Opens research-paper PDFs in its own viewer and marks up the important spans in place.
Users
21
0 in 30 days
Rating
5.0 / 5
unchanged in 30 days
Ratings
2
0 in 30 days
Store rank
#150K
#125K among extensions
Version
1.0.4
updated 4 Oct 2026
Users
monthly, 2 months
Latest, 18 Oct 2026:21 usersMove the mouse over the chart for any month
Ratings count
monthly, 2 months
Latest, 18 Oct 2026:2 ratingsMove the mouse over the chart for any month
The Chrome Web Store rounds user counts down to the leading digit, so the user line moves in steps. The ratings count is exact and is the better signal of real adoption.
About Paper Highlighter
Paper Highlighter reads a research paper the way a careful reader would, and
marks the few sentences that matter.
Three kinds of highlight, not one:
- What it claims. The paper's own statement of what it did or found.
- What backs it up. The result the claim rests on.
- Where it stops. Where the authors themselves say the evidence ends.
That third one is the reason this exists. A tool that marks only a paper's
pitch makes every paper look good.
YOU STAY IN CONTROL. PDFs open in this viewer, and one switch in Settings
hands them straight back to Chrome, or keeps this viewer for chosen sites
only. Adding ph-raw=1 to an address opens that one file in Chrome's viewer.
Local files on your own disk are left alone until you grant access by hand.
Analysis is always a separate, deliberate press. It can cost an API call, so
it never happens just because a page loaded, and a paper you open and simply
read is never sent anywhere at all.
IT IS STILL YOUR DOCUMENT. Highlight by hand in any colour, or use the pen
bar beside the page: a pen and a highlighter for your own marks, an eraser,
undo and redo, and a laser pointer for presenting or recording that fades on
its own and leaves nothing behind. It works with a mouse or a drawing tablet.
Print the paper, download the original exactly as it came, or save a
marked-up copy with everything flattened into the file so it opens the same
way in any PDF reader. Your marks are keyed to the document's contents, not
its address, so the same paper downloaded again from somewhere else comes
back with your highlights on it.
IT RUNS WHERE YOU WANT. Point it at Ollama and nothing leaves your machine.
Or use OpenAI, Anthropic or Google Gemini with a key you hold and can change
or delete at any time.
Works on any PDF with a text layer: arXiv, OpenReview, ACL Anthology,
publisher sites, and files on your own disk.