5 PDF Highlighter Chrome Extensions (Features, Pros and Cons)

Google Chrome browser comes with PDF viewing capabilities, but unlike the Microsoft Edge browser, it lacks basic PDF annotation features. That’s why it becomes crucial to install a PDF highlighter Chrome extension. On the Chrome Web Store, you can find a lot of free options, but picking the right one among them is important. So, in this article, we will compare the 5 best Chrome extensions that make it possible to highlight your PDF document without using any other third-party tool.

Part 1. 5 PDF Highlighter Chrome Extensions

Here are our top 5 picks organized according to their features, pros, cons, and customer ratings. With this detailed comparison, you can easily pick out one that brings you the best value.

1. Weava Highlighter

Weava Highlighter Chrome Extension is the best free extension to highlight PDFs on Chrome and other websites while reading them. While it works with most websites, it may not work with a few with conflicting code.

Weava not only allows you to create annotations for every highlight but automatically creates them for you to make the process of highlighting your PDF documents quicker. Moreover, once you highlight a source, it is saved, and whenever you access it for the next time, all your highlights will be there for you to quickly review the document unless the source code has changed.

Features

• Stores your notes in the cloud to access anywhere
• Organize your PDF work on folders and sub-folders for easy finding
• Works on every website that has compatible code

Customer Ratings: 4 Stars

2. Web Highlights

Our next pick for a PDF highlighting extension for Chrome is Web Highlights. It is designed to improve productivity and does not require any registration to begin using. It brings all the basic PDF highlighting features like using different colors, taking notes with highlights, or searching for highlights in PDF documents. Moreover, PDF highlighting supports offline usage here, meaning that you can work without an internet connection.

Whenever you highlight something here, your document and highlights are kept private. Those are only visible to you unless you share them with someone else. The extension itself brings privacy by ensuring that your page content or highlight data is not used, transferred, or sold to anyone.

Features

• Allows you to save pages as bookmarks for quick revision
• Supports exporting to HTML, PDF, Notes, Kindle, Notion, etc.
• Share your notes and collaborate with others

Customer Ratings: 4.9 Stars

3. Glasp

Glasp is a note-taking tool designed with AI capabilities in it. It can help you highlight PDF documents and web pages inside the Chrome browser without requiring any third-party software on your device. Highlights stay on the PDF or page for later use, and you can share your highlights with others to help collaboration.

It first lets you highlight your PDF content and then brings multiple features like linking, tagging, annotating, etc. The sidebar is one of its best interface features, making version tracking and collaboration simple.

Features

• Glasp can generate a summary of content based on your annotations
• You can add tags and links to your content
• Summarizes whole YouTube videos, web articles, and PDFs with AI.

Customer Ratings: 4.9 Stars

4. Hypothesis

Hypotheses is an annotation Chrome extension that supports annotating both PDFs and Web pages. It brings simple and easy highlighting features with no complex functionalities. However, it excels at offering complex annotation features through its idea of social annotation, which may not be the best choice for some use cases.

With this extension, users can organize their research and take notes, including all the highlights, with the option to make it visible to themselves only or to the public. However, this mode for sharing highlights to the public may not be the most secure option to work on crucial documents.

Features

• Supports discussions via collaboration features
• You can separately take personal notes from PDFs and web pages
• Works on Web pages and EPUBs in addition to PDF

Customer Ratings: 4 Stars

5. Kami

Our last pick here is Kami, which is a well-known PDF annotating Chrome extension with a lot of highlighting features. While you can highlight PDF text with customizable styles and colors, it supports other features like underlining and striking text. Moreover, it allows you to add sticky notes and comments to your PDF document highlights.

To make reviewing highlighted content easier, you can record voice annotations with Kami and conveniently collaborate with others since it seamlessly integrates with several online storage and collaboration tools. Kami also allows you to highlight PDFs offline and re-access your offline highlights for the same document.

Features

• Add freehand sketches to your PDF or use rulers
• Add media content from online or offline sources
• It comes with accessibility tools, including voice typing, read-aloud, etc.

Customer Ratings: 4.6 Stars

Part 2. Bonus Tip: The Best PDF Highlighter for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS

Using a Google Extension for highlighting PDF documents may get the job done, but it is not the best experience in every use case. For example, you completely rely on the internet to get things done. Moreover, giving access to your confidential PDF documents online l is never considered a safe option. Moreover, the PDF highlighter may not have the features you need.

With such issues existing with Chrome extensions, using UPDF could be your one-stop solution to all of them. UPDF is an PDF editor and viewer built with extensive PDF editing features to cater to the needs of every basic-to-pro-level using of PDF documents.

When it comes to highlighting PDF documents, you can choose a customized color. It allows adding notes to every highlighted part, and you get to highlight documents across all your devices. It intelligently detects text and only highlights text cleanly and comes with several other PDF highlighting features. Download UPDF today on all your devices and enjoy a synchronized PDF highlighting experience.

Key Features

As mentioned earlier, UPDF is built with extensive PDF editing capabilities and other features, including:

• It brings in-depth PDF commenting and annotating features
• You can edit PDF text, links, and images
• Supports organizing PDF documents, merging them, and splitting them
• UPDF has page tools, including cropping PDF, background editing, watermarks, and header & footer.
• OCR feature comes with support for multiple languages and brings over 99% accuracy
• Easy sharing via link, QR or email for real-time collaboration
• UPDF cloud organizes your PDF documents and synchronizes your work across devices on your account.
• UPDF supports converting PDF files to other formats and vice versa
• UPDF AI beings built-in ChatGPT capabilities for reviewing, summarizing, or translating content.
• It allows attaching files to PDF documents
• Users can use the read-aloud feature to listen to PDF contents

To enjoy all these features, you must download UPDF on your devices and use it for all your PDF tasks. If you do not want any limitations after testing, you can upgrade to the pro version.

Final Thoughts

Highlighting PDFs is a basic annotation capability, but Google Chrome browser does not support it by default, although it supports PDF viewing and printing. That’s where we need a PDF Highlighter Chrome Extension to get the job done. We hope that now you can pick one of the PDF highlighter extensions for Chrome browser, considering the detailed comparison from this article.

However, if you want a much more reliable option for highlighting PDF documents, then you must go for UPDF. It not only manages your highlighting requirements but offers a complete range of features for everyone. So, download UPDF to try what capabilities it has loaded for you.