Reviews & Comments of Hypothesis - Web & PDF Annotation chrome extension

Updated review: From 3 stars to 1. DO NOT USE. I spent HOURS going through and making notes on dozens of pages (an annoying, inefficient process as detailed below) yesterday, only to go back to it today, without even having closed the browser or the tabs in the meantime, and ALL but ONE page has lost the annotations. If I search for them, or for any done by me, it's the only one that comes up. So HOURS of work gone. This "service" is garbage and should NOT be used. Consider yourself warned. It's nice being able to annotate, but has issues. Can't set to always show notes (have to either leave the sidebar open or manually open it each time, instead of being able to keep note visible in corner), constantly having to log back in, which is both annoying and can cause issues, have to manually enable it on each and every page, even within the same site, and after having to log back in this last time every time I tried creating an annotation it would increment the counter number but not let me type anything, until I refreshed the page. Also, it reverts back to public instead of staying on private as set (or allowing a default to be set). Much potential brought down by poor design and possible bugs.

This extension does one extra thing that other extensions doesn't. The option to temporarily hide all the annotations/highlights on the page. I don't know why other extensions overlooked this simple to implement feature. Thanks for this feature. Improvements: More variations of color. Its a bit bland right now.

I tried and used hypothes.is a year or two ago (along with every other note taking \ pkm \ bookmark tool \ extension in the world ... i finally gave up and went to (try to) use worldbrain Memex and then Obsidian, and then, frankly gave up, and just used OneTab. Lately i started trying to come up with "a plan" again. Memex with Logseq, sorted and organized tab groups to Tab++ and whole sessions saves to OneTab ... the bulk of it happens between Memex and Logseq. Memex recently went paid (for more than 50 uses per month) so i went back to searching. Tried this again. Its MUCH better now. Feels smoother, tighter, more in the right place stuff, less in the wrong place. Great features. Private notes (finally?) ... integrates with Logseq. Will be using this and Logseq now, with tabmanager back ups just to be safe. But a FULL TEXT SEARCHABLE annotation (and defacto bookmark) service with a graph capable PKM (logseq) is THE TICKET. If Hypothes.is ever beefs up their note taking capabilities, it will be untouchable. HELL YEAH!

Keeps logging out. After each refresh of page I have to login again. After logging in I have to change "group".

Cannot use it without signing up

Conusing, not intuitive, awkward.

Cannot comment without sign up... 1 star.

If I say it's a good extension, it would not be a appropriate review. It's a legendary extension with amazing features! <3

I love it, but it's really really really annoying how every time I try to use it, I need to log in again.

Want to love it, but really need ~4 colors. Core functionality for me.

I was going to use this extension for one purpose which was to annotate PDFs, but my browser (Vivaldi) wouldn't allow it, which is a shame. It would have been perfect for me if a lot of browsers could have access to this extension.

It's a good tool, obviously, especially it's free. Thank you! But I still need two more features, please consider: 1. Support the original format, e.g. bold, newline, list, etc. 2. Automatically highlight the lines after openning a page, and without showing the drawer.

Might be best there is for collaboration. Wish it had more colors and more visible annotations (text on hover? anything, really). It would be nice if it had some sort of local storage cache, so it doesn't take 5 seconds to load what I just annotated.

Love it! Works like a dream, ma shaa Allah. Is there a way to change the highlight colour? Also, I would like to be able to move an annotation from one group tp another when needed for better organization. Please let me know how to achieve this.

Everything a student could ever wished for! note, highlight and even sync!

Pretty good extension, but do I really have to manually enable it on every page I visit? Is there a way I can have it automatically enabled for every page?

i like using this to read articles intentionally. better to really read and annotate a small number of articles then read many articles superficially. I'm dissapointed that there are so few others using it. This is how the internet was originally meant to be!

It is easy to use and make my work more efficiently

Fantastic extension and service - the best I've come across. It makes it easy to markup web pages either as an individual or as a group (or with the whole world!). I use Obsidian to store my information and it's possible to pull down highlights using the Hypothes.is API for further work. I did have a problem being repeatedly logged out, but that's because I have third party cookies turned off in Chrome. It's easily fixed by allowing third party cookies from [*.]bjfhmglciegochdpefhhlphglcehbmek (which is the URL of the extension).

Absolutely amazing tool! - Easy registration - No permissions required - Fast, intuitive - Keeps track of the files you highlight, even if you first annotate in your browser and then download it, Hypothesis will still know its the same file. Easily the best highlighter/annotation tool out there!

Not working with local pdfs: "We’re sorry, Hypothesis couldn’t open that file… This extension can’t be used on local HTML documents at the moment." File url access allowed Version 88.0.4324.182 (Official Build) (64-bit), Ubuntu 20.04.02

Just installed this after trying a bunch of other web highlighters, and it's far and away the best one. The other extensions I tried are all half-baked: Instapaper and Pocket (garbage) don't let you highlight portions of the article inline. Liner does a better job with on-page highlighting, but has no API and so doesn't integrate with anything. Only Hypothes.is actually has seamless in-page highlighting and a legit API. Moreover it integrates with apps like Readwise, which is huge. Ironically it's the only one of the bunch that's free, though I'd gladly pay for it over the others. My only minor beefs are that I have to click the icon in my toolbar to show the highlights and that the highlight count indicator doesn't distinguish between my private highlights and the public highlights of others. But overall great tool.

This app is incredible. The fact that it exists and every student on the planent doesn't know about it is a travesty. 100/10

Why I can not export my notes !!!???

The annotation button and highlight button are nowhere to be found. It doesn't appear when you highlight a text. So I can only make notes on pages -_-

It works really well, the features where you can click on an annotation and the page moves to where it is, is nice. I wish the color for highlights and annotations were different, though.

As a high school English teacher I have been so impressed with the usability of this extension. It is perfect for finding texts online to annotate, discuss, and share more information/research more about them. Really thankful that I found it.

One of the most underrated tools on the internet. I've been using it consistently for a little over 2 years now for everything from keeping track of random ideas to SEO & Web Design. ???

A robust way to annotate web sites, and the relocatable PDF annotator is pretty cool, too. I can imagine some usability improvements that would make for a more natural user experience, and some features that would be helpful, but all in all a great product.

This is an amazing idea and insanely helpful for education regarding annotating online textbooks. The one thing i have issues with and am hoping for a solution for is when annotations turn to "Orphans" when the page didn't alter too much. I find I run into this problem pretty frequently and have looked around only a little for some ways to fix this, hopefully someone can be of help if there is a solution available.

This is wonderful. Getting help from colleagues and helping around is way easier now. :).

I've been using Hypothesis since January 2018. This is the number one extension that I install on a new computer. The search function is amazing, it helps me to recall sites and annotations on any topic that I care to re-search. As my laptop died recently and had to install this extension, I took this opportunity to write this review. My mind boggles, how come not everybody is using this. Kudos to the whole Team

Lovely. From copying notes on Word files to saving web pages, I have struggled quite a lot keeping track of interesting content. With Hypothes.is, this is no longer a problem. I can have all my annotations in one place and choose to go back to them whenever I want. Kudos to the makers!

Please make the badge-icon distinguishable for dark theme users.

It's a great idea, but very annyoing that many users add useless Page Notes. It would be great if we could block individual Users and if we could block public Page Notes for selected domains.

ten thousand years for Hypothesis!

First of all, let me say that this extension is very useful while I am reading papers. Here is my suggestions to improve it - 1. If I turn it on, it changes the URL of the page (I am not sure whether this happens on all the sites but I can confirm that this happens when I read papers on arxiv). So if I need to share the paper with someone, I am forced to turn off the extension to get the url, refreshing the the page/pdf twice in the process. So I am forced to scroll back to the section which I was reading. It would be better if the extension does not change the url at all.

Wow, just wow! I rarely say "Everything's perfect about it" but I have to admit "Everything's perfect about it"! I just wish there were an option to highlight in green, yellow is really hard on my eye.

Great way to annotate websites!

Incredible concept, but not usable for me. I have to re-login everyime I want to annotate a new page. Plus I just spent 15+ minutes annotating an article and it looks like 2/3 of my annotations didn't get saved.

I literally installed this just so I can turn it off on journal article pages that have it on by default. There's no way to turn it off. Reading a journal on a web page is extremely annoying when every time you click opens a bubble asking to highlight or annotate.

There is very pertinent comments: "I would pay for it, yet is free."; "Someday, it will be integrated part of the browsers."; I was looking forward for this perfect annotation tool.

Please provide the option of having the extension active by default on a webpage.

Find hypothesis because of running out of Weava storage space. Really impresses me not only the amazing introduction video and the feeling of reading webs by the whole world. Really nice extension! Updated: Well, I meet a issue after using for some while. How to enable it automatically when I open a web or a local pdf?

Every time i log into my account on a page i previously annotated, i get random highlights which i did not put there, nor do they make any sense. Anybody knows what is the problem/ solution. Thank you very much.

This is awesome. It would be cool if a feature were added that allowed users to upvote comments on an annotation(reddit style). This way could serve as an indicator of how valid/factual some users comments are if on a research paper for example

It is easy to use and make my work more effciently

After a few semesters in school, and conducting research papers, I finally got fed up with not having the ability to highlight or take notes in real time on a web page. Insert Hypothesis. This honestly changed the way I research papers. Thank you so much for this amazing product

I would pay money for this and yet it's free! Amazingly clean and simple. Works great for all my note-taking, video/image posts, and research. Between Hypothesis and Diigo, my internet experience has changed the way I work and has inspired others. Please ensure this keeps going/growing! I have a lot of info invested in Hypothesis. Truly recommend for students and professionals alike! :)

While I know this extension for some time now, I always have missed a particular option. I am missing ome kind of website or source, which outlines where users annotate most websites... If something like this can be done, it would be great indeed.

The only drawback is the lack of color choices for highlighting purpose - for which I resorted to another Chrome extension: Yawas Web and PDF Highligher. Used together with Hypothesis' own excellent integrated annotation collection, it is the perfect tool for a researcher like me.

Top notch Annotation tool. If there is better, please let me know.

Sooner or later, this extension will (hopefully) be integrated by default into any webbrowser!

this is the good program for collecting the data

Perfect! Simple, clean, takes your annotations and puts them on a single page. Intuitive and readable. Well done!!!

This is a very useful tool. I wonder if my notes can still be preserved if the original sites (from which i annotate) are down?

The online help files are too brief. I could not find a way to organize my annotated pages

I like it.

This should be default in any browser. I'm not certain if the comment moderation mechanism is any good but having the ability to read users' comments on any given text on the web can be invaluable when doing serious reading. Within the first few minutes after installation, this extension already provided me insightful comments and answers.

After you annotate text, when you are writing your note, none of the text tools like "Bold", "Italics" work for me. When you hit Bold, you get * on either side of selected text. The Link function does not work. Please fix this. Also, pl add some more highlighter colors. Otherwise a good product.

It's great. Keep your good work and enhance some issues

great

Do hope you can introduce more highlight color rather than only a yellow pen.

A great extension, and something the web needs. This can serve as a personal note taker (although maybe other mechanisms might be better for that), or a distributed or centralized point for shared notes and discussions.

I wish I could rate this higher because, in the beginning, I really loved it. It allows you to annotate, highlight (although the highlight function acts up sometimes. You try to highlight one thing, then when you go to highlight something else, the first thing that you highlighted becomes un-highlighted). Also, it is nice that you can make page notes in general (i.e. if you want to summarize a page) or just highlight one specific word or phrase and make an annotation of that. Furthermore, it saves all annotations and highlights, even if you close the tab or turn off your computer and then later revisit the pdf. BUT, and this is a major flaw. I hope this gets fixed soon: I will be on a certain page and then all of a sudden the app suddenly takes over and moves 10-15 pages forward or backward to another page. And then I try to move back to the page I was on and the app just does it again. Pretty soon it turns into a battle of me and the app and I just want to give up on the assignment I am doing. Please fix this. I am becoming angry to the point where I am considering getting rid of this extension.

Fantastic app, i have downloaded about 10 of this extensions and tested em all for my research. Finding this one, simple, elegant and very helpful. I would love the possibility to use it with PDF files.

Great tool :-) Public read groups sounds like a good idea. Would love to see private groups too.

Great community and very responsive. Clever implementation of an annotation tool.

Thank you for putting an end to endless useless alternatives!

All I need and for free!

This annotation tool has amazing potential. As an instructional designer, I use it in my work with faculty for password-protected LMS pages while developing courses. It's invaluable. We can give each other feedback right in the course and close the loop on action items. However, there's one major problem: annotations get lost. Rather, they don't show up where they should. I can always find it on the Hypothesis site after some effort, but this major glitch has hampered my course development process and has frustrated many of my faculty who are difficult to persuade to use new technology. I hope you will fix this glitch. Please advise.

This is a great tool for highlighting and annotating text on the web. I use it for my doctoral studies and it's fast, light-weight, and easy to use.

The way to think in the knowledge era!

Utterly useful.

Phenomenal. A great tool for diving deeper.

A great tool for studying, sharing, and classifying text on the internet. The ability to categorize annotations is especially helpful. I second Anita's request for public read groups!! The ability to programmatically control which annotations are displayed by the extension would be very useful - for instance, to display only annotations in a given category. And the ability to switch the display on and off and between categories would go a long way to support development of automated learning solutions. I'm excited to watch the evolution of this great tool.

Love it!!!! We built tooling around it for our curators so we are using the H++ version, but I love using it. By the way, we really need private write, public read groups!

Because of the notes capability, I'd probably be using this extension instead of GistNote Highlighter. But I really need a minimum of two different highlight colors. Just yellow alone is not adequate.

Best extension :) I think that should auto active in any websites. Thanks for a good extension

Convoluted UI. Can't just do a simple "right-click, add note," but rather you have to highlight something and make a note specific to the highlight instead of just specific to the page, and it pops up in a sidebar rather than inside the page. Icky.

greatest for WEB ANNOTATION and Collaboration online

Can't do multiple annotations???

Amazing, but please add an option for BRIGHTER, CONTRASTING highlighting! I have a fairly high brightness monitor, and I can barely see the yellow highlighting.I literally highlight the same spot multiple times to see it better!

Exactly what I looked for and even better. It is interesting to see that someone already read the article and had some thoughts

Promising but with some major holes. Once you've annotated a file, there is no where to save it (no dashboard or list of files you've worked on). The help doc on printing didn't work. The overlay doesn't show up when you go to print. So take all the notes and they are stuck on your screen. Also, there is so little for help documentation. Not helpful as a research tool yet. Could be really cool. Just missing some key pieces.

Exactly what i was looking for. Pat on the back!

Warning. You need to create an account before you can do anything. That is just crazy, why do i need to signup when I just want to create labels to my pdf files??

Very promising. Waiting on functionality like local storage of posts, group post management, bar location options, and more.

Very handy app. Request: a dashboard overview of all notes made.

Love this site/plugin - collaborative commenting without limiting fee structures. If I had one request though, it would be an option to have the plugin automatically activate for pdfs.

I will rereview at another time but it looks really promising!

Wonderful idea

It always shows "failed to load" and can not work properly.

Annotate everything anywhere!

So COOL

Great plugin! Would be 5 stars but can't invert pdf colors (white backgrounds make my eyes bleed). If I have the pdf's colors inverted already (i.e. hackervision) it _undoes_ the inversion upon activation. I want to love this plugin. Hypothesis, if you're listening please make me update this review :)

Really cool.

Too many problems. The URL to activate my account returned a 404 not found error, yet I was able to use the tool. I attempted to highlight portions of a PDF on the web. The selected area was highlighted with multiple shades of blue with embedded gaps. It was hard to select the text I wanted as the selected area jumped around as I approached the end of the desired line. It selected everything above the line I wanted. I found it to be unusable in its current state.

I really hope this takes off.

The basic functionality seems to work, but the extension still has some rough edges. For instance, global comments (introduced without previously selecting text on the page) aren't shown even when clicking the eye icon, but they do show up if one enters a new comment. Also, selecting a text with the sidebar activated shows a little pen icon -- a tooltip would make it clearer that this icon is meant to introduce a new annotation. Highlighting and introducing local comments in pdf documents doesn't seem to work yet, but at least the extension doesn't automatically load all pdfs with PDF.js anymore, which confused me previously. A common UX defect: when trying to login, it isn't revealed whether the password was incorrect or the username simply doesn't exist. I don't think obscuring this information from the user provides as much extra security as to justify the user frustration when an attempt to login fails. All in all, the extension is still in a phase I'd call beta, but the developers are actively workign out the issues on github, so I expect it to keep improving.