[Android] Alternative PDF viewer/editor

Feature requests
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#1

I have Paperpile for Android installed on an e-ink device, and whilst it works, the reading/annotating experience is naturally not as optimal as using the device’s own PDF viewer. So I would really like the option to download a PDF and have the possibility to use another app for the editing, and have Paperpile manage the upload etc. I don’t know if this is a common use case, but as more and more Android based 10 and 13" e-readers are available, I can see an increasing need…

Thanks for all your hard work!

2 Likes
#2

Thanks for the feedback, @msbentley! The request to allow / facilitate the use of third-party viewers has come up a couple times in the last months, so I’m adding your +1 to our internal tracker (and changed the category of this thread accordingly). I understand this is not something we’re necessarily considering at the moment, but we certainly will as demand escalates.

#3

Great, thanks for your response @vicente!

#4

Does your device has Google Drive integration. Paperpile automatically syncs annotations in both direction from Google Drive. (as long as your PDF viewer uses ISO conformant annoations).

#5

Hi @stefan - yes, I use this to sync my “Starred Papers” folder, for example. This is a fine stop-gap but it would be nice to have the full Paperpile search/folder/label functionality to locate papers and then “open with” a different PDF viewer.

Having said that, I haven’t yet fully explored the recently added options for configuring how papers are stored to Drive, so perhaps I can make some tweaks there and sync my entire library…

#6

I’m also considering the purchase of e-paper based Android tablet, but the absence of the explicit support is a blocker.

I’d rather like the better native e-paper support than the alternative reader support. I guess supporting non-scrolling page turn would solve like 80% of the problem. Too optimistic?

#7

I think there are a few issues using the Paperpile app on current app on e-ink devices (I am running it on a Boox Note 2) - it’s designed for users being able to easily pinch/zoom/pan etc. and on an e-ink that is less than ideal. If there were better settings for margin crop, colum-view etc. then that would be another alternative. But typically I think the best performance, battery life, and device compatibility, is going to come from the built-in viewer, and I would prefer to use that.

#8

Bought a e-ink tablet (boox note 3) and now I agree with @msbentley that the alternative PDF viewer support is ideal. The enhanced tablet support is great, but it’s probably long way to go. The PDF viewer on other hand is well optimized to these devices.

I don’t expect two-way sync (getting the annotation back to Paperpile) but having an ability to export would be very nice. I don’t enable Google Drive sync on Paperpile because it takes up too much space. So no realized that on-demand loading by the Paperpile app with alternative PDF reader support is exactly what I want.