Free pdf reader that supports taking notes (and bookmarks)

Question

I learned about the PDF possibility of taking notes which are then stored with the document, usefull when reading ebooks. If the note taker also supports some math notation, that would be wonderful! Which free PDF reader can do this? (I am using Lubuntu 12.10)

possible duplicate of How can I highlight or annotate PDFs? – landroni Jan 24 '15 at 18:46 — landroni, Jan 24 '15 at 18:46

score 26 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 19 '12 at 14:22

26

I suggest you try these two programs and choose the one that better fits your needs.

Xournal

sudo apt-get install xournal

All annotations are hand made (so to speak). You can print them on the PDF, if you want, or you can set them apart.

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Mendeley

Download from here. Very useful to keep track of your research notes.

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answered Dec 19 '12 at 14:22

Ed Villegas

3,413

4

Xournal doesn't save annotation in the pdf file itself, so if you send the file to someone else, he won't get the annotations. – To Do Jun 01 '13 at 10:38
14

You must "Export to PDF" to generate a new PDF with the annotations. This way anybody can read them. – Ed Villegas Jun 02 '13 at 13:40
How can you save your annotations directly to PDF using Mendeley? – Georgy Ivanov Nov 21 '13 at 14:02
1

Yes, you can. Just go to «Export to PDF with annotations» in the «File» menu. – Ed Villegas Nov 24 '13 at 18:03
xournal sucks regardless, because it just shows the pdf as a canvas and the links and interactive elements don't work. – Mark Jeronimus Nov 24 '21 at 19:45

alfC · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-23T09:13:53.593

22

Evince 3.6.1 (the default PDF viewer) now supports adding annotations and bookmarks (proper PDF bookmarks), that are saved with the document.

Since Evince 3.14 you can add and delete annotations.

evince

UPDATE Evince 3.14: Annotations can be added and deleted.

UPDATE 2020: Key S adds a text note and Ctrl + H highlights selected text. (both still require a mouse click to start writing on the annotation). Thanks @Gogowitsch

edited Nov 23 '20 at 09:13

answered Jun 18 '13 at 05:02

alfC

3,624

3

Maybe I just do not see it, but I can't move or delete annotations in evince. I'm using the ubuntu 13.10 default version (3.10). – verpfeilt Oct 19 '13 at 23:02
3

yup, that is a pending feature https://help.gnome.org/users/evince/stable/annotations-delete.html.en – alfC Oct 20 '13 at 19:50
4

With GNOME 3.14, removing annotations has been finally implemented. See https://wiki.gnome.org/ThreePointThirteen/ReleaseNotes (evince: supports removing annotations). – Peque Dec 10 '14 at 22:13
2

If you're looking for it and can't find it, in Ubuntu, Evince is called Document Viewer. – Brad Turek Sep 24 '18 at 15:44
1

Look at the keyboard shortcuts to work with comments efficiently. For instance, the key S adds a note. – Gogowitsch Nov 21 '20 at 17:52
@Gogowitsch, good catch, very useful. key S adds a note and Ctrl + H highlight text. (both still require a mouse click to start writing on the annotation). – alfC Nov 22 '20 at 01:54

Thomas Arildsen · Answer 3 · 2014-10-02T19:01:36.500

You could also try Okular. Now you can actually export annotations to PDFs in Okular (this was not possible until recently): http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdegraphics/okular/annotations.html

It seems Okular has to be built with Poppler at least version 0.20. It works with Ubuntu 13.04.

Update:

The version of Okular (0.19.3) found in at least Ubuntu 14.04 now also supports customising the review toolbar (the toolbar for adding annotations) by adding and modifying the various annotation types that can be selected.

score 5 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:03

5

Xournal would be worth taking a look at. Annotations and modifications are stored in a separate file but can be easily exported to PDF.

I don't think there's any PDF editor out there that supports any kind of sophisticated math notation, but I might be mistaken.

edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:03

Community

1

answered Dec 19 '12 at 14:01

Glutanimate

21,393

score 3 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:03

3

PDF-X-Change Viewer is fairly good. You have to run it under Wine, though.

You can read up on it here: Finally, real PDF annotating under Linux! (with help from Wine)
Or you could look at pdfedit .

edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:03

Community

1

answered Dec 19 '12 at 14:02

don.joey

28,662

score 3 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:03

3

Try qpdfview Install qpdfview . It is fast, customizable and has rudimentary annotation support.

A recent version can be installed by adding this launchpad ppa.

edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:03

Community

1

answered Feb 09 '13 at 11:19

DMT

824

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 24 '13 at 09:18

2

There is yet another alternative. You can install Adobe Reader. The latest linux version is 9.5.5 (which is dated compared to W$ and Mac versions). It allows for editing and commenting. You do have to enable the editing and commenting toolbars (right click on the toolbar and select).

sudo apt-get install adobereader-enu
sudo apt-get -f install # needed because there is a wrong dependency

For doing proofreading when working with a publisher this is the way to go.

answered Jul 24 '13 at 09:18

don.joey

28,662

I also suggest you to use adobe reader for that. Adobe reader might not be the fastest (for viewing only the default ubuntu viewer is way faster for large documents), but is available on many platforms and works very well. – ortang Jul 30 '13 at 07:31
This seems to no longer work in Ubuntu 14.04. – Finn Årup Nielsen Jan 25 '16 at 15:39

score 2 · Answer 8 · edited Jul 05 '17 at 12:25

Our company, Qoppa Software publishes a free advanced PDF viewer for Linux. It can render many PDF features including annotations, form fields, layers. PDF Studio Viewer has advanced printing options, and other UI features such as loupe tool, pan & zoom, rulers & grid, etc. There are navigation panes such as thumbnails, comments, digital signatures, bookmarks, etc .. And the application is easy to install with no dependencies. The installer comes as a single file. https://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudioviewer/

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 01 '17 at 14:38

I'm a huge fan of Master PDF Editor, which is free for non-commercial use (home, education). Features include:

Comment and annotate PDF documents
Add and/or edit bookmarks in PDF files
Edit PDF text and images
Create and fill PDF forms
Split and merge PDF documents
Create new PDF document from scanner or existing file(s)

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Sep 13 '20 at 10:04

You could give Polar Bookshelf a look.

Then note style is similar to Mendeley, where notes are shown collected in a sidebar. It also copies out highlighted text. For math, it has the very handy feature that you can drag a "highlight box" around content, with the content then shown in the list of notes.

Note that Polar stores notes etc. in a database, currently with no options to share them, and not embed option.

score 0 · Answer 11 · edited Apr 20 '22 at 02:42

For anyone who found this question, my suggestion is to use:

Foxit PDF Reader

installation link: https://www.linuxbabe.com/desktop-linux/install-foxit-pdf-reader-ubuntu

In my opinion it is a more powerful PDF reader than any mentioned in this post. Its advantages include, but are not limited to:

user friendly interface
easy customization
comparable features/functions to Adobe Acrobat Reader

And the most important is that it is available cross systems: Windows, Mac and Linux.

Try it out, I believe you will find amazing!

Free pdf reader that supports taking notes (and bookmarks)

11 Answers11

Foxit PDF Reader

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