Read and annotate PDFs inside Obsidian without friction. Select text, click a color, done — your highlights are painted onto the PDF and saved as plain markdown notes in your vault.
Scholar PDF is a fork of the excellent PDF++ that adds an Annotator-style annotation experience on top: a floating selection popup, an annotation card sidebar, and one markdown annotation file per PDF. It works on any PDF — books, papers, manuals — with zero setup.
Select text in a PDF and a small popup appears right at your selection:
- Color dots (red, orange, green, blue, purple, pink) — instantly highlight the selection in that color. Nothing else happens; no clipboard, no dialogs.
- Comment button — opens a small input to attach a note. Comment annotations are always yellow, so you can tell "thoughts" apart from plain highlights at a glance.
The same actions are available from the right-click menu ("Annotate selection", "Highlight <color>") and as commands you can bind to hotkeys.
A native sidebar (ribbon highlighter icon, or the "Open annotations sidebar" command) lists all annotations for the active PDF as cards: page number, highlighted text, and your comment. Cards are accented with the highlight's color.
- Click a card (or its quote) to jump to that spot in the PDF.
- Click a highlight in the PDF to reveal and flash its card in the sidebar.
- Edit or delete annotations from the card's hover actions.
Each PDF gets one annotation file: annotations/<pdf name>.md (folder configurable via scholarAnnotationFolder). Annotations are ordinary markdown blockquote callouts with block IDs and standard Obsidian links back into the PDF, so they work with search, graph view, backlinks, and sync — and remain readable even without this plugin. Your PDFs are never modified.
- The PDF sidebar defaults to the (nested) table of contents; the thumbnails view is removed from the menu.
- Everything follows your Obsidian theme, light or dark.
Scholar PDF is a superset of PDF++, so all of its features are still here: backlink highlighting, copy links to selections with templates, PDF editing tools, and much more. See the PDF++ documentation for the full reference.
- Install the BRAT community plugin.
- In BRAT settings, choose Add beta plugin and enter:
prdai-archive/obsidian-scholar-pdf - Enable Scholar PDF in Settings → Community plugins.
BRAT will keep the plugin updated as new releases are published.
Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release into <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/scholar-pdf/, then enable the plugin.
Note: Disable PDF++ and Annotator if you have them installed — Scholar PDF replaces both, and running them side by side will conflict.
- Open any PDF in Obsidian.
- Select some text.
- Pick a color from the popup to highlight, or hit the comment button to annotate (Ctrl/Cmd+Enter submits).
- Open the annotation sidebar (highlighter ribbon icon) to browse, jump, edit, or delete.
The annotation file is created automatically on your first highlight. Open it like any note — every entry links back to the exact selection in the PDF.
Scholar-specific options (in the plugin's data.json; settings UI coming):
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
scholarAnnotationFolder |
annotations |
Vault folder for per-PDF annotation files |
scholarAskForComment |
true |
"Annotate selection" prompts for a comment |
scholarOpenSidebarOnAnnotate |
true |
Open the sidebar after saving an annotation |
Highlight colors are configured in Settings → Scholar PDF → Colors (the standard PDF++ color settings). The color named Yellow is reserved for comment annotations.
pnpm install
pnpm run build # typecheck + bundle to main.js
pnpm run dev # watch mode- PDF++ by Ryota Ushio — the foundation this fork is built on.
- Annotator by Elias Sundqvist — inspiration for the annotation UX and per-file storage.
- Obsidian Scholar by Shannon Shen — inspiration for the library structure.
MIT — see LICENSE and THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.