If you are used to working on a large number of PDF documents, articles and ebooks, Polar is a tool that deserves your attention! Indeed, this tool defines itself as " a document management platform and knowledge for students, knowledge professionals and self-learners"... quite a program! In concrete terms, Polar combines several functionalities since it is a directory of cloud document storage, a document viewer and an annotation manager… making it an ideal companion for research or learning!
Polar, a directory, viewer and annotation manager
When you first go to this document manager, you will first have to create a free user account. Once logged in, you will arrive directly on the "Documents" section which groups together in one place all your documents (PDF, ebooks and web pages that you can capture using an extension to install on your browser).
On the side, you will find everything that will allow you to classify these documents: files and labels.
Double-clicking on a document opens it in Polar's built-in viewer. This viewer also has features that let you highlight excerpts, add annotations, or highlight passages in the text. Everything you do with the text is visible in a right sidebar making it easier to find and edit your annotations.
Finally, an “Annotations” section common to all your documents allows you to consult all your notes in a transversal manner and offers you the possibility of finding the labels and folders that you have created to better organize your content.
If you like to work in the evening, Polar has a dark mode where even the colors of PDF documents can be inverted so you can read white on a black background.
Regarding the security of your documents, they are stored in Polar's cloud infrastructure and are fully encrypted in transit and on servers.
In addition to a web version, Polar has apps for Windows, Mac and Linux… no mobile app yet, but it seems that they are in development. However, the app is a progressive webapp that can be used without problems on your smartphone.
Document management comes at a price
To survive in this basely pecuniary world, the service has a limited free version and two paid plans at $6.99 (around €6) or $14.99 per month (around €12.8). The free version allows you to store 250 documents representing up to 1 GB of data… which is already not bad!
In short, Polar is a really interesting tool for anyone who has to work with a large number of documents or has to learn complex courses! To be tested without moderation!
Polar
Article updated on January 5, 2025 by Byothe
