# Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes — user reviews > 464 indexed App Store user reviews of Highlights by Jonas Myren Ribe, rated 4.50/5 from 1,602 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/highlights-pdf-reader-and-notes/id1498912833/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/highlights-pdf-reader-and-notes/id1498912833.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 1,275 · 4★ 140 · 3★ 57 · 2★ 43 · 1★ 87 ## What do users think of Highlights? Overall sentiment: neutral **Pros** - 🚀 Great for highlighting and annotating PDFs - 🔍 Effective for research and note-taking - 📚 Useful for academic and professional work - 👍 Clean and intuitive user interface - 🔗 Good integration with other apps and cloud storage **Cons** - 💰 Subscription model is too expensive - 🐛 Frequent crashes and bugs - 🔍 Limited search functionality - 🔒 Lack of customization options - 🔧 Poor customer support and unresponsive developers **Commonly reported bugs** - Highlights and annotations randomly disappearing - Text selection issues, especially with footnotes - Compatibility problems with certain PDF files - Syncing issues across devices - Export functionality not working as expected **Most requested features** - Add handwriting and freeform annotation support - Implement a table of contents or bookmarking feature - Allow editing of notes directly in the app - Provide a one-time purchase option instead of subscription - Improve search capabilities with visual results and navigation ## Newest reviews (18 of 464) ### 4/5 — my because benefit *2026-06-15, version 2026.1.3* Greetings ### 3/5 — Why is there a subscription? *2026-05-14, version 2026.1.2* Okay so the app does what it is supposed to do. I can’t stand the UI. It’s literally just the Apple file system. I would like to organize my notes separately from… everything else on my computer. I guess I need the mental separation. Also, I don’t understand why there is a subscription for this app. It feels greedy. I’m not asking it to do anything extravagant, just highlight my pdfs. Won’t be renewing. ### 3/5 — Super application, mais qui bogue souvent *2026-04-25, version 2026.1.1* Très pratique, très facile à utiliser. Malheureusement l’application bogue souvent; Soit l’écran gèle pour un temps, soit le document ferme soudainement, soit il n’est plus possible d’interagir avec l’écran, etc… ### 2/5 — Unacceptably complicated for form completion *2026-03-29, version 2026.1.1* I cannot use Highlights for submitting forms. ### 3/5 — Done With Subscription-Based Apps *2026-03-17, version 2026.1* I really like this app and I have used it for a lot of things (the pro-version), but I cannot justify paying a subscription price every year. I hope apps that have no yearly updates or drastic changes to their software reconsider the subscription-based model. It’s killing those of us who need to look through all of our subscriptions each month and determine what is actually worth our money. I used it for very, very simple annotation tasks and really like the ability to highlight automatically, use hotkeys to switch between colors and the ability to easily export my notes—however, it’s not worth paying 30 dollars every year for. I’d much rather pay a one-time fee of even 60-70 dollars for an app like this, but not interested in paying forever. I have found an alternative one-time-payment app with more features (though honestly, I like the simplicity of this app) that benefit my studies so will be using that instead. ### 4/5 — The app could be so great ! *2026-02-03, version 2026.1* I love this app, but there is one major improvement to be made. Impossible to highlight in a smooth way texts which are in columns. Is there a fix ??? ### 2/5 — False Advertising *2026-02-02, version 2026.1* This app is the worst. The Reference Manager integration is outdated and does not work for Papers! ### 4/5 — Super helpful! I have some gripes though *2026-01-21, version 2025.1.5* I love the usefulness of the app and I feel like it works really well. Highlighting between pages is still annoying sometimes and I really want to be able to use handwriting (I saw you reply to a review 5 years ago but it’s still not here). Great app, but please order stuff. ### 3/5 — The notes does not translate to preview *2026-01-10, version 2025.1.2* I like the app, but the notes are not visible when same pdf is opened in preview from highlights. ### 2/5 — Drains a lot of battery *2026-01-01, version 2025.1.2* App is good but drains a lot of battery like my new Mac fell from 80 to 60% in a span of 1.5 hrs ### 3/5 — Besoin d’un achat unique ! *2025-12-28, version 2025.1.5* Highlights remplit la majeure partie de mes critères comme outil académique, sauf un, essentiel : la pérennité. Le système par abonnement ne me permet pas de m’assurer que mes notes seront libres dans cinq ou dix ans. Il faut absolument qu’il y ait un système d’achat pérenne, qui me permette d’utiliser l’outil en l’état même si le développeur périclite. ### 4/5 — No Notion integration *2025-11-21, version 2025.1.2* Great app, but I can’t understand why it has not a direct integration with Notion. Otherwise it would be the definitive app for studying and investigation. Near perfect. ### 2/5 — Would be great if it worked *2025-11-14, version 2025.1.5* The idea behind is fabulous, but the app freezes when I highlight more then 2 things and has to be restarted.. ### 4/5 — On the Cusp of 5-Star Experience… *2025-11-12, version 2025.1.5* I’ve been using this app on and off for the past ~4 years or so. Biggest issue is crashing with PDFs that are even moderately bulky. Another major issue is the lack of basic PDF reading features common to other readers, particularly Night Mode. I want to use this as my go-to default research reader, but between the crashing, lack of night mode, and lack of adequate support for Japanese language PDFs, I keep going elsewhere ### 3/5 — Good for smaller files *2025-11-06, version 2025.1.5* With smaller files is great, I used it for the file that has around 60 pages and it was great. But when I use it for a file that has over 130 pages it keeps breaking and getting stuck frozen. Which is sad because I quite like the app. ### 2/5 — New changes won’t let me highlight *2025-10-29, version 2025.1.2* I can’t highlight my college notes with the new change. The app created this new trait for table formats where selected words & sentences in cells can’t be properly edited with either highlights, underlines, etc. If the sentences are not in a table/box then it’s fine to highlight. Very frustrating and bad timing as midterm exams have started. ### 3/5 — É bom, mas… *2025-10-17, version 2025.1.1* O Aplicativo é simples e prático, porém deixa a desejar em alguns aspectos, como, por exemplo, não dá para inserir anexo, imagens, nem no pdf e nem nas anotações. Também não dá para usar Apple Pencil para escrever no pdf ou nas anotações. ### 2/5 — Doesn’t Reopen Book to Where I Left Off? *2025-10-04, version 2025.1.2* Saving one’s place in a document would seem like a basic feature of a reading app, but it doesn’t seem to be a feature of Highlights, unfortunately. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Last update killed it on Monterey *2026-06-13, version 2026.1.2* Been using this for 2-4 years now due to black modeI Si verion check done, dev may have forgotten to fill that, result Poof, Nothing. Doesn't open on Monteray 12.7.6 no warning no nothing. ### 1/5 — Memory leaks *2026-03-04, version 2026.1* About once every two weeks I get an enormous memory leak that eats up swap space until my disk runs out of storage. I cannot recommend this app until this is fixed. ### 1/5 — Excellent App for Academics *2026-01-04* The app is very effective for organizing and tracking annotations, and the macOS integration is a major strength. I do most of my reading on an iPad, and my annotations appear instantly on my Mac, which makes my workflow seamless. I like the macOS app so much that I’ve actually replaced my default PDF editor with Highlights. There are also some specifocclimitations. First, the app does not support handwriting or drawing directly on documents. All annotations must be typed, which makes the process less intuitive and more time-consuming, especially for technical reading. The inability to sketch or write equations is a major drawback, as I often work through math while reading papers. Second, there is no option to add margins or insert blank pages, which makes it difficult to attach handwritten notes or extended commentary. On a related matter, I do experience occasional freezes, which may be related to using the Documents app for handwriting on the same files. I can only add margins and blank pages using Documents app. Hence, this is unavoidable for the time being. Overall, this is a strong and promising app with a clear research-focused vision, and I appreciate the direction it’s heading. However, it still has some way to go before it can function as a fully comprehensive PDF and annotation solution. ### 1/5 — Developer Never Reply *2025-12-02, version 2025.1.2* I faced a bug since Nov. 12, 2025, which caused the problem of the page scrolling up when selecting text after zooming in. I contacted the developer since that day, and it has been 3 weeks; the developer has never replied to me. I paid for a year of subscription, and it seems like the developer does not care about user experience. ### 1/5 — Extract text from PDFs *2025-09-20, version 2025.1* Not intuitive! I can extract the text from the PDF, but cannot copy and paste it! ### 1/5 — nefasto *2025-08-30, version 2024.1* una aplicacion para resaltar que no te deja resaltar, quien la hizo, un cuadrupedo? ### 1/5 — Не работает про подписка *2025-06-10, version 2024.1* Оплатила подписку, ничего не поменялось ### 1/5 — Highlights Save Feature *2025-03-15, version 2024.1* Can’t figure how to save a document to file. ### 1/5 — es un engaño *2025-01-26, version 2024.1* no entiendo un programa en otro idioma diferente entiendo que es un engaño ### 1/5 — Not useful *2025-01-25, version 2024.2.3* It is not supporting Turkish language. Also you can make changes on your highlighted sentences or words. If you want to work on your highlights you also have to pay for microsoft word. So what is the meaning of highlighting? ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Most useful app ever!! *2026-03-26, version 2026.1* Best app ever!!! Everyone should have this on their phone if they are going to stare at it! ### 5/5 — Ease of use and tools are excellent *2026-03-18, version 2026.1* This is an excellent app for working with PDFs with very intuitive and easy-to-use tools ### 5/5 — best in its field *2026-03-03, version 2026.1* great application for those who likes to extract important parts from pdf texts or images. if only it also exist for android platforms ### 5/5 — Does what is says, keeps quiet *2025-11-02, version 2025.1.2* Best tool for PDF reading I used so far. Quiet, modest, works brilliantly even with mammoth PDFs. Congrats on a well-written piece of software ### 5/5 — Love this reader *2025-10-22, version 2025.1.3* Does what it needs to do, and then some! Syncs across my devices, boom. ### 5/5 — Best PDF reader for Apple ecosystem *2025-10-21, version 2025.1.3* If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, this is hands down the best PDF reader out there. I go through tons of financial and annual reports, and this app makes it so easy to manage highlights, capture key insights, and sync seamlessly between my iPad and Mac. ### 5/5 — Good App *2025-10-11, version 2025.1.3* One of the best in business ### 5/5 — so good *2025-10-05, version 2025.1.1* it can help to focus ### 5/5 — The best *2025-09-29, version 2025.1.1* This is the ONLY PDF reader I use on my MacBook and iPhone now ### 5/5 — Good start *2025-09-28, version 2025.1.1* This app is everything Apple’s Preview should have been. Highlights are attached to the original file and can be exported—brilliant for many professionals. It’s a great start, but it still needs improvements to fit better into real workflows. On iPad, the app should allow marking with Apple Pencil—even if those markings can’t be exported as text. At the very least, Pencil input should be integrated. It would also benefit from adopting some features from Readdle’s Documents app, such as syncing and file management. The pricing feels too high; it should be closer to half the annual fee of the Documents app. Otherwise, subscriber growth could be limited. That said, I really want to see this company succeed. With faster development and expanded usability, Highlights could truly gain ground. Good luck! --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-06.*