POLAR makes it easy to manage your reading.

A powerful document manager for Mac, Windows, and Linux for managing web content, books, and notes - supports tagging, annotation, highlighting and keeps track of your reading progress.

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Features

POLAR allows you to keep all your documents, annotations, and flashcards in one place. Never lose track of what you're reading again. Annotate documents directly while reading them and sync with spaced repetition systems like Anki.

PDF support

We have first-class PDF support thanks to PDF.js. PDFs work well when reading content in book format or when reading scientific research which is often stored as PDF.

Captured Web Pages

Download HTML content and save them as offline documents which can be annotated. Captured pages are rendered for greater readability using CSS browser emulation.

Pagemarks

Easily keep track of what you're reading and the progress of each document. Pagemarks enable a form of non-linear reading named incremental reading and the ability to suspend and resume individual documents for later consumption.

Offline-first

All content is stored locally which means you can use Polar while offline. Polar cloud sync allows you to use Polar with other computers as well.

Hackable

The entire system is based on Electron, Node, pdf.js, React and other web standards. If you're a developer - welcome home!

Standards Based

All content is stored as JSON in a well documented schema. Annotations never change the original content which keeps your document repository safe.

Cloud Sync

POLAR is fully cloud-aware and support synchronizing your documents across multiple devices running either MacOS, Windows, or Linux. Based on Google's Firebase, POLAR supports real-time synchronization of your documents to other devices.

Annotations

Annotations are a central feature to POLAR. While reading documents you can underline text or create area highlights. Once created, you can attach additional metadata to annotations such as comments and flashcards.

Document Repository

The document repository allows you to manage your documents in one place - sort by reading progress, or time added, archive and filter flagged documents.

Documents can be opened by double clicking them to open a new window.

Web Content

Polar supports reading and annotating HTML documents. We call this process 'capturing' content and we store the document permanently in your own private archive.

Since most pages aren't designed for reading and have ads, chrome, and other annoyances within the page, we render the content as a tablet device to make the content more readable.

Browser emulation

Emulate multiple browsers and mobile content to make sure pages captured are rendered properly.

Personal Archive

All content is stored in a personal archive which allows you to refer back to important documents and view annotations over time.

Integrated Annotations

All annotations are easily accessible in the sidebar. You can create flashcards, add comments, and jump to any text highlight in the main document at any time.

More Exciting Features Are Coming!

We update Polar every couple of days with new features and listen to your feedback on our forum. Jump on our Discord or suggest a feature in Github and there's a good chance it will be implemented.