Polar icon
Polar icon

Polar

 73 likes

Polar is a powerful desktop app for managing all your web content, books, and notes. Polar keeps all your content in one place, supports tagging, annotation, highlighting and keeps track of your reading progress.

Captured HTML content available for offline viewing at any time.
Document repository for tagging and managing your documents.
Page annotation including pagemarks, comments, and flashcards.

License model

  • FreemiumProprietary

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows  Windows requires you to manually accept that the app is a new app and hasn't yet earned reputation.
  • Linux
  • Chrome OS
  • Electron / Atom Shell
Discontinued

The website and GitHub repository are unavailable, and the last update on Snapcraft is from March 2020.

3.8 / 5 Avg rating (22)
73likes
22comments
0news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features
  1.  PDF annotation
  2.  Cloud Sync
  3.  Built-in viewer
  4.  Offline Reading
  5.  Save web page for offline use
  6.  Text Highlighting
  7.  Technical paper notes
  8.  Tagging
  9.  Learn with Flashcards
  10.  Document Annotations
  11.  Document Repository
  12.  Capture web pages
  13.  Book Manager
  14.  Web-Based
  15.  Website annotation
  16.  Export to PDF

 Tags

Polar News & Activities

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Comments and Reviews

   
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Comment summary: Polar receives praise for its features such as Incremental Reading support, document storage, tracking, and a strong AI flashcard feature. However, users criticize its transition from open to closed source as a bait-and-switch tactic, privacy issues, and bugs affecting responsiveness. Despite its potential as a productivity tool, concerns about tracking, monetization changes, and lack of technical support are notable. Users appreciate development activity but remain wary of privacy implications.
Top Positive Comment
RemovedUser
Apr 9, 2021
0

This has become my go-to software for reading on my laptop. Absolutely love the AI flashcard feature.

Top Negative Comment
Norton
Apr 29, 2019
20

The initial acceptance terms upon installing this made me uninstall it immediately without bothering to try it. Too much tracking for my liking. Felt like I was about to use one of those nasty intrusive Google apps! I don't care how much organisations promise not to use identifiable information etc. They are, at least, very open about tracking you, but I don't want any snooping whatsoever. Particularly for a database application in which I'm like to be storing sensitive information. What I do on my computer is private.

Reference T&C screenshot https://imgur.com/fUeXRsR

RemovedUser
Nov 9, 2022
0

I was rather excited about it when it initially came out and have used it for a while.

But as it stands, there's a major privacy issue that the owner is not looking to address (as others have reported), it changed from an open source app to a closed source one, the technical support is not great, and the abrupt way that they decided to monetise the app really alienated their user base.

One can only hope that this will sometime return to its former approach, but there's very little hope in that sense. Overall, it feels like a botched solution which I cannot recommend at all.

hex111
Aug 27, 2021
3

Its so sad to read all the features. This is like the exact thing i wish i was using for the last few years (instead of scattering notes all over), but its like notion and one note, can't touch it without feeling like with every thought I'm feeding a machine.

I would be desperately happy to pay a subscription if all these features were open source, independently audited, and did everything to empower the users freedom and privacy. Its not even paranoia its just irresponsible to give more power to those who have abused it at every turn.

heleyo4596
Jun 22, 2021
4

Polar is not an open source solution. The developer only initially claimed to be open source to get initial traction. Initially only the client was partially open source but now they are fully closed source. The repo has been archived. See https://github.com/burtonator/polar-bookshelf Also got it confirmed in Discord.

Dont trust these folks for the bait and switch. Who knows what they will do next.

Maxim Kamalov
Mar 18, 2021
2

There's no button to delete your account.

Maalo
Nov 23, 2019
12

It isn't free if "free" means that less than half of its features are usable, and at the same time, it fully tracks you in the use of the application, plus bugs like not connecting to internet for syncing neither in the desktop application nor in the browser extension.

[Edited by Maalo, November 23]

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What is Polar?

Polar is a powerful desktop app for managing all your web content, books, and notes. Polar keeps all your content in one place, supports tagging, annotation, highlighting and keeps track of your reading progress.

POLAR allows you to keep all your documents, annotations, and flashcards in once place. Never lose track of what you're reading again. Annotate documents directly while reading them and sync with spaced repetition systems like Anki so you never forget an important fact ever again.

Official Links

Polar information

  • Developed by

    Kevin Burton
  • Licensing

    Proprietary (GPL-3.0) and Freemium product.
  • Pricing

    Subscription ranging between $5 and $15 per month + free version with limited functionality.
  • Written in

  • Rating

    Average rating of 3.8 (22 ratings)
  • Alternatives

    51 alternatives listed
  • Supported Languages

    • English

AlternativeTo Categories

News & BooksOffice & ProductivityEducation & ReferenceWeb Browsers

GitHub repository

  •  4,445 Stars
  •  272 Forks
  •  966 Open Issues
  •   Updated May 13, 2022 

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Our users have written 22 comments and reviews about Polar, and it has gotten 73 likes

Polar was added to AlternativeTo by Kevin Burton on Oct 2, 2018 and this page was last updated Sep 28, 2023.