Support for mobile devices

Do you plan an open beta for android? Can we expect it in the next 2-3 months? I am very curious about it :slight_smile:

Yes we hope to have a beta in this timeframe, ideally much sooner.

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Thank you for coming up with android app in progress.

Just curious, would it be possible to have a list of features slated for the android app? i’m deciding if I should go for either Chromebook/Windows laptop or Android tablet route, just to have Paperpile on-the-go (when away from a desktop PC).

I mean, could I access the Paperpile interface of references listing that’s on desktop interface now, do filtering/ sorting, click to open PDF (maybe with Xodo?), type notes in the android interface? View by labels?

Thank you.

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I am also waiting on the PP mobile app to make a decision about a chromebook or tablet.

I won’t really be using the mobile device to write, so the Google docs integration isn’t as important. What I plan to use most is the access to my library so I can read on the go and make notes and annotations that will be saved. I also would like to have the “add to paperpile” button in my browser on my phone and other mobile devices. Another useful feature would be a “make available offline” that will save a copy of the paper locally. That would be handy for plane flights and other instances with low or no connectivity.

The first version for Android will pretty much feature all the functions you mention except note taking. It will be read-only first, and you can access your papers through folders, labels, stars and search and you can open them in any PDF reader you have installed.

The mobile Apps will be offline by default. In the first iterations the focus will be on viewing and annotating your PDFs.

Save to Paperpile buttons won’t be available in the first versions but are on our roadmap of course.

Many thanks, Stefan! appreciate your reply to clarify on the android app and the hard work that has gone into it. I really like the simple PP interface on the desktop. Personally, however, it feels more “paper-like” to read on a tablet or 2-in-1… Anyway, looking forward to the android app soon!

Big thumbs up for the Android version, with the upcoming Chromebooks (that will have the full Android Play Store), it would mean that it would work on Chromebooks as well! :grinning:

I know you don’t do roadmaps, but any idea on how long the Android version will stay read-only? (mainly interested in the annotation feature)

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I did not mention there is one exception to “read-only” and that’s annotating PDFs. That will be part of the very first beta.

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any news on this?

We are getting close. Stay tuned.

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We are really looking forward to the android version. Could you give us a rough time estimation? This November?

We will start private beta sign ups this week and hope to be able to share an early version with some beta users this month. So it’s really close…

I would love to be in the beta program! Any help I can give is yours

As the user who submitted the original suggestion for this (obviously mandatory, as it seemed to me from the beginning!) feature 2+ years ago, I definitely hope I will be invited to the beta testing! :wink:

We are very close now and we’ve started taking sign-ups for the private betas. Please check out this blog post with details how to sign up:

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One more month has passed.
In June I subscribed to Paperpile with expectation that “soon” (your wording) a mobile app would be available. Now it is November and nothing there besides a Private Beta (which I subscribed to, but never heard again something…).
Please give me/us a reliable timeframe for a usable mobile app.

As discussed over and over in this forum, It’s impossible to give exact timelines or guarantees for future features or products.

I’m really sorry about that but that’s just the nature of the software business.

I still try to give some estimates where we stand on things from time to time but please understand that I can’t even do that in the future if it leads to wrong expectations.

We are always very clear in our communication on this issue but I want to stress again: Paperpile offers a lot but you should only subscribe to our service if you find Paperpile useful as is. That’s why we have the 30 day free trial.

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I completely support Stefan’s response - if you decide to pay for Paperpile, you should do this for the features it already has, not for the features it might have in the future.

As a workaround, you could consider using Paperpile in combination with Mendeley. For me, the main value of Paperpile is integration with Google Docs. But Mendeley is free and more powerful in other areas: it has full text search, and it has mobile apps. If you synchronize your Paperpile Google folder that has PDFs on your computer, and then make Mendeley watch that folder, you can automatically update Mendeley library with the PDFs imported by Paperpile.

One wrinkle in this setup is that annotations are not interoperable between Paperpile and Mendeley, so you would need to choose one that you will use for annotations.

I do hope one day I will be able to use just one reference manager for all of my needs!

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Any news? I signed up for the private beta, but never heard anything. What is the current state?