Papyrus for iPad

The Library, Under Touch

Nothing is cut down. Folders, tags, flags, Smart Collections, projects, and notebooks all appear in the sidebar; the paper list carries the same filters and sorts; the detail pane holds the abstract, membership, Markdown notes, overview metadata, and the Reading card. A paper's actions — Open PDF, Copy, Link, Add Note, Read Later, Share — sit as a row of buttons where a Mac would use a menu bar.

In 1.6.0 the crowded spots got room to breathe: the notebook header no longer crams four spelled-out controls into a split-view column, the PDF row offers the one action the paper's state actually calls for instead of wrapping “Replace PDF” onto two lines, and the Library title no longer drags down when you overscroll the list.

Reading & Apple Pencil

Mark up a PDF directly on the page. Annotate a proof, sketch beside a figure, work a derivation out in the margin. The ink belongs to the paper and travels with it — encrypted — to your other devices. Highlights, underlines, strikethrough, notes, and bookmarks work as they do everywhere else, and the inspector beside the page carries the markup list and the reading note.

Scrolling a heavily inked paper is markedly cheaper in 1.6.0: Papyrus no longer re-reads and re-saves a page's ink just because you scrolled past it, so a long annotated PDF stays responsive under the Pencil.

The page column is no longer fixed. Layout Options opens a popover with two independent settings. Page layout puts the document in one column or two-up, and can show the first page alone so a two-up spread falls the way a bound journal does. Split view divides the reader into two panes — side by side, or one above the other — each showing the same PDF at a different page. The methods section can sit against the figure it describes without either one leaving the screen.

Both panes stay live: a search highlights its hits in each, and page number, selection, and navigation follow whichever pane you last touched, which carries an accent border while it is the active one. Apple Pencil markup stays deliberately on the primary pane — ink belongs to one editing surface, so inking from the second pane draws on the first rather than splitting your annotations in two.

A References tab looks up the open paper's reference list and related work by DOI, so a citation trail can be followed — and anything worth keeping added to the library — without leaving the reader.

Notebooks

Notes gathered by theme rather than by paper. A notebook is a shelf — a topic, a chapter, a reading group. Filing a note onto one copies nothing and moves nothing: it still belongs to its paper, still says which paper that is, and one tap takes you there and back. A note can sit on as many shelves as it belongs on.

Fill a new shelf from what you have already written with Add Notes…, search it by a note's text or by the paper behind it, and order it four ways — including oldest paper first, which reads your notes forward through the literature. Export the shelf as one Markdown document, or copy a link to it.

Capture & Linking

Papers arrive from Safari or from a link. The bundled Safari extension captures the paper on the current tab, or saves any PDF, DOI, or arXiv link from the long-press menu — from inside your browser session, so papers behind a publisher sign-in you have access to come across too. Paste an arXiv link, DOI, or PDF URL and Papyrus imports it, looks up the details, and fetches the file.

Papers and notebooks each carry their own Link control, with Copy Link and Copy Markdown Link, so a papyrus:// address is visible rather than hidden behind a long press. See the URL scheme for what those links can do.