Papyrus vs Handfull

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.

Most habit trackers advertise themselves as being made for ADHD. Then you open the app and see a calendar grid, seventeen tiles, badges, levels, and a streak counter that reminds you of the last time you failed. For a brain already struggling with sensory overload, this isn't an overview—it's just the next stressor. Handful is the antidote. Built by someone with ADHD who spent ten years trying and deleting trackers. This app offers subscriptions. Apple's Standard Terms of Use apply: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ *No streak that can break* Instead of a number that drops to zero with every gap, Handful only counts upward. "Done 340 times" stays "Done 340 times," even after a three-week break. A pause slows down your momentum; it doesn't erase your past achievements. This is precisely the point where most users usually give up entirely. *Always just a handful on your screen* You can create as many as you want, yet you'll never see more than a few tiles at a time. What isn't relevant right now stays parked. No scrolling through everything you theoretically *should* be doing. *Triggers instead of times* "After waking up" works much better for time blindness than "at 8:00 AM." Habits are tied to a real moment in your daily routine, not an alarm you just swipe away. *Skipping without guilt* "Not today" is a normal button, not a failure. The app doesn't tell you what you missed. It says: No worries. And actually means it. *"I'm stuck"* For those moments when the intention is there and yet nothing happens. One tap, and "Workout" turns into "just put on your shoes." For larger tasks, Handful asks you for the tiniest next step instead of demanding a complete plan. *Routines made of small steps* "Morning routine" is a single tile that unfolds when tapped: make bed, glass of water, short movement. Checking them off individually feels better than an abstract checkmark next to a big label. *Also for "Don'ts"* No sugar, no cigarettes, no alcohol. Resolutions like these don't have a moment of action to check off. Handful checks in on them in the evening as a brief recap, without any judgment. *What Handful intentionally leaves out* No calendar view. No confetti animations. No points, no levels, no leaderboards. No comparisons with others. No statistics page that calculates your gaps for you. Handful is not a medical device and does not replace a diagnosis, consultation, or therapy. It is an organizational tool for everyday life.