Papyrus vs PhoneDeck

Papyrus is a native research workspace for reading, annotating, organizing, and citing PDFs — built for iPad, iPhone, and Mac. READ AND ANNOTATE Open a paper in a fast built-in reader. Highlight, underline, and mark up pages, and every highlight stays searchable and linked back to its source. Bookmark a page as you go, and pick the paper up later from a Reading card that remembers where you stopped. On iPad, a References tab looks up the open paper's reference list and related work, so you can follow a citation trail and add what matters to your library without leaving the page. WRITE ON THE PAGE WITH APPLE PENCIL Mark up a PDF directly on iPad — annotate a proof, sketch beside a figure, work a derivation out in the margin. Your ink belongs to the paper and travels with it, encrypted, to your other devices. NOTES BESIDE THE SOURCE Keep Markdown notes next to each paper: headings, tables, code blocks, LaTeX math, and [[note]] cross-references. Notes stay with the paper and export as PDF when you need to share them. NOTEBOOKS Gather notes from across your library onto themed shelves — a topic, a chapter you're drafting, a reading group. Filing a note copies nothing and moves nothing: it still belongs to its paper, still says which paper that is, and one tap takes you there and back. A note can sit on several shelves at once. Fill a new shelf from what you've already written, search it by a note's text or by the paper behind it, order it four ways — including oldest paper first, which reads your own notes forward through the literature — and export a whole shelf as one Markdown document. All Notes lists everything you've written in one place, filed or not. ORGANIZE THE WAY YOU THINK Folders — a paper can live in several — plus tags, star ratings, and seven colored flags you can name yourself, each with its own shape so they stay tellable apart at a glance. Smart Collections keep themselves current from rules you set, including flag rules. Review Duplicates finds look-alike papers and merges each set after you confirm, combining tags, folders, projects, notes, and highlights. FIND ANYTHING Search titles, authors, notes, and highlights — or the full text inside your PDFs. TURN READING INTO WRITING Projects are where a reading pile becomes a manuscript. Group the papers behind a chapter or article, give each one a role, and capture evidence — claims, quotes, and your own interpretation — tied back to the source paper and page. Write the project note from a template (related work, method comparison, experiment plan, thesis chapter, reviewer response), keep its revision history, and run a preflight that catches missing citation keys and metadata gaps before you export. Export a bundle with Markdown, a BibTeX bibliography, and the PDFs. IMPORT AND CITE Bring in PDFs, whole folders, or BibTeX and RIS files — including libraries exported from Mendeley and Zotero. Papyrus looks up metadata by DOI or arXiv ID and fills in the details. Save papers straight from Safari with the included extension. Copy citations in the style you write in, and export BibTeX or RIS whenever you need them. READ ANYWHERE Paste an arXiv link, a DOI, or a PDF URL and Papyrus imports it, looks up the details, and fetches the PDF. Add a paper to Read Later and its PDF downloads ahead of time, so a flight or a commute doesn't need a signal. Ask Siri, or search from the Home Screen, to pick up the paper you were last reading on the page you left it. YOUR LIBRARY, YOUR DEVICES Your library syncs over iCloud across iPad, iPhone, and Mac. No account to create, no tracking, no ads. Free to download and use — every feature included, no in-app purchases, no subscription.

PhoneDeck needs two free apps to work : this iPhone app + the Mac companion app at phonedeck.io . Both are 100% free, forever. No account needed. Stuck or something not working? DM me directly on Instagram @PhoneDeckApp - I reply personally, usually within a few hours. Turn your iPhone into a wireless Mac controller. Launch any Mac app, trigger system controls, open any website all with one tap. Think Stream Deck, but you already own the hardware. -------------------------- HOW IT WORKS -------------------------- • Install this app on your iPhone • Download the Mac app from phonedeck.io (free DMG) • Open both apps on the same WiFi - they pair automatically • Drag any Mac app, control, or website onto a tile • Tap your iPhone to launch No account. No cloud. No subscription. No data leaves your devices. -------------------------- WHAT YOU CAN DO -------------------------- APPS : Launch any Mac app with one tap. VS Code, Figma, Cursor, Premiere, Photoshop, Slack — anything installed on your Mac. CONTROLS : 16 built-in Mac controls: volume, brightness, keyboard backlight, media play/pause/next/previous, screenshot, screen recording, dictation, lock screen, show desktop, mission control, empty trash. WEBSITES : Drag any URL onto a tile. YouTube, ChatGPT, Linear, Figma files, your dashboards — one tap and it opens on your Mac. PAGES : Organize tiles into pages. One for Design, one for Dev, one for Music. Swipe between them on your iPhone. -------------------------- WHY IT'S DIFFERENT -------------------------- • Free forever. No subscription, no Pro tier, no ads, no tracking. • Works over local WiFi. No account, no cloud, no data collection. • Auto-updates on Mac : bug fixes ship the same day. • Built by one indie developer. Every feature is something a user asked for. -------------------------- WHAT YOU NEED -------------------------- • An iPhone running iOS 17 or later • A Mac running macOS 14+ or later • Both devices on the same WiFi network • The PhoneDeck Mac app from phonedeck.io (free download) -------------------------- Made by one developer in Mumbai. Constantly updated. Feature requests welcome at phonedeck.io/request-feature or DM @PhoneDeckApp on Instagram.