Folio vs Rectoly for Zotero

Every PDF tool you need — and not one byte of your document ever leaves your device. Online PDF tools are convenient until you read the fine print. Your contract, your payslip, your client's financial statement — uploaded to a server you don't control, retained for purposes you didn't agree to, mined for data you didn't consent to share. Folio makes that trade-off unnecessary. Folio is a full-featured PDF toolkit that runs entirely on your iPhone and iPad. No network connection. No account. No cloud sync. No analytics. Your files go in, your files come out — nothing in between. WHAT YOU CAN DO Organise — Merge multiple PDFs into one document — Split a PDF into separate files by page range — Reorder, rotate, or delete individual pages Reduce & Prepare — Compress PDFs to shrink file size without rebuilding content — Add watermarks or page numbers — Flatten form fields and annotations into a fixed document Convert (best-effort, on-device) — PDF to images: export pages as JPG or PNG — Images to PDF: combine photos into a single document — PDF to Word, Excel, or PowerPoint — conversion is handled entirely on-device using Apple's document frameworks; complex layouts may not reproduce with pixel-perfect fidelity, but no file is ever sent to a remote service to achieve it Protect — Password-protect a PDF with your chosen password — Remove password protection from a document you own Fill & Sign — Fill text fields in PDFs — Add your signature to any document Extract & Search — OCR: turn a scanned or photographed document into searchable, selectable text using Apple's on-device Vision framework — Extract all text from a PDF for copying or reference ZERO NETWORK DESIGN Folio ships with no networking capability. It cannot phone home. It cannot upload a file even if it wanted to. Every operation — compression, conversion, OCR, signing — runs on your device's own processor using Apple's built-in frameworks. This is not a marketing claim; it is a technical constraint we built in by design. This matters most when you are handling documents that should never leave your hands: NDAs, medical records, legal filings, HR documents, financial statements, tax returns. NO ACCOUNT REQUIRED Open the app. Use every feature. Close the app. No sign-up screen. No email address. No subscription prompt. No paywall on any v1.0 feature. BUILT FOR PEOPLE WHO HANDLE SENSITIVE DOCUMENTS Folio is built for lawyers, accountants, HR professionals, and anyone else who regularly works with documents that are nobody else's business — and for anyone who is simply tired of feeding their files to free websites that profit from what they read. Your documents are yours. Folio keeps them that way.

Rectoly is the research-focused PDF reader built for Zotero users. Your library stays in Zotero — Rectoly makes reading and annotating on iPhone, iPad and Mac a genuine pleasure. READING MODE Academic papers are often formatted in two columns, making them hard to read on a phone. Reading Mode reflows the content into a single, clean column — without losing access to the original PDF. Jump back to the exact page anytime. ANNOTATE IN READING MODE Unlike other readers, Rectoly lets you highlight, underline, add sticky notes, and draw with Apple Pencil — all while staying in Reading Mode. No need to switch back to the raw PDF just to mark something up. ON-DEVICE TRANSLATION Read an English paper in your own language, in Reading Mode and on the PDF page. Translation runs on this device; the paper is never sent to a translation service. If you agree, translations are saved to your Zotero library for your other devices (using your Zotero storage). The app's translation model (about 2.5 GB) needs 8 GB of memory or more. Translates English papers into the app's 19 other display languages: Hindi by the system's translator (iOS 26 or later), all the rest by the app's own model. TOOLS FOR READING Read Aloud: hear the text in Reading Mode, in the system voice or the VoiceOver one. Choose the typeface and line spacing in Reading Mode. “Darken PDF pages” softens text and paper to gray tones while leaving figures and photos in their original colors when possible. SPLIT VIEW INSIDE THE READER Keep Reading Mode open while glancing at a figure, the original layout, or another section — side by side, all within a single window. No multi-window setup required. RESEARCH THEMES Send a passage to a theme, with its source. Keep the theme beside the paper, or open it as a sheet. Export as Markdown or Word (.docx). ACROSS PAPERS The library column has a new Across papers tab: search the annotations, the text and your handwriting in your whole library at once. FIGURES, TABLES AND A COMPARISON Save a figure as PNG and a table as CSV — one paper at a time, or your whole library in one go. Compare many papers' abstracts, methods, results and conclusions in one table, one row per paper. YOUR DRAFT BESIDE THE PAPER Open the document you are writing (.docx, .doc, .odt, .rtf, Markdown, plain text — password-protected ones too) in a column next to the paper. It re-reads the file every time you save. CITING AND NOTES Copy with page, copy BibTeX or citation keys (Zotero 7's keys and Better BibTeX's are used), and a Notes folder for Obsidian and others — with keyboard shortcuts you can change. ZOTERO SYNC Annotations you create are written back to Zotero automatically. Highlights from Zotero Desktop or other apps appear in Rectoly automatically. Your notes are always in one place. WEBDAV AND LINKED FILES If Zotero syncs your files over WebDAV, Rectoly can now open them — and PDFs you add in the app go to your WebDAV server too. Files that ZotFile or ZotMoov keep in Dropbox or Google Drive open once you choose the folder. WORKS OFFLINE Downloaded PDFs and annotations are stored locally. Read anywhere, anytime — even without an internet connection. SEARCH YOUR HANDWRITING Notes you write with Apple Pencil are now read as text on your device, so you can search them (iPadOS 27 and later). 14-DAY FREE TRIAL → ONE-TIME PURCHASE Try every Pro feature for free for 14 days. Unlock with a one-time payment — no subscription, no recurring charges.