The main features I want are:
- Import PDFs and annotate them in the app’s native format (so that I’ll still be able to remove previous changes after I save and re-open it)
- Quickly add text boxes anywhere on the PDF
- Draw some basic shapes and lines with different colors (can either be notability-style “draw and hold to make shape” or just a classic “insert shapes” option from the toolbar)
- Have a page thumbnail option and can search text in the PDF file and quickly go there
Honestly, building a Notion level FOSS alternative, probably in the lines of Obsidian as well, would be a fun project. Especially with the features you mentioned.
Doesn’t MacOS do this natively?
But MacOS’s pdf editor saves the file as PDF, which means I can’t change a text box or drawing I already did once I save the file and delete previous versions. And I’m planning to switch to linux in the future so I want something open source.
Zotero.org has a pdf reader, but it’s a reference manager to use in more academic world
Xournal++
I tried this app before, but on Mac this app has a weird layout and I can’t even find the toolbar that is in the screenshot on the official site. How do I make the toolbar show?
I don’t know, I use it on Linux and it works fine there. What exactly do you mean by “weird layout?”
I don’t have the tool selection menu on top of the document, instead there’s a menu called “tools” that I have to click in, and the tools are listed by names instead of icons which is confusing and hard to find.
Screenshot on my computer (after I clicked open the “tools” menu):
Screenshot on the official site (note that there’s a tool selection menu on the top, inside the red rectangle, which is missing on my computer):
