Alternative to Weava
A Weava alternative for highlighting without the research suite.
Weava is built for academic research: highlight web pages and PDFs, sort highlights into folders, generate citations, and collaborate, with a free tier and a Premium subscription for more storage and features. Selection Toolbar is lighter. It is a toolbar that appears beside any text you select, and highlighting is one of its actions: press H, the passage is marked in colour and restored on your next visit, and a side panel lists your highlights with a note on each, ready to copy or download as Markdown.
If you came here for
The things people say they miss when they look for a replacement.
- Highlight quickly on ordinary web pages without a project to set up first.
- A note attached to the highlight, written in place.
- A list of everything you highlighted, grouped by page, with the source link.
- Markdown export for the notes app you already use.
- No storage limit on the free tier.
Side by side
| What | Weava | Selection Toolbar |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A research tool: highlights, folders, citations, PDF support, collaboration. | A toolbar on selected text; highlighting, notes and export are one part of it alongside copy, search, translate and AI hand-offs. |
| Highlighting | Colours, folders and sub-folders, on web pages and PDFs. | Four colours, one key, restored on every visit, grouped by page in the side panel. |
| Notes | Notes on highlights and folders. | A note on each highlight, edited in the panel. |
| Citations | Generated in several styles. | Not generated; every export carries the page title and its link. |
| Where your data lives | Weava's account, with storage limits by plan. | Your browser's extension storage, no limit on the number of highlights. Premium syncs it across your browsers if you want that. |
| Price | Free tier; Premium subscription for more. | Free. Premium, $19 a year or $59 once, adds sync across devices, exports and search; nothing that is free today moves behind it. |
Facts about Weava are as published by its maker at the time of writing; tell us if one is out of date.
Not here
So you do not install it for the wrong reason.
- No folders or projects; the panel groups highlights by page and searches their text and notes.
- No citation generator.
- No PDF highlighting yet.
- No collaboration. Sync is a paid extra, Premium, not part of the free tier.
How it works
Three keys cover most of it.
- 1Select text on any page. The bar appears beside it. Press H to highlight; the picker under the bar changes the colour or removes it.
- 2Press Alt Shift H for the panel: this page, all pages, search, and a note on each highlight.
- 3Export copies or downloads everything as Markdown: a heading per page linking to the source, a quote per highlight, your note under it.
Questions
Can I organise highlights into folders?
Not in this version. The panel groups them by page, newest page first, and the search box filters by quote, note, title and address. Saving pages themselves into named collections is what the companion extension, Collections, does.
What does the Markdown export look like?
A heading per page linking to its address, a blockquote per highlight in reading order, and your note as the paragraph under it. It pastes cleanly into Obsidian, Notion or any text editor.
Is it free?
Yes. Highlights, notes, the panel and Markdown export are free with no account. Sync across devices is the first paid extra, Premium; nothing that is free today moves behind it.
Where do my highlights live?
In your browser's own extension storage, on your machine. Nothing is uploaded unless you later choose to sign in and turn on sync.
Try it on this page.
Install, come back, select a sentence, press H. It is highlighted the next time you open this page.