Best Highlight Text Apps

249+ iOS apps curated and reviewed

4.4 avg rating
18 free apps
Updated August 2026

Every iPhone needs a few good highlight text apps. We benchmark 249+ of them on App Store rating, freshness, and pricing, then surface the standouts so you don't have to scroll the App Store yourself.

Compare top Highlight Text Apps (August 2026)

#AppPriceRatingAdsIn-App PurchasesUpdated
1Highlights: PDF Reader & NotesHighlights: PDF Reader & NotesFree4.5★ (1.6K)NoYesSep 2026
2CiteLighterCiteLighterFree4.2★ (29)NoNoJul 2026
3Book Tracker: HighlightedBook Tracker: HighlightedFree4.9★ (713)NoYesSep 2026
4Noteful: Notes & PDF MarkupNoteful: Notes & PDF MarkupFree4.8★ (23K)NoYesSep 2026
5Black Highlighter: Redact TextBlack Highlighter: Redact TextFree4.4★ (90)NoYesSep 2026
6PDF Expert: Editor & ReaderPDF Expert: Editor & ReaderFree4.7★ (216K)NoYesSep 2026
7Highlight PDF - Markup NotesHighlight PDF - Markup NotesFree—NoYesAug 2026
8Highlighted text readerHighlighted text readerFree—NoNoJul 2026

Top Picks for Highlight Text

Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes#1

Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes by Jonas Myren Ribe

Edit Research Documents/Books
Editor's Choice
📊 Productivity
4.5😐(1.6K ratings)
FreeIn-App Purchases
Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes screenshot 1
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Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes screenshot 5
Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes screenshot 6

This app is a fast and lightweight PDF reader designed for research. It allows users to read, highlight, and annotate documents, and then extract this information into organized notes. Advanced features include table data extraction, text recognition, and smart copying of annotations into various formats.

What We Love

  • 🚀 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

Room to Improve

  • 💰 Subscription model is too expensive
  • 🐛 Frequent crashes and bugs
  • 🔍 Limited search functionality
  • 🔒 Lack of customization options
  • 🔧 Poor customer support and unresponsive developers
CiteLighter#2

CiteLighter by Evan Gould

Highlight Text in Images!
Strong Contender
📚 Books
4.2(29 ratings)
Free
CiteLighter screenshot 1
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Easily highlight text from images of books or articles. Capture text from photos or screenshots and emphasize key passages by blurring the surrounding content.

Book Tracker: Highlighted#3

Book Tracker: Highlighted by Damir Stuhec

Bookshelf, Notes & Quotes
Worth Considering
📚 Books
4.9😊(713 ratings)
FreeIn-App Purchases
Book Tracker: Highlighted screenshot 1
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Book Tracker: Highlighted screenshot 6

Capture, organize, and revisit key passages from your books with advanced text recognition. Create collections, add tags and notes, and easily export your highlights. Stop forgetting what you read and make your reading more impactful.

What We Love

  • 👍 Simple and easy to use
  • 🚀 Accurate text recognition
  • ðŸ’Ą Useful for readers and students
  • 🔖 Allows organizing highlights by book and tags
  • 🔒 No ads or in-app purchases
  • 👏 Excellent support from developer

Room to Improve

  • 🐛 Issues with text ordering and formatting
  • 🔍 Limited search and filtering options
  • ðŸ“ą Needs offline support and sync capabilities
  • 🖌ïļ Lack of formatting options for highlights

More Highlight Text apps to explore

FAQ about Highlight Text

What are the best highlight text apps for iPhone?
Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes tops our highlight text apps ranking as of August 2026, with a 4.5-star average from 1.6K App Store ratings, and it's free to download.
Yes — 18 of the top highlight text apps we rank are free to download, including Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes and CiteLighter.
Highlights: PDF Reader & Notes has no ads and offers in-app purchases, according to its App Store listing as of August 2026.
We track 249+ highlight text apps on the iOS App Store as of August 2026, ranked by rating, recency, and analysis of real user reviews.
Highlights is a PDF reader designed for research. It allows you to read, browse, and annotate PDF documents with various tools like highlighting, underlining, and strikethrough. It also extracts your annotations into organized notes and can convert table data and recognize text within PDFs.
Key features include reading and browsing PDFs, annotating text and images, adding comments, extracting annotations into notes, converting table data to CSV, recognizing text from images, and smart copying of annotations into formats like BibTex for citations.