Online highlighters: The 3 Best Solutions to Annotate the Web

Last updated on 1 March 2026

‘How am I going to find this again later?’ You may have already asked yourself this question while browsing the web. Between articles to read, searches to organize and important passages to save, reading online can quickly become a headache.

No more time for random copy-paste and bookmarks that accumulate endlessly.

Online highlighters have become essential in our digital daily life. They make it easy to organise what you have read and learned and to come back to the important parts later.

To help you decide which online highlighter to use, I tested for you three of the best online highlighters available on the market today – Glasp, Hypothesis and Web Highlights.

Needless to highlight this article itself 🙂 I propose at the end a comparative table of these three solutions to highlight everything on the screen. And if you want to go further, check out my article on Best Tools to Annotate the Web in 2026

Are you ready? Let’s go!

Highlight online web pages or PDF files

Nostalgia aside, online highlighters still have a lot of advantages over coloured markers. They allow you to work on digital documents from anywhere, provided you have an internet connection.

Digital versions of the highlighter often offer additional features

• Choice of multiple highlight colors
• Possibility to add annotations
• Organization of highlighted passages in folders or with tags
• Quick search in highlighted items
• Simplified sharing of annotations with others

There are many online services and software that offer all these options to facilitate online curation. Here are three of them. Three of the best.

Web Highlights. Highlight, take notes and organize all this

Web Highlights is an extension for Chrome. It offers a complete solution for highlighting and annotating web pages and PDFs.

It is highly rated on all evaluation sites and acclaimed for its ability to efficiently organise online readings.

Key uses of Web Highlights include highlighting text on websites and PDFs, taking notes associated with highlighting, organising and archiving important passages, and creating bookmarks to save web pages.

These features will allow you to centralize your searches and easily find essential information.

All options for easy note capture

The extension offers a choice of several highlight colours, allowing for a personalised visual organisation of the information. You can also add tags to rank highlights, making it easier to find and organise them later.

You can also create notes related to highlighted passages. The tool offers a full-text search option in highlights and notes to quickly find specific information.

As for the advantages of this solution, it is also worth mentioning the keyboard shortcuts and offline mode offered by Web Highlights.

Integration with popular tools such as Notion and Obsidian further expands the possibilities of use. By combining ease of use, advanced features and flexibility, Web Highlights is positioned as an excellent tool to improve organisation in online research and information management.

Web Highlights offers a free version that will meet most user needs. Access to all functions takes around EUR 30 per year.

Hypothesis: Collaborative annotation to share with all

Hypothesis is an open source solution web annotation that transforms online reading into a collaborative experience. This tool, which is particularly used in the educational world, makes it possible to annotate and discuss any web content directly at its source.

The system allows comments and highlights to be added to all web content, be it articles, sites, videos or PDF documents. Annotations can be enriched with tags, links and basic formatting.

Compatible with the majority of current browsers, it easily integrates with learning platforms (LMS) and supports a variety of multimedia formats, including PDF and videos. An additional asset is its free version, intended for personal use.

A platform focused on collaboration

The The collaborative dimension is at the heart of Hypothesis. The tool allows to create public or private groups to share and discuss annotations. Conversations develop directly in the context of original content, facilitating constructive exchanges and knowledge sharing. This approach is particularly relevant for theCollaborative learning.

You can design commented reading itineraries, promote online text exchanges, and measure your students’ interest in content.

The interface is intuitive, with a simple browser extension to install and use. Synchronisation of annotations is automatic, and the history of contributions is preserved in their original context.

This tool offers An interesting solution to overlay a collaboration layer on any online content.

The platform is completely free for personal use. Specific solutions are available for the education sector.

Glasp: One of the best web highlighters for all your digital readings

Glasp is another highlight extension This will turn your web browsing into a collaborative learning experience.

This solution, particularly adapted to pedagogical practices, makes it easy to capture and organise the essential content of your readings online.

At the heart of Glasp, you will find a set of classic but essential features that make it a complete content management tool. Multi-coloured highlighting applies on any web page. Here you can also add personal notes to marked passages.

The organisation of content is facilitated by a system of tags and thematic collections, while the flexibility to export to different formats (CSV, HTML, Markdown) and integration with popular tools such as Notion or Readwise ensure good interoperability.

Very practical sharing functions

What really sets Glasp apart from other web highlighters is its social dimension. The tool creates a real learning community by enabling sharing annotations between users.

You can discover passages highlighted by other members, follow people who share your interests and actively participate in a collaborative learning network.

In a pedagogical context, Glasp is really very practical. The preparation of the courses is simplified thanks to an organized collection of resources, while the sharing of annotated content with the students is done in a few clicks.

The tool allows for the creation of guided reading paths and encourages collaborative annotation. Thematic monitoring is also facilitated thanks to the system of tags and collections.

Glasp also has other premium functions that can make it a very interesting all-in-one tool. You will be able to annotate and get automatic summaries of YouTube videos or transcription and summary of audio files. Practical.

You can use Glasp for free in its basic functions. For full access, it is necessary to count around ten Euros per month.

Comparative table of online highlighters

Note: Prices and features are subject to change. Check the official websites for the latest information.