parts of my application needed to be refactored and renewed. This meant a lot of work. It required me to concentrate for many hours straight without being distracted by other things. Only by doing so could I lay the groundwork to scale Web Highlights beyond the 100,000 user mark while maintaining or even improving my good reviews. I was amazed at how quickly I accomplished things and how wonderfully fast and error-free my application became all of a sudden. In a relatively short time, I was able to make the app significantly faster and more user-friendly. After just one month and the first release, it became clear that my users were much more satisfied. ![“This extension should have existed since browsers became a thing. It’s useful, well designed, intuitive, and beautiful! Fast, no bugs, also useful for PDFs. It’s the whole package. Warning, you may not be able to do without once you use for a while. Thank you Marius!”](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*EtJIku7Ya0GFqfpjVMEp2Q.png) *Growing numbers of users started to love Web Highlights .* After that, I revamped the entire [web app](https://app.web-highlights.com/) and even built a completely new [landing page](https://web-highlights.com/) . This was long overdue, as I had put both together ages ago during my time at university. ![Web Highlights landing page before (left) and after (right) the rebuild.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*379CEtrkScvnPIh_3UKLdA.png) *Web Highlights landing page before (left) and after (right) the rebuild.* I was truly astonished at how I could achieve such significant improvements in less than three months. These substantial enhancements now provide me with the perfect foundation to focus more on marketing and SEO in the future, knowing that my app is ready for a potential 1 million users. #### Great Software Has Built-In Marketing Just because I’ve focused on development for three months doesn’t mean I haven’t indirectly engaged in marketing efforts.  > The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing — it feels like an exceptional product that speaks for itself. — Gary Vaynerchuk Often, a well-structured website itself serves as a marketing tool. As mentioned earlier, I completely rebuilt my landing page for Web Highlights, implementing Server Side Rendering (SSR).  This brings about several SEO benefits, hopefully enhancing my website’s Google ranking in the future.  Additionally, I’ve refreshed some texts and addressed accessibility issues, making the website more accessible to everyone. ![Performance: 94, Accessibility: 96, Best Practices: 100, SEO: 100](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*mtxg7m5k_PkhkNX_dpEQBQ.png) *The Google Lighthouse score is now almost perfect.* #### Word of Mouth Marketing I don’t want to build any product. I don’t want to build a product with the most users. **I want to build the best product for my users!** > “Your product should be so good that even your competitors recommend it.” —  **Elon Musk** I strongly believe that my product holds great value and has the potential to revolutionize the way people organize their online research. Consequently, I anticipate that when the product is truly outstanding, users will recommend it, driving substantial growth. ![Briana Mar 4, 2024 This extension is amazing! I love that I can write notes with any highlights I make. It’s so helpful and runs smoothly with almost no issue! I recommend it to all of my classmates and friends in college!](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*A2WVfkki5b4tDAVeGGyiYA.png) *Word of Mouth Marketing is powerful* That’s the kind of marketing I’m aiming for. It’s likely the reason why the key features of my app are free. I want people to enhance their research, and if they genuinely enjoy the product, they can upgrade to access all the other fantastic features. ### Final Thoughts Well, of course, the article’s title is intentionally provocative, and I understand that marketing is a crucial factor for any product.  However, I believe that sometimes it’s more important to have a truly excellent product before promoting something that may not be ready for the masses.  User validation is crucial, but before aiming for a million users, it’s essential to ensure that the product can scale without compromising quality.  Especially as a “Company of One,” it’s wise to choose priorities carefully and sometimes just do what you love most: **“Building.”** Thanks for reading! 🙏🏻  I always appreciate feedback. Feel free to connect with me on [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) **or [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts)** . --- # How to Export Your Research to Capacities with Web Highlights > Learn how to export your research data to Capacities using Web Highlights. Follow our step-by-step guide to improve your workflow and productivity. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2024-02-08 - Updated: 2026-08-30 - Tags: FAQ, Tutorials, and Help, Tutorial - Reading time: 3 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-capacities-with-web-highlights/ --- A handy tool like [Capacities](https://capacities.io/?via=marius) can gather all your research in one spot. Many people use Capacities for this purpose. In this article, I will show you how you can seamlessly connect [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) to [Capacities](https://capacities.io/?via=marius) and export pages and highlights directly to your workspace. > To follow along, make sure to have the [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) installed. > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. ## 1\. Highlight any website Firstly, to export our research, we need to highlight information from a website. This is a simple process if you have the [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) installed - Just select some text and then, either: 1. Click the highlighter popup. 2. Right-click the selected text and choose 'Highlight selected text.' 3. Use a keyboard shortcut (Mac: ⌥ + S, Windows: ALT + S). Your highlighted text and notes get saved automatically and are accessible from the extension's sidebar. If you've got the premium feature of cloud sync enabled, you can also access them on the web app at [app.web-highlights.com](https://app.web-highlights.com) . Moreover, you can add tags, create notes, and modify the title or description of the highlighted page. ## 2\. Connect to Capacities First, we need to connect Web Highlights to Capacities. Since August 2026 this works with a single click — you approve the connection on Capacities’ own page, and no API token is needed anymore. To do that, we need to open the settings and go to the integration sections of Web Highlights. You can find the settings by opening the sidebar and clicking the settings icon: ![Open Web Highlights settings](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/06/image-3.webp) *Open Web Highlights settings* Open the integration settings, click on “Export to Capacities”, and then on “Connect to Capacities”. You will be redirected to Capacities to approve the connection. > The connection is bound to one Capacities space, which you choose while approving access. The connected space appears in your settings afterwards — to switch spaces, disconnect and connect again. Once you approve the connection, you are sent back to Web Highlights and the integration is ready — your connected space is shown right in the settings. Did you connect Capacities with an API token in the past? Capacities upgraded their API, so the old token no longer works — just reconnect once from the same settings page, and your exports keep working as before. ## 3\. Export to Capacities Navigate to any highlighted page and click the three dots in the sidebar. Select "Export to Capacities.": ![Export to Capacities](https://email.web-highlights.com/uploads/send-to-capacities.png) *Export to Capacities* Within a few seconds, your Capacities weblink will be created. ## 4\. Open in Capacities Once the weblink is created, an "Open in Capacities" button will appear on your highlighted page. Click this button to directly open the Capacity weblink in your browser. ![Open in Capacities](https://email.web-highlights.com/uploads/open-in-capacities.png) *Open in Capacities* You should now be redirected to the created Capacities page, with all your highlights directly stored in your Capacities space: ![Exported Capacities page](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/06/image-4.webp) *Exported Capacities page* --- Enjoy this cool new feature, I hope you like it! Thanks for reading! Want to learn more about how I scaled my [Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to hundreds of thousands of users as a solopreneur? [Subscribe to my stories](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/subscribe) or follow me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . **Related Articles:** > [**How to Export Your Research to Notion with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-notion-with-web-highlights/) — A central organized tool helps to structure your research. Export highlights & notes to Notion using the Web Highlights Chrome Extension. (Marius Bongarts) > [**How to Export Your Research to Obsidian with Web Highlights**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-research-to-obsidian-with-web-highlights/) — Web Highlights allows us to easily copy all highlights with all necessary metadata and information into, e.g., Notion or Obsidian. (Marius Bongarts) --- # 🔥 The New Web Highlights 🚀 > Discover Web Highlights' new features: sidebar images, light/dark modes, editable titles, organized history/tags, and popovers. Share your feedback! 🚀 - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-12-15 - Updated: 2024-07-23 - Tags: Web Highlights - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-new-web-highlights/ --- This update is just for you 💪 I have been working hard to bring this update to life. In this article, I'll walk you through all the changes and show you how to make the most of the new features. Here is an overview of the key improvements: - The sidebar now has a beautiful cover image 📷 - You can switch between light ☀️ and dark 🔦 mode. - You can edit titles and descriptions 📝 - Your highlighted websites are neatly organized in a history list ⏱️ - You can open highlighted websites in a popover 📖 _ℹ️ The latest update will be released gradually to users. If you don't have the newest version yet, please be patient._ I understand that change can be challenging, but I hope you'll come to love the new design as much as I do. Your feedback is invaluable to me, so please take a moment to [fill out this form](https://forms.gle/9RCeowp1ZaAAKUVm7) and help me enhance the app even more. I truly appreciate it! > [**Design Feedback - Web Highlights**](https://forms.gle/9RCeowp1ZaAAKUVm7) — Hi, This is Marius from Web Highlights 👋 I’ve made some big design changes, and I’d really appreciate hearing what you think. Thanks a bunch in advance! 🙏🏻 ## Preview Image of Websites 📷 When you visit any website the new preview image will directly be noticed. Showing the preview image of an article or any website makes the sidebar much more enjoyable and gives you a great feeling of the website. ![Sidebar with cover image](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-1.webp) *Sidebar with cover image* If the new cover image isn't your thing or you just want to concentrate on emphasizing text without any visual distractions, you have the option to hide the image. To do this, hover your mouse below the image and click ' **Hide image** .' ![Hide Image Button](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-4.webp) *Hide Image Button* Once done, the image won't be visible on this specific website you're highlighting. ![Sidebar with hidden cover image](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-6.webp) *Sidebar with hidden cover image* If you change your mind and want to display the image again, simply click ' **Add image** .' --- ## Light ☀️ and Dark 🔦 mode Previously, Web Highlights was exclusively in a dark design, which remains the default setting. Now, there's an option to switch to a light mode. ![Switch to light mode](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-9.webp) *Switch to light mode* Just click the sun icon at the bottom of the sidebar, and the sidebar will take on a new light color mode. ![New light mode of the sidebar](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-10.webp) *New light mode of the sidebar* Feel free to choose your preference, and if you want to go back to dark mode, click the moon icon. --- ## Edit Titles and Descriptions 📝 Previously, there was always a title in the sidebar that couldn't be edited. But now, things have changed for the better. You can not only edit the title but also add and edit a description for the website. ![You can now edit titles and descriptions](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-7.webp) *You can now edit titles and descriptions* If you don't want a description, simply click ' **Hide description** ' in the toolbar below the image to hide it. ![You can also hide the description](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-8.webp) *You can also hide the description* --- ## Organized History List ⏱️ Previously, the leftmost tab view was somewhat disorganized, making it challenging to find what you were looking for. Now, you have a neatly organized history list that displays the highlighted websites in chronological order, making it easier to find what you're looking for. ![New history list of highlighted websites](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-11.webp) *New history list of highlighted websites* ## Popover Showing Website and Highlights ✨ If you click on an item in the history, a new popover will open up giving you a nice overview of all the highlights, tags, and notes of that specific page. ![New popover giving a nice overview](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-16.webp) *New popover gives a nice overview* --- ## Open Websites as a Page ↗️ Maybe you already notice the new 'Page' button: ![Open in Page](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-17.webp) *Open in Page* By clicking this button, the current website will open as a popup, providing you with more space to explore your highlights and notes. ![New popup giving you more space](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-18.webp) *New popup giving you more space* You could even get more space by clicking the '↔Wide layout' button. ![Wide Layout](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-19.webp) *Wide Layout* That will adjust the view to the full width of the popup. ![Full width popup layout](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-20.webp) *Full-width popup layout* Furthermore, you can also click " **Open in App** " to open the highlight in the web app on [web-highlights.com](https://web-highlights.com) , in case you are using the premium [**cloud sync feature**](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) . --- ## Organized Tags View 🏷️ Just like the history list, the tags view has been redesigned for a more organized format. Now, you'll discover a well-structured list of tags arranged alphabetically. ![New tags list](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-12.webp) *New tags list* Moreover, when you click on a tag, just like before, all the results for that specific tag will be displayed. Additionally, related tags are now presented in a more organized manner. ![Filtered Tags View](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-15.webp) *Filtered Tags View* Similar to the history list, clicking on a result will open a popover showing the related website with all the highlights. --- ## Quick Access to Recently Updated Websites ⭐️ Many times, we just want to pick up where we left off. Now, it's simple with the new "Recently Updated" view in the sidebar, providing a handy overview of your most recent highlights. ![Recently updated view](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/12/image-21.webp) *Recently updated view* ## Final Thoughts I hope you like the new design 🙏🏻 Your feedback is invaluable to me, so please take a moment to [fill out this form](https://forms.gle/9RCeowp1ZaAAKUVm7) and help me enhance the app even more. I truly appreciate it! > [**Design Feedback - Web Highlights**](https://forms.gle/9RCeowp1ZaAAKUVm7) — Hi, This is Marius from Web Highlights 👋 I’ve made some big design changes, and I’d really appreciate hearing what you think. Thanks a bunch in advance! 🙏🏻 --- # Blog Boost: Technical SEO Strategies Every Writer Should Know > Boost your blog's visibility with expert technical SEO tips for writers. Learn keyword strategies, audience connection, and content optimization. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-11-20 - Updated: 2023-11-20 - Tags: SEO - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/blog-boost-technical-seo-strategies-every-writer-should-know/ --- In a world where millions of articles are published each day, it's vital that your website is seen by search engines in order to succeed. While quality content has an important role to play. You can significantly increase your blog's visibility if you understand and apply the specific strategies for Search Engine Optimisation.  We're going to take a look at the essential technical search engine optimization strategies designed for writers and content creators as well as explore how you might [increase your blog's ranking](https://web-highlights.com/blog/5-powerful-techniques-to-improve-website-rankings/) on Google. It is important to strategically place your target keywords for search engine optimization that does not mean stuffing them. If you overload the keyword your content will not be readable. It's likely to raise a red flag for Google which could hurt your ranking.  Here we present our most efficient advice on how to optimize blog posts like a professional. These tips help our own blogs to attract millions of Organic visitors. ## Strategies Every Writer Should Know Provide you with the essential strategies that will help you achieve your writing goals. Study the art of creating interesting content, from developing strong stories to becoming an expert in [Search Engine Optimisation](https://ahrefs.com/blog/what-is-seo/) . It will give you information on how to conduct effective research, keyword optimization, and audience connection. Let's look at the essential components of Technical SEO that any writer should be familiar with. ## Write for your audience first This is the most important tip when it comes to content creation for search engine optimization. Well, it is very simple but many companies are making content for the wrong reasons. In order to appeal to your target market's interests you can provide content or respond to their questions.  Your product or service does not have to be relevant for each of the posts, but they should all relate to the industry.  By writing content that is excellent and useful in the field of search engine optimization which will be superior to what you're competing with, your company and yourself are able to become an effective industry expert. ## Keep it all under the same roof Keep original content under a domain name in order to get the credit and traffic that your website deserves. Therefore, if you have a blog, opt out of hosting with WordPress or Blogger and host the blog in a subfolder on your own domain (e.g: www.example.com/blog ). You should also add them to your website when you are given the opportunity to present more forms of original content e.g. videos, infographics, or whitepapers so that they can be shared from there as well. ## Make headlines that pack a punch You've got very little text to make a big impression. So the strength of a good headline on search engine optimization doesn't have to be underestimated! Develop headlines that are concise, and interesting and use rich keyword phrases. Apart from that great headline, also ensure your meta description is interesting and includes more details about the subject of this article. Remember, your title and meta description have to be included in search results so that they're counted! ## Use Images Images are good to increase your website traffic but make sure to use small-sized images and formats that reduce image sizes. You can use online available converters like JFIF to JPG to convert your image into JPG format. Make pictures pop up on your posts! People are visual. You can really make a statement if you add an image to your blog. You've got a Pinterest account? You can also pin posts with photographs to complement your blogs and add another way for you to get visitors to your website, along with promoting the site across all of your Facebook channels. ## Research Your Keywords It is vital to find out what are the important keywords before you write your content. Search for keywords is the first step in the creation of an excellent blog post. To satisfy the needs of a target audience, you will be able to modify content.  When you know the words and phrases they are using to conduct their searches. To that end, keywords will help to bridge the gap when it comes to what your target audience wants and how you can provide them with useful information. ## Select the Right Focus Keyword You need a focus keyword that you should Search for and find keywords with a high volume of searches and low competition. This will be the most important keyword you can use for your target and users are going to search for that. You can use online available plugins for your WordPress such as All in One SEO to set this keyword. By searching for the keyword focus in Google you'll be able to locate other relevant keywords. ## Understand Search Intent For describing the purpose of an Internet search we use the term 'search intent'. Because of that, there will be a specific search. Every time you go on the Internet you're hoping to find something. So, somebody wants to know what's on their mind? Do they have a special website that they would like to visit? Or are they just out there looking for something on the Internet?  A large part of online user journeys is these sorts of searches however they often differ from one stage to another. ### 4 types of search intent There's a variety of [different kinds of search intent](https://medium.com/@exec.shellybeanllc/4-types-of-search-intent-baec1d2ef564) . We shall take a look at four of the most frequently used: 1. Informational intent If you are writing an informational blog article then you should focus on information keywords. People are doing a lot of searches on the Internet looking for information. Information such as education for kids, information about Search Engine Optimization, you name it. There is a certain question or need to know more about some topic that people with an information purpose have. 2. Navigational intent Are you searching for a website directly? That's the intent of navigation. Like when you search \[Facebook\] to go to Facebook. Check to see if the site is listed with your company name. However, do not forget that it's only useful if your site is what people want. We've been in the top five for Google Analytics, but people don't want their websites from us.These kind of keywords mostly have low competition but you should only target these keywords if those are related to your site. 3. Transactional intent If you are writing an article about selling something then transactional intent keywords are good for your blog or product description. Users have interest in purchasing something online. That's the intent of the transaction. It's used by people when they want to buy something. They know what they want and just want to find that product page quickly. 4. Commercial investigation Some people plan on buying in the near future and take advantage of the Internet for research. What's the best washing machine to buy? Which plugin is more useful in terms of search engine optimization? There's also an intent of doing business with these people, but they need more time and convincing. In particular, these types of searches are [referred to as business](https://web-highlights.com/blog/why-i-will-change-my-pricing-model-from-a-lifetime-plan-to-freemium/) investigations intents. ## Structure your posts The contents of your message can be very good but in an unorganized format, it may easily fall through the cracks. It's easy to read if you break your content into shorter paragraphs with headlines, which keeps readers interested. For search engines, back-end organization is key too. Using proper tag hierarchy when tagging headlines (H1 for titles, H2 for subtitles) is important to maintain [a well-structured article](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-advanced-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking/) . ## Conclusion The achievement of online visibility is an essential requirement for a digital sea filled with articles. It's not enough to provide quality content only, you need to adopt particular search engine optimization strategies that will increase the impact of your blog. We've looked at the main tactics, such as tactical use of keyword phrases and insight into diverse user intent. These findings, derived from experience, led to millions of readers visiting our blogs organically.  Integrating SEO mastery into your writing ensures that it is not only resonant but dominant in a wide variety of Internet sites. In a dynamic world of [digital content](https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlight-the-web-with-the-colors-of-your-beloved-stabilo-highlighters/) , craft with intent, optimize strategically, and watch your words rise to the top. If you'd rather audit a page than guess at it, we've ranked the [10 best SEO extensions for Chrome](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-seo-chrome-extensions/) — the on-page readers, keyword overlays and traffic checkers worth a toolbar slot. --- # 5 Powerful Techniques to Improve Website Rankings Successfully > Learn powerful SEO techniques: refresh content, enhance readability, build quality links, optimize on-page elements, and speed up your site. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-11-01 - Updated: 2024-07-23 - Tags: SEO - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/5-powerful-techniques-to-improve-website-rankings/ --- Every site owner wants to rank higher in search results so that his/her website can attract the maximum number of visitors and increase overall revenue. However, it is important to note that, [ranking the website higher](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/top-ranking-factors/) in the SERPs is not a cup of tea, especially if you are a beginner.  But don’t worry, it is not impossible because there are several effective techniques available that help you to improve your site’s visibility in the search engines.  In this article, I am going to discuss the five most powerful ranking techniques in detail. It will be going to be quite worth reading this article for you.  ### 1\. Refresh Content Regularly ![Refrsh Content Regularly](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/hXA_gI0yqkiDx-PtJela3mkbGBjBJbIDvQkWe3lTSdWgOWIX98yazOor6RLZ9uDzQtMynNpG_IjRMfxb_dQZcpmmMvpk3tRVpgTuCxrMBTKXeNpKSwKOLL3vsTmeZKkn0UmSfhCfOE1j9Tj8IkOReQ) Search engines like Google live to serve the readers, and due to this reason, they encourage the site admin to keep updating the content regularly. So that the readers can get familiar with the latest information about their searched query.  According to [Searchenginejournel](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/fresh-content/#:~:text=Fresh%20Content%20Is%20A%20Confirmed%20Ranking%20Factor%20For%20Some%20Queries) , fresh content is a confirmed Google ranking factor for time-sensitive or trending keywords. Now the question here is how you can refresh or update content. For this, you have to add more content to your already published blogs or product reviews, and then republish them. In my personal experience, this will give a good indication to search crawlers that you are continuously putting time and effort into coming up with the latest information. There is a strong chance the search engine will start rewarding you with higher rankings.  But let me tell you, adding a little piece of content to the existing one will not make it fresh. Instead, you have to add an ample amount of content to grab the attention of the search engine.  ### 2\. Enhance Content Readability ![Enhance Content Readability](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/90hJf8h3vGs7-lJpLL32NkHHnmYGnQjo4zrSEBbgCfUMCP-NCJOxX-73l5MtF5FsK8To3KlNaMqZ7OP87TltjHhiGTOpF6isybl09GPoEXHBGrbkKVOx6GzGUHClRe9yLkxWqovalB9IwMu4nbUQKg) Content readability is also an [essential ranking factor](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-advanced-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking/) and can greatly help in improving a website's ranking. It refers to how simple and easy to understand a site’s content is for search engines and readers.  When search engine crawlers have an efficient understanding of your website content, they will provide it with better rankings in the required niche or category.  On the other hand, when the content is readable, visitors will spend more time on the site, resulting in a decreased [bounce rate](https://neilpatel.com/blog/bounce-rate-analytics/) – which is an important ranking factor.  So, to improve website ranking, you have to first enhance its content readability. For this, you have to first figure out complex words, and phrases used in the sentences or paragraphs of the content. After that, you have to replace those difficult-to-understand terms with their simple yet relevant synonyms for enhanced readability.  However, if you are facing difficulty in the replacement of words (due to lack of vocabulary), then you can get help from a [word changer](https://www.paraphraseonline.io/) tool. It will quickly change the words of a given text with simple synonyms to increase readability.  ### 3\. Continuous Link Building ![Continuous Link Building](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/K03aS9UZ-W5kFyE0jvlSnOL22otC1LpYNp1Q2qCZEKzKIK2MeSzeiUbJHnuH0THS7drwgPtuvY5FxyOF7p5V2aacMn-hYiKDmaiesbxcXXt--r-bWJBX2ZcNK0Awo6uMdKqZwByMJL-VtRVJEdcVsA) According to [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/blog/link-building/#:~:text=Link%20building%20is%20the%20process,and%20bring%20more%20search%20traffic.) , link-building is an effective SEO technique that involves getting links from other websites to your website. This technique is adopted to increase the authority of a website in the eye of a search engine, which further leads to improved rankings.  As far as I know, this is usually done by adding external links to other sites in the web content. Adding an external link to the content will allow both the readers and search crawlers to verify that piece of information from an external source.  That’s why, most of you may have seen many [SEO experts recommending](https://web-highlights.com/blog/seo-strategies-i-used-to-gain-2-000-users-in-two-months/) only adding the externals of credible and trusted websites. The more credible external links your site will have, the more will be the chances of gaining readers' and search engines’ trust and ranking as well.    ### 4\. Optimize On-Page Elements ![Optimize On-Page Elements](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/_auf_wWM77z2_SAR-LrSU6YGUwO1eN6Qokil6zzSkJbnLZCWJ2QkLEjFJc2ZSK559gvxULTbriMEVDR3tcCsOyHtWZ3_80YP0kCgQ6pTkO6p61AukMTQ80EuFoYXdMWmOCObecGXGFj5ONzByjOW-w) Optimizing different on-page elements can also help in successfully improving a website’s ranking in the search results: Some of the major elements are as follows:  **Headers:** Headers or heading tags help readers and crawlers quickly skim the given information. Heading tags are ranked in order of importance with H1 being the most important while H6 is the least once. To optimize the heading, I have added some points below give them a read:  - Make use of the heading tags by following the right order  - Keep them to the point - Never repeat H1 tag **Alt tags** : Alt tags provide information about the image (that is added in content) to the search engine so that they can rank it accordingly. It is important to note, that search engines can’t crawl or read the image, that why alt tags or text are introduced. Now, let me tell you how you can efficiently optimize them for better rankings.    - Describe the image in a clear manner - Try to be specific - Make use of main keywords (but not in every tag) **Meta descriptions:** A meta description is a summary of an article that tells what a particular is about. It has a maximum limit of 160 characters and generally appears beneath the title of an article in the search results. To optimize meta descriptions:  - Be specific and relevant to your content - Must add the focus keyword - Try to highlight the solution ### 5\. Take Care Of Loading Speed:  ![Take Care Of Loading Speed](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/NOV43V4OSff1Dbkde80ugIJ31su4iGCa8Zu664f0KOXW1EJBsaiH3blOrBYv3NGd7Rqqwlm-v4iP0NzZzPH6Tf2tOnM1PmhuxQ8E27dz7dYIbw4B1PJDTytMYq95vo9lYgSi14CzAuwDQO4fQo4uIg) This is the final technique that you can adopt to increase website rankings successfully. The loading speed refers to how fast the website loads for the users. It is an essential ranking factor and search engines like Google recommend a loading speed of under two seconds.  According to my research, multiple factors affect the loading speed, these include: - The web hosting on which the site is operating - Overall size of the homepage or a particular page (like how many images or videos it contains) So, to take care of the loading speed, you have to get hosting from a dependable service provider. Along with this, you also have to reduce the size of images and videos that are added to the content.  ## Conclusion Ranking your website higher in the search results is not an easy task, because requires following the techniques or approach. In this blog article, I have discussed the five most powerful things that can help you to improve site rankings, hope you will find the information valuable. --- # How To Install Chrome Extensions in Microsoft Edge Browsers > Learn how to effortlessly add Chrome extensions to Microsoft Edge! Follow our step-by-step guide for seamless integration and enhance your browsing experience. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-10-19 - Updated: 2024-07-23 - Tags: Chrome Extension, Tutorial - Reading time: 3 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-install-chrome-extensions-in-microsoft-edge-browsers/ --- If you like Microsoft’s Edge browser more than Google’s Chrome but still want to use Chrome’s many extensions, I’ve got great news: it’s simple! In this article, I’ll walk you through the process. #### 1\. Allow extensions from other stores To be able to install Chrome extensions in the Edge browser, we need to allow the Edge browser to install extensions from other stores. To do that, we can navigate to the Extensions page by clicking the **extensions icon** and then **manage extensions** . ![Extension icon](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*VAsG_D8Z1eE7_lCAobTP7A.png) *Extension icon* If you don’t see the icon, you can also click the three-dot menu on the right and select **Extensions.** Alternatively, you can also just paste this URL into your address bar: _edge://extensions_ . Now you should see the Edge Extensions page, where all of your browser extensions are listed. You can see all of your browser extensions from the Edge Add-ons Store. Now, make sure to enable “ **Allow extension from other stores** ”, which is visible on the left sidebar of the page. Having this enabled, will enable you to install extensions from other stores, like the Chrome Web Store. ![Allow extensions from other stores on Edge Extensions page](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*0u3AG0Uouj1eu_X9-zM_Pg.png) *Allow extensions from other stores on Edge Extensions page* If you just recently installed the Edge browser, this option is most likely already enabled. In this case, you can skip this step and continue with the next step. #### 2\. Install a Chrome Extension Now, as we configured Edge to allow extensions from other stores, we can visit the [Chrome Web Store](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions) to install a Chrome extension of our choice. The banner in the store already tells us that we can easily install extensions from it: ![Chrome extensions work banner in Chrome Web Store](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*TuQk9Q-ppcv17mkAaxA8aA.png) *Chrome extensions work banner in Chrome Web Store* We can select any extension we want to and install it. In this example, I will install [Web Highlights](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , which is a web highlighter that allows us to highlight text on any website or PDF. ![Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*qDAPuE96xWDowbJ8KcE0dw.png) *Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter* Simply click “ **Get** ” and accept the popup by clicking “ **Add extension** ”. That’s it, our extension is installed. If you like to have the extension visible in the browser toolbar, you can click the extension icon again and click the icon next to the extension to show it in the toolbar. ![Add Extensions](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*KJnmjfau9TBwPwngKchbCg.png) That’s it, we have successfully installed a Chrome extension in our Edge browser. ### Final Thoughts Adding a Chrome Extension to the Edge browser is easy since Edge browsers are built on Chromium. Usually, extensions from other stores are automatically allowed, and sometimes Edge even syncs your Chrome extensions, making the switch hassle-free. Keep in mind that extensions you download from the Chrome Web Store might not be tested for the Edge browser. You could encounter bugs or issues. It’s a good idea to install one extension at a time and make sure everything works smoothly before adding the next one. Using Edge on your Android phone? It can install extensions too, from its own menu. Here's [how to install extensions in Edge for Android](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-install-chrome-extensions-on-android/#edge). I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions, and I am open to criticism. Feel free to contact me at any time 😊 Get in touch with me via **[**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/)** or follow me on [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) **.** --- # 5 Best Note-Taking Tools To Organize Your Digital Second Brain > Discover the Best Tools to Build Your Digital Second Brain! Tiago Forte's famous productivity system for ultimate organization and creativity. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-09-26 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Second Brain, Tools, Web Highlights, Tiago Forte - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/5-best-note-taking-tools-to-organize-your-digital-second-brain/ --- Tiago Forte’s idea of building a second brain is a game-changer in anyone's digital organization. Following the [‘CODE’ technique](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) in combination with the famous [PARA-method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) gives you the perfect framework for building and organizing your digital life. By that, your brain can focus completely on being creative, without getting stuck trying to remember stuff. > Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. — David Allen, author of Getting Things Done In his book, _“_ Building a Second Brain _,”_ Tiago Forte makes sure to communicate that his system works with any digital-note-taking app and that you can even switch between apps when using it.  **His intention is not to use a single software program, but to use a single organizing system.** In this article, I want to share the best tools and note-taking apps I use to build my own digital second brain. Remember that those apps are just the ones I find most useful, and you’re free to choose any other tool of your choice. > [**Building A Digital Second Brain: The Ultimate Guide To Unlock Creativity**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) — Unlock your creative potential with Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain” digital system. Discover the transformative ‘CODE’ technique and ‘PARA’ method. (Marius Bongarts) Full disclosure: I built Web Highlights, so keep that in mind when you see it on this list. ### 1\. Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter ![The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-12-at-10.04.02-3.webp) *The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store* Capturing useful information is the first step in Forte’s framework for [building a second brain](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) . According to Forte, the key is to **capture what truly resonates with you** . As many of us spend a lot of time on our computers and in our browsers, the best tool to capture content is one that can save text and important information directly when you encounter them. Web Highlights is a [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) that enables you to do exactly this. The productivity highlighter lets you highlight text on any website or PDF, and you can take notes and create tags.  For example, imagine reading an article and encountering a great quote you want to save in your second brain. With Web Highlights, you can now select any text, and a highlighter popup will appear from which you can choose a color to save the quote.  ![With Web Highlights, you can highlight text on any website](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*e7ZVW4GU_MfG9tgHLCH-XA.png) *With Web Highlights , you can highlight text on any website* With [Web Highlights](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm?hl=en&authuser=0) , you can highlight text on any website Choosing a color will now highlight the text on the website. The best thing is that the highlights will be recreated when reloading the page. Next to websites, you can also [highlight online and local PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) by opening them in your Chrome browser. Afterward, you can organize your highlights in the extension’s **sidebar** or by using the popup when clicking on the highlight. You can **create tags** to find your research better and **add notes** to add important thoughts that might be important in the future. ![You can add tags and create notes either from the sidebar or from the popup](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-20-at-17.25.02.webp) *You can add tags and create notes either from the sidebar or from the popu* You can also **export your research** to Markdown, PDF, and HTML to save it in a centralized tool of your choice. The tool is entirely **free to use** , and you can get started right away **without needing to sign up** . However, if you do choose to sign up, you’ll also be able to enjoy the cloud sync feature, free for your first 7 days and part of the paid plans after that. This feature allows you to access your highlights from any device simply by visiting [web-highlights.com](https://web-highlights.com) . Web Highlights is a popular tool with **hundreds of thousands of users** , and it’s the [top-rated Chrome extension for highlighting websites and PDFs](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-rated-pdf-web-highlighter-chrome-extensions/) , with an impressive rating of **4.8 stars** . You can [**install it here**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . ### 2\. Kindle Reader If you are reading books on your Kindle or any other E-book reader, you can highlight text directly in your books. This is very useful as you can directly save important or just interesting topics. Sometimes, you don’t need to know how and why you will use this information. It’s just important to capture it so that you can access it later on easily. > This special feeling of “resonance” — like an echo in your soul — is your intuition telling you that something is literally “noteworthy.” You don’t need to figure out exactly why it resonates. — Tiago Forte By highlighting your books, you have tons of raw information stored, which you can revisit by going go the Kindle reader website on [read.amazon.com](https://read.amazon.com/) , where all your books with the corresponding highlights & notes are stored. Now, you could easily use tools like Web Highlights to re-highlight parts of your highlights to distill the most important information or import all of your highlights by using the Kindle import functionality of Web Highlights. This makes it very easy to export your highlights & notes to the tool of your choice. ### 3\. Capacities While the initial tools were helpful for capturing content, [Capacities](https://capacities.io/) is the ideal tool for arranging your content in line with [Tiago Forte’s PARA Method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) . > Say goodbye to files and enter the intuitive world of objects. — capacities.io I discovered Capacities a few months ago and am obsessed with it. The fact that after a few weeks, it convinced me to use it as my primary note-taking app shows that it can compete with the big players like **Notion** or **Obsidian** . ![Capacieties — A studio for your mind](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*ClRsU6tU4ercnFgXyzhPWA.png) *Capacities — A studio for your mind* What makes Capacities unique is that it completely changes how we think about organizing our digital world. Instead of organizing our content in folders and files, in Capacities, **everything is an object** . > Our units of thinking are objects such as books, people, conversations, or ideas.Say goodbye to files and enter the intuitive world of objects. — capacities.io Capacities transformed how I manage my digital life, and it seamlessly matches Tiago Forte’s concept of structuring our content using the [PARA method](https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/) , which stands for **Projects** , **Areas** , **Resources** , and **Archives** . ### 4\. Notion Notion is the most powerful note-taking app, and I have used it for years to organize my digital life. Notion offers a lot more than just a basic note-taking app. It includes features like databases, task management, real-time collaboration, flexible templates, and a powerful search function, making it the ideal tool for constructing your digital second brain. ![Notion - Second Brain](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*bwlaGOoMGpkeRkInilyO7A.png) *Notion — Second Brain* You can begin effortlessly by selecting one of the numerous [“Second Brain” templates available in the Notion Template Gallery](https://www.notion.so/templates/search?query=Second+Brain) . This provides you with a robust starting point to structure and manage your digital life. ### 5\. Obsidian While I use Capacities as my primary tool for personal work and other private tasks, I turn to Obsidian for client work. Obsidian is a great choice because it operates entirely offline and keeps all data stored only on your local device. Even though tools such as Capacities and Notion keep your data and work private until you choose to share it, it’s essential to note that they store this information on their servers. This isn’t suitable for handling critical client data or internal company documents, so I can’t use them for such purposes. ![Obsidian works locally on your computer](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Z3AG5vRiVI6IGmYRP-92bQ.png) *Obsidian works locally on your computer* Now, let’s talk about Obsidian. Obsidian stores all your information right on your computer, in what they call a “Vault.” Think of it as a special folder on your computer. This folder allows you to create and back up your second brain easily. What’s great is that Obsidian doesn’t rely on cloud syncing, making it an ideal tool for organizing my second brain, especially for client work. --- ### Final Thoughts When it comes to creating your Second Brain, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all perfect tool. It largely depends on personal preferences. Tiago Forte also emphasizes that the focus should be on the system rather than the tools. That said, having the right tools can make a significant difference. I’d suggest trying out the [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) for **capturing** important online information. To **organize** your content effectively, consider using [Capacities](https://capacities.io/) . If you’re dealing with sensitive data, Obsidian could be a solid choice. Thanks for reading! 😊 I always appreciate feedback. Connect with me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) , [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) , or drop a comment. --- # PARA Method: The Secret To Digital Organization > Discover the PARA-method: Tiago Forte's revolutionary approach to a clutter-free, productive, organized digital life with an unleashed creative potential - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-09-14 - Updated: 2024-08-08 - Tags: Second Brain - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/para-method-the-secret-to-digital-organization-i-wish-i-knew-sooner/ --- Do you ever feel like your digital world has become a “ **digital junkyard** ”?  I bet you tried many tools to get all your files, notes, and docs in order, only to realize later that your nice and tidy system has turned into a massive, cluttered mess where finding anything has become a headache. [Embedded content](https://giphy.com/embed/E2USislQIlsfm) We all seem to scatter notes and files everywhere. You might find them in various Google Docs, folders on your computer, in Dropbox or OneDrive, as PDFs, jotted down on Post-it notes, in paper notebooks, and across numerous note-taking apps like Notion, right? According to Tiago Forte, author of the book “ _Building a Second Brain_ ,” most people overcomplicate their note-taking and knowledge management systems because **they don’t have a framework** that helps them decide where things should go. That’s why he invented the [**PARA-Method**](https://web-highlights.com/discover/page/667122b072362cb6bfbf5792) , which is _“a simple, comprehensive, yet extremely flexible system for organizing any type of digital information across any platform”_   —  [fortelabs.com](https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/) . The great thing about the method, which Forte calls **_“The Most Popular Idea he has ever invented,”_** is that it’s a universal framework that functions with any note-taking tool and suits everyone. > PARA can handle it all, regardless of your profession or field, for one reason: it organizes information based on how actionable it is, not what kind of information it is. — Tiago Forte Before we dive into the **PARA** method, let’s first zoom in on Forte’s broader concept of maintaining a **digital second brain** and why it’s a good idea to start crafting one now. > [**The PARA Method: The Simple System for Organizing Your Digital Life in Seconds**](https://web-highlights.com/discover/page/667122b072362cb6bfbf5792) — Learn how to organize your digital life in seconds. Stop wasting time looking for information and gain greater focus on what matters most. (Web Highlights) ### What is a Digital Second Brain? [When I first started reading “Building a Second Brain,”](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) I figured it was just another tactic for sorting out my digital life, and I wasn’t anticipating much from it. However, Tiago Forte goes far beyond that, and the full title of his book **_Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential_** already reveals the book's main intention. > [**Building A Digital Second Brain: The Ultimate Guide To Unlock Creativity**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/?source=post_page-----b24c224f9daa--------------------------------) — Unlock your creative potential with Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain” digital system. Discover the transformative ‘CODE’ technique and ‘PARA’ method. (Marius Bongarts) Forte continuously mentions that “building a Second Brain” is all about **creativity** .  He suggests that if we store all the important stuff in our digital “second brain,” it frees up our main brain to **focus on being creative** instead of trying to remember everything, since the “second brain” can take care of that. #### The ‘CODE’ technique Forte introduces helpful techniques to build up our second brain. One of those is called **‘CODE’** .  Understanding this method will help us understand why we use the PARA-Method in organizing our second brain. The ‘ **CODE** ’ technique is a four-step approach to follow when establishing our second brain. ![The ‘CODE’ technique](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*wSpcJDbLKWEOuMhaYtDDwQ.png) *The ‘ CODE ’ technique* 1. **Capture:** The first step is capturing ideas and insights that are noteworthy. By capturing and storing information in one main tool, we can eliminate the worry of forgetting something and free up our minds for more creative tasks. For example, when reading online, you can use a [PDF & Web Highlighter](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to highlight important articles to get back to them later. 2. **Organize** : After capturing content, it’s important to organize it efficiently. Hereby, we should organize our content for action according to the projects we are working on right now. Forte invented the PARA-Method to simplify this **,** which we will look closer at in the next section. 3. **Distill** : Distilling our already organized content is the third step in the ‘CODE ’ technique. In this step, we will look closer at our notes and highlights to remove non-essential things and optionally summarize the content in our own words. 4. **Express** : The final step of the ‘CODE’ method involves sharing and displaying your work to others. Be sure to craft something from your content that can be a valuable output for others. We will now focus on the “ **Organize** ” step among the four, where the **PARA method** is a big help. For details on the other steps, refer to the article [Building A Digital Second Brain: The Ultimate Guide To Unlock Creativity](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/) . > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm?source=post_page-----b24c224f9daa--------------------------------) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. ### The PARA-Method To make organizing our second brain easier, Forte invented the organizing system **PARA** , which is an acronym for the four main categories of information in our lives: - **Projects** - **Areas** - **Resources** - **Archives** The most important takeaway from this method is that it organizes your content for **action** .  > The ultimate system for organizing your life is one that is actionable —  [fortelabs.com](https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/) Each of the four categories above can be sorted by **actionability** , starting with projects as the most actionable items on the list: ![The PARA method sorts categories by actionability](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*2VpjzWGbXMAbfPMr32xrKA.png) *The PARA method sorts categories by actionability* #### Projects Projects are the most actionable items in the framework. So, whenever you want to store some information in your second brain, start by asking: **_In which project will this be most useful?_** Projects represent any outcome you’re actively committed to that requires multiple work sessions to complete.  In general, projects have two important features —  They have: - a **beginning** and an **end** with a specific time frame - an **outcome** , a goal that you’re trying to reach The main idea is that every time we save new information in our second brain, we should try to categorize it in a practical project in our life. Projects could be anything; for instance, you might have a project for renovating your house, finding a new job, or buying Christmas presents for the upcoming year. For example, when reading “ **Building a Second Brain** ,” I didn’t just place my Kindle highlights in broad categories like _“Productivity”_ or _“Organization”_ .  Instead, I created a project folder named _“Write Article about the PARA-Method.”_   Next, I again marked up my Kindle highlights using the [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and exported them to my note-taking app. Naturally, you can opt for any note-taking app you prefer, such as **Notion** , **Obsidian** , [**Capacities**](https://capacities.io/) , etc. Using this approach, I had all the important information in one place when writing this article. #### Areas While **Projects** are short-term efforts in your work and life that often change, **Areas** are long-term responsibilities. > As important as projects are, not everything is a project. For example, the area of our lives called “Finances” doesn’t have a definite end date. — Tiago Forte Consider **Areas** as continuous aspects or themes in your life. For instance, you might have a “ **finances** ” area where you manage your taxes or a “ **health** ” area where you focus on maintaining your fitness. Unlike projects, **areas can not be completed** . They are vital for tracking your thoughts, information, dreams, and desires over time. In contrast to projects, areas can not be completed. They are important on an ongoing basis, but unlike projects, they’re also important later too. While they’re not as actionable as projects are, they still need our focus to track ideas, information, dreams, and wishes over time. #### Resources If there is no project or area, we can place some information in a so-called **Resource.** Resources are not directly actionable at the moment, but might be helpful for actionable projects in the future. > The third category of information that we want to keep is resources. This is basically a catchall for anything that doesn’t belong to a project or an area and could include any topic you’re interested in gathering information about.  — Tiago Fort in Building a Second Brain Resources tend to align with what many of us are used to — sorting information into broader categories and topics such as “ _Productivity_ ”, “ _Note-Taking_ ”, “ _Studying_ ”. Those resources may not demand immediate action, but they’re always there to revisit. They stand as ever-ready references, helpful to support future projects or areas that might require more direct action. --- #### Archive The archive holds items that are either finished or no longer in use. Typically, **projects** are the things we archive most since they have a clear end date. **Resources** are also often archived.  > \[…\] there’s no reason to delete anything these days just archive it — Tiago Forte in  On the other hand, **areas** are seldom archived because they represent long-term topics — though it can occur, say, if you undergo a significant life change or choose to alter your priorities. The great thing about the archive is that it’s still searchable and available for later access. In a digital world, it’s not necessary to delete anything completely. You will never know whether future projects can benefit from archived items. > The archives are an important part of PARA because they allow you to place a folder in “cold storage” so that it doesn’t clutter your workspace, while safekeeping it forever just in case you need it. — Tiago Forte  Forte describes the archive as a cold storage containing items that are almost completely unactionable just waiting there in case you need to find or reference them sometime in the future. ### Final Thoughts Looking at the four different attributes of the **PARA-Method** allows us to derive the following checklist of questions to determine where to place any content: - Start by asking: _In which **project** will this be most useful?_ - If none: _In which **area** will this be most useful?_ - If none: _Which **resource** does this belong to?_ - If none: _Place in **archives** ._ You should now be familiar with the key concepts of the effective PARA-method. Give it a try in your life to witness how it can enhance the organization of your digital world. Thanks for reading! 😊 I always appreciate feedback. Connect with me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) , [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) , or drop a comment. If you are just starting to build your second brain, check out my online [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension](https://web-highlights.com/) to capture important content on any website or PDF. Give it a try; it’s **free** ! > [**The PARA Method**](https://web-highlights.com/discover/page/64fee1af45baf1e275c91b20) — Try the simple system for organizing your digital life in seconds. Stop wasting time looking for information and gain greater focus on what matters most. (Web Highlights) --- # Master Your Creativity by Building a Digital Second Brain > Unlock your creative potential with Tiago Forte's "Building a Second Brain" digital system. Discover the transformative 'CODE' technique and 'PARA' method. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-09-06 - Updated: 2024-10-20 - Tags: Productivity, Second Brain, Tiago Forte - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-a-digital-second-brain-the-ultimate-guide-to-unlock-creativity/ --- > Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. — David Allen I consider myself a highly organized person, particularly in the digital world. For my friends, I am the go-to person to find that one specific document, photo, or invoice from past years. However, I recently read **_“Building a Second Brain”_** by **Tiago Forte** , and the method that Forte states as _“A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential”_ made my digital life even easier.  Thiago Forte believes that efficiently organizing your digital life is crucial to clear your mind from holding onto small things.  Using a “Second Brain” for our thoughts allows our “First Brain” to **focus on creativity** rather than getting bogged down by remembering tasks. > \[…\] creativity is about connecting ideas together, especially ideas that don’t seem to be connected. — Tiago Forte ### “CODE” — Capture; Organize; Distill; Express The ' **CODE** ' technique, introduced by Forte, is a simple four-step approach to help establish our second brain. **CODE** stands for: - **Capture** : Keep what resonates - **Organize** : Save for actionability - **Distill** : Find the essence - **Express** : Show your work ### Capture: Keep What Resonates ![Capture: Keep what resonates](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*nZz_3arqfKDdeWzS_u774g.png) *Capture : Keep what resonates* Capturing useful information is the first step in Fortes’ four-step method.  > Adopting the habit of knowledge capture has immediate benefits for our mental health and peace of mind. We can let go of the fear that our memory will fail us at a crucial moment. — Tiago Forte To ensure that you don't capture too much information, it's crucial to acknowledge that **_“in any piece of content, the value is not evenly distributed”_** . Once you understand this, the solution is clear: Focus on extracting only the essential parts and notes from your content, instead of saving entire book chapters. #### How can I capture content? Luckily, some tools can help us with capturing essential content: - **Highlighter Browser Extensions** : If you are reading a lot online, PDF & Web Highlighter browser extensions like [Web Highlights](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) might be the tool of your choice. Online highlighter allow you to highlight any website or PDF in your browser. You can choose from different colors, take notes, organize in tags, and export your research into various formats. - **Ebook Highlighter** : If you are reading on your **Kindle** , you can easily use the built-in highlighter to save important parts of your books. - **Web Clipper** : At times, you might wish to store articles for future reading. You'll find numerous excellent Chrome extensions for web clipping if you’re seeking options beyond the default bookmark manager. [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) also offers the convenience of effortlessly bookmarking websites, ensuring you can access them later from any device. > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. Using those tools, you can choose specific passages or the best quotes, pair them with your notes, and export them into a single centralized location of your choice like **Notion** , **Obsidian** , **Capacities** , and more. For example, when I read “Building a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte, I marked the most important sections on my Kindle. At that time, I wasn’t sure how those highlights would be useful later on. I just made sure to capture them.  Later, I realized how valuable this book was and decided to share my knowledge by writing this article. I can easily access my highlights and notes from the book on the Kindle website. I then re-highlighted the key information that aided me in writing this article using the [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . Afterwards, I could utilize the [Kindle import functionality](https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/) of [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) and markdown-export to combine the highlights and notes into a single centralized tool, such as Notion, Obsidian, Capacities, or any other tool you prefer. #### What information should I capture? Forte gives us **four questions** to ask to _“help you decide exactly which nuggets of knowledge are worth keeping”_ : 1. **Does It Inspire Me?**  2. **Is It Useful?** 3. **Is It Personal?** 4. **Is It Surprising?**   If you can say “Yes” to any of those questions, what you see could be valuable to save. Ultimately, there’s no rule for how or what you should capture. The key is to **capture what truly resonates with you** . > I often find that a piece of content resonates with me in ways I can’t fully explain in the moment, and its true potential only becomes clear later on. — Tiago Forte Here is why: Spending too much energy on analytically deciding whether the content is worth keeping takes away your energy for being creative. When you spend all your energy on that decision, you have less energy left for valuable steps like making connections, imagining possibilities, formulating theories, and creating new ideas. ### Organize: Save for Actionability ![Organize: Save for actionability](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*7mQy3rDjqRdw9NDP1LfYUg.png) *Organize : Save for actionability* The second step in Forte’s ‘CODE’ technique is to organize what you have captured and to save it for actionability. > Once you’ve begun capturing notes with the ideas that resonate with you, you’ll eventually feel the need to organize them. — Tiago Forte The most common and natural way many organize their research & notes is in broad subject categories like “Business”, “Self-Improvement”, or “Productivity”. But Forte says that this strategy is not so good, as these categories keep growing and becoming more and more confusing. > For example, say you come across a useful article on how to become more resilient and capture it in your notes. \[…\] Most people would save this note by subject in a folder called “Psychology.” That seems like a perfectly logical choice. Here’s the problem: the subject of “Psychology” is far too broad to be useful. Imagine your future self a few weeks or months from now. In the middle of your workday, how much time will you have to search through all your notes on such a broad subject? — Tiago Forte Instead, Forte suggests organizing content for action, according to the projects you are working on right now. > Our notes are things to use, not just things to collect. — Tiago Forte To make this approach easier, Forte created the organizing system **PARA** , which stands for the four main categories of information in our lives: **Projects** , **Areas** , **Resources** , and **Archives** . ![PARA method: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives (Image from: workflowy.com)](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*fzvnlPnD33o7t2tjYG7INg.png) *PARA method: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives (Image from: workflowy.com)* As you can see from the image above, the PARA method is sorted by **actionability** . This gives us a convenient checklist of questions to decide where to put our highlights and notes: - Start by asking: _In which **project** will this be most useful?_  - If none: _In which **area** will this be most useful?_  - If none: _Which **resource** does this belong to?_  - If none: _Place in **archives** ._ For instance, when I took down the key points from the book “Building a Second Brain”, I didn’t just place them in broad categories like _“Productivity”_ or _“Organization”_ . Instead, I saved them in a **project** folder named _“Write Article about Second Brain”_ . I used the same approach for the additional research I did for this piece. This way, I can quickly find all the crucial details I need for this article in one spot. > PARA can handle it all, regardless of your profession or field, for one reason: it organizes information based on how actionable it is, not what kind of information it is. — Tiago Forte Organizing for action gives you clarity because you know that everything you’re keeping actually has a purpose. ### **Distill** : Find the essence > To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. — Lao Tzu ![Distill: Find the essence](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*qa07C9T1vd52VB2pva0OYg.png) *Distill : Find the essence* The third step of the ‘CODE’-method is to distill. Here, we begin transforming our captured content into our own message. You may remember from school or university that it can be incredibly helpful to summarize learning in your own words. Here, we “distill” unimportant content and concentrate only on the essential things that are important to remember. The same applies to our highlights and notes that we made in the first “capture” step. These first research notes are disorganized and contain unessential things. Now we go over our notes again, removing non-essential things and summarizing things in our own words. Forte calls this process [**Highlighting 2.0: The Progressive Summarization Technique**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-art-of-summarization-tiago-fortes-progressive-highlighting-2-0-technique-in-action/) **,** which looks like this for him: > The technique is simple: you highlight the main points of a note, and then highlight the main points of those highlights, and so on, distilling the essence of a note in several “layers.” Each of these layers uses a different kind of formatting so you can easily tell them apart. Only in this way can we make the content accessible to our future selves. Forte gives a very clear example: Your future self may need more time to go through your notes thoroughly. Each note you capture is like a product you are trying to sell to your future self. Therefore, break down your notes to the essential parts to make them as easy to access as possible for your future self. > What do you do when communicating with a very busy, very impatient, very important person? You distill your message down to the key points and action steps. You leave out unnecessary details and get right to the point. Distillation is at the very heart of all effective communication. — Tiago Forte ### Express: Show your work > We all naturally have a desire to create — to bring to life something good, true, or beautiful. ![Show your work](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*fMYomjBaqQXi7rJvZUyE_Q.png) *Express : Show your work* The last part of the ‘CODE’ technique is to express and show your work to others. Forte says that we all naturally have a desire to create — to bring to life something good, true, or beautiful. According to him, it’s the most deeply fulfilling thing we can do. And it also has a positive impact on others — by inspiring, entertaining, or educating them. > The word “productivity” has the same origin as the Latin verb producere, which means “to produce.” Accordingly, you should not let your knowledge, notes, and markings simply rot. Make sure you assign them to an action to produce something deliverable. For example, I didn’t just read the Second Brain book. Instead, I transformed my notes and highlights into an article. This not only added value for others but also for me. Writing the article helped me internalize the book’s content more deeply. ### Final Thoughts Building a Second Brain can drastically alter how you arrange your digital content. Tiago Forte introduces us to fantastic strategies like the ‘ **CODE** ’ technique and the ‘ **PARA** ’ method to optimize our digital content for practical use.  It offers us a unified location where we can retrieve all our notes, insights, and highlights. Above all, it liberates our mind from the task of memorization, allowing us to channel our energy towards creativity. > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. --- # Top 5 Chrome Extensions for Highlighting Websites & PDFs > Compare the best Chrome extensions for highlighting PDFs and web pages. Top pick: Web Highlights at 4.8 ⭐ from 5,000+ ratings (checked 2026-09-23). - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-08-25 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Productivity, Chrome Extension, Tools - Reading time: 7 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-best-rated-pdf-web-highlighter-chrome-extensions/ --- 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](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) 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. > [**Best Productivity Browser Extensions | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/) — Discover and compare the best productivity browser extensions at Tooltivity. Explore our in-depth reviews of top tools to boost your browsing experience. (Marius Bongarts) ### 1\. Web Highlights - 4.8 ⭐ (5,000+ user ratings) ![Web Highlights is the best rated online highlighter in our review with 4.8 out of 5 stars](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/09/image-14.webp) *Web Highlights is the best rated online highlighter in our review with 4.8 out of 5 stars* [Web Highlights](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) 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](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-highlight-pdfs-using-web-highlights/) 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](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/download-print-pdf-with-highlights)  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](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/highlight-pdfs/import-pdf-annotations)  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](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-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](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/)  📚 - [set email reminders](https://web-highlights.com/blog/say-goodbye-to-forgotten-articles-introducing-the-snooze-reminder/)  ⏰ - [learn and recall your highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/)  with spaced repetition 🧠 - use keyboard shortcuts ⚡ - share your research 🔗 - [explore & discover](https://web-highlights.com/explore)  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. ![5-star Chrome Web Store review praising the simple design of Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/08/image-8.webp) *Users appreciate the intuitive and simple design of Web Highlights.* ![5-star review calling Web Highlights a refreshing, low-stress highlighter for research](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/08/image-10.webp) *Web Highlights makes users' lives easier and less stressful.* You can [install the extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) 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](https://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](https://web-highlights.com/) while sync is active. > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter - Chrome Web Store**](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. ### 2\. Roam Highlighter - 4.6 ⭐ (57 user ratings) ![Roam Highlighter with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars (57 ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/08/image-19.webp) *Roam Highlighter with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars (57 ratings)* The [Roam Highlighter](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/roam-highlighter/hponfflfgcjikmehlcdcnpapicnljkkc) 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 with an average rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars (26 ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/08/image-20.webp) *"Highlights" with an average rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars (26 ratings)* ["Highlights"](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/highlights-highlighter-an/fiajhjomgpnlefcbdhfghnbhpillkklb) 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](https://web-highlights.com/) 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) ![Snippet Highlighter with an average rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars (137 ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/08/image-18.webp) *"Snippet Highlighter" with an average rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars (137 ratings)* The [Snippet Highlighter](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/snippet-highlighter-web-p/fkaokedhimpifhfadmgjpfjimkogdlcm) 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](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , 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](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/weava-highlighter-pdf-web/cbnaodkpfinfiipjblikofhlhlcickei) - 4.0 ⭐ (2,800+ ratings) ![Weava with an average rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars (2,800+ ratings)](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/08/image-22.webp) *" Weava " with an average rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars (2,800+ ratings)* The [Weava Highlighter](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/weava-highlighter-pdf-web/cbnaodkpfinfiipjblikofhlhlcickei) 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](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and the [Roam Highlighter](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/roam-highlighter/hponfflfgcjikmehlcdcnpapicnljkkc) , 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: 1. [Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) 2. [Roam Highlighter](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/roam-highlighter/hponfflfgcjikmehlcdcnpapicnljkkc) 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](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) 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](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/roam-highlighter/hponfflfgcjikmehlcdcnpapicnljkkc) is a great choice too. ## Related Articles > [**Top 9 Productivity Chrome Extensions for Students in 2023**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/best-chrome-extensions-for-students/) — These 9 Chrome extensions make your life as a student much easier and efficient. (Marius Bongarts) > [**Top 7 Productivity Chrome Extensions for Developers in 2023**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-7-productivity-chrome-extensions-for-developers-in-2023/) — These five Chrome extensions save me many hours every week as a developer (Marius Bongarts) > [**Highlight the Web with the Colors of Your Beloved Stabilo Highlighters**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlight-the-web-with-the-colors-of-your-beloved-stabilo-highlighters/) — Highlight web pages with Stabilo Boss colors using Web Highlights, a Chrome extension. Install it for free, customize colors, and start highlighting text online with ease. Rediscover the joy of Stabilo highlighters on the web! (Marius Bongarts) --- ## Looking for More Productivity Tools? At [Tooltivity](https://tooltivity.com/) , we review the top productivity browser extensions. Read our detailed reviews here: > [**Best Productivity Browser Extensions | Tooltivity**](https://tooltivity.com/) — Discover and compare the best productivity browser extensions at Tooltivity. Explore our in-depth reviews of top tools to boost your browsing experience. (Marius Bongarts) --- # The Dangers of Relying Too Much on Frontend Frameworks - A Short Story > Frontend Frameworks can be powerful tools, but the balance between innovation and established web standards like Web Components is key for staying competitive. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-08-16 - Updated: 2024-07-23 - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-dangers-of-relying-too-much-on-frontend-frameworks-a-short-story/ --- #### Caught in the Framework Trap: Peter’s Story Meet Peter, an enterprising startup founder who in 2016 was driven by the ambition to develop a groundbreaking web application that could change the world. Peter, like many of us, believed that the latest frontend frameworks held the key to unlocking innovation and efficiency. He comes across Ember.js, a frontend framework that gained significant traction from 2012 to 2018, renowned for its established conventions and robust viewpoints. He thinks: > “Wow, Ember.js looks great. Let’s build our complete frontend architecture around it. We can even hire many aspiring developers, eager to learn this fancy innovative technology” Things started great. Thanks to the new technology, his vision was brought to life rapidly. His dedicated team of ten skilled developers, now well-versed in Ember.js, was highly motivated and was able to build a feature for feature in no time. ![Peter believes frameworks are key to innovation.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*rxRpyzSHuoqXL1hqtNFs9g.png) *Peter believes frameworks are key to innovation.* But, as time passed, Peter began to notice that his developers were losing motivation. The popularity of Ember.js was declining, and new technologies like Svelte.js, Solid, and Qwik were getting involved. ![State of JS 2022: Developers’ interest in Ember.js declines](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*cwVWg8SB4Mcy6ZWLu0lskg.png) *State of JS 2022 : Developers’ interest in Ember.js declines* Meanwhile, developers frequently proposed a full application overhaul to transition to well-established technologies like React, Vue.js, or Angular. Yet, the application’s size and intricacy have grown to a point where this option is almost unfeasible for Peter. Completely rebuilding the application would result in halting the current product development as all developers would be tied up for a long time in migrating the existing shop. Additionally, Peter would have to train his entire staff anew and hire new qualified employees with new skills. In addition, some developers have already left the company, and it has become extremely difficult to find good people who know Ember.js. Peter and his team were caught in **Vendor lock-in** : > "Vendor lock-in is when someone is essentially forced to continue using a product or service regardless of quality" - [cloudflare.com](https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cloud/what-is-vendor-lock-in) Peter and his team stuck with Ember.js for a long time due to financial limitations that prevented a complete frontend overhaul. As more developers left, Peter eventually realized the need for a rebuild. This time, he decided to go for React to choose a well-established library. ![Peter gets caught in Vendor Lock In and becomes uncompetitive.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*RRYQN0UwtL8mOTPD7XJneA.png) *Peter is trapped in Vendor Lock-In* The transition took a considerable amount of time and incurred substantial expenses. Meanwhile, competitors were enhancing their products significantly, rendering Peter’s offering less competitive and ultimately leading to a halt in its development. ![Peter was naive. Don’t be like Peter.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*eJQJ-JpCLzXKz9w7ZMiEow.png) *Peter was naive. Don’t be like Peter.* --- ### Innovator, Hans: Standards as the Bridge to Freedom Meanwhile, another visionary named Hans embarked on his startup journey during the same period. ![Hans, a determined and thoughtful startup founder](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*7sHsB_qN54rss7eRmyA9Hg.png) *Hans, a determined and thoughtful startup founder* Like Peter, he chose Ember.js to build his ambitious project in 2016. However, Hans was determined to safeguard his project against the potential pitfalls of frontend framework dependency. Embracing Ember.js’s potential, Hans realized the importance of adaptability. He observed that although frameworks can offer a solid basis, relying on them too much could create limitations in the future. ![Hans knows that a blend of innovative technologies and established standards is important](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*YOrReJ8BWrydFYMELR8jqA.png) *Hans knows about the importance of standards* He also knows that using **standards** makes systems more tolerant to change. He reads about web standards and comes across **Web Components** . He learns that [Web Components](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/the-complete-web-component-guide-part-1-custom-elements-a627af805df8) - are reusable client-side components based on official **web standards** . - enable us to develop entirely **independently** of frontend frameworks - are an excellent way of **encapsulating** functionality from the rest of our code. - are **self-contained** components that you can use all over the web. - are **supported** by all major browsers. Hans also understands that Web Components have not come to replace established frontend frameworks. Quite the opposite: Even established Frontend Frameworks recommend using. As he goes through the React.js documentation, he notices that they too recommend their use: > Most people who use React don’t use Web Components, but you may want to, especially if you are using third-party UI components that are written using Web Components. - [https://reactjs.org](https://reactjs.org/docs/web-components.html) He understands that, although Frontend Frameworks play a crucial role in managing an application’s **data layer** , the **component layer** can often be substituted with Web Components, offering a consistent and native solution aligned with web standards. > [**Will Web Components Replace Frontend Frameworks?**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/will-web-components-replace-frontend-frameworks-they-are-built-to-solve-different-problems/) — Web Components will not replace frontend frameworks but they can enhance those frameworks by replacing their component layer with a native solution. (Marius Bongarts) Driven by this insight, he took a strategic approach: Hans encapsulated the majority of his frontend components into Web Components. These versatile building blocks operated independently of the chosen frontend framework, allowing for seamless migration when necessary. This decision gave Hans a significant edge. Just like Peter, Hans and his team recognized a shift in technology after a few years — The interest and usage of Ember.js was declining, but Hans was already a step ahead. While starting with Ember.js had its benefits, allowing efficient development and motivating the team, they sensed the need for something different. As React has shown itself to be an established pioneer and industry standard over the years, they decide to migrate their application. Recognizing React’s established leadership and industry-wide adoption, they opted to migrate their application. In contrast to Peter’s experience, Hans’s team faced minimal disruptions during this technological transition. ![Hans seamlessly moves between frontend frameworks, staying competitive.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*wpwDkS-tFUDyiRPNL5CyzQ.png) *Hans and his team effortlessly shifts between frontend frameworks* Unlike Peter’s difficult choice between a complete overhaul or wrestling with a monolithic framework, Hans’s developers smoothly migrated their existing Web Components into the React application. By focusing on changing only the data layer, the shift to React became seamless, a task that might have seemed daunting otherwise. [https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/react-vs-web-components-80d754f74811](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/react-vs-web-components-80d754f74811) The migration to this modern approach not only pleased all developers but also attracted new talent to the team. By smoothly combining their existing Web Components with React, they found a powerful combination. ![Hans is clever and foresighted  Be like Hans.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*FIEL_NzfTJzWbx4OjVm9kQ.png) *Be like Hans — clever and foresighted* Importantly, they didn’t have to spend too much time on a massive migration, enabling them to focus more on staying competitive and less on dealing with complex changes. ## Final Thoughts In the end, the tales of Peter and Hans reveal a valuable lesson: while frontend frameworks can be powerful tools, balance is key. Peter’s struggles show the risks of becoming too dependent on a single framework, while Hans’s success proves the benefits of adaptability through standards like Web Components. Finding the right mix of frameworks and standards can lead to a more competitive and future-proof web development journey. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Feel free to contact me at any time! Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) , [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) , or leave a comment. ## Related Articles > [**Will Web Components Replace Frontend Frameworks?**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/will-web-components-replace-frontend-frameworks-they-are-built-to-solve-different-problems/) — Web Components will not replace frontend frameworks but they can enhance those frameworks by replacing their component layer with a native solution. (Marius Bongarts) > [**Are Web Components Dead?**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/are-web-components-dead/) — Web Components: Prospects and Challenges in Modern Web Dev. (Marius Bongarts) --- # Are Web Components Dead? > Explore the future of web components, their impact on modern web development, and if they are still relevant in the current tech landscape. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-08-14 - Updated: 2024-07-23 - Tags: Web Components, Web Development - Reading time: 10 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/are-web-components-dead/ --- Recently, I published an article with a different question on a similar topic: [Will Web Components Replace Frontend Frameworks?](https://web-highlights.com/blog/will-web-components-replace-frontend-frameworks-they-are-built-to-solve-different-problems/) Most of us would say **NO** . But what's your answer regarding the more controversial question of whether **Web Components** have a future at all? Let's zoom in and explore why some say that Web Components have already died while others think they're the future of web development. --- ### Introduction In 2012, when the W3C launched the [first specification](https://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-components-intro-20120522/#decorators-vs-custom-elements) of Web Components, many expected that Web Components would revolutionize frontend development. And there is good reason to be optimistic. Web Components promised many remarkable things: - Reusable components with **plain HTML, CSS, Javascript** - Based on **official web standards** - **No framework** needed - Supported in **all evergreen browsers** But, the idea of creating reusable standalone HTML components based on official web standards without any framework sounded too good to be true. Despite the promising advantages, Web Components continuously struggle to find industrywide adoption. Many developers say they have already died. Who's right? What is the current state of Web Components? Let's face these questions in detail and explore what web components are, where we can find them, why developers are reluctant to use them, and what the future holds. ### What are Web Components? Web Components are reusable client-side components based on official web standards and supported by all major browsers. They are an excellent way of **encapsulating** functionality from the rest of our code. Not only that, but you can **reuse** them in every web application and web page. Their purpose is to write strongly encapsulated custom elements to use everywhere. Web Components enable us to develop entirely independently of frontend frameworks. > The primary benefit of Web Components is that we can use them everywhere. With any framework, or even without a framework. - [vuejs.org](https://v3.vuejs.org/guide/web-components.html) **_How do they work?_** Here's an example of how an **autonomous web component** can be defined: ```js class MyWebComponent extends HTMLElement {...} window.customElements.define('my-web-component', MyWebComponent); ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/be8c916dbd4291c4504a8205a0a24a5a) You can pass your element to any HTML page like this: `` For more details on web components, check out my other articles: > [**The Complete Web Component Guide: Custom Elements**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/the-complete-web-component-guide-part-1-custom-elements-a627af805df8) — Become an expert in the future of Web Development (Part 1) (Marius Bongarts) ### **Where can you find Web Components?** The web development world is undoubtedly ruled by frontend frameworks/libraries like **React, Angular, and Vue.js.** ![State of JS 2022](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*vV0OT17uIP-hwxQkYGCQYQ.png) *State of JS 2022* The State of JavaScript Survey of 2021 shows that 80 % of the respondents have used **React** , followed by **Angular** (54 %) and **Vue.js** (51 %). Also, **Svelte** moves up quickly and gets more and more users. Now, where do **Web Components** show up in this ranking? Web Components are entirely based on web standards, so we do not expect them to be listed here. Still, there are libraries like **Lit** that support us in building them. After all, at least 7 % of the respondents have used it. #### **Frontend Frameworks adapt to Web Components** However, this is only half the truth. The most-used frontend frameworks have seen quite a bit of adoption lately. All of them support building official standard-based Web Components. Let's take **Angular** , which provides the `@angular/elements` package enabling developers to transform a component into a Web Component quickly. > "Angular elements are Angular components packaged as custom elements \[…\] " - [angular.io](https://angular.io/guide/elements) Angular Elements is a minimal, self-contained version of the Angular framework. It is injected as a service to support the component's change-detection and data-binding functionality. If you are interested in how Angular Elements works in detail, here is an interesting [Youtube video by Rob Wormald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1gLFPLVJjY&t=4s) . Similarly, also, **Vue.js** supports creating Web Components via the `defineCustomElement` method. > _“Vue supports creating custom elements using exactly the same Vue component APIs \[…\] ” —_  [_vuejs.org_](https://v3.vuejs.org/guide/web-components.html#passing-dom-properties) Having the most popular and most-used frameworks adapting to Web Components shows that their creators bet on a future with Web Components. > [**React vs. Web Components**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/react-vs-web-components-80d754f74811) — Combining them is the genuine secret to success. (Marius Bongarts) --- #### Usage of Web Components As we can see, Web Components are more present than we may have thought. However, sometimes a framework is still used to create them. However, how can we measure the actual usage of Web Components? One approach would be to look at how often a website registers at least one [**custom element**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts11/the-complete-web-component-guide-part-1-custom-elements-a627af805df8) by calling `customElements.define` . As a reminder, here is how to define a custom element: ```js class MyWebComponent extends HTMLElement {...} window.customElements.define('my-web-component', MyWebComponent); ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/be8c916dbd4291c4504a8205a0a24a5a) For Chrome, we can do that by checking the CustomElementRegistryDefine feature usage on [chromestatus.com](https://chromestatus.com/metrics/feature/timeline/popularity/1689) : ![Percentage of page loads (in Chrome) that use CustomElementRegistryDefine (Source: chromestatus.com)](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*LIk2CfjSNg1QO2NyGPXswg.png) *Percentage of page loads (in Chrome) that use CustomElementRegistryDefine (Source: chromestatus.com )* You can see that around 20 **%** of all websites, viewed in a Chrome browser, register at least one [**Custom Element**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts11/the-complete-web-component-guide-part-1-custom-elements-a627af805df8) . For me, this dramatic growth of Web Components was astonishing. Compared to that, and according to [w3techs.com](https://w3techs.com/technologies/comparison/js-angularjs,js-react) , only **2.9 %** (Status: June 2022) of all websites use React. Well, it seems that Web Components'usage is higher than most of us expected (at least, that is what I assume). But, what about big companies? When looking at job descriptions, most of them require experience with at least one of the most used frontend frameworks — React, Angular, and Vue.js. So, are there companies requiring to know about Web Components? Are there big companies that have decided that Web Components is the best way to implement their frontend? One of the most famous examples is **Github** . When Github launched over a decade ago, it had a frontend codebase that mostly used jQuery. Over the years, their GitHub monolith grew in size, and they saw the need to implement better encapsulation before the frontend became unmanageable. They chose to use Web Components because their codebase was already structured into component-like behaviors. Furthermore, they could experiment with Web Components alongside their existing frontend infrastructure since it doesn't incur any upfront cost or "buy-in" to a specific framework. > "We're using Web Components in a big way at GitHub" - [github.blog](https://github.blog/2021-05-04-how-we-use-web-components-at-github/) But, also Github faced many problems when navigating to a frontend infrastructure using Web Components. There are some common **pain points** that all developers have with the current state of Web Components. That leads us to our next question. > [**Web Components at Big Tech Companies: Github**](https://levelup.gitconnected.com/web-components-at-big-tech-companies-github-812e632e1650) — If the enterprise can deploy web components so can you! (Marius Bongarts) --- ### Why are developers reluctant to use web components? As mentioned at the beginning, there are plenty of reasons to believe that Web Components could replace modern frontend frameworks. Now, a lot of developers are still reluctant to use Web Components. Why is that? Is it because they feel threatened by the thought of Web Components wiping out frontend frameworks? As I already analyzed in my former article ' [Will Web Components Replace Frontend Frameworks?](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts11/will-web-components-replace-frontend-frameworks-535891d779ba) ' — there is no reason to drop your frontend framework. Quite the reversal, combining frontend frameworks with Web Components is the real secret to success. > _As a developer, you are free to use React in your Web Components, or to use Web Components in React, or both. —_  [_reactjs.or_](https://reactjs.org/docs/web-components.html) Nevertheless, there is no getting around the fact that Web Components are not yet fully developed and face many problems and pain points. #### **Problems of Web Components** Let's look at the difficulties Web Components face in the current state. Here are some of the developers' most common problems when working with them. --- **Shadow DOM** One pain point of Web Components is the [Shadow DOM](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts11/the-complete-web-component-guide-shadow-dom-2e40921eb77) . While the idea of having wholly encapsulated markup and style of components is excellent, there are still many challenges and open questions. For example, how to apply **global styles** to Web Components with shadow roots? Indeed, the Shadow DOM allows us to modify styles within their roots by using, e.g., **Shadow Parts** and **CSS variables** . Also, there are many approaches and workarounds to apply global styles, but I haven't seen the ultimate solution. > [**The Complete Web Component Guide: Shadow DOM**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/the-complete-web-component-guide-shadow-dom-2e40921eb77) — Become an expert in the future of Web Development (Part 3) (Marius Bongarts) **Github** also faces problems when working with Shadow DOM and is supporting an open Github proposal for [declarative Shadow DOMs](https://github.com/whatwg/dom/issues/831) . That could solve some common issues developers face when working with shadow roots. > [github.blog](https://github.blog/2021-05-04-how-we-use-web-components-at-github/) But, the primary motivation for this proposal is the support of Server Side Rendering (SSR) for Web Components. That leads us to the next problem. --- **Server Side Rendering** All modern frameworks provide a way to server-side render their components. For example, Angular provides **Angular Universal** , React a **ReactDOMServer** , and Vue.js provides a `renderToString` function. Using **SSR** in combination with Web Components is practically **difficult** or **impossible** to use. Web Components rely on browser-specific DOM APIs that are unavailable on the server. At least not until you use some headless browser like Puppeteer to pre-render your components and send an initial string to the browser. But, even when pre-rendering your components, we can not yet use the Shadow DOM because we can not represent them declaratively yet. Therefore, it is impossible to send it over in the initial string of HTML. To put it short: **To use Shadow DOM, we need JavaScript** . Luckily, there are libraries like Lit or Stencil to help us in building Web Components. Stencil already provides their [**Hydrate App-Bundle**](https://stenciljs.com/docs/hydrate-app) to accomplish SSR, and also [**Lit**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/build-your-own-blog-portfolio-with-web-components-lit-library-2701dffc735f) is working on a `@lit-lab/ssr` package for server-side rendering. --- **Accessibility** One more concern we need to keep in mind when working with Web Components is accessibility. **Accessibility** aims to provide a universally accessible global information system for everyone. By that, we ensure that people with disabilities can use all website tools and technologies. > [**4 Simple Steps to Make Your Website Accessible**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/4-simple-steps-to-make-your-website-accessible-a29ec305da1e) — “The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.” — Tim Berners-Lee (Marius Bongarts) This problem can also be traced back to the [**Shadow DOM**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/the-complete-web-component-guide-shadow-dom-2e40921eb77) . Typically, you create DOM nodes and append them as children of another element. With Shadow DOM, you create a scoped DOM tree that's attached to the element but separate from its actual children. This scoped subtree is called a **shadow tree** and is essentially a document on its own. Having a new document means that if an id is set inside the shadow DOM, it only has to be unique inside that custom element. > Web Components are forced to use ARIA to declare their default semantics. - [wicg.github.io](https://wicg.github.io/aom/explainer.html) Hopefully, you know that by using correct [semantic elements](https://javascript.plainenglish.io/stop-using-divs-for-buttons-87a0b3d7945e) , you directly provide built-in accessibility features for elements like **buttons** or **forms** . Unfortunately, when creating custom elements we have to add all those properties ourselves to provide the same accessibility features. Ideally, custom elements should have default implicit semantics just like native elements. Luckily, there is the [**Accessibility Object Model (AOM)**](https://wicg.github.io/aom/explainer.html) proposal, that aims to include this using `ElementInternals` . > The Accessibility Object Model project aims to improve certain aspects of the user and developer experiences concerning the interaction between web pages and assistive technology. - **Accessibility Object Model** [wicg.github.io](https://wicg.github.io/aom/spec/) Currently, we are forced to use so-called **ARIA attributes** within our Web Components to express semantics which is implicit for native elements. For example, if we use the `selected` attribute on an element like this: `` We would also need to add an **ARIA** **attribute** to it, to provide built-in accessibility features: `` The **AOM** now suggests using `ElementInternals` to set the default semantics to avoid the need for additional attributes, and also avoid losing its semantics if developers forget to add **ARIA attributes** . Using `ElementInternals` would look like this: ``` class CustomOption extends HTMLElement { constructor() { super(); this._internals = customElements.createInternals(this); } // ... } ``` *The AOM Code* After all, we can say that providing accessibility for our Web Components is possible. But, at the moment it is still connected to some extra effort. ### What does the future hold? The fact that all modern frontend frameworks count on Web Components shows that their creators are planning with them in the long run. But, as we saw, at the moment, working with Web Components is still connected to some non-trivial problems. That's why most companies that have decided to go the Web Components route use libraries to make their lives easier. For example, Github is using [**Catalyst**](https://github.com/github/catalyst) . Personally, I like to work with the [**Lit**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/build-your-own-blog-portfolio-with-web-components-lit-library-2701dffc735f) library from which Catalyst took its inspiration. > Catalyst, our open source library that makes it easier to write web components - [github.blog](https://github.blog/2021-05-04-how-we-use-web-components-at-github/) Not only Github hit the Web Component way. Many more companies like **Youtube** , **SAP** , **Salesforce,** and many more have realized that combining Web Components with their current frontend architecture is a great way to encapsulate parts of their application. > YouTube is being rebuilt with Web Components.- [react-etc.net](https://react-etc.net/entry/youtube-is-being-rebuilt-on-web-components-and-polymer) Having such big companies count on Web Components supports my personal opinion that there is no future without **Web Components** . But, there is also no near future without **frontend frameworks** . The goal of Web Components was never to replace them but to enhance them. **There is no need to hate Web Components.** > [**Web Components at Big Tech Companies: Youtube**](https://levelup.gitconnected.com/web-components-at-big-tech-companies-youtube-84266bb507fd) — Today, I don’t want to discuss whether Web Components will replace Frontend Frameworks. Also, I’m not eager to discuss whether Frontend… (Marius Bongarts) ### Final Thoughts Conclusively, it is beneficial for every developer to have at least heard of Web Components and, at best, even know how to work with them. Existing proposals will hopefully solve many problems of Web Components. We can avoid them using libraries like Lit, Stencil, or Catalyst. The realization that all modern frontend frameworks and many big companies count on Web Components clearly shows that **Web Components are not dead** . > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) — Productivity Highlighter for any Website or PDF. Free and easy to use without signing up. --- # 5 Reasons Why Side-Projects Never Get Finished > Learn why side projects stall & get back on track! Overcome distractions, find passion, beat boredom, and prioritize effectively. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-08-01 - Updated: 2023-08-01 - Tags: Side Projects - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/5-reasons-why-side-projects-never-get-finished/ --- > _**Are you a programmer?**_ > _Chances stand 9/10 that you have active side projects._ > _**Have you published a side project?**_ > _You most likely didn’t_ #### **Why is that?** It seems like such a simple thing to do. You just have to keep working at it until you’re done, right? Apparently not. > The average developer spends more than 7 hours per week coding on the side. - [StackOverflow](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015#profile-sideprojects) There are many reasons why even the most motivated people can’t seem to finish their project ideas, but the good news is that there are ways around this issue. If you are currently stuck in this situation, here are some tips on how to get back on track! ### 1\. Shiny Object Syndrome Shiny Object Syndrome is a term that describes the tendency to get distracted from one task by another quickly. Here’s how it plays out: You start on a project and get excited about what you’re doing — but after a few days or weeks, you realize that the project isn’t going anywhere fast (or maybe even at all). So, rather than doubling down and making progress on your project, you get discouraged and move on to something else — anything else! Just like a small child chasing after **shiny objects** . Once they get there and see what the object is, they immediately lose interest and start chasing the next thing. For you, rather than literal shiny objects, shiny objects may be side-projects, technologies, or programming languages. ![Image of craftsman starting to build many houses but never finishing one of them](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*6NQ567DUidn2xSVZWAaj2A.png) *Shiny Object Syndrom (Image Source: Commitstrip.com )* The Shiny Object Syndrom is particularly relevant for side projects because, as you might have noticed, **there are many things we could be doing instead of working on them** . We can all get distracted with **shiny new project ideas** and as a result, abandon our current efforts. While some may intend to return to the project, it will likely lead to it becoming stale and remaining that way. Having multiple projects can feel overwhelming. It’s difficult to focus on one thing when you have so many great ideas floating around in your brain. > “Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.“— John Carmack A good way to prevent this from happening is by focusing on one project at a time. It’s essential not only as side project owners but also as creative people in general: **If we don’t stay focused on our goals and priorities, we’ll never achieve them!** ### 2\. You’re Not Doing What You Love > “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.“ - [**Marc Anthony**](https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/marc-anthony-quotes) **_Why is it important to do what you love?_** When you do something that you’re passionate about, it becomes easier, more fun, and less stressful. Often you are entering a **flow state** which gives you momentum where all tasks feel effortless and easy to do. The state of flow is a psychological term for being completely immersed in what you are doing. When you are in the moment, focused on the task at hand and not thinking about anything else. You lose track of time and feel like you could do that activity forever because it feels so good. As a programmer, you most likely experienced a **“Flow”** . You lose track of time and program until late in the night, and it feels like you could do that activity forever because it feels so good. You just can’t stop until you have finished solving the problem at hand. In contrast, working on tasks you are not passionate about prevents you from getting into the “Flow.” Therefore, getting up in the morning and diving into work can be challenging. Accordingly, a side project for which you are not on fire is doomed to fail. If a project is too much work or painful for you to deal with, chances are that it’s not something that makes your heart sing. ### 3\. You are Getting Bored! Let’s say you’ve found a project you’re passionate about. Diving right into implementation and building the main functional parts of the application is fun. But, things will inevitably catch up with you that need to be done that you don’t feel like doing. That’s when the Pareto Principle hits you hard: > The Pareto Principle states that 80% of the work takes 20% of the time. For example, I enjoyed building the main features of my [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://web-highlights.com/) . Implementing features so that users can select text on websites is fun. Building a web application with the then brand new framework Vue.js was also very enjoyable. Also, trying out Nest.js as a server was a new experience from which I learned a lot. But, once the main features of the application were implemented, other tasks came up like: - Payments - Creating preview images - Tutorial - SEO - Writing tests There are plenty more tasks that, although not felt to be half of the application, take up more than half of the time. I did not start building my [Chrome extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) to deal with Chrome Web Store preview images or writing blog articles about the extension (Here I am :D). I did it because I wanted to create a web highlighter that fits my needs — Efficiently highlighting information and re-finding it. Working on many tiny but time-consuming tasks for long periods without seeing much progress or results can be a real motivation killer. All of the enthusiasm and excitement from the beginning goes away. > “The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.” — James Clear The key to finishing a side-project is to keep going, even when it gets tough. > Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference. — James Clear That’s what differentiates successful side hustlers from unsuccessful: **They continue even though they get bored.** ### 4\. Lack of Courage When you’re in the middle of trying to finish a project, it’s easy to let fear get the better of you. You don’t want to fail, look bad, disappoint people, or look stupid. > _We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed. — Mark Manson_ The problem is that many developers continue developing their side projects for years. They spent hours creating a product without ever publishing it. Why? Because despite dreaming about making money through their product, the real potential of launching a product nobody likes is far scarier than developing a product nobody’s heard of. Publishing a side project can be scary. But the thing is, nothing is ever going to be perfect. [You have to start somewhere and release something](https://javascript.plainenglish.io/publish-your-side-project-now-1e3bb170c079) , even if it’s not perfect. Otherwise, you’ll never get anywhere. I remember when I first launched my [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) in November 2019. After one month, I had **four** users — Me, my brother, my mum, and a friend. > “If you’re not embarrassed by your first release, you’ve launched too late.” — Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn founder) Two months later, I have had **eight** users — Me, my brother, my mum, and five friends. My brother used to be (and still is) a “bug-hunter” and always sent me screenshots to fix stuff and my friends were more or less using it to do me a favor. But, I remember the day on March 12th, 2020 — The first unknown user signed up. I couldn’t be happier! After a year, I was a proud developer of an extension with 123 active users. Meanwhile, there are **21,275 active users.** ![Users per week Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/08/image.webp) *Users per week Web Highlights* ### 5\. **It can be hard to prioritize side projects.** For most people, side projects are not a priority. They have jobs and other responsibilities that they need to take care of first. Side projects can be a nice distraction from work, but they should never be something you spend all day doing because it’s not always worth it. What helps me a lot is to split work into very small tasks and set specific times to work on projects or to write articles. Sometimes it is just about getting started because when you start taking action, motivation follows. > _“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”_ For example, I try to write 30 minutes every day before work, and after work, I try to begin with a small task for my [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) extension. Often, that’s enough to get really motivated, and sometimes I end up programming until late in the evening because I got into the “Flow”. ### Final Thoughts I hope I’ve given you some insight into why side projects get abandoned so that if you find yourself in the same situation, you can come up with a solution. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Feel free to contact me at any time! Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) **,** follow me on [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) , or [**subscribe**](https://medium.com/subscribe/@mariusbongarts) to get my stories via email. --- # Top 5 Non-AI Chrome Extensions for Productivity > Uncover Productivity-Focused Chrome Extensions, Untouched by AI Hype. Enhance your workflow with reliable tools dedicated to their core purpose. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-07-11 - Updated: 2024-08-26 - Tags: Chrome Extension, Software - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/top-5-non-ai-productivity-chrome-extensions-everyone-needs-to-know/ --- These days, nearly every Chrome Extension wants to jump on the AI bandwagon. Even those that have nothing to do with AI are desperately trying to squeeze it in just so they can proudly proclaim, “Hey, look at us! We’re using AI too!” While this approach may be justified for certain valuable tools like Grammarly, it can sometimes lead to an excessive focus on AI that distracts from the original purpose of the product. Here are the Chrome Extensions that I have been using for years, which have remained unaffected by the AI hype and instead concentrate on their core purpose: **enhancing productivity** . ### 1\. Text Blaze: Templates and Snippets ![Text Blaze: Templates and Snippets](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*UwCp8Ju0hmB4HL7fr0-kig.png) *Text Blaze: Templates and Snippets* [Text Blaze](https://blaze.today/?ref=UTTZVTAL) is absolutely incredible, and I deeply regret not discovering this tool earlier because it saves me an immense amount of time every single day. With Text Blaze, you have the ability to create text templates that can be accessed from anywhere within your browser using keyboard shortcuts. Personally, I use Text Blaze predominantly for effortlessly inserting repetitive email snippets in response to customer inquiries. However, the beauty of Text Blaze is that it can be utilized for virtually any scenario where you find yourself repeatedly typing the same content. Let’s take the example of a signature. Typically, I would manually write “Greetings, Marius” at the end of my emails. However, with Text Blaze, I can type `/greet` and hit enter. While this is a basic example, it becomes even more advantageous when working with larger templates. ![Text Blaze web interface is very intuitive](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*nb5_j1dvwF5kCOJrkSbMuA.png) *Text Blaze web interface is very intuitive* To utilize Text Blaze, it is necessary to create an account, but I highly recommend doing so. The user interface is exceptionally intuitive, and you can organize your snippets into folders, making it effortless to maintain a clear overview. Sign up using [this link](https://blaze.today/?ref=UTTZVTAL) to get **one month of Text Blaze Pro for free** . ### **[2\. Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm)** ![The Web Highlights Chrome Web Store page](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-12-at-10.04.02-4.webp) *The Web Highlights listing on the Chrome Web Store* The [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) revolutionizes your online research by enabling you to highlight any website or PDF in your browser. The best thing is that your research can be directly synced to the web app on [web-highlights.com](https://web-highlights.com/) . By that, you can easily highlight important articles on the web and directly access them on your mobile phone. This is the perfect way to re-find important information at any time from anywhere. ![Highlight any website or PDF with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*WA-aS75Qd8XVl73hca9VuQ.png) *Highlight any website or PDF with Web Highlights* Next to the core highlighting functionality, Web Highlights comes along with great features like: - **Tagging functionality** : The tagging functionality of Web Highlights is essential and loved by many users. It enables you to add tags to your research to rediscover your research effortlessly. - **Export your research** : You can export your research to several formats like Markdown, PDF, and HTML. This enables you to sync your research to tools like Notion or Obsidian that support the Markdwon language. - **Kindle import** : Easily import all your highlights & notes from your Kindle notebooks. - **Spaced Repetition Learning** : Web Highlights automatically converts your highlights and notes into flashcards, similar to tools like [Readwise](https://web-highlights.com/blog/readwise-alternative/). These flashcards are then presented during your daily recap session, strategically reinforcing the information and aiding in its long-term retention. 💡 ### 3\. StayFocusd — Block Distracting Websites ![StayFocusd — Block Distracting Websites](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*XLpkxnxqoog4N-p9W2pM1g.png) *StayFocusd — Block Distracting Websites* As its name already reveals — this extension is a real productivity saver. If you ever get distracted from work while subconsciously navigating to distracting dopamine-seeking websites, this extension is for you. [StayFocusd](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd-block-distract/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji) is a productivity extension for Google Chrome that helps you stay focused on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites. Once your allotted time has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day. Fortunately, I have successfully detached myself from social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. On my phone, I use the Digital Well-Being settings to limit my time on specific apps and websites. To do the same on my computer, I’ve been using the StayFocus extension for a while. It allows me to easily create a whitelist or blacklist of sites I want to restrict. ![StayFocusd helps to limit your time on specific websites](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Eh1duiOIpiB5Vx_1e_zX8Q.png) *StayFocusd helps to limit your time on specific websites* For instance, I noticed LinkedIn gradually replacing other social media apps, so I added it to my blacklist. Although I recognize its business value, I occasionally justify using it and end up scrolling through it for several minutes. ### 4\. Paint Tool by Painty ![Paint Tool by Painty](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*vBHMuvIF6PBBoKfxVOWgnQ.png) *Paint Tool by Painty* The next tool I love very much. I don’t even remember how I came across it. I wasn’t actively looking for it, but it saves me so much work and makes it easier. [Painty](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/paint-tool-by-painty/obdhcplpbliifflekgclobogbdliddjd/related) is a tool to draw shapes, add text on web pages in real time, make a screenshot, and download or share the screenshot with friends. Before using Painty, my workflow for marking or drawing specific details on websites involved taking a screenshot and using the editing tool on my Macbook, which was quite cumbersome. ![Paint any website with Painty](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*FRBb08paY6C2UrhCs38SPg.png) *Paint any website with Painty* However, with Painty, I can now conveniently mark and draw details directly in the browser before capturing the screenshot. This process has become much simpler and user-friendly thanks to Painty’s ease of use. ### 5\. Unlimited Email Tracker by Snov.io ![Unlimited Email Tracker by Snov.io](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*ViN1to4u5NSWL_K4B4sXTA.png) *Unlimited Email Tracker by Snov.io* I have tried many email trackers, but this is the one I like most. If you are like me, sending many emails via Gmail, Snow is the perfect tool for you. It provides an unlimited and beautifully designed email tracking extension for Gmail that will show you which emails have been opened by your recipients, including the number of opens and link clicks, right in your Gmail. This mail tracker also lets you set follow-up reminders, schedule emails for later, and get regular performance reports. ![Snoov’s labeling system is easy to understand and straightforward](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*L1NGa-MuqD-l7Zs_TyDJbw.png) *Snoov’s labeling system is easy to understand and straightforward* I have tried some other email trackers, but this is the one I love most. The labeling system is straightforward and easy to understand - a white label Unopened if an email has not yet been opened - a purple label Opened with the number of times the recipient opened the email - a green label Clicks with the number of times the recipient followed a link in the email Having this system enables me to track my emails efficiently and easily. While the free version works great, the premium version will enable you to enjoy all the awesome features. If you love it as much as I do, you can **[get a 25% OFF DISCOUNT by signing up using this link](https://snov.io?_get=marius64)** . ## **Final Thoughts** I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions, and I am open to criticism. Feel free to contact me at any time 😊 Get in touch with me via [****LinkedIn****](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [****Twitter****](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) ****.**** --- # Convert Kindle Highlights to Study Flashcards Instantly > Discover how to transform your Kindle highlights into instant study flashcards, ensuring you remember everything from the books you've read. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-07-06 - Updated: 2026-03-23 - Tags: Learning, Tutorial, Web Highlights - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/supercharge-your-learning-convert-kindle-highlights-into-instant-study-flashcards/ --- Have you ever wondered how many books you’ve read from which you can’t recall anything anymore? Reading business books is an excellent method for skill enhancement, but if you read them once and never revisit their content, it’s nearly useless. > We forget 80% of what we read once According to a study conducted by Ebbinghaus in 1885, commonly known as the **“Forgetting Curve,”** it was found that we tend to forget approximately 80% of what we read once. Learn more about the Forgetting Curve in the article [Spaced Repetition: How to Make Your Readings Stick in Long-Term Memory.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) In a nutshell, the key to truly remembering what we read lies in repeated recall of the information. Regarding books, this implies finding an efficient way to recall what we have read. While rereading books is one option, it may not be the most efficient approach. --- Luckily, there are more efficient solutions. In this article, I will show you how you can import your Kindle highlights to the [Web Highlights Chrome extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , which uses **spaced repetition learning** to remember what you have read truly. The **spaced repetition** technique optimizes your learning by scheduling review sessions at strategic intervals, reinforcing your memory and preventing forgetfulness. By incorporating spaced repetition, Web Highlights transforms your flashcards into a powerful tool for long-term retention. If you'd rather just try it, you can — no install, no signup. My free [Kindle Flashcards tool](https://web-highlights.com/tools/kindle-flashcards) turns each book's highlights into its own deck right in your browser. Upload your `My Clippings.txt` file from an e-reader, or [import from your Kindle notebook](https://web-highlights.com/tools/import-kindle-highlights), and start studying with spaced repetition in seconds. > [**Convert Kindle Highlights into Study Flashcards — Free**](https://web-highlights.com/tools/kindle-flashcards) — Turn your Kindle highlights into instant study flashcards, one deck per book, and remember them with spaced repetition. Upload My Clippings.txt or import from read.amazon.com/notebook — runs in your browser, no signup. ### What is Web Highlights? Before delving into the specifics, let’s take a brief moment to familiarize ourselves with the capabilities of the PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension. ![Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*6b4cF7ZmTVAbdBEQegm88w.png) *Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter* This productivity tool offers a range of features, including the ability to highlight text on any webpage or PDF, create tags, and take notes. Furthermore, it streamlines the process of transforming your highlights into flashcards. ### How can I import my Kindle Highlights? Once you’ve installed the [online text highlighter from the Chrome Web Store](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , you can highlight text on any website or PDF you visit. Consequently, you have the option to visit your [Kindle library](https://read.amazon.com/kp/notebook) and conveniently access all your highlights and notes from the books you’ve read. From there, you can proceed with two options: #### **1\. Highlight the most important parts of your highlights** If you don’t need all highlights of a book you can manually re-highlight your highlights & notes from your [Kindle library](https://read.amazon.com/kp/notebook) . ![Manually highlighting Kindle annotations & notes with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*crCo50oq1boHVgZv.png) *Manually highlighting Kindle annotations & notes with Web Highlights* Highlighting your annotations manually is a simple process. Once you have installed the PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension, you can immediately start highlighting text by selecting it and clicking on the highlighter popup. You can also choose to highlight by right-clicking or using a keyboard shortcut. All your highlights will be conveniently displayed in the sidebar for quick and easy reference. **2\. Import all highlights & notes of your books** If you consider all the highlights and annotations in a book to be valuable, you can take advantage of the “Kindle Import Helper” feature offered by Web Highlights. This approach is simple: with a click of the “Import Highlights & Notes to Web Highlights” button, all your highlights and notes will be seamlessly imported into the Web Highlights extension. ![Automatically highlighting Kindle annotations & notes with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*Wej5IbG3uxZcZ_v2.png) *Automatically highlighting Kindle annotations & notes with Web Highlights* Web Highlights ensures that the highlight color you choose on your Kindle device automatically applies to your highlights within the extension. ### Recall your Highlights To Remember Them After importing your highlights into the online highlighter, we come to the intriguing part —  **spaced repetition learning** . Once you have imported or manually created some highlights, you will locate them in the extension’s sidebar. To access it, click on the extension icon in your browser’s toolbar. In this sidebar, you will also discover the button to initiate a recall session. ![Starting a learning session with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*2flDSOrtGdmgiOeqjLbHXg.png) *Starting a learning session with Web Highlights* Initiating a recall session will display a popup containing details about your daily learning progress. Additionally, you can view your daily streak if you successfully engage in learning for consecutive days. To assist in reinforcing the habit of recalling your highlights and notes, you have the option to enable a **daily reminder** of your learning session, which will be shown in the top right corner. After clicking “Learn” a learning session will be started and you have the option to provide feedback for each learning item by selecting either “Know it” or “Don’t know”. If you can successfully remember an item, its confidence level increases, and the item will be rescheduled for the next recall cycle. ![Flashcard Learning with Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/image-2.webp) *Flashcard Learning with Web Highlights* In the given example above, we managed to successfully recall our highlight for the first time, leading to a boost in our confidence regarding our ability to retain it. Consequently, the highlight will be scheduled for review again in 3 days. If, after the three-day interval, you can still recall the essential details, the review date will be set further in the future, perhaps at ten days. Subsequently, the review cycle may extend to approximately 30 days, and so on. However, if you cannot recall a particular item, your certainty will decrease, and the review cycle will reset. In such cases, the item will be reviewed again on the following day. If you wish, you can also choose to "Discard" any learning items. This will ensure that they will not be displayed during your sessions anymore. Want to turn a book highlight into a real quiz? Add a question and answer to make it a **Q&A flashcard**, or let the on-device AI draft the whole card for you — even a full deck from a book’s highlights. The [spaced repetition guide](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning) covers every step. If you're interested in delving deeper into the concept of **Spaced Repetition Learning** and discovering how Web Highlights seamlessly incorporates the SuperMemo algorithm to enhance long-term memory retention of highlights, take a look at this article. > [**Spaced Repetition: How to Make Your Readings Stick in Long-Term Memory**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) — How to beat the “Forgetting Curve” and memorize things effectively using flashcard learning, spaced repetition and the SuperMemo algorithm (Marius Bongarts) ### Final Thoughts Engaging in book reading is a highly effective method for personal growth and self-improvement. Nonetheless, reading a book just once proves to be inefficient, since we tend to forget approximately 80% of its content. To address this, you can make use of the [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , which not only allows you to import your Kindle highlights but also facilitates the retrieval of these highlights later on. This ensures that the important information is retained in your long-term memory. [**Install the extension for free**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , and start highlighting on any webpage or PDF, create tags, and take notes. Share your research and export it to HTML, Markdown, and PDF. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . --- # How To Export Your Kindle Highlights And Notes to Notion and Other Markdown Tools > Export your Kindle highlights to any external tool that supports the markup language using the PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome Extension - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-07-03 - Updated: 2026-10-04 - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-export-your-kindle-highlights-and-notes-to-notion/ --- If you’re someone who reads numerous Kindle books, frequently highlights interesting passages, takes notes occasionally, and prefers to have all your data in one place, this article is tailored for you. You may already be aware that you can revisit all your Kindle highlights and notes on the website [https://read.amazon.com/kp/notebook](https://read.amazon.com/kp/notebook) . Although having your highlights synced to Amazon is convenient, I personally prefer to store my data in a single location. Therefore, I will demonstrate how you can effortlessly export all your highlights and notes from any Kindle book to Notion using the [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . Want to skip ahead and just get your highlights out first? I built a free [Import Kindle Highlights tool](https://web-highlights.com/tools/import-kindle-highlights) for exactly that. Upload your `My Clippings.txt` file from an e-reader, or import straight from your Kindle notebook with one click — every book comes in organized on its own, no signup needed, and the file is parsed right in your browser so nothing is uploaded. From there the Notion export below works the same way. > [**Import Kindle Highlights from Amazon — Free & Private**](https://web-highlights.com/tools/import-kindle-highlights) — Upload My Clippings.txt or import from read.amazon.com/notebook in one click. Your highlights and notes come in organized by book, ready to export onward to Notion and Markdown — no signup, parsed in your browser. ### Install the Web Highlights Chrome Extension Before we start, you will need to install the Web Highlights Chrome Extension from the Chrome Store. You can get it [here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . ![Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2023/07/1_hpzraHN9pGB9mlFtR7IynA.webp) *Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter* --- [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) provides you with the capability to highlight text on any webpage or PDF within your browser. Additionally, you can create tags, take notes, and export your research in various formats such as HTML, PDF, and Markdown. And the best thing is that it provides functionality to **import all your Kindle highlights & notes** with one click! ### Import your Kindle Highlights After installing the online highlighter from the Chrome Web Store, you gain the ability to highlight text on any website. This means you can easily navigate to your [Kindle](https://read.amazon.com/kp/notebook) library, where you can access all your highlights and notes from the books you have read. #### **1\. Import your highlights by selecting text** When accessing your Kindle page, you have the freedom to select any book on which you have read and made highlights. Once you have installed the PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension, you can immediately begin highlighting text on the side. Your highlights will then appear in the sidebar for easy reference. ![Manually highlight your annotations from your Kindle with Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*wOjki-iTXrfJLx31LocP6w.png) *Manually highlight your annotations from your Kindle with Web Highlights* If you are looking to revisit all your annotations and carefully determine which ones are truly significant to you, this option is an excellent choice. It allows you to review and reassess all your annotations before making any decisions. #### 2\. Automatically import all highlights & notes If you believe that all your highlights and annotations in a book are important, you have the option to utilize the “Kindle Import Helper” feature of Web Highlights. This method is straightforward: just click the “Import Highlights & Notes to Web Highlights” button, and all your highlights and notes will be automatically imported into the Web Highlights extension. ![Automatically import all highlights & notes to Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*DDLWeFl5eKjiYLFM2IwoGg.png) *Automatically import all highlights & notes to Web Highlights* Web Highlights ensures that the same highlight color you choose on your Kindle is automatically applied to your highlights. ![Automatically import all highlights & notes to Web Highlights](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*B4VBjjg5UnuR5IewRs6j4g.png) *Automatically import all highlights & notes to Web Highlights* All the highlights you imported will be visible in the sidebar of Web Highlights, allowing you to conveniently edit them, add tags, or take notes on your highlights. ### Export your Highlights to Notion Since we have just imported our Kindle annotations and notes, let’s explore the process of exporting them to Notion. Web Highlights provides several export options, including Markdown, HTML, and PDF formats. To export to **Notion** , we will utilize the “ **Copy Markdown** ” feature. To access this functionality, we must first create a free account for Web Highlights. By creating an account, we can synchronize our highlights and notes for the first 7 days with the web app on [web-highlights.com](https://web-highlights.com) , allowing us to utilize the browser extension fully. Registering for the free account grants us a 7-day trial period, during which we can experience all the premium and ultimate features of Web Highlights. After the trial ends, we have the option to subscribe to either the Premium or Ultimate plan of Web Highlights at an affordable price. With the markdown now copied to our clipboard, we can effortlessly open a new page on Notion and paste all our research into it. ![Copy highlights and notes to markdown](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*ljnXm9da021VjIgxv2P2Tg.png) *Copy highlights and notes to markdown* Having the markdown copied to our clipboard we can open a new page on notion and paste all our research easily: ![Kindle Highlights & Notes imported to Notion](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*ZmT5TRHVUqxMdjjrtGRxtA.png) *Kindle Highlights & Notes imported to Notion* That’s it. You can repeat the same steps for all your other books to store them on Notion or any other tool that supports the Markdown language, such as Obsidian for instance. By the way: if you’d rather skip the copy-and-paste entirely, Web Highlights also has a [one-click Notion export](https://web-highlights.com/docs/integrations/notion-export) that sends a book’s highlights and notes straight into your Notion workspace — one export a day on the free plan, unlimited on Ultimate. ### Frequently Asked Questions #### **How do I export my Kindle notes?** Open [read.amazon.com/notebook](https://read.amazon.com/kp/notebook), pick a book, and use the Kindle Import Helper described above — one click brings every highlight and note into Web Highlights. From there you can keep them, tag them, or export them wherever you like. I’ve also put together a [step-by-step tutorial covering every export method](https://web-highlights.com/tutorials/pdf-web-highlighter/how-to-export-kindle-highlights), including the e-reader routes. #### **Can I export Kindle highlights to PDF?** Yes. Once a book’s highlights are imported, you can download them as a PDF or HTML file on the Ultimate plan (and during the free trial) — handy for a single document you can print, archive, or share. Copying them as Markdown works on every plan. #### **Does this work if I don’t use Notion?** Yes — Notion is just one destination. The same imported highlights can be pasted into Obsidian via Copy Markdown, sent to Capacities, or simply kept in your Web Highlights library where they’re searchable and taggable. #### **Can I turn my Kindle highlights into flashcards?** Yes — and it’s my favorite part. Imported highlights work with the spaced repetition learning feature, so you can review the best passages of a book instead of forgetting them. If you’re studying, the free [flashcard learning paths](https://web-highlights.com/learning) show the review flow in action before you commit to anything. ### Final Thoughts I hope you like this feature of Web Highlights. In my eyes it offers a perfect solution for exporting your research and learnings from books into a single tool. Moreover, the **spaced repetition learning feature** is another valuable aspect, allowing you to recall your highlights and prevent forgetting important information. If that's what you're after, turn any book into a deck with the free [Kindle Flashcards tool](https://web-highlights.com/tools/kindle-flashcards) and start reviewing it in your browser. Learn more about this in the article [Spaced Repetition: How to Make Your Readings Stick in Long-Term Memory.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) > [**Spaced Repetition: How to Make Your Readings Stick in Long-Term Memory**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/) — How to beat the “Forgetting Curve” and memorize things effectively using flashcard learning, spaced repetition and the SuperMemo algorithm (Marius Bongarts) [**Install the extension for free**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , and start highlighting on any webpage or PDF, create tags, and take notes. Share your research and export it to HTML, Markdown, and PDF. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . --- # Spaced Repetition: Retain Your Readings Long-Term > How to beat the “Forgetting Curve” and memorize things effectively using flashcard learning, spaced repetition and the SuperMemo algorithm - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-06-17 - Updated: 2026-10-04 - Tags: Learning, FAQ, Tutorials, and Help, Web Highlights - Reading time: 6 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/spaced-repetition-how-to-make-your-readings-stick-in-long-term-memory/ --- Have you ever found yourself nodding along with an article, fully convinced you’ve absorbed every brilliant word, only to realize later that your memory has decided to erase everything? It’s a common problem we all face —  the tendency to forget information we don’t use daily or regularly. > We forget 80% of what we read once ### The Forgetting Curve According to a study conducted by Ebbinghaus in 1885, commonly known as the **“Forgetting Curve,”** it was found that we tend to forget approximately 80% of what we read once. The forgetting curve is a chart showing that the chances of remembering memorized information decrease significantly over time: ![Forgetting curve chart showing information retained dropping steeply over time](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*cz710myyNDoEpI8unB1lYA.png) *The Forgetting Curve (Image from: mindtools.com )* There is also good news — the study reveals that with every repetition, the ability to recall information increases. In other words: It will take you longer to forget the information again. By consistently reviewing your learned information at the appropriate intervals, you can halt the notorious Forgetting Curve. > Spaced repetition is based on the principle that our memory is strengthened when we revisit information at strategic intervals, allowing us to combat the forgetting curve. Using **spaced repetition** , the forgetting curve will now be halted for each review, and every new curve is shallower than the last one: ![Halting the Forgetting Curve with spaced repetition (Image from: mindtools.com)](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*-ozvpUqP_LdCpTzdW1N8mQ.png) *Halting the Forgetting Curve with spaced repetition (Image from: mindtools.com )* By reviewing your gained knowledge, you will significantly increase the chances of getting information into your long-term memory. However, when applying the spaced repetition principle, crucial to strike a balance when conducting these reviews. You should revisit your learnings when your ability to recall them has significantly declined, but not so frequently that you find yourself starting from square one. But, how do we know when to review our learnings? Let’s take a look at the SuperMemo algorithm and how [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) integrated it. ### Optimizing Review Timing with the SuperMemo Algorithm As we just learned, it’s vital to find the perfect timing to review your learnings. The so-called **SuperMemo** algorithm is a spaced repetition learning method created by Piotr Woźniak, who needed a better way to learn biochemistry and English vocabulary. Think of the algorithm as a traditional flashcard learning method. Here's how it operates: 1. A new learning item is introduced. 2. The learning item undergoes its initial review. 3. The user provides feedback on their recall of the information, indicating whether they remember or don't remember it. 4. If the user successfully recalls the information, the algorithm extends the intervals before the next repetition, aiming to reinforce the knowledge effectively. 5. Conversely, if the recall is weaker, the algorithm reduces the intervals to enhance reinforcement and improve retention. ### Highlight Online Articles And Remember Them Let's put the theory aside and focus on incorporating **spaced repetition** and **flashcard learning** into your daily routine. I have been using the PDF & Web Highlighter “Web Highlights” now for years, and I really love to highlight important or interesting parts of articles. However, I realized that I rarely recall the highlighted information. Now, with the new spaced repetition feature, it’s very easy. For example, if you read something interesting online, you could easily highlight this information using the [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) : ![Highlighting with the Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*36Fi9HDoMAvUc5YW_cyeZw.png) *Highlighting with the Web Highlights Chrome Extension* Web Highlights will automatically transform your highlights into flashcards and bring them forward to you in your daily recap. Your daily recap will contain ten highlights every day but you can always choose to learn more. To begin your learning session, simply access the sidebar of the Chrome extension or the [learning section of the web app](https://app.web-highlights.com/learner) . ![Start a learning session](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/image-1.webp) If you'd rather watch, this 48-second video goes through a full session, from the brain icon in the sidebar to rating the cards: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExU6mNx1Gg0) During a learning session, you have the option to provide feedback for each learning item by choosing one of three actions: - **Know it** : You remembered the content. Your confidence increases and the next review is pushed further into the future. - **Don't know** : You could not recall the content. Confidence decreases, and the item comes back sooner for extra practice. - **Discard** : This highlight is not worth reviewing anymore. It will be removed from future sessions entirely. In the example below, we successfully recalled our highlight for the first time, resulting in an increased confidence in our ability to retain it. The highlight will reappear for review in 3 days. ![Learning session in Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-23-at-07.57.52.webp) *Learning Session* If, after three days, you can recall the significant details, it will determine a review date that is significantly farther in the future, such as ten days. Subsequently, the review cycle may extend to around 30 days, and so forth. However, if you cannot recall an item, your certainty will decrease and the cycle will restart. In such instances, the item will be reviewed again on the following day. After around five successful repetitions, an item is to be considered as anchored in your long-term memory by the **“Forgetting Curve.”** ### Turn a Highlight Into a Q&A Flashcard Reviewing a plain highlight already helps. But you can go further and turn any highlight into a true **question-and-answer flashcard**: write a question on the front, flip the card to reveal the answer, and grade yourself _Correct_ or _Incorrect_. Now you are actively recalling the answer instead of just re-reading it — which is the whole point of spaced repetition. Don’t feel like writing the cards yourself? The on-device AI can draft a question and answer — or a whole deck — from what you highlighted, so a study set from an article or PDF is only a click away. The [official spaced repetition guide](https://web-highlights.com/docs/features/spaced-repetition-learning) walks through flashcards, decks, and everything else in detail. ### Track Your Progress with Confidence Scores Web Highlights derives a  **confidence score (0–100 %)**  from your easiness factor and number of repetitions. You can see exactly how well you know each highlight — and how your knowledge is distributed across your entire library. Here is how confidence maps to your learning status: - **80–100 %**  — Long-Term Memory - **60–79 %**  — Confident Recall - **40–59 %**  — Good Recall - **20–39 %**  — Moderate Recall - **1–19 %**  — Likely to Forget - **0 %**  — Not Yet Learned These scores are displayed for each highlight individually, aggregated per website and tag, and as an overall score across your entire library. It’s a simple way to see where your knowledge is strong and where it needs more review. ### Learning Streaks Consistency matters more than marathon sessions. Web Highlights tracks your  **learning streak**  — the number of consecutive days you have completed at least 10 cards. The learning dashboard shows your current streak, your longest streak, and a contribution graph of your learning activity over time. Even two or three minutes a day adds up. The streak is a small nudge to keep you coming back, and it works. ### The Learning Dashboard ![Learning Dashboard](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-23-at-07.55.58-1.webp) If you want a full overview of your learning progress, the  **learning dashboard**  puts everything in three tabs: - **Decks**  — today’s session front and center, your pinned decks, and ready-made decks and book summaries to discover - **Library**  — every page, tag, folder and website you highlighted, each one ready to study as a deck - **Progress**  — your memory strength, your learning streak, and the full card list with each card’s next review date You can access the dashboard from the Chrome extension sidebar or the  [learning section of the web app](https://app.web-highlights.com/learner)  . No account yet? You can try a spaced-repetition session for free — no sign-up — in the [free learner](https://app.web-highlights.com/learner), or browse the ready-made sets in the [Learning Hub](https://web-highlights.com/learning). ### Final Thoughts Sometimes just reading an informative article isn’t sufficient as we tend to forget around 80% of what we read. By utilizing the [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , you can not just mark noteworthy sections of online articles or PDFs, but also retrieve those highlights later to ensure they are retained in your long-term memory. [**Install the extension for free**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , and start highlighting on any webpage or PDF, create tags, and take notes. Share your research and export it to HTML, Markdown, and PDF. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . Also, check out my [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) extension if you haven’t. --- # Brighten Your Web Pages with Stabilo Highlighter Colors > Highlight web pages with Stabilo Boss colors using Web Highlights, a free Chrome extension. Customize colors and highlight text online easily. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-05-24 - Updated: 2026-10-07 - Tags: Chrome Extension, Colors, FAQ, Tutorials, and Help - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/highlight-the-web-with-the-colors-of-your-beloved-stabilo-highlighters/ --- We all remember the good old Stabilo highlighters we relied on during school or university. The bright colors and pleasant marker glide across the pages brought our study material to life and made important information stand out effortlessly. > Imagine highlighting web pages with the exact colors of your favorite Stabilo Boss highlighters. Today, in a primarily digital world, we rarely use analog highlighters. But don’t we also miss it? Imagine highlighting web pages with the exact colors of your favorite Stabilo Boss highlighters, and capturing and organizing digital content in a way that feels familiar and visually appealing. With the [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension Web Highlights](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , you can now experience this nostalgic feeling while browsing the web. ![Highlighting with the PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*R97vNrAoYVuhRM8orNFosQ.png) *Highlighting with the PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension* If you are used to using digital/paperless notes and read a lot online, this might be for you. I will show you how to highlight any text on the internet in your Chrome browser with your favorite Stabilo colors. ## 1\. Install the Web Highlights Chrome Extension First of all, you need to install the Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter extension. You can [install it for free in the Chrome Web Store](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . ![Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/09/image-16.webp) *Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter* It’s really that simple. Click **“Add to Chrome,”** and you can directly start highlighting the web. Select some text and click the highlighter popup to create your first highlights. ![Highlight and annotate any website](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-21.webp) *Highlight and annotate any website* To access the sidebar displaying your highlights, simply click on the extension popup located in the Chrome toolbar. ![Web Highlights sidebar](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/08/image-23.webp) *Web Highlights sidebar* In the sidebar, you’ll be able to view your highlights and enhance the organization of your research by adding **tags** and **notes** . ## 2\. Customize your Colors As we already learned how to create our first highlights, let’s customize the colors of our highlights to resemble the vibrant hues of a Stabilo highlighter. You might have noticed that when you hover over the highlighter popup, there are many pre-set color options available: ![Web Highlights default colors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/09/image-17.webp) *Web Highlights default colors* In the top row, you'll find standard colors, while the second row offers beautiful pastel shades, similar to the popular Stabilo highlighters. In this one-minute video, you can see how to pick a color, make it your default and add your own custom colors: [Watch the video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJZBL0nRTwo) You can either pick one of these colors or create your own custom shade. Just click the plus icon in the color popup to open the color picker. ![Click the plus icon to add more colors](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/09/image-18.webp) *Click the plus icon to add more colors* Now, can choose whatever color you prefer. I have created an overview of all the **official Stabilo highlight colors** for you to simplify things. [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/437ce57779d48b0d881c1c1053327291) You can effortlessly input the appropriate RGB or HEX value into the color picker. Alternatively, you can choose an even simpler method by clicking on the “eyedropper” icon, which enables you to select a color from an image, webpage, or any other part of your screen. ![Choose a Stabilo color with the eyedropper.](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/09/image-19.webp) *Choose a Stabilo color with the eyedropper.* Just click on the desired area and then the color tile in the overview above. Web Highlights supports having one default color and shows the five most recent colors in the popup. So, go ahead and choose your preferred four Stabilo colors, and relish in highlighting the web, reminiscent of your school days when you highlighted physical texts. ## Final Thoughts The Stabilo highlighters were once cherished tools that brought color and vibrancy to our study materials, making important information effortlessly stand out. In today’s digital age, where analog tools are increasingly rare, we may find ourselves longing for that familiar sensation. [The PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , Web Highlights, offers a delightful solution by allowing us to highlight web pages with **the exact colors of our beloved Stabilo Boss highlighters** . [**Install the extension for free**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) , and start highlighting on any webpage or PDF, create tags, and take notes. Share your research and export it to HTML, Markdown, and PDF. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) , [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . Full disclosure: Tooltivity, which this article links to, is run by my company — the same one that makes Web Highlights. > [**Best Productivity Browser Extensions**](https://tooltivity.com/) — Discover and compare the best productivity browser extensions at Tooltivity. Explore our in-depth reviews of top tools to boost your browsing experience. (Marius Bongarts) --- # Create a Custom Chrome History Extension with React - Part 2 > Learn how to build a custom Chrome history extension with React in this guide. Explore the Chrome History API and improve your browsing experience. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-03-10 - Updated: 2024-07-23 - Tags: Chrome Extension, React, Tutorial, Web Development - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/build-your-own-custom-chrome-history-extension-with-react-part-2-chrome-history-api/ --- In this series of articles, I will walk you through creating your own browser history Chrome extension using React. We will use the **Chrome History API** to read and display our browser history in our personalized React dashboard. In the first part, we learned how to set up a Chrome extension using React and Webpack. The setup from Part 1 is our ground base to continue with the **Chrome History API** integration. Therefore, check out the first article if you haven’t: > [**Build Your Own Custom Chrome History Extension with React - Part 1: Set Up**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/build-your-own-custom-chrome-history-extension-with-react-part-1-set-up/) — Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Your Custom Chrome History Extension in React. Learn how to create a Chrome extension with React and how to implement the Chrome History API (Marius Bongarts) Again, here is what we are going to build: ![Our own Chrome History — What we will build](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*ldEieDkorqouo1mb7UBwNg.png) *Our own Chrome History — What we will build* ### Typescript Setup Before we start, we need to configure Typescript to give us autocompletion for the chrome APIs. Try it yourself and type `"chrome.”` into your IDE. Usually, you should not see any autosuggestions. Therefore, you need to install the typings for the chrome APIs to access them. You can do this by running: _yarn add -D @types/chrome_ Now, you need to add this into the `tsconfig.json` file: ```json { "name": "Chrome History Extension", "version": "1.0.0", "manifest_version": 3 } ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/19c5a920705cd19a60dff01005663dec) Finally, you should get autosuggestions from your IDE: ![Chrome API Typescript suggestions](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*b4R4cdgmvto6aAaEfYa-zg.png) *Chrome API Typescript suggestions* ### Chrome History API Our goal is to show the browser history in our dashboard. For that, we need to access the [**Chrome History API**](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/history/) . Having our types configured, we should get autocompletion when typing `window.history` . To get started, let’s create a search query to get the ten latest entries in our browser history. We can do this by calling it inside our `Dashboard.tsx` component: ```tsx useEffect(() => { chrome.history.search({ text: "", maxResults: 10 }, (data) => { console.log(data); }); }, []); ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/d8789887e1901ada24b4b0391b566385) When refreshing the page, we should see an error: ![Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘search’)](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*-YAStErQmBHhJZUOETS5zQ.png) *Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘search’)* We get an error because `window.history` is `undefined` . That’s because we don’t have permission to use it yet. To fix this, we need to add it to our `permissions` array inside our `manifest.json` : ```json { "name": "chrome-history-extension", ... "permissions": ["history"] } ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/7a471766ead24a88d2ada560dc78cbd8) After reloading our extension, we should see an array of our ten most recent browser history entries in the console. > [**Building Your Own New Tab Chrome Extension**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-your-own-new-tab-chrome-extension/) — How to build a beautiful New Tab Chrome Extension with plain HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Components (Marius Bongarts) Before we show those entries in our dashboard, let’s make the history search call more accessible by providing a more straightforward interface using a custom React hook. Let’s create a `useChromeHistorySearch` hook that executes a history search query with the provided `HistoryQueryObject` and sets the `historyItems` in a state, once the query finishes: ```tsx type HistoryItem = chrome.history.HistoryItem; export const useChromeHistorySearch = ( query: chrome.history.HistoryQuery ): HistoryItem[] => { const [historyItems, setHistoryItems] = useState([]); useEffect(() => { chrome.history .search(query) .then((historyItems) => setHistoryItems(historyItems)) .catch(() => setHistoryItems([])); }, [query]); return historyItems; }; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/9902738c2ca670644d259c2fdfe1ff75) Having this helper hook makes it easier to handle the asynchronous `chrome.history.search()` function within our components. Now, finally, let’s show those entries in the frontend. ### Display Browser History Now that we can get our data, let’s show it in our browser. We will build three components for this. The `Dashboard.tsx` component will use the `useChromeHistorySearch` hook to pass the data to our `History.tsx` component. ```tsx import React from "react"; import { useChromeHistorySearch } from "../hooks/useChromeHistorySearch"; import { History } from "./History"; interface DashboardProps {} const query = { text: "", maxResults: 100 }; export const Dashboard: React.FC = () => { const mostRecentItems = useChromeHistorySearch(query); return (

Chrome History Dashboard 📊

); }; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/9435601522c696ed612226d6dd891a46) Our `History.tsx` component simply takes in an `items` array containing the chrome browser history entries to be shown. Now we iterate over those and show them in an unordered list like this: ```tsx import React from "react"; import { HistoryItem } from "./HistoryItem"; import { StyledList } from "./History.styled"; const MemoizedHistoryItem = React.memo(HistoryItem); interface HistoryProps { items: chrome.history.HistoryItem[]; } export const History: React.FC = ({ items }) => { return ( {items.map((item) => ( ))} ); }; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/cf672d06385ce6fd9ed240b8dc1ca099) For each `item` we render a `HistoryItem` which is another component that renders the item’s information which looks like this: ```tsx import React from "react"; interface HistoryItemProps { item: chrome.history.HistoryItem; } export const HistoryItem: React.FC = ({ item }) => { return (
  • {new Date(item.lastVisitTime ?? 0).toLocaleTimeString()} {item.title}
    • ); }; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/53cceba3d3a7268c6d05d665e43571a9) Our extension should now look like this: ![Chrome History Dashboard](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*l7qJbIchuJ1Xedd8RHGVRg.png) That’s already great. Now let’s make it look a little better. ### Add Styles To apply styles to our components, we will use the `styled-components` library that lets us write CSS inside our Typescript components. > _This means you can use all the features of CSS you use and love, including (but by far not limited to) media queries, all pseudo-selectors, nesting, etc. —_ [_styled-components.com_](https://styled-components.com/) Let’s install it by running: _yarn add styled-components @types/styled-components_ Now, we can customize our unordered list like this: ```tsx const StyledList = styled.ul` list-style: none; padding: 0; margin: 0; `; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/49edeffd2b4396ba54a46daaec495902) This will remove the list dots on the left and also removes some margin and padding. We can use this list in our template like this: Furthermore, we will style the **date** of each entry to make its font color light grey, and we will have a title and a link to the URL: ```tsx export const StyledInfo = styled.div` flex: 1; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; row-gap: 2px; padding: 4px; `; export const StyledItemLink = styled.a` color: var(--light-grey); text-decoration: none; font-size: 0.8rem; `; export const StyledTitle = styled.span` color: black; width: 100%; font-size: 0.9rem; font-weight: 400; `; export const StyledTime = styled.span` color: var(--light-grey); `; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/af7557d1acb85e7273c994781c13b94a) We can use the styled components like this in our template: ```tsx import React from "react"; import { truncateString, urlWithoutSchema } from "../services/helper"; import { StyledInfo, StyledHistoryItem, StyledItemLink, StyledTitle, StyledTime, } from "./HistoryItem.styled"; interface HistoryItemProps { item: chrome.history.HistoryItem; } export const HistoryItem: React.FC = ({ item }) => { const lastVisitDate = new Date(item.lastVisitTime ?? 0); const time = lastVisitDate.toLocaleTimeString().substring(0, 5); const url = urlWithoutSchema(item.url ?? ""); return ( {truncateString(item.title ?? "", 50)}
    {truncateString(url, 30)}     {time}     ); }; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/ff9dc92e165a06b7c0747fac7d1f352f) Those will give our history list some basic styles to make it look like this: ![History Extension with styles](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*D5679JssEDniI1UmOe_WvA.png) *History Extension with styles* #### **Add Favicon icons** Now, let’s improve the design of our `HistoryItem.tsx` file a bit more. To make it look better, we will be add a favicon to our history list items. We can do this by using a Google API that automatically pulls the favicon image of any URL. It works using a simple GET request to: **_https://t0.gstatic.com/faviconV2?client=SOCIAL&type=FAVICON&fallback\_opts=TYPE,SIZE,URL&url=${item.url}&size=16_** We simply replace the `url` parameter to be the history item’s `url` and pass it to an image like this: ```tsx import React from "react"; import { truncateString, urlWithoutSchema } from "../services/helper"; import { StyledInfo, StyledHistoryItem, StyledItemLink, StyledTitle, StyledTime, } from "./HistoryItem.styled"; interface HistoryItemProps { item: chrome.history.HistoryItem; } export const HistoryItem: React.FC = ({ item }) => { const faviconUrl = `https://t0.gstatic.com/faviconV2?client=SOCIAL&type=FAVICON&fallback_opts=TYPE,SIZE,URL&url=${item.url}&size=16`; const lastVisitDate = new Date(item.lastVisitTime ?? 0); const time = lastVisitDate.toLocaleTimeString().substring(0, 5); const url = urlWithoutSchema(item.url ?? ""); return ( {`Favicon {truncateString(item.title ?? "", 50)}
    {truncateString(url, 30)}     {time}     ); }; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/212893eb544dde29d4d5124e586eaf53) Here is what our extension looks like now: ![History Extension with Favicon and styles](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*qMTllCXEfdmACM00_oy_FQ.png) *History Extension with Favicon and styles* ### Final Thoughts I would say that our extension already looks very good. We have successfully integrated the Chrome History API to show the recently visited pages in our dashboard. Also, we applied some styles to make it look a little better. In the next part, we will take care of displaying the extensive list of history items efficiently using lazy-loading. We will also integrate a search bar to search for specific entries in our browsing history. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Feel free to contact me at any time! Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) , [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) , or leave a comment. --- # Web Highlights Tech Stack: Chrome Extension With 100k+ Users > Explore the tech stack of Web Highlights, a Chrome extension using Web Components and Vue.js for saving and highlighting web content easily. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-02-27 - Updated: 2024-09-19 - Tags: Web Development, Web Highlights, My Journey - Reading time: 10 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-tech-stack-behind-web-highlights-a-chrome-extension-with-over-10-000-weekly-users/ --- Web Highlights is a [Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) and [Edge](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/web-highlights-pdf-we/ghdpaajjhmlfkogblgeibaabcpjfgldn) extension created to help users highlight and save important web content. With over 100,000 weekly users, it has become a go-to tool for many who need to keep track of key information online. > [**Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter**](https://web-highlights.com/) — Best highlighter for the web. Just like you do on books, highlight on any web page or PDF, and take notes. Organize with tags and find your research in the app. (Marius Bongarts) In this article, I’m excited to share with you the technology stack that powers the extension and brought this project to life. ### Introduction When I started developing Web Highlights 5 years ago, I wasn’t too worried about the tech stack. It was just a fun side project and my first attempt at building a Chrome extension. Like many developers, I grabbed the tools I knew and started building. Even though the tech stack has evolved over the years, I’m still happy with my original choice. Without making any major changes, the extension can sync all highlights with the cloud and the web app, and so far, it’s been able to handle the needs of 100,000 users. ### Frontend At the core of the Web Highlights Chrome extension are two primary front-end applications: - the **extension** itself, which is loaded into the user’s browser, - and the associated **Web App** that can be accessed at [web-highlights.com](https://web-highlights.com) . #### Browser Extension At the heart of [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) is obviously the browser extension itself. This application part is loaded in the user’s browser, enabling text highlighting on any web page and PDF. It also displays a **collapsible and expandable sidebar** that shows all the user’s text **highlights, notes, and tags** . ![Web Highlights Chrome Extension — Sidebar & Highlighter](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/09/image-1.webp) *Web Highlights Chrome Extension — Sidebar & Highlighter* Those who follow my articles will probably already guess that a large part of my front-end architecture is built using **Web Components** . > Web Components are reusable client-side components based on official web standards. They are an excellent way of encapsulating functionality from the rest of our code. Not only that, but you can reuse them in every web application and web page. I have written many articles on how to build a Chrome Extension using Web Components. For example, [in this article I build a New Tab browser extension using Web Components](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-your-own-new-tab-chrome-extension/) . > [**Building Your Own New Tab Chrome Extension**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/building-your-own-new-tab-chrome-extension/) — How to build a beautiful New Tab Chrome Extension with plain HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Components (Marius Bongarts) Web Components offer numerous advantages, so I used them from the beginning of developing the browser extension. To streamline the process of creating Web Components, I opted to utilize the [**Lit library**](https://lit.dev/) . This lightweight library, maintained by Google, is specifically designed for building web components and makes the development process significantly easier. I have discussed the benefits of Web Components in various articles previously. However, the most significant advantage that saves me a lot of work is the **reusability of components** . > [**Will Web Components Replace Frontend Frameworks?**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/will-web-components-replace-frontend-frameworks-535891d779ba) — They are built to solve different problems. (Marius Bongarts) Thanks to their easy reusability, I can quickly integrate some components from the extension into the web app. For instance, if you prefer React, you can easily [use your Web Components in your React app](https://web-highlights.com/blog/how-to-use-web-components-in-react/) . I’ll explain more about that in the next section. I also use **Typescript** like in all of my other applications as well. Furthermore, I included **Redux** to manage and synchronize states within the application. #### Web App In addition to the Chrome extension, Web Highlights includes a progressive web app (PWA) allowing users to access their saved highlights from any device. > A **progressive web app** (PWA) is an app that's built using web platform technologies, but that provides a user experience like that of a platform-specific app. - [MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps) Here is what the dashboard looks like: ![Web Highlights dashboard](https://web-highlights.com/blog/content/images/2024/09/image-2.webp) *Web Highlights dashboard* I decided to use Vue.js for the PWA somewhat on a whim. It was early in Vue.js’s rise, and there was a lot of excitement around it. I was eager to learn it, which led me to start building the WebApp’s frontend with it. Nevertheless, as already mentioned, I reuse many Web Components from the extension in Vue.js. This saves me a lot of duplicated code and work. When looking at Web Highlights’ dashboard, you might have noticed that some components look very similar to the ones in the extension. > [**The Dangers of Relying Too Much on Frontend Frameworks - A Short Story**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/the-dangers-of-relying-too-much-on-frontend-frameworks-a-short-story/) — Frontend Frameworks can be powerful tools, but the balance between innovation and established web standards like Web Components is key for staying competitive. (Marius Bongarts) The reason for this is that they are essentially identical, except for the fact that they are loaded within my Vue.js app. To illustrate this, let’s compare the screenshot from my extension with the Vue.js PWA and note their similarities: ![Web Components in Web App and Chrome Extension](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Mirny1taQgm0Sam6ee11vA.png) *Web Components in Web App and Chrome Extension* As you can see, the rich editor, share button, and toolbar are used in both the web app and the Chrome extension. Many other components are shared between the two as well. Hopefully, this comparison clearly shows the advantages of reusing web components. #### Blog Besides the frontend, I also run a blog under the subdomain [**web-highlights.com/blog**](https://web-highlights.com/blog) . The main motive for setting up the blog was to rank higher on Google. In the last few weeks, I have dealt extensively with the topic of SEO and understood that a blog on one’s domain could significantly improve the Google ranking. When it comes to SEO, then there is no way around it. Hosting a blog and creating content on my website was a game-changer. If you want to learn more about it, read this article: > [**3 Instant Ways to Increase Your Google Ranking**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-instant-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking/) — Anyone can implement these three essential points to make their product visible on Google, Bing, and Co. (Marius Bongarts) When it comes to hosting a blog, there are several choices available. However, I opted for a self-hosted **Ghost** instance. > **Ghost** _It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members. —_  [_https://ghost.org/_](https://ghost.org/) I created a digital ocean droplet and set up Ghost on it. This is easy, as Ghost and Digital Ocean provide excellent [getting-started articles](https://ghost.org/docs/install/digitalocean/) and [documentation](https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/ghost) . --- ### Backend When choosing a server, it was essential to me that I could also use JavaScript/Typescript. For two main reasons: - I simply **know JavaScript best** - I can **share code between the server and frontend** The second point is particularly important to me. The fact that I can reuse code in both the frontend and the backend makes my code so much cleaner. In my article “ [Share Code between React Client and Express Server](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/share-code-between-react-client-and-express-server-5dc0977faa76) ,” you can learn how to implement this using a **mono repository** . > [**Share Code between React Client and Express Server**](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/share-code-between-react-client-and-express-server-5dc0977faa76) — Set up a mono repository with yarn workspaces (Marius Bongarts) #### Main Server A huge part of my application forms one server, which relies on **Nest.js** . Nest.js is a powerful Node.js framework that provides a robust set of tools for building scalable and efficient server-side applications. The server synchronizes users’ highlights, bookmarks, tags, and notes with the cloud. This functionality allows users to access their highlights not only within the extension but also from anywhere there is an internet connection. Users can log in to the web app, which downloads all their highlights from the server. It is also possible to share your research with friends who do not have the extension. To ensure secure authentication, the server implements JSON Web Tokens ( **JWT** ) technology. Furthermore, I integrated Google Sign-In with **Firebase** . Furthermore, my server handles a few asynchronous processes I implemented with **CRON** jobs. For example, users can set email reminders that are then executed every hour in a CRON job. To make some recurring queries faster and more efficient, I also introduced a caching system that simply uses the `NodeCache` to cache time-consuming database queries and return them faster. #### Micro Server In addition to the main server, I implemented a small microservice using **Express.js** . This microservice exports HTML to PDF files using the **Puppeteer** library. I had initially considered implementing this functionality in the main Nest.js server, but given the Puppeteer library's large size and resource-intensive operations, I decided to offload it to a separate microservice. This way, I can keep the central server lean and fast while still providing the necessary PDF export functionality via the microservice. ### Database The Web Highlights Chrome extension relies on a **MongoDB** database to store user data. MongoDB is a popular NoSQL database with high scalability, availability, and performance. I am using Mongoose, which is a popular object data modeling (ODM) library for MongoDB, to model the data in the database. **Mongoose** provides a simple and intuitive API for defining schemas, creating queries, and validating data. The database is hosted on **MongoDB Atlas Cloud Database,** which handles all the complexity of deploying and managing my database. Additionally, it offers the security of automatic backups. ### Hosting #### Server Currently, my main server and microservice are hosted on Heroku Dynos, which provide flexible hosting for my apps. Heroku has been really convenient because it lets me easily deploy from GitHub and set up a pre-production testing server by deploying from my development branch. It might also be more cost-effective to host the main server on the Digital Ocean droplet, but I’m really happy with Heroku. I like knowing I can easily restart the server from anywhere using their web app. It gives me peace of mind knowing it works reliably and I can manage it, even when I’m on vacation for a few weeks, ensuring my server is always running. #### Frontend I have set up a **Digital Ocean droplet** to host the front end of my Vue.js web app. This setup has changed a lot over the years. When talking about the front end, I have to differentiate between the marketing website at [web-highlights.com](web-highlights.com) and the actual web app at [app.web-highlights.com](app.web-highlights.com) . The marketing website is a server-side rendered Nuxt3 application, while the PWA is a client-side rendered Vue3 app that even works offline. A configured A-record in my domain provider, **Strato** , directs the domain [_web-highlights.com_](https://web-highlights.com) to the IP address of my Digital Ocean droplet. The droplet is set up to serve the web app as a static site and the marketing website through the port of the running Nuxt3 app. I also configured an NGINX server to host my Ghost CMS blog under the /blog subfolder of the domain. This setup allows visitors to access both the web app and blog from the same domain easily. #### Payment Since my app offers [different paid subscription plans](https://web-highlights.com/pricing) , I needed to choose a payment provider. Some of the most popular options are Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, and others. I went with Paddle because, like Lemon Squeezy, they offer a Merchant of Record system that makes it easy to manage payments globally. This is especially important for being legally compliant in European countries. Integrating Paddle into my Nest.js backend was simple, thanks to their excellent documentation and easy-to-use sandbox environment for testing. ### Testing: Jest + Cypress Initially, like many others, I developed my application without any unit tests or integration tests. However, over time, I added a significant number of unit tests and integration tests, which have helped me avoid many issues. Although it was challenging to test the Chrome extension fully integrated, I established a test environment where I could launch and test my application locally. Using Cypress, I have tested almost every feature of my application. Additionally, I have implemented many unit tests for complex logic, for which I utilize Jest. ### Final Thoughts That's it! Of course, I didn’t cover every single technology or library I’m using, but I hope this gives you some useful insights. Maybe you can even apply some of these ideas to build your own Chrome extension. Here’s a quick summary of the tech stack: - **Frontend:** Web Components + Lit, Vue 3 PWA, Nuxt3, Typescript, Redux, Ghost CMS - **Backend:** Nest.js, Express.js, JWT, Firebase Auth - **Database:** MongoDB, Mongoose, MongoDB Atlas Cloud - **Payment** : Paddle - **Hosting:** Heroku, Digital Ocean, Strato - **Testing:** Jest, Cypress I hope you enjoyed reading this article! I’m always happy to answer questions and open to feedback. Feel free to reach out anytime 😊 I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Feel free to contact me at any time 😊 Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . Also, check out my [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) extension if you haven’t. [Follow me on Medium](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts) for more articles like this. --- # Failing Forward: The Importance of Publishing Your Side Projects > Discover the benefits of publishing your side projects, even if they fail. Learn how 'failing forward' can increase your creativity and lead to success. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-02-20 - Updated: 2024-09-01 - Tags: Side Hustle, Side Projects, Web Development, Programming, My Journey - Reading time: 4 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/failing-forward-the-importance-of-publishing-your-side-projects/ --- Developers often take on side projects as a way to explore their passion for programming and learn new technologies outside of their day-to-day jobs. Unfortunately, too many of those never see the lights of the public. > For many developers, programming is a labor of love. - [StackOverflow](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015#profile-sideprojects) According to the [2015 StackOverflow survey](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015#profile-sideprojects) , an impressive 91.7% of developers reported having active side projects. Unfortunately, the survey does not reveal how many of these projects are published. While it is difficult to determine the exact numbers, likely, only a small percentage of side projects are ever made public. > The average developer spends more than 7 hours per week coding on the side.- [StackOverflow](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015#profile-sideprojects) Many developers have continued developing a side project for years. They spend hours creating a product without ever publishing it. **Why is that?** The idea of launching a product that is not well-received can be daunting. Despite dreaming about making money with a product, the real potential of launching a product nobody likes is far scarier than developing a product nobody’s heard of. ![Side project](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*-vuzP4JAoPf9S6ZdHNR_Jg.jpeg) One of the side projects I started and successfully released is the [Chrome extension Web Highlights](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . I still vividly remember my thoughts when I first made it available in the Chrome Web Store. - _Was I concerned that nobody liked the extension?_ **_Yes_** _._ - _Was I concerned that users would complain about bugs?_ **_Yes_** _._ - Was I excited to publish my first side project? **Yes, I was.** So, what happened? **Did I launch a product nobody likes?** Let’s put it that way: It could have started better. After one month, I have had **four** users — Me, my brother, my mum, and a friend. Two months later, I have had **eight** users — Me, my brother, my mum, and five friends. My brother used to be (and still is) a “ _bug-hunter_ ,” and my friends helped me test and improve the app. However, the highlight for me was on March 12th, 2020, when an unknown user signed up for the project. It was a small but significant milestone that brought me joy and renewed my motivation to continue working on the project. After a year, I was a proud developer of an extension with **124** active users. Meanwhile, there are over **9250** active users. This is still not an overwhelming amount. But much more important to me is that many users love the application as much as I do. ![Weekly users — Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Fp2qm7YZw28KZVH8v8nueg.png) *Weekly users — Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter* So ask yourself: What could happen? It might be that nobody will notice your product. Or maybe, users will not like your product and will get rid of it again. You might also receive negative reviews. So what? _We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed. — Mark Manson_ Establishing a mindset where failure is not a bad thing would be best. Actually, failure is necessary for growth. Let me emphasize that by quoting Mark Manson: > _If you think about a young child trying to learn to walk, that child will fall down and hurt itself hundreds of times. But at no point does that child ever stop and think, “Oh, I guess walking just isn’t for me. I’m not good at it.” Avoiding failure is something we learn at some later point in life._ Projecting this to side projects means that even if your first project is not a success. Maybe your second, third, or fifteenth is. Never give up and realize that at the end of all of your projects — whether successful or unsuccessful, paid or unpaid, finished or unfinished — you will always win: new experiences, new contacts, and new findings about yourself! > I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. — Yevgeniy Brikman Another significant advantage of publishing your side project is showing your work to others. When interviewing for development jobs, it’s not uncommon to be asked if you’ve completed any side projects. Having a [GitHub profile](https://github.com/MariusBongarts) is also expected in many cases, and potential employers may ask to see your profile. I can say that having a running Chrome extension with thousands of users caused me amazement during my job interviews. ### Final Thoughts We often start side projects to develop skills and unleash creativity. However, it’s not uncommon for many of these projects to never see the light of day. If you have a side project, don’t be afraid to take the next step and share it with the world. Publishing your project isn’t just about showcasing your work. It’s also the first step to potential success and growth. By embracing the possibility of failure and taking a leap of faith, you open yourself up to new experiences, opportunities, and personal growth. **So, don’t delay and publish your project today!** I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Feel free to contact me at any time 😊 Get in touch with me via [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) or follow me on [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) . Also, check out my [PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) extension if you haven’t. --- # Create a Custom Chrome History Extension with React - Part 1 > Learn how to set up and create a custom Chrome history extension using React with our step-by-step guide. Implement the Chrome History API easily. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-02-13 - Updated: 2024-07-23 - Tags: Chrome Extension, React, Software - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/build-your-own-custom-chrome-history-extension-with-react-part-1-set-up/ --- In this series of articles, I will walk you through creating your own browser history Chrome extension using React. We will use the **Chrome History API** to read our browser history and display it in our personalized React dashboard. Here is what we are going to build: ![Screenshot showing our React Dashboard in the extensions' popup](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*kEO9vWt6N3ztMXw7poVKug.png) *Our own Chrome History - What we will build* Without further ado, let’s get started. ### Extension setup Create an ‘ _/extension’_ folder anywhere on your machine to get started. We will later copy & paste it into our React app. Then create a `manifest.json` file inside our **_extension_** folder: ```json { "name": "Chrome History Extension", "version": "1.0.0", "manifest_version": 3 } ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/19c5a920705cd19a60dff01005663dec) The manifest is our entry point, which defines our extension's metadata. For now, we only provide the `name` , `version` , and `manifest_version` , which is enough to install the extension in our browser. Open your Chrome browser and navigate to **chrome://extensions** . Enable Developer Mode by clicking the toggle switch next to **Developer mode** . Click the “ **Load unpacked”** button and select the **_extension_** directory of our repo containing our `manifest.json` . ![Install the extension](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*JXPO18Iebr-6WJEWjb7dCQ.png) *Install the extension* > Congratulations! You just created a Chrome Extension! 👏 Currently, the extension doesn’t do anything. Therefore let’s define a page to open when clicking our extension icon in the chrome toolbar. We can do this by defining an `action` in our `manifest.json` . > _An action’s popup will be shown when the user clicks on the extension’s action button in the toolbar. The popup can contain any HTML contents you like, and will be automatically sized to fit its contents. The popup cannot be smaller than 25x25 and cannot be larger than 800x600. -_ [developer.chrome.com](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/action/) Here is how to define an **HTML popup** that opens when clicking our extension icon: ```json { "name": "chrome-history-extension", "description": "Chrome extension that accesses the chrome history API to read the browser history and display it in our own personalized React dashboard", "version": "1.0.0", "manifest_version": 3, "action": { "default_title": "Chrome History Dashboard", "default_popup": "./index.html" } } ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/08e5fcd0e8fc30c0e84401c360a867fa) Our `index.html` file contains a simple HTML file with some styles to set the _width_ and _height_ of the body element. Furthermore, it provides the JavaScript for our React app by loading the `app.js` file. ```html Chrome History Dashboard ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/f47e52f4f58f31ab9c82950565e81097) As we still need to set up the React app, our popup only contains a blank page with the defined width and height. You should now be able to see it when clicking the extension icon: ![Screenshot: Extension Popup](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*CTVWai4gf7p91Txewc1Lgg.png) *Extension Popup* If you like, you can also include a custom icon for your extension by providing the `default_icon` attribute: ```json { "action": { "default_title": "Chrome History Dashboard", "default_popup": "./index.html", "default_icon": { "16": "images/icon16.png", // optional "24": "images/icon24.png", // optional "32": "images/icon32.png" // optional }, } } ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/b5c242b7612bf639e8777a452d14b39d) ### React Setup We will build a React application. Therefore let us create some boilerplate by running the following script using the `create-react-app` CLI: `npx create-react-app chrome-history-extension --template typescript` Let’s eliminate all the unnecessary stuff. Remove all CSS styles and the React template code in the `App.tsx` component. You can also delete the **_/public_** folder (We will replace it with our **/extension** folder later). To test our setup, let’s put a simple _“Hello from React App_ 👋 _”_ headline to our component: ```tsx function App() { return (
    Hello From React App 👋
    ); } export default App; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/645637756acb27cf205c9308e695f943) Finally, we will adjust our `index.tsx` file a bit to create the entry point of our application programmatically: ```tsx import React from "react"; import ReactDOM from "react-dom/client"; import App from "./App"; const rootElement = document.createElement("div"); rootElement.id = "chrome-history-dashboard"; document.body.appendChild(rootElement); const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(rootElement); root.render( ); ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/a0bd990f80687215d1337c95e860f24f) ### Webpack setup In the next step, we will configure an application bundler to build our chrome extension automatically. Furthermore, we will set up a development environment to test our extension. We will use **Webpack 5** as a module bundler. To use it, we install _webpack_ and the _copy-webpack-plugin_ plugin by running: `yarn add -D webpack@^5 copy-webpack-plugin` OR `npm i -D webpack@5 copy-webpack-plugin` Now, let’s create a `webpack.config.js` file and put the following code in it: ```js const path = require("path"); const CopyPlugin = require("copy-webpack-plugin"); module.exports = { entry: "./src/index.tsx", mode: "production", module: { rules: [ { test: /\.tsx?$/, use: [ { loader: "ts-loader", options: { compilerOptions: { noEmit: false }, }, }, ], exclude: /node_modules/, }, ], }, resolve: { extensions: [".tsx", ".ts", ".js"], }, output: { filename: "app.js", path: path.resolve(__dirname, "dist"), }, plugins: [ new CopyPlugin({ patterns: [{ from: "./extension", to: "" }], }), ], }; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/a67a94708c1c7510d0c8702cec20815a) If you don’t know how webpack works, I highly recommend learning it. Still, for now, it’s relevant to know that it will replace the built-in `react-scripts` configuration to start and build the app. Therefore it uses a `ts-loader` to transpile our Typescript `.tsx` templates into JavaScript and bundles them into one Javascript file ( `app.js` ). Additionally, we will create a `CopyPlugin` that transfers all files from the _/extension_ directory, including the `manifest.json` file, to the _/dist_ build folder. Navigate to the `package.json` file and look at our `"start"` and `"build"` scripts. They should look like this: ```json { "name": "chrome-history-extension", ... "scripts": { "start": "react-scripts start", "build": "react-scripts build", }, ... } ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/caa3b886733ca92c79bcc4cae504243a) Let’s replace those scripts with webpack: ```json { "name": "chrome-history-extension", ... "scripts": { "start": "webpack serve --config webpack.dev.js", "build": "webpack", }, ... } ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/a1e80f5f452d22f6511aaea41e1653d6) You can see that our `build` script simply calls `webpack` . By default, webpack will look for a `webpack.config.js` configuration file that we just created. Furthermore, we defined a `start` script. This script takes a different webpack configuration with a dev server, enabling us to test our extension locally without installing the extension. By that, we can better and faster test our extension. Here is what the development configuration looks like: ```js const path = require("path"); const config = require("./webpack.config"); module.exports = { ...config, mode: "development", devServer: { static: { directory: path.join(__dirname, "extension"), }, port: 8080, }, performance: { hints: false }, output: { ...config.output, publicPath: "/" }, }; ``` [View this code on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/MariusBongarts/f4955081bc03010788f28c8735816910) This config takes our original configuration from the `webpack.config.js` file and overrides some values. We configure a webpack dev server to serve our application statically from the `extension` folder on port 8080. Now, you should be able to run `yarn start` and see our application running on [localhost:8080](http://localhost:8080/) . Furthermore, you can run `yarn build` , and webpack should automatically generate all necessary files for our extension and copy them to the _/dist_ folder. We can now load our unpacked extension from this folder. Opening our popup should show the React app containing our _“Hello From React App 👋”_ headline: ![Screenshot: Chrome Extension Popup including React app](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*cCCQdaZdwE1ZSZkmyovGdQ.png) *Chrome Extension Popup + React app* We are finished with the setup and will continue implementing the chrome history API in the following article. [Here is the Github repository](https://github.com/MariusBongarts/chrome-history-extension) , including the extension's final version. ### Final Thoughts In this article, we laid the groundwork for displaying our Chrome history in our React Chrome extension in subsequent articles. We’ve covered the essential steps for setting up a Chrome extension and integrating React with Webpack to bundle them into a Chrome extension effortlessly. With these building blocks in place, we’re now ready for the next article, in which we will learn how to access the Chrome History API to show it inside our extension. Follow me or [**subscribe**](https://medium.com/subscribe/@mariusbongarts) to get my stories via email not to miss the next article. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Feel free to contact me at any time! Get in touch with me via [****LinkedIn****](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/) , [****Twitter****](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) , or leave a comment. --- # How I Increased Chrome Extension Users by 270% in 9 Months > Learn how I managed to grow the user base of my Chrome extension by 270% in just nine months by applying simple SEO strategies. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-02-06 - Updated: 2024-07-23 - Tags: Marketing, SEO, Side Hustle, Web Highlights - Reading time: 5 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/rocketing-to-10-000-users-how-i-achieved-a-270-increase-in-just-9-months-with-my-chrome-extension/ --- Finally! Something that seemed impossible a year ago was only a matter of time — my [Web Highlights Chrome Extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) reached more than **10,000 users** in the Chrome Web Store 🎉 🎊 ![Web Highlights Chrome Extension — 10,000+ user milestone](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1280/1*XGqkE-NA1ETmFa6PZr9-5A.png) *Web Highlights Chrome Extension — 10,000+ user milestone* Last year in April, when I posted [My Journey to the First $ 9.99 with My Side Project](https://medium.com/@mariusbongarts/my-journey-to-the-first-9-99-with-my-side-project-3edc13dd1f2d) , my online highlighter had **only 2,703 active users** . Today, I want to update you on how things are going and outline how I managed to grow my user base by **270%** and my organic SEO impressions by **16,666%** in less than a year 🚀 ![User Growth: Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1280/1*6ZYrBJykNQ2mIOVYYAHBuQ.png) *User Growth: Web Highlights — PDF & Web Highlighter* Back then, my [Chrome extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) had: - **2,733** weekly users - **7,102** created user accounts - ~ **3,000** organic SEO impressions Today, [Web Highlights](https://web-highlights.com/) has: - **10k+** weekly users ( **↗ 270 %** ) - **18,240** created user accounts ( **↗ 157 %** ) - ~ **473k+** organic SEO impressions ( **↗ 16,666 %** ) I’m currently trying my hand on Twitter and regularly post earning reports like this and many more insights about programming, SEO, and updates on my side projects. I would be thrilled if you accompanied me on my [Twitter journey](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) 🙌 > [@WebHighlights\_](https://twitter.com/WebHighlights_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [#buildinpublic](https://twitter.com/hashtag/buildinpublic?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) report #2, Jan 23 📈 > > 👋 3,257 Chrome installs | 😥 1,733 uninstalls > > 💸 $223 MRR | ⬇️ $64 > 🤵 15,448 Created accounts | ⬆️ 16 % > 🔥 9,747 Weekly users | ⬆️ 31 % > 👆 7,730 Google clicks | ⬆️ 101 % > 👀 206,000 Google impressions | ⬆️ 73 % > > — Marius Bongarts (@MariusBongarts) [February 1, 2023](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts/status/1620769062107095040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) ### Build Something You Love My primary goal is still, and will always be, building a product that my users love. My most significant advantage is that I am the heaviest user of [my own extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-highlights-pdf-web-hi/hldjnlbobkdkghfidgoecgmklcemanhm) . > Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like. — Paul Graham If you want to build something and need some advice, my number one tip would be to **build something you are passionate about** . It will make the journey much more enjoyable and fulfilling. As I am constantly using my app, I always try to improve it. Just recently, I figured that I would appreciate it if there was a way to be reminded about bookmarks and articles I saved. Too  often, I add articles to my reading list and forget about them… That’s why I built this reminder which works similarly to the Gmail “Snooze” functionality for emails: ![Web Highlights — “Snooze” Reminder](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1280/1*A62a6riKZijX2LqKe_PcvA.gif) *Web Highlights — “Snooze” Reminder* However, a great product alone is not enough to achieve growth, and I had to work hard to ensure that Web Highlights continued to grow. Here are some of the strategies I used. ### Talk About Your Product > “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” — Seth Godin When I started developing Web Highlights, I built in **“Stealth-mode.”** While I wasn’t worried about someone stealing my idea, as it wasn’t entirely new, I found it challenging to speak publicly about the project. I often felt that the product wasn’t polished enough and feared receiving negative feedback, which led me to keep quiet about it. > “Stealth-mode” refers to a startup or company working on a new product or service without publicly announcing it or revealing too many details about it. Luckily my mind has shifted entirely in this regard. And hopefully, I can convince you too. Instead of avoiding feedback, try to get feedback as early as possible. I can only encourage anyone who builds things online to participate in the **#buildinpublic** community. I regularly share updates about my product, even before the features are officially launched. This not only allows me to gather direct feedback from my audience, but it also helps to increase awareness and build excitement for my product. > The [@WebHighlights\_](https://twitter.com/WebHighlights_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) sidebar is now fully resizable making it even easier to organize and access your highlights and notes. > > I hope you like it 😊 [#buildinpublic](https://twitter.com/hashtag/buildinpublic?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [pic.twitter.com/PeTLIQicR7](https://t.co/PeTLIQicR7) > > — Marius Bongarts (@MariusBongarts) [January 9, 2023](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts/status/1612464346147217409?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) ### Increase Organic Traffic ![Web Highlights Organic Traffic — Google Search Console](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1280/1*0VUA3DFvEhs7Hv2cEdIJDg.png) *Web Highlights Organic Traffic — Google Search Console* Increasing organic traffic is one of the most essential steps for every possible product you can build. Of course, you could have a large marketing budget and spend tons of money on Facebook Ads, Google Ads, etc. I have tried this, but that’s not a long-term growth strategy. I very much like the way how [Rick Blyth](https://medium.com/u/742103990be0) puts it in his Micro SaaS Handbook eBook : > I like to think of organic traffic vs paid traffic akin to building a campfire. ![Organic Traffic Campfire with many keywords like “Blog, Paid, Micro, Lead, Youtube, Growth, etc…”](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1280/1*oyeIJFVYu8NdYWKnFfjqPg.png) *Organic Traffic Campfire* > You want to set up a foundation of large slow-burning blocks of wood (your organic content marketing/referral marketing/affiliates etc). This will ensure that the fire will burn steadily for a long period of time. You will consistently add to these foundations over time (more blog articles/referral schemes/affiliate partnerships). > Once the fire is burning well, you can pour on some gasoline (paid advertising) to increase the height of the fire for a short period of time. > However, gasoline can be expensive and is also out of your control. The price of gasoline (cost of ads) can skyrocket and ad accounts are notorious for being shut down (leaving you with zero traffic) so you can’t rely on this alone --- Organic traffic is the foundation for all SaaS products. SEO plays a huge role in this. In recent months, I have almost only worked on improving SEO to take care of the organic traffic, even though I would much rather just build new features to make my product better. > You can build the most outstanding product in the world — if no one hears about it, it’s doomed to fail. The great thing about SEO and organic traffic is that you can quickly see results. Here is the organic traffic of my web-highlights.com website in December 2021 compared to December 2022: ![Organic traffic: web-highlights.com. Grey by 2,265.7% in one year](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1280/1*EYYZW-T6WZKsVuKl-1N5aQ.png) *Organic traffic: web-highlights.com* In my article, [3 Instant Ways to Increase Your Google Ranking](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-instant-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking/) I wrote about the three things I did to achieve such growth: - Hosting a blog - Improve Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO score - Creating Backlinks Check out [the article](https://bettermarketing.pub/3-instant-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking-d36cf98a933e) for more information. ### Final Thoughts Reaching the milestone of 10,000 users with Web Highlights is a fantastic achievement, and I am very grateful to all the users who have supported and promoted the extension. I look forward to improving the product and reaching even more users in the future. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always happy to answer questions and am open to criticism. Feel free to contact me at any time 😊 Get in touch with me via **[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marius-bongarts-6b3638171/)** , or follow me on **[Twitter](https://twitter.com/MariusBongarts) .** > [**3 Instant Ways to Increase Your Google Ranking**](https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-instant-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking/) — Anyone can implement these three essential points to make their product visible on Google, Bing, and Co. (Marius Bongarts) --- # 3 Advanced Ways to Increase Your Google Ranking > Improve your website's organic traffic on Google with advanced techniques. Increase credibility, improve user experience, and increase trustworthiness. - Author: Marius Bongarts - Published: 2023-01-25 - Updated: 2024-07-23 - Tags: SEO, Web Highlights, Marketing - Reading time: 8 min - URL: https://web-highlights.com/blog/3-advanced-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking/ --- Three months ago, I posted “ [3 Instant Ways to Increase Your Google Ranking](https://bettermarketing.pub/3-instant-ways-to-increase-your-google-ranking-d36cf98a933e) ”. This article discussed three effective and straightforward methods for boosting your website’s organic traffic on Google: - **Creating content (E.g., Hosting a blog)** - **Improving the webpage quality (Performance, accessibility, etc.)** - **Creating backlinks** These three things are the cornerstone of being a factor for search engines in the first place. Every website should focus on these three points before moving on to **more advanced topics, which we will look at in this article.** ### 1\. Increase Credibility and Trustworthiness Just like you don’t like calls from unknown and dubious numbers, Google doesn’t like websites that look **untrustworthy** . Instead, Google ensures that users are directed to high-quality and trustworthy sources of information. > Google wants to keep poor-quality, untrustworthy sites out of the search results, and keep high-quality, legit sites at the top. — Adam Clarke in [SEO 2023](https://amzn.to/3CYq5sC) Have you ever wanted to buy something online, and the store seemed untrustworthy? How did you proceed? You probably searched for online reviews. Maybe you looked at the website's imprint to search for contact details. Or maybe you just googled **_“Is store XY trustworthy?”._** That’s how you can imagine how Google distinguishes dubious from serious websites. When Google crawls a web page, it evaluates various aspects to determine its trustworthiness. If a website is only **two weeks old** , has **no imprint** , **advertising popups** virtually slay you, and users **leave the site immediately**  — Then this is probably a very **untrustworthy** website. Consequently, Google will rank it further down in future results. On the other hand, if a website is already **ten years old** , the **domain is registered** with **contact details** , users regularly **spend a lot of time** there, and it links different social media channels with thousands of followers — Then the website can be trusted, and Google will rank it higher. It follows that you can do these things to **increase the trustworthiness** of your website: - **Contact information** : Make sure to have valid contact information on your website, including an email address, phone number, and physical address. This allows users to reach you and gives Google the image of a reputable website. Also, having a clear and easy-to-understand **privacy policy** and **terms of service** on your website can help establish trust and transparency with users and Google. - **Age of website** : The age of a website is essential. If you start from scratch, the most obvious way is to wait. But you could also consider buying an already trustworthy domain to give yourself a head start. - **Social Proof** : While Google states that **social medi** a is not directly contributing to SEO ranking, it can still contribute to your brand exposure and trustworthiness. Having links to your social media accounts on your website shows Google that your website can be trusted. - **Security** : Having a secure website (HTTPS, SSL) is a must-have for Google. Not having an SSL-secured website will give you a significant disadvantage. - **Domain Registry** : Make sure your domain is registered with the same contact details as it is stated on your website. This can be checked by doing a [who.is](https://who.is/) search, showing the registration information for a specific domain. - **Professional Design** : Avoid using too many pop-ups and intrusive ads, and make sure the website loads fast. This will not only increase the trustworthiness of your website but also the user’s experience, which we will look closer at in the next section. ### 2\. Improve User Experience Now we’ll turn our attention to one of the most important topics of all. We want our users to have a great experience on our website to make them stay as long as possible. > Are users sticking to your content like glue? Or are they visiting and leaving your site faster than Usain Bolt? — Adam Clarke in [SEO 2023](https://amzn.to/3CYq5sC) Many points in this article go together, and you can not clearly separate them. Improving user experience will naturally increase the **trustworthiness** of your site — because if many people use the site for a long time, then Google concludes that the site can be trusted. #### Page speed Making sure your website loads fast is probably the most important thing you can do to improve your site's user experience. Users are less likely to stay on a website that takes a long time to load. Walmart reported that for every 1 second of improvement in page load time, they saw a 2% increase in conversions. > For every 100ms of improvement, the total revenue of Walmart grew by almost 1% Additionally, a study by **Google found that 53% of mobile users will leave a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load** . Ensure that your website loads fast by using techniques like **minifying code** , **lazy-loading** , **caching,** and **optimizing** **images** . For more detailed information on improving page speed, check out my article “ [5 Advanced Ways to Load Your SPA Web App in Under 1 Second](https://javascript.plainenglish.io/5-advanced-ways-to-get-lighthouse-performance-of-spa-web-apps-to-100-de269ce9a73c) ”. #### Navigation & Semantic HTML Make sure your website is easy to navigate. This is important not only for your users. Also, Google must be able to navigate your website. Using correct **semantic HTML elements** can be the first step to making your website accessible for Google and people with disabilities who rely on screen readers or other tools. > “Semantic elements = elements with a meaning.” — [w3schools.com](https://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_semantic_elements.asp) While **non-semantic** elements like `
    ` and `` tell nothing about its content, **semantic** elements like `