Brilliant for converting, compressing, merging and signing - all of which transform the file. Sidenote leaves the file alone and answers questions about its contents instead, with a citation that scrolls to the exact passage, scanned documents included.
For PDFs
AI for PDFs - even the scanned ones.
Sidenote is a browser extension (Chrome, Edge and Firefox) that reads any PDF you open, including scanned, image-only PDFs via OCR. Summarize it, chat with it, ask it anything. Every answer cites the exact passage and scrolls the document straight to it. You read and question the PDF, not just convert it.
Reads PDFs in the browser · Scanned PDFs via OCR · Upload optional
Sidenote
Service Agreement · scanned
Image-only PDF - no text layer
OCR complete · text extracted
§8 Termination. Either party may terminate this Agreement on thirty (30) days' written notice to the other party. Any such notice shall be deemed delivered two (2) business days after posting by recorded mail.
Sidenote
How much notice to terminate?
Either party can terminate on 30 days' written notice1, and a posted notice counts as delivered two business days after it's sent2.
The problem
The answer is in the PDF. Reading all of it isn't the plan.
PDFs are where the important things live: contracts, reports, papers, datasheets, policies. And they're the format least built to be questioned. Search finds a word, not an answer. And the moment a document is scanned, even search gives up: it's a picture, not text.
Sidenote reads the PDF for you, running OCR on scanned pages when it needs to, and answers in your browser, on the file you already have open, with a citation you can click to scroll straight to the source.
How it works
How Sidenote works on a PDF.
STEP 01
Open the PDF - or upload it.
Open any PDF in a browser tab and Sidenote reads it in place from the side panel. Got a file on your computer? Upload it to the web app instead. No conversion, no reformatting.
STEP 02
Scanned? OCR runs automatically.
If a page is an image with no real text, Sidenote runs OCR to extract it first - so a scanned contract or photographed report becomes just as answerable as a born-digital file.
STEP 03
Ask, then click a citation.
Ask the question you'd ask a colleague. Every answer is grounded in quoted passages - click a citation and Sidenote scrolls the PDF to the exact spot and highlights it.
Working through a stack of files? Bundle them into a collection and query several PDFs at once - citations name the source document and passage. Mostly reading papers rather than contracts? See Sidenote for research papers. Prefer the head-on pitch? See chat with documents.
Use cases
What people ask a PDF - and how Sidenote answers.
“What does this contract say about termination?”
Sidenote reads the PDF you've opened and quotes the exact clause - then scrolls you to it so you can read the surrounding context yourself.
“Summarize this scanned report.”
A scanned, image-only PDF isn't searchable text. Sidenote runs OCR first, then summarizes, so even a photographed document becomes answerable.
“Explain this research paper in plain English.”
Dense methods sections become a short, cited explanation. Click any claim to jump to the figure or paragraph it came from.
“What are the key numbers in this datasheet?”
Pulls the spec or figure you asked for and points at the row it sits in - no scrolling through forty pages to find it.
“Does this policy actually cover my case?”
Reads the PDF and quotes the clause that applies. If nothing in the document supports an answer, Sidenote says so rather than guessing.
“Give me the TL;DR of this 80-page PDF.”
A long PDF becomes a short, cited summary - every line links back to the page and passage it was drawn from.
Scanned PDFs
Yes, it reads scanned PDFs too.
A scanned PDF is a stack of page images with no machine-readable text underneath, which is why you can't select it, search it or paste it into a chatbot. Sidenote runs OCR to lift the text out of those images first, then summarizes and answers over it like any other document, citations included. OCR is a paid feature, included in the 7-day trial.
Photographed contracts, old reports, faxed forms.
If you can read it with your eyes, Sidenote can usually OCR it and answer questions about it. And because every answer is checked against the extracted text, anything the document doesn't actually support gets dropped before it reaches you.
Compared
Read and question - not just convert.
Most PDF tools change the file. Sidenote reads it. That's a different job - and the one you actually need when the question is “what does this say?”
Copy-paste loses the layout and the source - and scanned PDFs won't copy at all. Sidenote ingests the document in place (OCR and all), checks every answer against the retrieved passages, and links each claim back to where it came from.
Just want the gist of one file? Sidenote turns a long PDF into a short, cited brief, and every claim is tied to a citation you can verify in one click. Weighing Sidenote against Acrobat's own AI assistant specifically? Read Sidenote vs Adobe Acrobat AI.
Private by design
Your documents stay yours.
A PDF is only ever read once you open it or upload it: there's no background crawl and no copy of every file sitting on someone else's server. Your documents are used to answer your own questions and nothing else.
Stored in your account, isolated per user.
Document text lives behind row-level security in our UK (eu-west-2) Supabase region - your content stays scoped to your account. Anthropic and Voyage AI both run with no-training defaults on the API tiers we use; we never fine-tune models on user content.
FAQ
Common questions about Sidenote for PDFs.
Try it on your next PDF
Make any PDF answer back.
Add Sidenote to your browser, open a PDF (scanned or not) and ask it anything. Every answer scrolls you to the source. Free tier forever, opt-in 7-day Pro trial, no card required.
Reads PDFs in the browser · Scanned PDFs via OCR · Upload optional