Sidenote

• Summarise with citations: TL;DR bullets, a tight standard summary, or a structured deep-read of the whole document. Every key point carries a numbered chip that scrolls to its source, and your first document summarises itself so you see the product working immediately.
• Chat with citations: ask anything about the document and watch the answer stream in. Click a citation chip and the page jumps to the highlighted passage, and a cited-passage card in the panel shows the exact quote with the cited lines marked, a Show on page button, and one-click save to notes.
• Ask follow-ups faster: suggested follow-up questions appear under each answer, one tap each.
• Explain simply: select a dense passage and have it rewritten at the reading level you choose, from plain language to expert, without losing accuracy.
• Build a glossary: jargon, acronyms and proper nouns defined from the passages where they appear, each definition cited back to its context.
• Study from any document: turn it into a study pack of flashcards and a self-marking quiz, with every card citing the passage it came from (paid plans, in the dashboard).
• Listen instead of reading: summaries, chat answers and explanations can be read aloud.
• Dictate your questions: a microphone button turns your speech into text on your device.
• Save highlights as notes: right-click any quote to keep it with your own comment and a jump back to its exact spot, then search your notes across quotes and comments alike.
• Find in the document: search inside the open document and jump to every occurrence with the same scroll-and-highlight as a citation. Nearby repeats share one row, so the match count means distinct places in the document.
• Search your library by meaning: find saved documents by what they say, not just their titles, with stars, tags and filters to keep a growing library organised.
• Ask your whole library: a question box that answers across everything you've saved, not just the open document, and each citation names the document it came from and opens it (Pro and above).
• Collections: group documents from different tools into one workspace and ask a single question across all of them; the answer cites which document said what. In the dashboard, turn a collection into a verified research report with click-to-highlight citations, or an answer grid that puts up to 8 questions to every document at once (paid plans).
• Share what you found: send a summary, a chat thread, a single answer or a glossary as a link that shows a frozen snapshot, with per-link view counts and one-click revoke.
• Answer in your language: summaries, chat, explanations and glossaries in any of 17 languages, including Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Hindi and Arabic, while quoted passages stay in their original wording so citations still match the document.
• Right-click anywhere: Explain selection, Ask about it, Save highlight, or Summarise this page, straight from the context menu.
• Export everything: summaries, chat threads and glossaries as Markdown or CSV, or one combined export pack per document, delivered through the browser's download manager.
• Know where you stand: usage meters on Chat and Summarise show how much of your monthly allowance is left, and calibrated progress bars estimate how long a build will take.

WHO IT'S FOR

• Students: summarise lecture slides and textbook chapters, build glossaries for a new subject, turn readings into flashcards and quizzes, and revise from cited notes instead of rereading everything.
• Researchers and academics: get through papers faster, keep a cited trail from claim to source, search your reading by meaning, and put one question to a whole collection of literature.
• Analysts, lawyers and consultants: pull the load-bearing clauses out of contracts and reports, verify every AI claim against the document before it goes into your own work, and export cited summaries colleagues can check.
• Teams: share collections, reports and cited answers, index the team wiki, and stop paying for a separate AI seat inside every tool you use.
• Non-native readers: have a dense document explained at a gentler reading level, get answers in your own language, and listen to summaries and explanations read aloud.

WHY SIDENOTE IS DIFFERENT

• Citation-first by design: the model is required to cite the passages it used, and the server checks every quoted citation against the document before you see it. A claim the source does not support loses its citation, and if the document doesn't answer your question, Sidenote says so plainly. No silent hallucinations.
• Citations that actually land: the highlighter opens collapsed sections to reach a passage, sees through modern web-component pages, survives pages that change after you save them, and waits to confirm the passage is really on screen before calling it done. On YouTube the citation is a timestamp; in a PDF it is the exact sentence on the exact page.
• One assistant across every tool: most AI add-ons are locked to a single platform and sold per seat. Sidenote reads your PDFs, your email, your wikis and your cloud documents from one place, for one subscription.

PRIVATE BY DESIGN

• We never train AI models on your documents, and analytics never runs on your signed-in dashboard.
• Data is stored in a UK region and encrypted at rest. Connected accounts are read-only, and disconnecting one deletes its tokens immediately.
• You choose retention per document: keep it to re-open later, or have it deleted within 24 hours.
• Delete your account and every stored document yourself, any time, from the dashboard.
• Sign in with a magic link. No passwords, no third-party trackers, no ads.

WHAT'S NEW IN 3.0

• A reworked citation engine: clicks now pay off on web-component sites, in the built-in PDF viewer, from documents opened out of your library, and on pages that changed since you saved them.
• A cited-passage card on every citation click, so the click is useful even where the page itself can't be highlighted.
• Sign-in-protected PDFs load through your existing browser session.
• Read-aloud on answers and explanations, follow-up question chips, usage meters, and a first document that summarises itself.

COMMON QUESTIONS Q: Does it work on scanned PDFs and photocopies? A: Yes. OCR is built in, so a scanned contract, an old paper or a photographed handout becomes searchable text, and its citations still point at the right place on the page.

Q: Do the citations really point at the source? A: Yes, and they are checked. The server verifies every quoted citation against the document before you see it, a claim the source does not support loses its citation, and clicking a chip scrolls to and highlights the passage on the page. If nothing in the document answers your question, Sidenote tells you that instead of guessing.

Q: Is there a free plan? A: Yes, free forever: a monthly allowance of documents, summaries, cited chat turns, explanations and glossaries. The 7-day Pro trial unlocks everything with no card required.

Q: Will my documents be used to train an AI model? A: No, never. Your data is stored encrypted in a UK region, connected accounts are read-only, and you can delete individual documents or your whole account yourself at any time.

Q: Does it work on documents behind a sign-in? A: Yes, for pages and PDFs you can already open in your browser. Sidenote reads them through your existing session, and nothing is captured until you explicitly load a document with the panel open.

Q: What languages can it answer in? A: 17: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Hindi and Arabic. Quoted passages stay in the original language so citations still match the document.

Q: Which browsers does it work in? A: Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Firefox, plus the web dashboard at getsidenote.app. Your library, notes and collections stay in sync through your account.

GET MORE FROM SIDENOTE

• Reopen a document and the panel remembers the tool you last used on it.
• Pause Sidenote on sites you never want it to read, per site.
• Select several library documents at once to tag, export or delete them together.
• Choose a light, dark or system theme, and drive the whole panel from the keyboard.

TRY IT BEFORE YOU SIGN IN Open the side panel and a guided demo runs on a sample document before you create an account: a cited summary, scripted questions and a glossary, with real click-to-highlight citations. When you sign in, everything you save syncs to a full web dashboard at getsidenote.app with the same viewer, citations, collections, sharing and exports.

PRICING

• Free forever: a monthly allowance of documents, summaries, cited chat turns, explanations and glossaries.
• 7-day Pro trial: every feature, no card required.
• Pro plans from £10/month: higher monthly limits, multi-document collections and saved thread history. The top tiers unlock our most capable model and bigger uploads.

Full limits: https://getsidenote.app/pricing

QUESTIONS OR FEEDBACK We read everything: [email protected]

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