# Reading Desk

Read PDFs in Obsidian, highlight passages, and write about them in Markdown notes that live in your vault.

Reading Desk is an Obsidian desktop plugin. It replaces the built-in PDF viewer with a continuous-scroll reader. Every PDF gets a book note, an ordinary Markdown note with a quote for each highlight. Each highlight also gets a quote note that holds your comment about it.

![Reading Desk demo: highlighting passages in a PDF and commenting on one in the sidebar](docs/images/demo.gif)

## What you can do

- Read PDFs in one continuous scroll, with zoom, a table of contents, and page controls.
- Pick up where you left off. Reading Desk remembers your page and zoom for each PDF.
- Highlight text in colors you choose, one click per highlight or in highlight mode.
- Write about a passage in its card in the sidebar. The comment saves to the passage's own quote note. Click **Open passage** to jump back to it in the PDF.
- Copy highlighted text, recolor highlights, and delete them with Undo.

## Install

**Recommended.** In Obsidian, open **Settings → Community plugins**, turn on community plugins, select **Browse**, search for **Reading Desk**, then **Install** and **Enable**.

**Manual.** Download `main.js`, `manifest.json`, and `styles.css` from the [latest release](https://github.com/andy-spike/obsidian-reader-plugin/releases/latest) into a `reading-desk` folder inside your vault's `.obsidian/plugins/` folder, then enable the plugin under **Settings → Community plugins**. The [getting started guide](docs/getting-started.md#install) has the full steps for both.

It needs Obsidian desktop 1.14.4 or newer. It does not run on mobile.

## Quick start

1. Click a PDF in your vault. It opens in Reading Desk.
2. Select a passage and click a color to highlight it.
3. Click **Note** in the popup to highlight and start writing about the passage.

## Guides

| Guide | What it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [Getting started](docs/getting-started.md) | Install, open a PDF, make a first highlight |
| [Reading PDFs](docs/reading-pdfs.md) | Scrolling, zoom, table of contents, saved position |
| [Highlights](docs/highlights.md) | Colors, highlight mode, editing, deleting |
| [Book notes](docs/book-notes.md) | What the note holds and how to use it |
| [Settings](docs/settings.md) | Palette, folders, templates |
| [Keyboard shortcuts and commands](docs/shortcuts.md) | Every key and command |
| [Files, sync, and renaming](docs/files-and-sync.md) | Where your data lives and how to sync it |

## Privacy

Reading Desk keeps everything in your vault and makes no network requests or telemetry calls.

It lists your vault's PDFs for the document picker and Markdown note paths for template suggestions. It reads PDFs and templates, saves highlight records, and updates book notes. When it retires an older annotation export, it reads Markdown notes to check for links before moving that export to the trash.

The Copy button writes the selected passage to the system clipboard. Reading Desk never reads the clipboard.

## Roadmap

- [ ] EPUB support
- [ ] An AI reading assistant that answers questions about your books, using an API key or an existing subscription

## Contributing

You need Node.js 22 or newer, pnpm, and Obsidian desktop.

```sh
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm build
```

The [development guide](contributing/development.md) covers the development vault, watch mode, headless checks, architecture, and releases. Other contributor pages sit in [`contributing/`](contributing/).

## License

Reading Desk is licensed under the [MIT license](LICENSE).

It bundles [PDF.js](https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js) (Apache 2.0), PDF.js's OpenJPEG, JBIG2, and qcms image and color decoders (BSD, Apache 2.0, and MIT), and [Svelte](https://github.com/sveltejs/svelte) (MIT). The [license texts and notices](licenses/README.md) are also embedded in the generated `main.js`, so they travel with the installed plugin.