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Decades ago, the notion of digitally highlighting content seemed far-fetched amidst the realm of paper and pen.
However, with technological advancements and the shift towards remote work spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for efficient productivity tools skyrocketed.
Enter virtual highlighters for PDFs and web pages, transforming how we annotate and organize information online.
What are web highlighter extensions?
Web highlighter extensions are browser add-ons that allow users to highlight text on web pages, similar to using a highlighter on physical documents. These tools enhance the web browsing and research experience by enabling users to mark important information, add notes, and sometimes even share or save these highlights for future reference.
List of the 10 best web highlighters on the Chrome browser
Choosing the right highlighter from a sea of options can be daunting. To simplify your search, I've curated a list of the top 10 must-have web highlighter extensions for 2024 based on features, usability, and user feedback:
1. SaveDay - AI Bookmark Manager & Web Highlight - ⭐️ 4.9 (145 ratings)
Though being a highlighter tool is not the main task of SaveDay, the feature surely incorporates into its ecosystem of being a knowledge hub
After saving the highlighted content on a webpage, it is saved as a note and the website is saved in your knowledge hub, where your highlighted content is saved as a note in your account
Key Features:
- YouTube Summarizer
- Article Summarizer
- AI Search
- Website Note
- Web Highlight
- Bookmark Manager
Price: Freemium
SaveDay offers a range of helpful features, although it remains relatively undiscovered with 4,000 users and a solid 4.8-star rating on the Chrome Web Store.
The basic plan includes SaveDay’s key features, albeit with some limitations.
For users who appreciate its capabilities, SaveDay also provides premium plans to unlock enhanced functionalities.
2. Weava Highlighter - PDF & Web - ⭐️ 4.1 (2.7K ratings)
Weava stands out with its ability to highlight websites and PDFs, coupled with a robust sidebar for research management. It supports multiple colors, annotations, and automatic citation creation.
Key Features
- Highlighting with multiple colors
- Making annotations and revisiting them with a single click
- Organizing highlights into folders and sub-folders
- Creating citations automatically for your highlights
- Accessing your highlights from anywhere
Price: Freemium
- If you would like to access more features, Weava Premium has additional features such as
- Personalizing highlight colors to your preference.
- Organizing highlights with unlimited sub-folders.
- Enjoy unlimited cloud storage for your files.
- Clip and save images directly to your workspace.
- Collaborate in real-time with friends or team members
Despite its impressive features, Weava Highlighter faces issues with user retention due to excessive ads.
Nonetheless, Weava Highlighter remains the most popular PDF and web highlighter extension in the Chrome Web Store, garnering a solid 4.1-star rating.
3. Glasp Web Highlighter - PDF & Web Highlights - ⭐️ 4.6 (310 ratings)
Glasp excels in social sharing of highlights and notes across users, offering seamless integration with platforms like Twitter and Teams.
It supports multi-color annotations, YouTube video summarization, and syncs Kindle highlights, making it a go-to tool for content curation and collaboration.
Key Features:
- Highlight and annotate web pages and PDFs with multiple color options.
- Annotate YouTube videos and generate AI-powered summaries based on annotations.
- Tag, link, and share highlights across platforms.
- Easily copy highlights and notes with metadata to note-taking apps.
- Sync highlights and notes from Kindle eBooks.
- Discover curated content from other users.
Price: Freemium
Glasp empowers users to curate knowledge effectively by simplifying the organization, sharing, and exploration of highlighted content across diverse sources.
Trusted by over 300,000 users, Glasp maintains an impressive 4.6-star rating.
4. Snippet Highlighter - Web & PDF - ⭐️ 4.2 (130 ratings)
Snippet impresses with its organized snippet collection by books and authors, along with robust annotation features and extensive export options.
Key Features:
- Browse highlights by books and authors
- Organize highlights using folders and subfolders
- Tag highlights with colors for easy identification
- Bookmark articles for quick access
- Add personal notes to highlights
- Perform powerful text searches across highlights
- Download highlights and notes in PDF or editable text formats
- Utilize various citation systems
- Share highlights via email or social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter
- Export highlight collections as slideshows
- Integrate with note-taking apps
- Support for Kindle usage
Price: Freemium
While the free plan of Snippet comes with limitations, opting for Snippet Pro offers unlimited folders and advanced export features, making it perfect for researchers and enthusiastic readers alike. Snippet boasts a user base of over 20,000 with a commendable 4.2-star rating.
5. Highlighter - ⭐️ 3.8 (250 ratings)
This straightforward tool allows one-click highlighting and customizable keyboard shortcuts but falls short on dynamic web pages like Facebook and emails.
Key Features:
- View and copy all highlights from a page
- Easily copy all highlights to your clipboard
- Select existing highlights with a click to delete or copy their content
- Customize highlight colors (including text color)
- Customize keyboard shortcuts for enhanced user control
Price: Free
Highlighter offers a free forever plan which allows access to all features thus it is popular among 100,000 users with a 3.8-star rating.
6. Highlighty: Search, Find, Multi Highlight - ⭐️ 4.3 (38 ratings)
Highlighty boosts productivity with its multi-finder and highlighter capabilities, offering comprehensive search analytics and privacy-first features like no tracking or analytics.
It's perfect for users needing advanced search functionalities across dynamic websites.
Key Features:
- Adaptive text color based on WCAG 2.0 guidelines
- Comprehensive search analytics and visualization tools
- Bulk .xlsx file import for efficient data management
- Toggle RegExp queries for flexible search options
- Display sum of found queries on the extension icon
- Download and upload queries for easy data exchange
- Compact list view for streamlined browsing
- Highlight and search directly from selected words
- Customize query font size to 25px for visibility
- Save infinite query lists for ongoing projects
- Temporarily disable coloring for focused browsing
- Focus extension input automatically upon opening
- Set up custom navigation keys for personalized use
- Customize query colors using a color picker, palette, or randomizer
- Prioritizes user privacy with no tracking or analytics, ensuring an ad-free experience
Price: Freemium
7. Web Highlight - ⭐️ 4.3 (23 ratings)
Web Highlight by alexandrya.ai offers automatic highlighting of key sentences on websites, catering to English and German users with no registration required, making it a quick and efficient tool for content extraction.
Key Features:
- Automatically highlights important sentences on webpages
- No need for registration to use
- Completely free of charge
- Compatible with a wide range of websites
- Available in English and German
Price: Free
Web Highlight by alexandrya.ai caters to users who value artificial intelligence for identifying crucial information, offering a valuable edge.
Best of all, it's free! With 1000 users, it maintains a solid 4.3-star rating.
8. Page Marker - Draw on Web - ⭐️ 4.0 (502 ratings)
Ideal for educators and visual annotators, Page Marker allows real-time drawing and highlighting on webpages, offering a unique way to interact with online content beyond traditional highlighting.
Key Features:
- Customizable colors and size of marker
- Highlighter, pen, text and line tools
Price: Free
Page Marker is free to use and has over 400,000 users with a 4.0-star rating.
9. LINER: ChatGPT AI Copilot for Web&YouTube&PDF - ⭐️ 4.4 (6K ratings)
Similar to Web Highlight, Liner integrates ChatGPT for auto-highlighting, summarizing web and PDF content, and even YouTube videos.
Key Features:
- AI Copilot powered by GPT-4o
- ChatGPT based Google Search Assistant
- Web & PDF Highlighter
Price: Freemium
Despite having a free plan, Liner offers various plans catering to different user needs, leveraging AI for enhanced research and productivity.
Liner is a popular extension used by 500,000 users and has a 4.4-star rating.
10. Web Highlights - PDF & Web Highlighter - ⭐️ 4.8 (1.5K ratings)
With a robust user base and stellar ratings, Web Highlights supports offline and cloud-sync modes, offering seamless access to annotated content across platforms. It's a favorite among students, bloggers, and programmers for its comprehensive features and integration capabilities.
Key Features:
- Highlight content on websites and PDFs
- Use multiple colors for highlighting
- Save bookmarks for easy access
- Take and organize notes
- Create tags to categorize highlights
- Highlight images (feature marked with *)
- Highlight various content formats like paragraphs and headings (feature marked with *)
- Receive daily highlights recap and facilitate learning
- Use keyboard shortcuts for efficient navigation
- Export highlights to Notion, Obsidian, and other platforms
- Copy highlights to HTML and Markdown formats
- Export highlights to PDF and HTML files (feature marked with *)
- Sync highlights across devices for seamless access (feature marked with *)
- Save pages as bookmarks directly from your mobile phone (feature marked with *)Set email reminders for important highlights (feature marked with *)
- Import Kindle highlights and notes
- Backup your research securely
- Share your highlights with others (feature marked with *)
- Explore highlights shared by other users
- Find your highlights quickly with a powerful full-text search
Price: Freemium
Web Highlights provides a free plan accessible to all users, offering basic functionalities.
For those seeking advanced features like automatic cloud sync to access highlights and bookmarks from anywhere, upgrading to the premium/ultimate plan is necessary.
With a substantial user base of 90,000 users and an impressive rating of 4.8 stars from 1.8K reviews, Web Highlights stands out as a popular choice among web users.
In conclusion
Choosing the right web highlighter extension can significantly enhance productivity and streamline research efforts.
Whether you prioritize features like comprehensive search capabilities, seamless integration with note-taking apps, or robust privacy protections, there's a highlighter tool out there to meet your needs.
From AI-powered solutions that automatically highlight important information to versatile tools offering extensive customization options, these extensions empower users to organize, annotate, and share content effortlessly.
By leveraging these tools, researchers, students, and professionals alike can elevate their digital workflows and maximize their efficiency in navigating the vast landscape of online information.
