Paperpile

I am an everyday user of this app, both in its intended use as a reference manager and also as a very good PDF reader. There are just several things which degrade my user experience heavily in regular use. I. There’s no option to edit existing entries. Why? You do this on your website, which you’ve helpfully not let me access on mobile because you have this inferior app. Utterly nonsensical, and your insistence on me using the app by not letting me use the website is worthy of losing four stars alone. By your own admission, this app lacks the full features of the website. So why in the world would you make the website inaccessible to mobile users??? This is a puzzling and frankly stupid decision on your part. You either a) let me access the website so I can use the features that I am PAYING for, or b) actually finish the app, as it’s been a few years now and you just aren’t even close. II. The file size limit is frustrating and just completely unnecessary. For two reasons. 1), do you REALLY need every file to be online? It’s nice but you can get rid of this by just storing files over 100mb on the iPad itself in the app’s directory (probably with a little warning mark indicating that it is not available online). This is an opportunity for you to actually add a feature on the app that wouldn’t be available on the website. Regardless 2), you store the files I upload to my google drive. Unless google made some stupid decisions recently, they have no such limit. Further, the app’s actual size limit is closer to 50mb than the 100mb you claim, which leads me to believe the limit has more to do with deficiencies in coding than with server space. You should fix this before you charge your customers, yes? There are a few other small issues but they wouldn’t even be able to knock off a star. I am serious in saying this is a great app and it has no reason at all to have to have to be rated this low. You dropped the ball. Dearly, now pick it up and fix it.

This is a wonderful reference manager! I’ve been needing to find a great manager that allows me to organize and sort my papers as I wish and this app does just that! I love how easy it is to organize my references as well as sort out certain papers based on a label. It was so easy to sign in to my university account to get access to all the journals out there AND I don’t have to re-sign in! It’s so seamless everytime!! I also think that annotating the document is pretty easy and smooth. There is one thing I will say though that I wish Paperpile did offer, and that is the ability to “cite while you write”. I know some other managers offer that and I really think it would be a great way to level up this application to a different level. Overall, a really great reference manager that I enjoy!

Great app! Not sure why after installing the app, i cannot open the app on ipad mini2/iOS 12, and kept crashing. Could you help to troubleshoot. Thanks

As titled. Why is it necessary at all to update the app only to make it useless??

I prefer this reference manager over all of the others on the market, but I do find it lacking in a few features that would add so much to the user experience. For one, it would be great if we could upload PDF files of journal articles directly from the iPhone or iPad app instead of having to go on the Chrome web app to do so (because of the way my institution proxy access works, automatic downloads only work around ~80% of the time). It would also be nice to see some more configuration options in the settings menu. I also want the ability to manually edit citation fields. In the case of some older papers going back decades, the digital archiving isn’t perfect so my collection of citations doesn’t look as neat & tidy as I’d like. These minor grievances aside, it is really a great system and I will continue to rely on Paperpile for my references.

I use Paperpile through the online application and chrome extension, and it is generally a good citation manager. However, the padOS / iOS application is unusable due to the inability to log in to my university account which has an authentication layer. The Google login has an authentication error for all login attempts, and if I attempt to circumvent that issue by logging in online on my iPad I get the infuriating prompt that I should download the app. For this to be worth my while, one of two things needs to happen. 1. Disable the painfully obnoxious prompt to download the app when on a mobile device, or 2. get the (university) authentication layer to work when using the google login option.

It is the best one I've used, I would definitely give 5 stars. However, please please please fix the issue of highlighting function for iPad. If I highlight something with one color and some content is kind of overlapping with that, the color of the previously highlighted content will be changed unexpectedly if I change the color of the overlapped content. It is really annoying. I hope it will be fixed soon.

15 years in academia; I’ve been a subscriber for many years and it is worth every penny. Incredible and the ongoing development is a rarity in this world of disposable abandonware. Can’t recommend enough.

I think the Paperpile UI is very easy to use, minimalistic, and clean. I also love the PDF annotation features, the ability highlight selected words and add either typed notes or handwritten notes. One major drawback is that the app crashes very often on my iPad Mini 5 (running on the latest iPadOS) and less often on my iPhone. This issue has greatly decreased my productivity and user experience.

I really want to like Paperpile on IPad but its just doesn’t work. Adding papers is a hit and miss on iPad (where it would just work seamlessly on desktop) on papers from popular journals. I have updated to the most recent version at this point in writing. Most times it just doesn’t recognize the paper and gives either the wrong information or a looping cursor. Tried sending to paperpile on both the webpage of the paper or sending the pdf instead and both methods do not work.