How to Upload, Highlight, and Summarize PDFs in the Glasp Mobile App

Reading PDFs on a phone often means your highlights stay stuck in a viewer app. That makes them harder to find and use when you return to your computer.

With Glasp, you can upload a PDF, highlight important text, take notes, and generate a summary from the mobile app. Your PDFs, highlights, and notes sync with your desktop when you use the same Glasp account.

Step 1: Upload a PDF from your phone

Open the Glasp app, tap Profile in the bottom bar, and select the PDFs tab. If the tab is empty, it shows No PDFs yet. Tap + Upload PDF to add one.

The standard iOS Files picker opens in the Browse view. You can browse Recently Used, Favorites, locations such as On My iPhone and iCloud Drive, or your tags.

Open Downloads, or the folder where you saved the PDF, and tap the PDF file you want to upload.

Glasp returns to your profile and shows Uploading... while it adds the file.

These screenshots show iOS. On Android, the same flow uses the Android file picker instead of the Files app.

Step 2: Open the PDF

When the upload finishes, the PDF appears as a card in the PDFs tab with its title, author, and date.

Tap the card to open the PDF in Glasp. The bottom bar gives you access to Highlight, Community, Reader, Summary, Chat, and More.

Step 3: Highlight and take notes

Press and drag across the text you want to save. A palette appears with pink, yellow, green, and blue, along with an X button for deleting the highlight and a pencil icon for adding a note.

Tap the pencil icon to open the Highlight note sheet. Enter your note and tap Save to attach it to the highlight.

Your saved highlights and notes appear in the Highlights & Notes panel under Highlight.

Step 4: Summarize the PDF or ask questions

Tap Summary in the PDF view to generate an AI summary of the document. The summary comes back as a list of key points, and Copy puts the whole thing on your clipboard so you can paste it into a note.

Tap Chat to ask questions about the PDF instead. Type your question into Ask about this page... and send it. Use it to clarify a section, pull out the key takeaways, or find something without scrolling through every page.

Read the PDF as plain text

Tap Reader to strip the page layout away and read the text in a single column. This is easier on a phone screen than a scanned page layout, and you can still highlight and add notes while you are in Reader.

Share, save, or remove a PDF

Tap More in the bottom bar to open the actions for the document.

From here you can Add to Favorites, Copy page & highlights to put the text and your highlights on the clipboard, Share the document, Save PDF with highlights to export a copy with your highlights embedded, Open in Browser, or Remove Document to delete it from your library.

Find your PDFs later and on desktop

Return to Profile and open the PDFs tab whenever you want to reopen an uploaded PDF. Your highlights and notes remain connected to it.

PDFs, highlights, and notes sync across the Glasp web app at glasp.co, the browser extension, and the mobile app when you use the same account. A PDF uploaded on your phone is available on the web, and a PDF uploaded on the web is available in the app.

FAQs

Is the Glasp mobile app free?

Yes. The Glasp app is free to download for iOS and Android.

How many PDFs can I upload?

Free accounts can upload up to 30 PDFs. The Glasp Pro plan raises the limit.

Are uploaded PDFs private?

Yes. Uploaded PDFs are private by default. Unlike web highlights, nobody else can see them unless you change the visibility.

Does this work on Android?

Yes. The Glasp mobile app supports this PDF workflow on Android.

Do my PDFs and highlights sync with desktop?

Yes. PDFs, highlights, and notes sync across the Glasp web app, browser extension, and mobile app when you use the same account.

Can I add notes to PDF highlights?

Yes. Select text, tap the pencil icon, enter your note in the Highlight note sheet, and tap Save.

Can I summarize a PDF, and how many summaries do I get?

Yes. Open the PDF and tap Summary. The Free plan includes 3 AI summaries per day, Pro includes 1,000 per month, and Unlimited includes 5,000 per 30 days.

Can I highlight a PDF opened from Safari or a link?

For the workflow in this guide, save the PDF to the Files app first. Then upload it from the PDFs tab and highlight it in Glasp.

Can I export a PDF with my highlights in it?

Yes. Open the PDF, tap More, and choose Save PDF with highlights. You get a copy of the document with your highlights embedded.

Can I remove an uploaded PDF?

Yes. Open the PDF, tap More, and choose Remove Document.

Which file formats are supported?

Only PDF files. For web articles, YouTube videos, and Kindle books, use the other import options in the app.

Want to do more on mobile?

👉 How to Use the Glasp Mobile App on iOS, iPad, and Android

👉 How to Upload and Highlight Local PDFs on Glasp

👉 How to Highlight a PDF on Chrome

Before you leave

Thank you for reading. We hope this guide helps you keep your PDF highlights, notes, and summaries together wherever you read.

👉 Get the Glasp mobile app and upload your first PDF.

See you next time,

Glasp team