How to Highlight and Summarize Local PDFs with Glasp
Upload local PDFs, highlight key ideas, add notes, and generate AI summaries—step by step.
We’re excited to announce a new tutorial on Glasp: Highlight & Summarize Local PDF Files with Glasp
With this feature, you can upload your local PDF files directly to Glasp, highlight important passages as you read, and instantly generate AI-powered summaries. Beyond highlighting, Glasp helps you turn PDFs into reusable knowledge you can search, organize, and reuse across your tools.
Whether it’s research papers, reports, essays, or internal documents, Glasp lets you:
Highlight key passages and add notes while reading PDFs
Generate AI summaries to quickly grasp the main ideas
Export selected PDF highlights to Notion for structured databases and projects
Copy highlights into Obsidian to build long-term Markdown-based knowledge
Search only the important parts of PDFs by focusing on your highlights, not entire files
In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to upload PDFs, highlight key ideas, summarize them step by step, and reuse your highlights — so you can spend less time managing files and more time thinking.
Note: This tutorial was originally published on Glasp. Please refer to the original article for the latest updates.
🪄 How It Works
Let’s walk through how to set it up in just a few steps 👇
Step 1: Sign up for Glasp
Choose your preferred browser, such as Google Chrome, Brave, Safari, or Microsoft Edge.
In your browser’s address bar, type glasp.co and you’ll be taken directly to Glasp’s website. You can also access it using the link below.
Once you’re on the site, click Sign up (beta) and continue with your Google account.
You can sign up for Glasp with either Google Sign-in or Apple Sign-in. If you’re not an iPhone/iPad user, we strongly recommend you use Google Sign-in.
After finalizing your account, you will be redirected to the Chrome Web Store.
Step 2: Install the Glasp extension to your browser
Click Add to Chrome to install the Glasp extension.
After installing the extension, make sure to pin it to your toolbar. This makes it easier to open Glasp from the sidebar. If you’re prompted to sign in to Glasp in the sidebar, simply sign in with your account.
Step 3: Go to your Glasp profile
Once you’ve installed the Glasp extension and signed in, click the Profile icon in the sidebar to open your profile page.
This will take you to your profile page. From there, click the + button in the left sidebar.
Step 4: Upload a PDF to Glasp
When the upload modal opens, drag and drop your PDF file into the area, or click Select Files to upload it from your device.
Select a PDF file from your computer to upload.
After selecting a PDF file, click Upload PDF Files in the modal. Your PDF will begin uploading to Glasp.
Step 5: Highlight the PDF
Once your PDF is uploaded, you’ll be taken to the page showing your uploaded PDFs.
To highlight text, select any sentence in the PDF. A popup with a four-color palette will appear—click the color you’d like to use.
To view all your highlights, click Highlights in the top-right corner.
You can also add notes to each highlight. Click the pencil icon in the popup to write your note.
Glasp is built around sharing knowledge publicly, so highlights from web content are usually visible to others. However, PDFs you upload and highlight in Glasp are saved privately and are not visible to anyone else.
Step 6: Summarize the PDF
To generate an AI summary of the PDF, click Summarize PDF in the top-right corner.
It may take a few seconds for the summary to appear.
(Optional) Step 7: Delete highlights or PDF
To delete a highlight, click the highlighted text in the PDF. A popup will appear—click the X icon in the color palette to remove the highlight.
To delete an uploaded PDF, go to the page showing all your uploaded PDFs.
Select the PDF, click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, and choose Delete.
To delete highlights from your Glasp profile, go to your profile page and select the PDF. Click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, then choose Delete to remove the highlights.
Glasp isn’t just for local PDFs. You can also highlight and annotate PDFs hosted on the web, making it easy to capture insights from research papers, reports, and shared documents.
You can then reuse your PDF highlights across your workflow — export selected highlights to Notion, or copy and paste them into Obsidian for long-term knowledge building.
If you haven’t already, sign up for Glasp and start turning PDFs into connected, reusable knowledge.
💡Pro Tips
Glasp also supports highlighting PDFs hosted on the web. This is perfect for academic papers, public reports, and shared PDF links.
To get started, check out the tutorial below:
👉 How to Highlight a PDF on Chrome
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Thank you for reading. If you prefer to watch a tutorial in the video, please follow the link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTHOW2NN-hw
The private storage for uploaded PDFs is smart positioning here. Most highlighter tools either keep everything public or paywall privacy entirely. The direct export to Notion/Obsidian is clutch for people who actually maintain knoweldge bases instead of just hoarding bookmarks. One thing I'm curious about tho - how does the AI summary quality compare when working with highly technical PDFs vs more general content?