Your Zotero papers on the tablet, your marks back in Zotero.
Tag a paper in Zotero or search it from Obsidian, and its PDF is on your reMarkable. Read it, highlight it, write in the margin. Sync: the note in your vault quotes every mark and links to the Zotero item. With Pro the same marks appear in Zotero as native annotations. No script, no Python, no Zotero plugin.
How do I send a Zotero PDF to my reMarkable?
Send Zotero PDF to reMarkable… is the one-paper way: type half a title, an
author or a year into the search, pick the paper, and its PDF is uploaded. Send
tagged Zotero papers to reMarkable is the batch: give any number of papers the tag
to-remarkable in Zotero — the name is a setting, change it if you like — and one
command uploads all of them, skipping the ones that are already there and saying so.
Either way the PDF lands in a Zotero folder on the tablet, without a tag. The
plugin never puts a tag on a document for you; when you want the paper back in your vault,
you give it your sync tag on the tablet. Nothing is written into Zotero by sending, and the
tag you set there stays where you put it.
Does sending write to my tablet?
No. “Sync never writes to your tablet” is older than the Zotero feature and it still holds. A sync — the one you start, the one that runs on a schedule — reads the tablet and writes the vault, and touches nothing on the device. Sending is a separate command with your finger on it: it adds one file per paper and does nothing else. It cannot change, delete, move or rename anything, because the code that uploads has no way to; the transport it uses can only add.
How does the note in Obsidian know which paper it is?
After the sync, the note for a paper carries the Zotero key in its frontmatter, a link to the item and one to your web library, and the digest of quotes that every annotated PDF gets. This half is free: switch zotero.org on under Settings → Zotero, paste an API key, done. No licence, no desktop app.
A PDF that reached the tablet some other way — dragged in from a browser, sent by a script — is matched to your library by its file hash. Where two papers fit, the plugin asks once and remembers; where none does, the note simply has no Zotero line.
How do my marks get into Zotero? (Pro)
With Tagged Sync Pro the same sync writes what you marked into the Zotero item as native annotations: highlights and underlines with the passage they cover, a margin note as the annotation's comment. The colour you used arrives as the nearest of Zotero's eight, so the Paper Pro's pastel highlighters keep their names. Your edits in Zotero win over a later sync; a highlight you erase on the tablet goes to Zotero's trash, unless you edited it there.
Pro also opens a second connection: the Zotero 10 desktop app on your own machine, through its local API, so reading and writing never leave your computer. And it lets you switch on group libraries by name — with the warning the setting carries, that a highlight written into a group is visible to everyone in it.
Pro is €24 once, after a 14-day trial that needs no card.
What does the Zotero side not do?
- Zotero 10. That is the version the plugin was built and tested against; the desktop connection uses an API that only Zotero 10 has.
- PDF attachments only. An EPUB item or an HTML snapshot in Zotero is not sent, and highlights from an EPUB on the tablet do not go back into Zotero.
- Ink stays in the vault. Your handwriting never leaves your machine, so a drawing in the margin is not sent to Zotero. A margin note reaches Zotero as the text it was transcribed into, and only with write-back on.
- Two PDFs on one item. The one-paper command asks which; the tag command names the paper in its notice and leaves it for the one that asks.
This part is in the plugin itself.
Sending a paper and the note knowing which paper it is cost nothing. Pro is for the way back into Zotero — €24 once, if you ever want it.
Desktop only — Obsidian for Mac, Windows or Linux. Doesn't open? See it on obsidian.md, or in Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → search Tagged Sync.