How to Read and Highlight PDFs

Screvi has a built-in PDF reader. Upload any PDF, read it in a clean viewer, and highlight text as you go. Highlights are saved to your library just like highlights from any other source.

Uploading a PDF

There are three ways to add a PDF to Screvi:

From the web app

1. Go to the Articles tab
2. Click Add Article
3. Drag and drop a PDF file onto the upload area, or click to browse for a file
4. The PDF is uploaded and saved as an article in your library

You can also paste a URL that points to a PDF file. Screvi detects the PDF and handles it automatically.

From the browser extension

1. Navigate to any PDF in your browser
2. Click the Screvi extension icon
3. The PDF is saved to your library

From the mobile share sheet

1. Open a PDF link in Safari or any app
2. Tap Share and select Screvi
3. The PDF is saved to your library

Reading PDFs

Open a saved PDF from the Articles tab. The PDF renders in a full in-browser viewer with:

• Page-by-page scrolling: All pages are laid out vertically in a continuous scroll
• Zoom controls: Zoom in/out, or fit to width
• Page thumbnails: A sidebar (on desktop) shows page thumbnails for quick navigation
• Page jumping: Click the page number in the toolbar to jump to any page
• Pinch-to-zoom: On touch devices, pinch to zoom in and out

Highlighting Text in PDFs

Select any text in the PDF to create a highlight. The highlight is saved to your main highlight library, linked to the PDF article.

• Highlights are anchored to specific pages, so they persist correctly even if you zoom or resize the window
• You can view all highlights for a PDF from the highlights panel in the reader sidebar
• Highlights appear visually on the PDF text, just like in the regular article reader

Sharing PDFs

Toggle sharing on for any PDF article to generate a public link. Anyone with the link can:

• Read the PDF in Screvi's viewer (no account required)
• See highlights you've made
• Download the PDF

PDF Annotation Import (Alternative)

If you have a PDF that already contains annotations (highlights, underlines, sticky notes) from another PDF reader, you can extract those annotations separately:

1. Go to Integrations > PDF Import
2. Upload the annotated PDF
3. Screvi extracts all annotations directly in your browser (the file is never uploaded to a server for this method)
4. Preview the extracted highlights grouped by type
5. Import them to your library

This is useful for importing existing annotations from tools like Adobe Acrobat, Preview, GoodNotes, or PDF Expert. The annotations are imported as highlights attached to a book source.

Tips

• PDFs have a 50 MB file size limit
• Screvi automatically extracts the title and author from PDF metadata when available. You can edit these after upload.
• Duplicate PDFs are detected automatically. If you try to upload the same PDF twice, Screvi redirects you to the existing article.
• The PDF reader uses its own formatting, so typography settings (font, size) from the regular article reader don't apply to PDFs.