Margin - PDF Highlighter, Notes & Vocabulary

Highlight and annotate PDFs and web pages, translate only the words you choose, and review them as flashcards.

Margin turns your browser into a place for serious reading. Open any PDF and it opens in the Margin reader, on the PDF's own address. Select a passage to highlight it, add a note, or look up just the one word that is in your way - not the whole page. The words you save come back as flashcards, so the vocabulary you meet while reading is vocabulary you keep. HIGHLIGHT WITH A PURPOSE - Four colors, each with a meaning you can rename: main idea, evidence, quote to cite, question. - Your notes panel groups every highlight by what its color means. - Extra colors can be added for a single document. - Keyboard: select text, then press 1 to 4 for a color, N for a note. - Optional: switch Margin on for ordinary web pages too (off by default). SCANNED PDFS - Pages that are only images are read on your own computer (English and Vietnamese), so their text can be selected, highlighted, searched and translated. - A pen and a highlighter mark anything by hand. LEARN THE WORD, NOT JUST ITS TRANSLATION - Double-click a word and press T: you get its English definition and the sentence it came from. The translation into your language is one click away, so you think in the language you are reading. - Prefer translations first? Change it in Settings, along with your language. - Save the word, then review it later: word to meaning, meaning to word, or by typing it. Review is spaced, so words you know well come back less often. - Export your words for Anki. CITE AND EXPORT - Finds the published record of an article and formats the citation in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard or BibTeX. - "Copy quote" copies a passage together with its page reference. - Export your notes as a Word or Markdown file, or as a copy of the PDF with your highlights inside it. COMFORTABLE TO READ IN - Light, dark and night modes. Light and dark never change the document's own colors. - Reopens every PDF where you stopped. - Zoom follows the pointer; thumbnails, outline and search are one click away. PRIVATE BY DESIGN - No account, no server, no tracking, no ads. - Everything is stored in your own browser, with an automatic backup to your Downloads folder. - Text leaves your computer only when you ask: the words you choose to look up go to a dictionary and a translation service, and opening the Cite panel looks the document up on Crossref. - Optional sync between your own computers through a folder of your cloud drive. To read PDFs stored on your computer, turn on "Allow access to file URLs" in the extension's details.