Roam Research Docs · Help & user documentation

PDF Annotator

Upload a PDF into any block and Roam becomes a reader and annotator: highlight passages, tag them, and hang notes off them.
Every highlight is a regular Roam block. That means you can reference it anywhere, nest notes under it, and find it in search.
Try it on this copy of Doug Engelbart's 1962 paper, Augmenting Human Intellect. Highlights you make here aren't saved, so feel free to experiment.
{{pdf: https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fhelp%2FlPT97cB08L.pdf?alt=media&token=e19a2a18-3673-4f66-902f-f9c83e3f71fb}}

Type /upload in a block and pick the file. The PDF renders right there.
Reading in a block gets cramped, so click the fullscreen button in the toolbar to expand the PDF to the whole main window. The same button collapses it back.
The toolbar also has page navigation, zoom (with fit-to-page and fit-to-width), and search within the document.

Select some text and click Create highlight. The same popup has note and tag buttons, which create the highlight with a note or tag already attached.
Or turn on highlight mode from the toolbar, and every selection becomes a highlight automatically. There's a mode for text and one for areas.
Hold Alt and drag to capture an area instead. Area highlights save a snapshot image of that region, which is how you clip figures and diagrams.
Copy what a highlight holds with Cmd-c (text or image), or grab a reference to it with Cmd-Shift-c and drop it in your notes. Shift-click opens the highlight's block.
Deleting a highlight warns you first if notes or references would be lost with it.

Behind every PDF is a page of its own, named after the file. Open it from the viewer's menu, or by shift-clicking a highlight's block reference.
Your highlights and notes collect there, grouped under a Notes section per person.
Roam recognizes a PDF by its contents, not its location. Upload the same file again, or embed it in several places, and they all share one PDF page and one set of annotations.