Highlights and notes

Six-color highlighting plus rich-text notes, stored locally in the reader's browser. No accounts, no sync servers, no data leaves the device.

Readers can highlight any passage in an article in one of six colors and attach a personal note to the highlight. The data lives entirely in the reader's browser via localStorage, so there's no sign-in, no sync service, and no privacy trade-off.

How to highlight

1. Select text with the cursor or tap-hold on mobile.
2. A small popover appears with six color swatches and a "note" icon.
3. Click a swatch to highlight; click the note icon to add a note.

How notes work

Notes use a minimal rich-text editor supporting bold, italic, lists, and links. Each note is attached to a specific highlight and appears as a tooltip when the reader hovers the highlighted text, or as a full card in the reader's Notes panel.

The Notes panel

Open the reader panel and select "Notes." The panel lists every highlight and note the reader has made, grouped by article. From here they can:

• Navigate to the source paragraph.
• Edit or delete a highlight or note.
• Change a highlight's color.
• Export all notes as a single JSON file.

Export and import

All reader data (highlights, notes, preferences, reading list) can be exported from the Notes panel as a JSON file. A second reader can import that file on a different device to carry their data over. It's the only sync mechanism Project Broadsheet provides, and it's manual by design.

Where the data is stored

localStorage under the key pb-reader-data. The structure is documented in src/assets/js/reader.js. Clearing browser site data removes the highlights and notes, which is why the export option exists.

What to do next

• Reader tools overview for the full feature list.
• Text-to-speech for audio playback.
• Reading list for save-for-later.