Zotero Reviews

I am a scientist, a this app beta tester, and a past user of almost all the major reference manager systems. I am providing this one star review because, while I am a firm supporter of this app (and open source and open science/academia models), Zotero has failed to improve basic, core functionality during the entire time I have used it from pre-launch betas to the current version. Basic things like being able to reliably import a reference from a webpage works differently across iOS browsers, often failing completely. Downloading a PDF from a publishers site and uploading is often the last resort solution—but one that fails when you don’t have accesses to the PDF from your current network (i.e. when you have institutional access only via VPN or being on the institutional network). Further, basic problems that are reported to the developers, specific improvements that are technically easy to implement and feature requests simply do not get responded to or integrated. I will continue to use Zotero as I want to support the this app ecosystem (and pay for a plan). But I cannot understand how the most basic aspects of a researchers workflow continue to fail constantly or take forever…

I decided to give this app a try because I need a place where I can store all the academic articles I read, and Apple Finder has not been working properly lately. I like how you can order your files and add metadata on this app, but I still need a system through which I can search specific words within the documents, e.g., when I type “content-based instruction”, the apps shows me all the articles where that word combination appears. I can’t see that this app can do this at the moment, whereas Apple Finder can to some extent, and iCloud subscription is cheaper and way more versatile than this app’s. This is a very promising project though.

Overall I like Zotero . I like that I can manage citations and notes all in one place, and link full text. If Zotero consistently worked, I’d give it 5 stars. The issue is that it doesn’t consistently work; it crashes frequently when adding new resources or notes. I’m prompted to submit a forum post with the error message, but the popup disappears when I click the link to the forums, so I can no longer copy the error log to submit. If these issues are corrected, I’m likely to purchase additional storage in the future; as it is, I’ll try to muddle on with Zotero a bit longer, but won’t stick with it if it continues to crash.

I switched to a different reference manager for a year but came back to this app once I discovered it’s improvements. One of the key things was the mobile app. I use my iPad a lot and having this app on my iPad helps me read like a physical document. I like how I can use my apple pencil which is a huge deal for me. However, there’s no setting for palm rejection. I wear a ipad drawing glove but still the this app is so sensitive that sometimes when I am annotating on a document, it takes me back to a different page. This is especially annoying and frustrating when I am reading a page of a 300 page ebook. I also think it’ll be nice if I can erase my handwritten annotation when I view the document on my laptop. The pencil and erase function are not available on the desktop app. I’d say the lack of palm rejection setting could be a deal breaker for people who read their dox on the ipad app because they are just better with active (not passive) reading of jotting notes.

This is certainly a much needed tool on ipad. So far the features are great starts. I find that the pdf reader/highlighter is similar to other tools I’ve used like Highlights. I love that you can see a list of your highlights in the side bar.

The mac version of this was indispensable for my work last year, and I look forward to improvements for this ipad version.

The main bugs I have noticed so far are that Zotero doesn’t collect citation data. I’ve tried importing several pdfs and links from oxford music online, but this app doesn’t enter any metadata such as author, source, year, etc. For pdfs it does create a title. But no other citation data.

Additionally the highlight feature tends to bug out for some reason. Certain words will trigger it to highlight seemingly random portions of text all over the page.

I was looking for a replacement for Apple Books to use in teaching, and this looked promising. Be aware that to use Zotero on iPad, you have to set up an account and log in, and the it uses the cloud to move your books and pdfs from the computer to the iPad. You are allowed only 300mb of room to do this, then it wants you to pay $20 a year for more storage to hold more books. If you log out of the desktop app and air drop the docs to the iPad, they will still get shuffled to the cloud because you cannot use Zotero without it being logged in. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot of money but it would have been nice to know that beforehand. I guess we’re at the point where everything has to go through the cloud, not directly from one device to the other. Oh well.

App worked well until the most recent and this app has been a blessing for a researcher. However, since updating to the most recent version of the this app app, my library no longer updates nor syncs across my devices. More information about this: This issue seems to apply only to references added to the library prior to the recent this app app update, i.e., references added to the library on one device prior to Zotero update do not sync to other devices. It seems that items added to the library on a given device after the this app app update do sync across devices. Please fix! That said, this app has a very helpful app and service — and Zotero is used frequently to work across iOS devices. Thanks for your product and service, this app!

Thanks for all the development work on the iOS system. One bug I’ve been encountering is that once I open up a note, the title disappears and appears as blank. I use the title to locate my notes and this has created enormous barrier for me to access my notes in the iOS this app version. If this could be fixed, that’ll be a huge help!! Thank you all for this awesome app!!

I really like the IOS version! Quick access to my this app database in iPad and iPhone is awesome! As a researcher who prefer reading journal articles on iPad, I really like that I can access the PDF files utilizing the this app Cloud Service. No more “send to iPad craps”.

But, I have to complain that the built-in PDF reader is really bad. Please add support for better annotating using the Apple Pencil. Or at least, enabling open the PDF using an alternative PDF reader such as PDF Expert (like in the Desktop version).

My current workflow is like 1. Download the PDF -> 2. Make a copy to PDF expert -> 3. Read and annotate -> 4. Send a copy to my Mac -> 5. Replace the old pdf with the annotated one.

It is still doable but merely too many steps to do so!!! I would highly appreciate any attempts to simplify this workflow~~

I have barely cared to write reviews for any apps but felt compelled to write something for this app. Absolutely love the new changes from the newest update. I pretty much only use this app for reading articles & ebooks and taking notes with them. Love that I can use it across devices super easily as well!

I do a lot of annotations on my PDF (not just highlighting , but writing and drawing things). I used to not be able to do it on this app since the ink colour is synced with the highlighter colour, and no black ink was provided. I switched to some third party app solely for this reason and had always suffered some syncing issues with the desktop apps. Now I’m switching back. Good job!

this app has long been available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Now, after a lo-o-ong beta it is available in iOS.

If you write reports that cite references, this is an essential adjunct to your work process. If you read documents online and want to add a reference (with annotations and notes) to your reference library; this is the tool you need.

I use a 12.9” IPad Pro as my sole computer while working through another masters’s degree. As most know, it is as powerful as most laptops, but is occasionally restricted because some apps, like Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office, and this app, are designed for phones an are thus more limited in capability.

For this app, the initial challenge: none of the popular tutorials cover this app for IOS. Some of my learning curve was simply from my recent switch from lifelong Microsoft use to Apple across the board. However, once I poked around enough to figure out how it works, I’ve discovered this app for iOS will do everything EXCEPT directly connect to Word iOS for automatic citation entry. Still, inserting a footnote and copying the automatically-generated citation isn’t bad at all.

Overall, I’m very happy with this app for iOS!

I love Zotero for managing papers, however I like to write notes with formulas and illustrations to help me explain things in the paper, and the current "sticky note" only allows pure texts. Is it possible to add something like a sticky note where I can draw stuff and write formulas with Apple Pencil? Or at least can I add a pdf page or rotate the pages to the files? Thanks so much for developing this amazing tool!

Granted it’s a bit of a niche game, but still.

Like so many others, I’ve always had an internal conflict when it comes to free/open-source software. My head says proprietary software is always more polished, but my heart says FOSS is just the way things should be. Thanks to the incredible devs at this app, that conflict is gone.

The latest desktop app is simply flawless. The new iOS app is perfect for reading on the go. Honestly, I will be shocked if this app doesn’t become the standard reference manager in the next few years.

Having grown weary of paying for upgrades to other software packages, I moved to this app years ago, and have been very happy. But some of the solutions for reading and annotating PDF articles have been a bit clunky. Not in the new this app 6.0, with its accompanying iOS app. This is amazing. I can now read articles on my iPad—or even iPhone, in a pinch—annotate them, and then have the annotations ready on whatever desktop machine I choose to work with. The annotation features are extremely good, and the convenience cannot be beat. This is the version of this app we’d been waiting for, and it’s really great.

It is honestly surprising how well and seamlessly Zotero works. I’ve been hurt too many times when apps like this just don’t work the way they are supposed to, or they have very limited functionality when compared with their desktop counter parts, but the this app app works amazingly where so many others have failed.

I’m able to write on and annotate documents synced to my account on my iPad with my Apple Pencil, and almost immediately see that document updated on my computer showing the markups I have made and I think that’s just awesome. Thanks for the hard work creating such a useful service!

I prefer to read papers on my iPad, because I started the old fashioned way (with printed papers, a highlighter, and a notepad), and using a tablet with a stylus matches my old workflow better.
I had been using a mindmapping/pdf reader app to mark up my papers on my iPad, and it was a little clunky remembering to sync the annotated files with this app when back on my laptop.

Now this app lets me take notes and annotations on my iPad in its own app! I’ve started using it today, and I love it. So far I’ve only had difficulty getting an article PDF to attach when sharing to this app from one particular website on Safari. Otherwise, it’s gone smoothly, and even lets me add tags, etc. I’m not sure if I’ll use The mind mapping app to read the papers anymore, since this app’s note taking function is pretty good now.

I’ve been using this app for years and up until now on iOS I’ve had to use it as a PWA or some wild “Save to this app” script bookmark. These options were inefficient in so many ways. (Although I appreciate the effort they made to help out.)

Having an honest to God this app app on my phone and iPad is incredible!! There are so many times when I’me using my phone and want to save something I’m researching for later use in a paper or project. Typically I’ve had to resort to some weird way (usually saving the link and then retrieving it later when I’m at my computer).

Now I can FINALLY save things naturally and super easily directly from my phone or iPad with the share feature. The interface is clean, the experience of using the library is intuitive. Thank you so much for getting this out!

When I started using this app, the iPad version felt like a clunky afterthought. But recently, the developers have been consistent in putting out excellent quality of life improvements that make it a pleasure to annotate using iPad and Apple Pencil. Good work! Oh, and it's also just a really well done grown up file organizer. Love the way it automatically indexes files and how bib info is easy to copy, and how citation info automatically attach to copied quotes. It's a great product.