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Zotero for Android available for beta tests
- Zetobal 3y agoOh nice Christmas present. I am using devonthink at the moment but would love to have a look at something else how does zotero hold up with big libraries?
- MrBurrito 3y agoVery well I would say (20gb and counting). More importantly: Zotero is the only one that does Web scraping correctly. If you are looking at a paywalled article, it will capture your DOM from the browser, so you get what you are looking at. DevonThink and many others choke at paywalled content because they try to access the content independently. Last but not least: thanks to the developers for the latest updates that bring zotero to a more modern experience. The iOS app specifically is awesome!
- phren0logy 3y agoYou can use them both together! Just have Zotero save your PDFs to a directory that DEVONthink will index. That way, you can use the right tool for the job. For inserting citation into documents, the work processor plug-ins that Zotero offers are really fantastic. Similarly, for academic papers, the web clipper that Zotero has is much better suited to those particular types of documents than the more general purpose one included with DEVONthink.
- Zetobal 3y agoOh that's actually perfect for my usecase thanks for the mind rub.
- jarbus 3y agoAs an iPad user, I’m more excited for the rumored Epub support. So excited to keep all my books and PDFs in one place
- xattt 3y agoHot take: the iPad/iOS Zotero reading experience is worlds apart from the PDF.js reader in Windows clients.
- layer8 3y agoIn which direction? (I don’t use either.)
- xattt 3y agoThe iOS version uses PDFkit, so the options for viewing and annotation are much better. It drives me bonkers that I can’t do single-page view on the desktop app.
- kergonath 3y agoAn iPad is the ideal form factor for this kind of things. Reading and annotating PDFs on that thing is a joy.
- evolve2k 3y agoI’m considering getting an iPad mini to read & annotate within Zotero. Anyone have experience of using an iPad mini for this. Is the form factor do-able or really too small? I like that I could read lying down with one hand, which I can’t achieve with a full-sized iPad.
- kergonath 3y ago> Anyone have experience of using an iPad mini for this. Is the form factor do-able or really too small? I contemplated doing that, but went with an iPad Pro instead (11’’, second hand). Even 11’’ felt a bit small and I got a 13’’ eventually. Besides screen size, the Apple Pencil 2 is miles better. > I like that I could read lying down with one hand, which I can’t achieve with a full-sized iPad. Yes, for reading a Mini would be much better. More Kindle-like. The 11’’ Pro is still manageable with one hand (but without a case), but it’s not comfortable.
- djtango 3y agoappreciate it's still in beta but save from browser will probably finally break my curse of 1000+ chrome tabs... (most of which are old HN threads)
- smitty1e 3y agoZotDroid has worked well on the tablet.
- atomicnature 3y agoLove Zotero. I've found it to be the best document manager of the available options. Good for research organization, casual reading, highlighting, annotations, and so on. Just want to thank the devs for sharing it with the world :)
- sva_ 3y agoGreat to see this, even though the functionality is currently pretty limited. PDF download doesn't seem to work currently, even if the PDF is available via e.g. arxiv. Going to keep an eye on the development.
- ZunarJ5 3y agoThere's also Zoo for Zotero. https://github.com/mickstar/Zoo-For-Zotero https://github.com/mickstar/Zoo-For-Zotero
- CrazyStat 3y agoI use zoo for zotero on my e-ink android tablet (Boox Tab X). It lacks quite a few zotero features but works well for my workflow—I manage my library on my desktop (downloading papers, adding tags, etc.), then sync to my Tab X where I can read and mark up the pdfs and sync them back to my desktop. It’s a great paper reading experience.
- j4yav 3y agoOut of curiosity what is it? Neither the store link or this one seem to explain. Is it some kind of citations tracking system? A pdf editor? I'm not sure what the features add up to in total.
- freddex 3y agoIt's mostly a tool to manage research literature. It allows you to add works you are viewing in your web browser to collections. Then, you can create bibliographies from these collections. As a researcher I use it a lot, since it makes working with references much smoother. There's also extra features like cloud syncing and most recently an integrated PDF viewer and annotator. https://www.zotero.org/ https://www.zotero.org/
- P-Nuts 3y agoA bit like JabRef then? That was what I was using when was in academia but that was 15-20 years ago.
- DoctorDabadedoo 3y agoExactly like the new generation of JabRef and Mendeley.
- swamp_donkey 3y agoQiqqa used to be my choice in this space but the devs have moved on
- panza 3y agoYeah, fundamentally it helps you manage records of documents. Of course you can also attach PDFs and full text (if you have them), but it's the record that's important. A common use case is in academia - it helps you track your citations and then output standardised reference lists, which is a pain to do by hand. Other tools in this space are Mendeley and Endnote.
- 3y ago
- senectus1 3y agoAnyone aware of a self hosted alternative?
- Zetobal 3y agoIf you are on a Mac, devonthink.
- boramalper 3y agoIsn’t Zotero already self-hosted?
- zephyros 3y agoFor the attachments like pdf you can use webdav, but for the metadata you have to use their service [1]. They have the code repos online so it's open source, but no self-hosting instructions [2]. They claimed it to be due to technical difficulties [3], though imo they have no incentives to provide this given that they host a paid service themselves. [1]: https://www.zotero.org/support/sync https://www.zotero.org/support/sync [2]: https://github.com/zotero/dataserver https://github.com/zotero/dataserver [3]: https://github.com/zotero/dataserver/issues/105 https://github.com/zotero/dataserver/issues/105
- TontonNestor 3y agoI've installed the app linked in TFA and it immediately asked me to sign in or sign up without any option to configure my own server address. But since it's still a beta version, the custom server/local only options are probably not implemented yet.
- bluish29 3y agoYou have to modify that hard coded servers in the clients to your data server and re- compile them.
- gexla 3y agoThe only server functionality I'm aware of is syncing between devices. Zotero does offer hosting space for this, but you can host your own as well. It works with Webdav, so I have used my own hosted instance of Nextcloud for syncing.
- retskrad 3y agoIt's funny how on the desktop, Windows has more apps and developers generally target it before MacOS. On mobile, it's the opposite where developers make apps for iOS first and release the Android version months/years later, even though Android has a 70% marketshare in mobile.
- carlosjobim 3y agoAndroid users don't want to pay for apps, that's why they get lower priority in general.
- feitingen 3y agoThis is also self-reinforcing, since apps worth paying for are released on ios first.
- filmgirlcw 3y agoYes and no. The Android Market was only a few months behind the App Store (paid apps took another year) but when Android started to take off, lots and lots of developers started to try to come to Android in a big way and some even experimented with being Android first. But they all largely failed. Companies that actively invested in trying to be Android-first for a paid app have largely failed or been relegated to a very specific niche. First, I think it was because the tooling was so much worse for Android than iOS, especially in the early years. And Google didn’t bother enforcing or even really outlining any HIGs for the longest time. It didn’t help that every Android maker had its own skin for the longest time (that is mostly over now, except for Samsung and some Chinese phone makers — and I would argue Samsung has a distinctive brand now that people buy their phones for their interface. They don’t want stock Android, they want the Galaxy Android experience). But then even when you did have hit phones, like the first Motorola Droid and the Samsung Galaxy S (where the Galaxy S3 was a huge moment) and better dev tools, you still didn’t have users willing to pay for apps or even IAP. And it is hard to justify heavy-investment into a platform that people won’t pay for if your primary business is selling an app. It also helps that iOS users typically have devices that are updated more regularly and that iOS devices are supported longer. And or course, there are fewer devices to test (though far more than there used to be).
- vodou 3y agoIf I mostly want to keep my own document repository (pdf, word, etc) with search ability over all included documents and, maybe, the ability to do notations, is this the right tool? If not, any suggestions?
- kumarsw 3y agoJabRef. No cloud component and as a bonus the database is just a BibTex file which you can keep in Git.
- growingkittens 3y agoI don't know much about JabRef itself, but a quick search seems to indicate that one of the key differences is word document integration - JabRef is focused on bibtex.
- acidburnNSA 3y agoThere a zotero plugin that stores the entire contents of your zotero db as an auto-updated bibtex file too. https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-better-bibtex https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-better-bibtex
- growingkittens 3y agoYes, this can be used as a document manager for those purposes, with selected plugins (which ones are based on preference; the list is not too long [1]). It now has the ability open and annotate PDFs, although for a long time it did not. There are additional notetaking plugins. It doesn't have all the features of traditional document managers, but it will be far better for handling annotations. [1] https://www.zotero.org/support/plugins https://www.zotero.org/support/plugins
- swamp_donkey 3y agoI used to use qiqqa for exactly what you describe but I think zotero has won this space
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dylmye 3y agoZotero got me through university. If their app supports Chromebook this could make them even more useful for new students on a budget.
- bluish29 3y agoAlthough this would be useful. Students currently using Chromebooks can still use it. Install connector(extension) from Chrome app store and choose save to library (online zotero library) instead. It is annoying that you will need to do that with every addition to the library but this will work.
- juujian 3y agoOooh, I wanted this but didn't think it would happen. And now it's here, around the same time that we can finally use their extension on Firefox for Android, too.
- dfgfek 3y ago[flagged]
- jonnycomputer 3y agoThis is pretty exciting news (even in early beta and missing a lot of features I'd like).
- Poudlardo 3y agoit will be even greater once a 'saving from browser' feature is implemented through a firefox mobile extension (if they have any plan to)
- juujian 3y agoJust took it for a spin. Interface looks decent. I love that I'm able to invert colors aka PDF dark mode cheat. But I don't seem to be able to add annotations to a PDF and sync that back to my desktop, which is a bummer. I'm sure that will work in the future, and then I will finally be able to read and annotate papers on a tablet. Okular set a high bar for what a good PDF Reader can do, this is surprisingly decent. The one killer feature which I don't anticipate any other software to implement any time soon is the "trim margins" feature of Okular, which makes pdfs so much more readable. For some.of those journals, the margins are like 30% of the width, that's some serious screen read estate, and the text is often too small already with academic papers.
- layer8 3y agoLibrera can automatically crop whitespace. And Adobe Reader has Fit Visible (Ctrl+3), which most of the time is good enough.
- juujian 3y agoWell, for now I can't even figure out where Zotero stores the PDF locally on Android... Wish there was a button to open the PDF externally. I appreciate that there is a built in reader though.
- juujian 3y agoI just noticed that the new Zotero has a double click to zoom feature, which does pretty much the same thing. It's great!
- wyldfire 3y ago> Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research.
- fyzix 3y ago> Zotero is a free, easy-to-use research tool that helps you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share your work.
- contrarian1234 3y ago(and it doesn't seem to be opensource)
- tkuraku 3y agohttps://github.com/zotero https://github.com/zotero It is open source...
- NullPrefix 3y agoThere's a lot of Zotero code on GitHub, but I can't find Android version there
- tkuraku 3y agoYou are right. There is a zotero-ios repo though. I'm assuming after beta they will make the android build public as well?
- dstillman 3y agoThe repo is now public: https://github.com/zotero/zotero-android https://github.com/zotero/zotero-android
- NullPrefix 3y agothank you
- Takennickname 3y agoSo what? What open source software have you published?
- maCDzP 3y agoNothing but love for Zotero and the iOS app.
- pks016 3y agoThis is very exciting news! Finally they shipped it. Can't wait to try it.
- AbraKdabra 3y agoThe Play Store has iOS screenshots lol.
- ryloric 3y agoIt's annotations make it the best PDF reader for deep reading a document.