Web Highlights: PDF & Web Highlighter + Notes & AI Summary

Web Highlights is a productivity tool for Chrome that lets you highlight text and annotate PDFs directly in your browser, with optional AI-powered summaries. It works offline without an account, but you can create a free account to sync data across devices and access premium features via a 7-day trial. Designed for students, researchers, developers, and lifelong learners, it centralizes the way you capture and organize information from the web.

Core Features

• Highlight Websites and PDFs: Select text on any webpage or open a PDF (including local files) and apply a highlight with a single click. Highlights persist after page reload, so they stay visible across sessions.
• Multiple Highlighter Colors: Choose from a set of standard and pastel colors, or create custom colors by clicking the plus icon. This helps you categorize highlights by theme or priority.
• Notes Attached to Highlights: While highlighting, you can add a note that stays linked to that specific passage. The note editor supports standard keyboard shortcuts (e.g., CMD+B for bold) for efficient formatting.
• AI Summary: Generate a concise summary of a highlighted collection or an entire webpage. The AI understands the full context of the page, and there are no usage limits on this feature.
• AI Chat: Ask questions about the content of a webpage. The AI has access to the full page context, so it can answer queries based on the material you are reading.
• Bookmarking and Read-It-Later: Save any webpage as a bookmark by clicking the bookmark icon or right-clicking the page. Tag bookmarks with labels like “ReadingList” for easy retrieval.
• Tagging System: Assign tags to both highlights and bookmarks. You can later filter your collection by tag to quickly find relevant items.
• YouTube Transcript Highlighting: When watching a YouTube video, you can highlight and annotate the transcript, making it easy to reference specific parts of the video.
• Sync Across Devices: With a free account, your highlights, notes, and bookmarks sync to the cloud. Access them from any device via the Web Highlights web app.
• Sidebar Overview: The extension adds a sidebar that shows all your highlights, bookmarks, and notes for the current page. You can click any highlight to scroll directly to that section on the page.
• Reader Mode: Click “Open in Reader” to view any article in a clean, distraction-free layout. You can customize fonts, colors, and spacing. A copy of the article is saved, so you can read and highlight it even if the original page changes or disappears.
• Import Chrome Bookmarks: Bring your existing Chrome bookmarks into Web Highlights so they appear alongside your highlights and notes.
• Full-Text Search: Search across all your highlights, notes, and bookmarks to find any piece of information instantly.
• Image Highlighting: Right-click on images or visual elements to save them to your sidebar collection.
• Advanced Highlighter Mode: In settings, you can switch to a mode that organizes highlights under headings and paragraphs in the sidebar, giving you a structured view.
• Daily Recap: Receive a daily summary of your recent highlights to reinforce learning and retention.
• Keyboard Shortcuts: Customize shortcuts for highlighting, opening the sidebar, and other actions via chrome://extensions/shortcuts. You can also enable/disable the highlighter popup from settings.
• Export to Note-Taking Tools: Send your highlights and notes directly to Notion, Obsidian, Capacities, and similar apps.
• Copy as HTML or Markdown: Copy selected highlights in HTML or Markdown format for use in documents or other tools.
• Export to PDF or HTML Files: Save your collection as a PDF or HTML file for offline archiving.
• Mobile Bookmarking: Use the web app on your mobile device to bookmark pages and view your highlights on the go.
• Email Reminders: Set up email reminders for specific pages so you revisit important content at a later time.
• Import Kindle Highlights: Bring your Kindle highlights into Web Highlights to have them alongside your web highlights.
• Backup and Download: Create a backup of all your data and download it for safekeeping.
• Share Highlights: Generate a shareable link for a specific highlight or collection to share with others.
• Discover Content: Browse highlights shared by other users to find interesting content.

Web Highlights is built with privacy in mind: your data remains private by default and is never sold or used for profiling. The extension is free for basic offline use, and a 7-day free trial unlocks premium features like cloud sync, AI summaries, and exports. After the trial, you can continue using the free version or upgrade for full cross-device access. The tool is actively maintained as a one-person project, and feedback is welcome via email or social media.