Reader Feedback: Any suggestions for an app that manages PDF files?

Written on January 18, 2008 by Josh Pigford and 49 people have commented

My collection of books in PDF form has grown exponentially over the past 6 months or so. The flexibility that PDF offers (especially when it comes to search functionality) just overpowers my desire for a physical copy of a book.

Unfortunately using a myriad of folders to organize all of these books is just getting out of control.

So, I was curious if anyone has any suggestions for a way to manage all of these PDFs/books? Any organizational method you’ve found that you like? Or many an application that does the trick?

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  1. #1 Ron Green says:

    Me too. I’ve probably got over a hundred now.

  2. #2 Josh says:

    Although I can’t personally vouch for it, I hear great things about Papers from people I trust on such subjects. It’s like iTunes for PDFs. http://mekentosj.com/papers/

  3. #3 Amit says:

    Josh, try YEP,its the iPhoto for PDFs and brilliant.

  4. #4 Mark Ayers says:

    Yep, Yep is the tool. I only converted to mac recently but Yep is a great tool.

  5. #5 Brad V says:

    Another vote for Yep. It’s awesome :)

  6. #6 Rizwan Reza says:

    Yep!

  7. #7 Niels K. says:

    I use Bibdeskwith its auto-filing feature for organizing e-books and papers.

  8. #8 Olga says:

    I had the same problem. Now I use Bookpedia. It’s easy to add new books, also I can make a link to the files and open them within the application.
    Smart collections appeared to be very useful for managing my library.
    I’ve tried Papers before. It’s great for scientific articles in PDF but it can’t handle other text formats.

  9. #9 Thorsten von Plotho-Kettner says:

    Yes, I am using YEP too for ages now. Papers is great too, but it´s more for the academic way.

    Cheers,

    Thorsten

  10. #10 ian says:

    iTunes will actually dot it too - look at the way it does album booklets for example

  11. #11 Ian T says:

    YEP without doubt. YEP and the new LEAP from same developer will change the way you use your mac. Get i from Ironic Software at yepthat.com

  12. #12 Coelomic says:

    Papers is the tool you need to use. It is actually an application to organise scientific papers but does some amazing things.

    http://mekentosj.com/papers/

  13. #13 Michele says:

    Papers is very nice, but it’s been quite slow on my MBP2.2 since the past few releases, so I might as well move all of my PDFs to DevonThink Pro.

  14. #14 Michael says:

    I use Papers for my conference and journal paper collection. For this purpose Papers is excellent but I’m not sure how well it will handle more general .pdf collections.

    The other option worth looking at is iTunes. iTunes will manage and organize .pdf files that are dropped into iTunes. For general .pdf management of a small (< 10000 documents) it is definitely worth the time to evaluate iTunes.

  15. #15 undeadbydawn says:

    I like ComicBookLover. Handles PDF’s, jpg folders and cbz’s easily, stacks’em all up for you in one big beautiful library. It also supports smart folders so you can have all your PDFs organized however you wish, viewable in full screen or however else you wish,

  16. #16 laura says:

    Yep !

  17. #17 Leonardo Cassarani says:

    My vote goes to Yep.

  18. #18 Ranjeet Sodhi says:

    Yojimbo is pretty awesome at managing and organizing PDF’s, notes, Web clippings etc. Its made by BareBones - the makers of BBEdit and other tools.

    http://www.barebones.com/

  19. #19 Mark Johnson says:

    Yep’s replacement, Leap (by the same company) does a fantastic job of managing PDFs *and* other documents on your computer.

    The tagging/keywording functionality it includes is expanded to work with Keynotes, Word documents, Applications, and many other file types. It’s truly fantastic.

  20. #20 Nick Santilli says:

    Papers is pretty sweet too. Using the demo version now, and have Yep already. Papers is much more polished feeling, but it may have many more features than you find necessary…

    http://mekentosj.com/papers/

  21. #21 Dave says:

    I’m looking for something like this to use at work, trouble is it needs to be cross-platform, and handle .doc, .txt, and .pdf. We generate a staggering amount of paperwork and it would save a ton of time if it could all be filed digitally instead of in hard-copy. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

  22. #22 academicdave says:

    Lots of good things to say about YEP, many people I know use it, and love it. But for me DevonThink is the only way to go, its ability to handle not only PDFs but media files, and notes from the web, make it, for me, the best research organizer on the market. Generally speaking it is open all the time on my computer and it serves as the hub for all my research. (I know the interface is not as pretty as other Mac apps, but it has “fuzzy logic.” I just love fuzzy logic.)

  23. #23 Eliah says:

    Another vote for BibDesk. It’s also good at making bibliographies, which is critical for academic papers.

  24. #24 BLUEFROG says:

    I currently managing almost 3,000 research PDFs in Yep (with many more to add to the collection!) Great software and the developers are very responsive.

    Check it out (and buy a copy!) at http://www.yepthat.com

  25. #25 BZ says:

    Yep, it is YEP!

  26. #26 laura says:

    I figured lots of you probably do this and I am trying to find a workflow for scanning papers into pdf’s then ocr’ing them so spotlight can find them (when I don’t have time to actually tag them in yep)
    I have a scansnap but have not found an intuitive way to ocr. My scanner has been sitting here since OCT with little use.
    thanks!

  27. #27 macsterdam says:

    Another Yep & Leap user here. Absolutely brilliant. I have also used Devonthink Pro for year but switched to EagleFiler cause DTP can gobble up quite some ram - it is powerful though, put both Yep and Leap are way ahead of the competition with their innovative interface.

  28. #28 Andrei Kharlanov says:

    Yep is the best app for collecting pdfs. Try it.
    For me Yep works great, better than DevonThink.

  29. #29 BLUEFROG says:

    Laura:

    Yep has what you’re looking for!
    From the Yep manual (page 9): “The Fujitsu ScanSnap is a nice, very fast document scanner that works well with Yep. Here are the instructions to get Yep working with the ScanSnap”…

    This is a great piece of software. I use it EVERYDAY (and no I don’t get a payback for saying this, though maybe if I asked nicely… 8^)

  30. #30 laura says:

    Thanks Bluefrog. I have seen that…as I do own Yep, but the automatic OCR part is where I am fuzzy.
    Yep does not do that part.

  31. #31 AR says:

    There are a myriad of options - Yep, Together (my favorite), Yojimbo, Devonthink Pro, Journler…

  32. #32 dan says:

    Papers is what you need. Yep is nice for collecting PDFs, but you get the same thing out of coverflow now (I own a license of Yep, so…).

    If you have a collection of journal articles, or books, Papers will download the metadata for the PDFs from Google Books (or Scholar, or MedLine), making it easy to keep track of stuff.

  33. #33 Steve J says:

    Yes indeedy, Leap and Yep. Simply fantastic software. Replaced DT, Eaglefiler, Yojimbo with just Leap and the Finder.

  34. #34 Sam F. says:

    I’ll have to go with YEP as well. I bought it through the MacUpdatePromo and it’s great. I am currently managing about 2000 PDFs with it. Being able to tag them makes searching a blast.

  35. #35 Piminnowcheez says:

    Okay, here’s something different: I keep all my pdf’s in a dedicated folder, tag them in Spotlight comments, and use Path Finder to search/filter through them and preview. This has worked very well for me, allowing me to search by author, subject, project I’m working on, or whatever tags are relevant. The advantage here of course is that Path Finder is good for so much else as well, so you get some bang for you buck by not buying a single-purpose app. Skim (free), is great for marking up and taking notes on pdf’s, and your notes/markup can be exported for using with whatever other systems you like, e.g. Devonthink.

  36. #36 George says:

    Surprised no mentions of DocumentWallet so far. I’m very happy with. It integrates quite nicely with my SnapScan as well.

  37. #37 Samuel says:

    If its not too obvious you could tag them with keywords, this is something that embeds itself into the file and will travel with it. Something that Windows did not allow was for tagging of PDF’s so its a welcome feature for me - a convert.

    Plus the PDF will be searchable from Spotlight, no extra program necessary.

    Samuel, UK

  38. #38 Ivanoats says:

    Yep is great — and you do get more than coverflow, with tagging and scanning features.

  39. #39 Eleventeen says:

    One more vote for Yep.

    Throw in a Fujitsu ScanSnap and you have yourself a powerful-Jedi digital paper archiving machine.

  40. #40 Drew says:

    There are many programs that do this and I’ve tried most of them. I liked YEP, but wanted something that handled more file types than PDF alone. I settled on Together from Reinvented Software. It was known as KIT (Keep it Together) in Version 1 and renamed to Together in Version 2. It’s become a really polished, highly capable software package, with fantastic support from the developer, Steve Harris.

  41. #41 ljun says:

    Does anyone know if documentwallet has OCR abilities like receiptwallet?

    I used to use Yojimbo, but I don’t like it anymore (for various reasons). Then switched to Shove Box but it’s a little limited (features) but a new interface, now I’m using Together, which I like, but I don’t really care for the interface either. Yep I’ve tried several times but didn’t like :(

    I guess I will take a stab at Papers …

  42. #42 Eleventeen says:

    @ Drew…

    There is a program called Leap from the same guys that do Yep brings their whole document tag/management system to the rest of the files you’d work with on a daily basis.

    When I bought Yep it came with a free license for Leap, I’ve not messed with it a bunch but it sounds similar to what you’ve got.

    @ Ijun…

    I’m not aware that Documentwallet does OCR…at least out of the box.

  43. #43 ReceiptWallet says:

    ljun-

    DocumentWallet does not have OCR like ReceiptWallet. ReceiptWallet’s OCR is designed to pick up simply things such as merchant name and amount. It is not sophisticated enough to handle full documents.

    Sorry.

  44. #44 ljun says:

    For everyone above looking for a way to OCR their PDFs, I think the only way is via Adobe Acrobat or Devon Think Pro Office …..

    There’s no other way to OCR them unfortunately :(

  45. #45 steverin0 says:

    Plenty of responses here, but I am late to the party and wanted to chime in for qPict. It is a general-purpose asset management program that is very flexible and feature-rich. It handles PDFs like a champ, along with all the standard image formats, movies, sounds, fonts and more. Not free, but reasonably priced for what you get.

  46. #46 Damien says:

    I use QuickLook Plugins to view all my files if i am not editing them, its as easy as hitting the space bar once the file is selected.

    Cheers Damo

  47. #47 KC says:

    Since only one other person mentioned it, I’ll throw my vote behind iTunes. It’s simple, and the interface is already familiar. Of course, you’ll likely experience the 5-minute hesitation of “Wait, I’m only supposed to use iTunes for audiovisual media!”…but that happened to me when iTunes added video, too.Once you get past that brief hurdle, it works like a charm.

  48. #48 Sharma says:

    If you’ve got pdf’s with references (i.e for research), i’d suggest ‘Sente’ to organize your collection. Else, itunes is great for pdfs that don’t need to be cited or organized in a specific manner. Been using these two for the past two years [close to a 500 pdfs] and its worked like a charm.

  49. #49 Noetic_Nick says:

    Some people have asked about OCR-ing PDFs and scanned docs. I found OmniPage in my research for a paperless office software solution.

    The list of software I’ve found so far is:
    Yep (and Leap)
    OmniPage
    Yojimbo
    ReceiptWallet (no longer DocumentWallet)
    Together
    Papers

    (I don’t use any of these yet. I’m still waiting to see which one has the best combination of: scanner input, easy interface, searchable PDFs, OCR, and leaving files in their current location.)

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