Highlight PDFs, keep notes right beside them — not drawn on top — and turn scans into AI-ready exam prep. Entirely on your Mac. No account, no cloud, no subscription.
Version 1.1.0 · macOS 14 or later · Free · Universal (Apple Silicon & Intel)
Everything in one place
No feature toggles hidden behind a subscription. It's all just here.
Not a proprietary overlay — real annotations saved straight into the original file. Open it in Preview, Skim, or anywhere else and they're there.
Bad scan? Recognized automatically on import — no waiting, no upload. Apple's Vision framework, entirely local, German & English.
Not drawn on top of the page or buried in a separate app — a real panel next to it, with a full A4 document note plus notes pinned to individual pages that fade in and out as you scroll.
Record and transcribe on the spot, or dictate straight into a note — no audio kept if you don't want it. Fully on-device transcription.
Drag one document onto another to study two side by side — they pair up right in the sidebar and stay linked across launches, like tabs in a split-view browser.
Organize by course and week with real subfolders and colour tags. Import a whole Finder folder — structure and all — in one go.
One Markdown file bundling your highlights, bookmarks and notes — weighted toward what you actually flagged as important. Hand it to any AI to build practice questions.
PDF pages invert too — white becomes dark grey, text stays legible, highlight colours are preserved. Not just a dark toolbar around a bright page.
Not a free trial, not a limited tier — the whole app, including OCR, transcription and exam-prep export, costs nothing and stays that way.
No account. No sign-in. No servers. OCR, transcription, and everything else runs entirely on-device. Your library lives in a plain folder you can see, move, or sync yourself — in Documents, or iCloud Drive if you'd rather.
How it stacks up
Not trying to replace a full note-taking app — just to do PDF study material better, and for free.
Scroll sideways to compare all six ↔
| Slides & Notes | GoodNotes | Notability | Notion | Apple Notes | PDF Expert | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Subscription | Subscription | Free tier / paid plans | Free | Subscription |
| Works fully offline | Yes | Yes | Yes | No — cloud-based | Yes | Yes |
| No account required | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Highlights saved into the real PDF | Yes | Own format | Own format | No PDF annotation | Markup only | Yes |
| Page-specific notes | Yes | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Whole-document note | Yes | No | No | Yes | Mixed into the note | No |
| Notes panel beside the PDF, not on top | Yes | No | No | Manual layout | No | Annotation list only |
| Built-in OCR for scans | Yes, automatic | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Dark mode inverts the actual pages | Yes | UI only — PDFs stay white | Yes | UI only | No | Yes |
| On-device voice transcription | Yes | Audio only | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Browser-style split view | Yes | No | No | Side peek | No | Yes |
| AI exam-prep export | Yes | No | No | Manual only | No | Chat, no export |
Available Partial Not available
Download, drag it into Applications, and open your first PDF.
Version 1.1.0 · macOS 14 or later · Free · Universal (Apple Silicon & Intel)