Best tools for organizing PDFs in Obsidian

Curious to ask from this video, which drive would you use and why is it the case? I’m deciding to do some research into how should I sync my obsidian and where I put my main files in? I’m thinking should I put files in Dropbox, Google drive, or something like iCloud, the obsidian syncing is also something that I struggle with, all kinds of syncing seems to have this or that problem and I would still like notes to be accessible on my phone. I’m thinking about this because I’m going to change from windows to macOS possibly. Which drive or syncing way would you recommend? Thanks for this great video again, I found these videos very helpful in making decisions, especially when you are in a same device or need as I am!

Nicole - I agree that for you Zotero is a great choice. I think you did DEVONThink a disservice. I use DT on a daily basis. Once configured, the sync over Dropbox is rock solid. My archive is 1/3 the size of yours and it’s been working flawlessly for over a year. The killer feature of DT that you missed is search. Hands down it is the best I’ve ever used. So it wasn’t for you, but I don’t think you did it justice in your comments.

Thanks Nicoole for another great video! I was just curious why you did not use the "Zotero Integration" plugin for Obsidian to deal with annotations and links to them. For me this was the reason to switch to Zotero for my PDFs. And "ich wünsche Dir Glück!"

Why not just use Obsidian Zotero plugin? It has most of the functionalities you mentioned

Regarding DEVONthink I’ve been very successful and satisfied with “indexing” my Obsidian vault folder. DT has good built-in Markdown-friendly annotation features with backlinks to the original PDF. After annotation/note-taking, I save the annotation markdown file into the Obsidian folder and archive the PDF separately. Works great. On the other hand you are spot on regarding slow and fiddly cloud syncing with the iOS app. Nicole, thanks for the excellent video. Your efforts are much appreciated.

Simply amazing. Been looking for something like this for ages!

Great video.

Great video! I just started using Zotero for academics in order to use the tagging system as well, and still trying to figure out how to merge it better with Obsidian. This gives me some good ideas!

I have a question, when you configure zotero to your online drive, do you put it in the same folder as your Obsidian vault or a different folder?

Also - with your comment of 'checked against another computer'... the setting up of Zotero isn't covered well in this vid - if you are a new user/database. I think many will need more help there - directly or with some links to Zotero sources - especially in building the 'linked' database, and not the local hard drive as so many instructors show...

... So your suggestions are?

Hey I know that youre doing whats comfortable for you, but this is just my personal opinion and its definitely subjective and I don't know if others agree:
For me it's very hard to watch your content due to colors. The combination of frontal+back lighting is very hard on my eyes, and paired with very bright hair color, it gets really hard at times.
I still watch because your content is great! But I can't say it's enjoyable viewing experience. I'm not saying this in a bad manner, just pointing out something that could maybe be improved.

What Obsidian theme are you using? Looks nice!

What about Bookends instead of Zotero? I find more solid and Apple oriented.

marginote is a good choice, but only for MacOS

This video was the reason i switched to zotero. I also have a huge collection of pdfs inside complex folder system, and adding them manually would be hell. Though I find more smooth way to export highlights to obsidian with obsidian-zotero plugin and biblex addon in zotero. It automatically add links, so you don’t have to manually edit links. There is one problem though. Pdf drawings on pdf inside zotero app on iPad doesn’t exports. Though I think there is the way to get these drawings outside exported pdf - because ipad software can manipulate with these drawings - so there must be the way to extract them, and export, let’s say, to excalidraw. So thanks again for this marvellous video!

Hi Nicole, I saw once that there is a limit in the volume of documents on zotero, no?
If yes this is quite important in your evaluation, no?

Have you tried the zotero plug in for obsidian. It pulls your annotations in without having to do all the steps in zotero. You just us a hotkey

Thank you so much!
I work with Evernote. Obsidian is difficult for my "hard" brain!🙃
Is there an instruction for linking Notes in Zotero PDF's with Evernote?
I thank in advance ! Marco from Botucatu, Brazil

I think your take on Devonthink is very fair. I'm a fan of Devonthink, but I don't use it across multiple computers, so it's pretty much local only, and I have a use case for it.

thank you for your videos. I just started moving all my notes to Obsidian and have been binging your videos..

logseq is the best

Porque seu obsidian está em português?

A fellow digital information hoarder. Thought I was the only one sitting over here with 17GB of eBooks and 72GB of wallpapers. 😬

Hi, thank you so much for the video. My only suggestion is to use the Zotero plugin integration in Obsidian; this would make the task much easier.

I also "somehow" have ended up with many PDFs 😆

Adoro seus vídeos! Este é exatamente o que eu estava procurando para pdf de artigos científicos! <<Respondendo em pt-br depois de ver a sua template do Obsidian =)>>

Hi Nicole, what is the Obsidian theme you use? It is so pretty!!
And your videos are really clear and concise!
Thank you so much!

I had this question of how to process PDFs in Obsidian. I now realise that Readwise is the best option for my needs, so far at least. Thank you for the detailed overview, Nicole!

What is the first tool you use? When you show the PDF chart?

Do you know of a solution to link from PDF to Notes?

What is the name of this red theme? Thanks.

One more option if you’re into this kind of thing is Emacs+pdftools. It can do (literally) anything you want if you have the time to hack it up

Obsidian should be more and better plugins integrations with Zotero. These tools are amazing and should be only one app

How can i refresh the pdfs folder after adding new files

Wow, your video was so extremely helpful. Thank you!

Hi Nicole. Great video. Is there a work around for Mendeley instead of Zotero? Thank you in advance.

So it's unlikely you'll see this, but I also use espanso and I use the following to pop a form where I paste from Zutilo and use the shell extension to do the string replacement. You'd have to adjust to work on mac.

- trigger: ";zot.lnk"
replace: "{{opnlnk}}"
vars:
- name: "zotlnkform"
type: form
params:
layout: |
Fix [[link]]
- name: "opnlnk"
type: shell
params:
cmd: "'zotero://open-pdf/library/items/{0}?page=1' -f '{{zotlnkform.link}}'.split('/')[-1]"
shell: powershell

Thanks for the detailed comparison, much appreciated!

A question on Zotero: What happens if you rename or move the PDF files in our Dropbox folder? Will the Zotero links be broken, or is there some sort of re-index so that it can re-discover the PDFs under their new path?

I´m using FOX IT PDF READER, and it´s pretty complete!!!

Have you figured out how to get the Links for Zotero PDF´s to work on your android phone as well?

Thank you!

Você fala português?

Que legal!

Obsidian é muito bom.

I use obsidian and pdf++, to classify i simple do an index note and drags books related to that note subject, not as much flexible as tagging ...but i have no need for that i dont handle too many gb of pdfs so i guess those index notes are more than enough for me, its like library reference cards after all. You could also to a note per pdf as a note registry and add tags to it, it would work for your data view and direct access to the book. And you do everthing inside obsidian of course if pdf++ annotation is enough

Great review, thank you!

Great video, very well organized. It really helped to understand the possibilities.

Thank you so much for this fascinating video, it really helps a lot! But it seems that these plugins didn't suit for the newest version of Zotero 7?