Annotate and highlight text and videos
What you need: Web browser (not Firefox); Android or IOS Time required: 10 minutes
As you browse the web, you may often come across content that you want to read or view later, or even return to regularly. Bookmarking is a great way to save websites or pages, but if you’d like to return to a particular section, paragraph or sentence on a site, or even a specific moment in a video, you need something capable of capturing more detail. Liner is the perfect tool. It effectively works as a highlighter pen for the internet that you can use on all your devices. Here, we explain how to make the most of it.
STEP 1 Go to http://getliner.com and sign up for a Liner account. You can sign in with an existing Google, Apple, Facebook or Twitter account, or set up a new account. Once that’s done you’ll see the For You page, where you’ll see a ‘Just one last step’ box at the top. Here, click the link to the relevant browser extension 1 if you use a Chrome-based browser (such as Chrome, Edge, Brave or Opera) or Safari on macos. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with Firefox. Once the extension is installed go through the introductory tutorials. You’ll be prompted to choose topics you’re likely to highlight so Liner can share relevant highlights from other users on the For You page 2 , but if you can’t see anything you like, simply choose a random selection.
STEP 2 Once the extension is installed, browse the web as normal. If you see a piece of text you’d like to save for later, highlight it with your cursor in the normal way (left-clicking at the start of the text, keeping the mouse button held down, and dragging to the end of the text 1 ). Release the button and the text will be selected as usual with a Liner icon at the end 2 . Click this, ignoring the coloured circles that also appear 3 , to highlight the text in yellow. The other colours are only available to paying customers, which costs $95 (around £68) per year. Most people will find the free version is more than sufficient for their needs.
STEP 3 Whenever you revisit the web page that contains your highlighted text, click one of the yellow dots 1 next to the scroll bar to go straight to it. Click your highlight 2 to see a number of options. Paid-for users can change the colour 3 , but free users can add a comment 4 , share the highlight via Slack (if you use it) 5 , or share it via several other services (such as Facebook and Twitter or by copying a link) 6 . If you no longer need it, click the bin icon 7 to remove it.
STEP 4 Return to the Liner website and click My Highlights
1 on the left to see your highlights 2 . They will be listed in the order they were created, with the most recent ones at the top. Multiple highlights from the same web page will be grouped under the title of that page 3 . Any comments you’ve made will be displayed below the highlighted text 4 . If you intend to collect a lot of highlights, you can organise them using tags. Click the Edit Tag link 5 and type any relevant keywords that will help you find the highlight later. This can also be used to group similar highlights. You can then choose to list your highlights by their Tags 6 . Click Highlights 7
to return to a chronological ordering.
STEP Share or Export highlights by clicking the appropriate 5 icon 1 (the Export option lets you save the highlights as a Word, Onenote, Evernote or text file). Click the menu button 2 for more options that let you edit the title of the page, click through to the original or delete it 3 . If you hover your cursor over a highlight, you’ll see a grey tick in the top-right corner 4 . This lets you select one or more highlights so you can manage them as a group. Once you’ve made your selection, Export, ‘Add tags’ and ‘Move to trash’ icons 5 will appear where the search bar was previously.
STEP 6 Liner has recently introduced a tool that lets you highlight moments in Youtube videos. While watching a video in a browser with the extension installed, hover over the video’s progress bar at the point you want to highlight. Click the teardrop icon 1 and enter a comment 2 (optional). Highlights sit on the progress bar as yellow markers, so you can go back and edit or delete them later. When you return to the Liner website, the video highlights will be listed alongside the text highlights in the My Highlights section.
STEP 7 Liner has Android ( www.snipca.com/39365) and IOS apps ( www.snipca.com/39366), which let you access your highlights on your phone or tablet. It doesn’t integrate with the browser you use, but instead installs a bespoke browser on to your device, which takes you straight to http://getliner.com when you open the app. From here, use the bookmark icon 1 at the bottom of the screen to access the My Highlights page. To add a new highlight, navigate to the relevant web page, then select text by long-pressing one word and adjusting it to cover everything you want to include. Finally, tap the Liner icon next to the selection. Use the Liner icon top right 2 to return to the My Highlights page.