I’m happy to announce that the new Paperpile is available for testing as private beta version .
What’s the new Paperpile?
It’s a completely rewritten version of Paperpile’s web app and browser extension. It will remain the Paperpile you know and love but we’ve added many new key features and hundreds of small improvements.
The new Paperpile will also make it easer for our team to add new functionality and improvements in the future — a prerequisite for our ambitious roadmap ahead.
Important: Even if you don’t encounter problems, please share first impressions and general feedback. It’s the only way to know if we are on the right track or things need more work.
Thank you for your question, @Charles_Heckscher. The team has made every effort to ensure your data will be safe. But if this is a concern for you, we recommend going to Settings and exporting all your data before trying the new Paperpile (go to your email in the top right corner, select Settings and then choose Export).
And, it’s also easy to switch back from the new Paperpile to the well tested and fully supported version of Paperpile at any time, via the lower left in the new app (see the graphic in Stefan’s post above).
Is there a timeline for sharing being enabled in the new paperpile? This is my biggest reason for bouncing back and forth between the two, that my research team uses shared folders to coordinate projects and these are all still hidden in the beta.
@Bjorn, thanks for your question about shared folders. Shared folders in the new web app are mostly done but the transition is a bit tricky and it needs more testing before release so that everything goes smoothly. In the meantime, you’ll need to use the old app to access your shared folders (you can use it side by side with the new app or you can switch back to the old app completely for now and switch back to the new app again later).
@Will_Wade, thank you for sharing this message with us. This happens when the extension is not detected, and the team is still investigating the issue. To remove the message, you need to click on the P button in your browser toolbar. You should see the sign in window to sign in to Paperpile.
@Will_Wade I had not realized that you had switched back to the old Paperpile. When you want to use the new Paperpile, you need to switch the New Paperpile preview toggle on by going to Settings > Feature Preview in the old web app:
What about the Paperpile app for Mac OS, version 0.8.1? It’s still Intel-only (so doesn’t run natively on M1 Macs), and it consistently uses 6-7% of CPU time.
@Odysseus Version 0.8.1 is still built for Intel processors. It also runs on M1 processors but you’re right, it can be a bit slower. The team plans to make a build for Apple Silicon processors in a future release but I don’t have a timeline for that yet.
I’m not stating that it’s slower per se, but that it consistently uses CPU in the background when it is presumably doing nothing – and that this wasn’t the case for version 0.8. Can someone look into this?
Three things I’ve noticed so far in the beta version:
When I first used the updated browser extension (in Chrome and Edge), it was a big improvement as it had the Library option so you could easily select which specific library to add it to via the keyboard (from memory the focus was in the library field and you just started typing to find the desired library). However since then it seems to have been updated again and now less usable as typing / tab / arrows won’t allow easy selection of the library and instead you have to use your mouse (tab will display the libraries but no way to select any except via mouse). So that was an improvement but has since regressed (imo)
In the version before the beta, it was quite easy to move citations from the general inbox to a specific library (could just select and then move via a keyboard shortcut). This seems to have disappeared in the new version. I imagine the idea is that you capture citations directly to the specified library via the extension as above and that would work well enough. However, I still think it is important to have a way to move citations from the general inbox (perhaps it is there somewhere and I’ve missed it - the other day I had to move around 40 citations to a folder by dragging each one individually which was not ideal)
There is an option for field searching at the top (accessed via that little filters icon) which is nice but it would be more useful if the syntax was shortened. For example instead of having to type title: to do a title search, ti: would be much more convenient etc
Thank you for your feedback, @Rob_Penfold. 1) You have correctly pointed out the issue with the usability of folder and label selection with keyboard shortcuts within the extension popup and this will be fixed in a future release. On 3) I’ve passed your feedback on the fields syntax in the search options to the team. On point 2, you can still select multiple references from the main list in the web app and drag them simultaneously into folders and labels under the My Library panel. Select the references with shift+up arrow key or shift+down arrow key and hit F to get the folder dropdown menu, or click any reference drag icon in the selection to drag the selected references to the folder.
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