I like to organize my notes in the side-bar with a combination of annotation formatting and free-text boxes. I don’t tweak very much and usually default to one of the built-in formats. The line thickness and color can all be tweaked. Every aspect of the annotation markup is customizable in LiquidText. Or each individual annotation can be manually selected and formatted later. Markup formatting is quickly adjusted by using the slide up tool-bar. Images can be dragged out and attached to a text excerpt or note. Each can be selected and highlighted or excerpted. One of the strengths of LiquidText is that it doesn’t treat text and images as objectively different. Want to extract an entire image in a PDF? Just drag your finger across the area and hit “AutoExcerpt” to add it to the side-bar.
Drag across a block of text to select or highlight with your finger. LiquidText does the right thing and uses the finger input as a traditional text selector in iOS. When I’m using my finger, I have less granular control. With the Pencil I usually want a more free-form selection. I generally like the different modes for creating annotations in LiquidText.
With the default setting, it’s a marvel to circle and then double-tap to excerpt text or sections of documents. LiquidText added meaningful support for double-tap on the Apple Pencil 2 within weeks of its release. The Pencil isn’t just a gimmick in LiquidText.
Liquid text review series#
In this way I can condense a large amount of information into a series of small annotations linked in a related context. While dragging out annotations, they can be immediately linked to existing annotations. It feels down-right incredible when you can simply circle some text or an image and start dragging it out to the side bar.
Liquid text review pdf#
Marking up a PDF with the Apple Pencil feels natural. Every detail has been thought of and the gestures in LiquidText make it feel like the iPad was custom designed for annotating PDFs. The paragraphs collapse immediately, which allows me to compare two different paragraphs more easily. Pinching on a page in LiquidText is a joy for long, wordy, passages. Try moving the order of your highlight around on a printed page. It’s better than a highlighter and a paper book. While organization of the excerpts and notes happens automatically at creation, I can re-organize them anytime to fit the way I think or how I want the ideas to flow. These can all then be moved around the annotation canvas together. Tap and hold on an excerpt and then tap more excerpts to multi-select. These will live on as if they were a separate document, but tapping on the connection arrow scrolls the document back to the source to show the context. Using an Apple Pencil I can quickly circle text or images and drag them out to my annotation sidebar. I also really enjoy the interactions with LiquidText. Tapping the annotation in the sidebar immediately scrolls the main document and shows where it is linked. LiquidText preserves the connection to the original document. With an Apple Pencil, or a finger, I can select text in the PDF and instantly extract a linked note. Highlights aren’t that novel but the way LiquidText extracts annotations is marvelously unique. The most basic capability of LiquidText is extracting and highlighting PDFs. The second is one of the many excellent books from Manning Press about AWS engineering, Serverless Architecture on AWS. The first is Creating Flow with OmniFocus. In this review I'm referencing two pretty awesome books. Now let’s start the long road of amazing features in LiquidText.
Liquid text review archive#
Because of this, I don’t think LiquidText is a good place to archive documents even though it has some great features for storing related research. It’s a clever implementation even if it’s not ideal. There’s no direct sync between devices but it does work with iCloud Drive and iCloud file providers like DEVONthink To Go. Let’s get the bad things out of the way first. For an app like LiquidText, I think the screenshots are just as important as what I have to say about it.
But, LiquidText isn’t a reading app, it’s an annotation app, and it’s the best annotation app I’ve ever used. That’s a sign of a great reading app, if you ask me. This article has taken me a long time to write because every time I go into LiquidText I end up reading for way too long.
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