Rectoly Is Now on Windows and Mac
Rectoly for Mendeley and Rectoly for Zotero now run on Windows and Mac, and one purchase covers your computer, tablet and phone. Here is what the desktop versions do, what they do not do, and what they cost.
Rectoly started as an iPad reader for Mendeley and Zotero libraries. As of September 21, both editions also run on Windows and Mac, and a single purchase now covers every device you sign in on.
This is the plain version of what shipped: what the desktop app is for, what it does with your annotations, and what it costs. The product page at rectoly.com/desktop has the recordings.
What It Is, and What It Is Not
Rectoly is a reader. It signs in to your Mendeley or Zotero account, brings your library onto the computer, and opens each paper in a view built for reading closely rather than for showing a page. It is not a reference manager and does not try to become one. Your library stays where it is, and everything you mark in Rectoly is written back as an ordinary Mendeley or Zotero annotation.
Both Mendeley and Zotero have capable PDF readers on the desktop, and for a lot of reading they are enough. Rectoly is for the work that happens between the PDF and your draft: the close reading, the comparing, and the pulling out of what you will cite. On a computer, that is also where you write, so that is where we put it.
Read: The Paper, Laid Out Again for a Screen
Two columns are made for print. Rectoly reads the structure of the paper and lays it out again as one column, with figures where they are first mentioned, equations at full width, and page headers and footers gone. The reflowed text sits on one side and the real PDF page on the other, following along as you read. One click takes you to the same spot in the PDF.
A few things follow from that:
- Open a second paper beside the first, each with its own page, zoom and notes. Or open the same
paper twice: the text here, the figures there.
- Click or hover over a citation like [12] and the reference behind it appears where you are. A
mention of Fig. 3 brings the figure to you instead of sending you scrolling back.
- When a PDF comes without bookmarks, Rectoly estimates an outline from the paper itself, and says
that it did.
Think: Your Notes, Across Every Paper
You can highlight, underline, add notes and write by hand directly on the reflowed text, without going back to the two-column page just to mark a sentence. Every mark is placed at its real position in the PDF, so it syncs to Mendeley or Zotero like any other annotation.
Because the notes are on the computer, they can be searched together. One search covers the full text and the annotations of every paper on the machine, and each hit opens at its page. Rectoly can also pull the Methods, Results, Limitations and other sections out of many papers into one table, a row per paper. That uses the structure already in the PDF: there is no AI and nothing is uploaded.
For longer projects there are research themes. Each one is a plain Markdown note for one research question, open beside the paper. A shortcut sends a passage to it, fragments can be dragged between Claims, Evidence and Objections, and pressing Enter on a fragment jumps back to the sentence it came from.
Write It Up: Handed to Wherever You Write
Rectoly is not one more editor. Its job ends when what you read reaches what you write, whether that is Word, LaTeX, Obsidian or your reference manager.
- Copy from the reflowed text and the printed page number comes along: p. 312, not page 5 of the
PDF. The BibTeX entry and the citation key are one click away.
- Export your highlights as Markdown grouped by the sections of the paper, each quote with its
citation key and page number. A CSL-JSON file goes with it for other tools.
- Export every figure as a PNG and every table as a CSV, for one paper or a whole shelf. A copied
table pastes into Excel as cells, not as a picture.
- Export a research theme as Markdown or a Word file, with a reference list built from the papers
you quoted. Or let Rectoly keep one note per paper in your Obsidian folder, named by citation key.
- Open the .docx, .odt or Markdown file you are writing next to the paper you are reading. The
preview follows every save.
- Send the notes of a paper back to Mendeley or Zotero as a note on the item, or export a PDF with
your highlights and handwriting drawn in, which anyone can open.
Handwriting From Your Tablet, on Your Computer
If you read with a stylus on the iPad, the strokes now appear in Rectoly on Windows or Mac, in the same place on the page. How they get there depends on the library, and the difference matters.
With Zotero, handwriting on the PDF page syncs as a Zotero ink annotation, so it shows in Zotero's own reader too. Handwriting on the reflowed text has no page coordinates and does not become a Zotero annotation. Rectoly carries it itself and draws it on the same text in Rectoly on your other devices.
Mendeley's annotation format has no type for handwriting at all. Rectoly for Mendeley stores the strokes with the paper and carries them from one Rectoly device to the next, so they appear on your computer. They do not appear in Mendeley's own viewer, and no update to Rectoly can change that.
Highlights, notes and sticky notes sync as regular annotations in both libraries, as before. The details are in What Zotero Does With Your Annotations on iPad and How to Annotate Mendeley PDFs on iPad.
Also in This Release: WebDAV for Zotero
If your Zotero attachments are synced through a WebDAV server rather than Zotero Storage, Rectoly now works with that setup, on every platform. This was the change Zotero users asked for most often, and the reason some of you could not try Rectoly until now.
Price, and What Is Included
- Free for 14 days, with every feature open. Then a one-time purchase: $49.99 for Rectoly for
Mendeley, $19.99 for Rectoly for Zotero. No subscription.
- Buy once and it unlocks on every device where you sign in with the same Mendeley or Zotero
account: Windows, Mac, iPad and iPhone. If you already bought Rectoly on the iPad or iPhone, the Windows and Mac versions are included. Sign in and they unlock.
- The two editions are separate apps, and each is bought on its own.
- Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), including Windows 11 on Arm. macOS 14.6 or later, on Apple silicon or
Intel. Both download from rectoly.com/desktop.
- Purchases on the website go through Paddle. If you are buying for a university or research
institute, enter its name, address and tax number at the checkout and the invoice and receipt are made out to it. Website purchases can be refunded in full within 14 days.
- There is no Linux version. Android, for phones, tablets and E Ink devices, is planned for
October 2026.
Where to Start
Download from rectoly.com/desktop, sign in with the account your library lives in, and open a two-column paper. Reading Mode is the first thing to try. Everything else follows from it.
If something does not work the way this post says it does, we would rather hear about it than have you find out later. The help page has the ways to reach us.