Polar Documentation
Anki and Spaced Repetition Polar supports native integration with Anki via the Anki Connect plugin. This allows for annotations on document and connecting flashcards to these annotations and then synchronizing them directly to Anki. Polar supports a robust annotation system internally with features like text and highlights, and allowing comments and flashcards to be attached directly to the text highlights. This allows you to create flashcards but keep context associated with the flashcards. Deck mapping...
Annotation Sidebar
The annotation sidebar in Polar shows a list of highlights, comments and
flashcards associated with a specific document.
This allows you to create, edit, and delete annotations for a specific document
and view all annotations in one central location.
Cloud Sync Polar supports synchronizing the storage of your documents and annotations (known as our datastore) with the cloud and synchronizing data across computers. Cloud sync is near real-time and actively pushes updates to your other devices so that when you change computers your documents are already up to date - no waiting (assuming your computer is active at the time). Backed by Firebase Polar cloud sync is backed by Google’s Firebase. You can read...
Device Sync Polar supports two main types of data sync to keep your data transferred and synchronized between your devices - git sync and cloud sync. If you’re only using your local machine you don’t really need to use device sync. IF you have a laptop, desktop, or work machine, and routinely go back and forth then using device sync might be for you. 3rd Party Sync DO NOT use a 3rd party sync framework...
Git Sync Polar supports synchronizing the storage of your documents and annotations (known as your datastore) into git since Polar just stores JSON files directly and the underlying PDFs are immutable. We still recommend using cloud sync for most users as it supports a much greater feature set and is vastly easier to use. However, if you’re already familiar with git, it’s nice to have a secondary backup. Additionally, git sync allows you to diff...
Incremental Reading Incremental reading is a strategy around suspending and resuming reading of a document over time. Reading the documents in chunks and coming back to the document at any future point in time. Incremental reading in Polar is implemented with the use of “pagemarks” which allow the user to mark regions of the document as read. You can think of a pagemark as a kind of ‘sectioned bookmark’. A pagemark has a start and...
#### Toggle Sidebar **F10**: Toggles the sidebar view when using the document viewer. The sidebar shows annotations in a 'tree view' including comments and flashcards. #### Abort **Escape**: Most components support ```Escape``` as a way to terminate entering data including tag completion. #### Complete Tags **Control-Enter**: Will finish a tag input and select all the tags. #### Complete Annotation **Control-Enter**: Finishes an annotation and saves it to Polar. This includes flashcards and comments. #### Create...
# Web Page Capture Polar supports long term web page archival via a process called "capture" which downloads and caches the content locally. We store it in Polar as if it were any other type of document (like PDF). This allows you to manage web pages with tags and annotations including text and area highlights, comments, and flashcards. This essentially allows Polar to work like your own personal Internet archive for documents critical to your...