Tip: Sync with GoodReader on iPad

Even though Paperpile doesn’t yet have a mobile app, you can setup the amazing iPad PDF annotation app to sync with Paperpile’s Google Drive folder. Personally I just sync with the “starred” folder so that I’m not downloading all my PDFs to the iPad. This works really well. I recommend setting it up as a one-way sync so that any changes you make on the iPad won’t affect your Paperpile account.

For those who are interested, my complete workflow then exports my annotations from GoodReader to Evernote. I find this works really well. I just hope that the Paperpile mobile app is released soon as sometimes I would like to “star” an item that is not yet starred and I can’t yet do that on mobile.

We don’t recommend using GoodReader. Actually we strongly advise against using the Google Drive syncing feature of this program. The reason is that it does not sync files correctly. If you locally annotate a PDF on your iPad and try to sync it back to Google Drive, GoodReader deletes the original file and uploads a new file with the same name. What that means is that it effectively deletes your Paperpile files because Paperpile can’t use of the uploaded file by Goodreader.

We had a user who ended up very frustrated because every time he annotated a PDF he could not open it in Paperpile any more.

We don’t officially support any third party apps, but I’ve tried iAnnotate and this program gets the syncing right (and seems to be much easier to work with in general).

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GoodReader offers one-way sync as an option when you set up syncing. Then you won’t have this problem. One way sync will just add new starred items to your GoodReader but will not attempt to upload them back to your folder. When I’m done I export the annotations to Evernote.

All of our users I’ve talked want two way sync to save their annotations back to Google Drive. So I can only iterate don’t use GoodReader, the sync is broken and it will eat your papers.

I have been using PDF Expert on iPad, and two-way synchronization works fine.

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Did someone test Google Drive syncing with Xodo on Android, another alternative to GoodReader?

I’ve just started using Xodo on Android and it’s working a treat. Two-way sync seems to be flawless and highlights and annotations are fully editable in MetaPDF.

FYI.
I am using PDF expert on iPad Pro and it works.

So I wonder if this work with all Apple iPad models or just the latest generations?