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Milton

v1.0.0-beta.12: Big PDF Update

v1.0.0-beta.12 is our biggest PDF release yet. A new PDF engine, annotations, tab groups, and a "live PDF" experience that finally feels instant — plus citation export gets a proper home.

New Features 🚀

  • Citation export, redesigned: A unified Bibliography + Machine-readable export dialog. Pick a style, copy/export your references, and manage your style library — favorites, recents, and defaults all in one place.

  • PDF annotations: Highlight, underline, strike-through, and squiggle anywhere in a PDF. Pick a color, drag to create, click to edit, and full undo/redo support. Annotations sync to your library and persist across sessions.

  • Tab groups: Organize open tabs into named groups (think Heptabase). Switch groups in one click and keep different research threads neatly separated. The old "pinned" tabs auto-migrate into a default Pinned group.

  • New PDF engine: We swapped the PDF viewer for EmbedPDF (PDFium-backed). Sharper rendering, faster page loads, and a much more capable foundation for everything we want to do next.

  • Clickable internal links in PDFs: Citations and cross-references inside a PDF now act as proper links. Hover any link to see a canvas-rendered preview of the destination page before you jump.

  • Search inside the current view: Hit search while inside a project, collection, or PDF and Milton highlights matches in scope — no more being yanked back to the full library.

Improvements 🎨

  • Live PDFs — no flash on tab switch: Switching between PDF tabs is now instant. No reload, no white flash, no auto-scroll. Your scroll position, page, and zoom are preserved exactly across tab switches and app restarts.

  • Per-tab sidebar memory: Each tab now remembers its own side-panel state (notes, info, related). Switching tabs doesn't blow away what you had open.

  • Drag-and-drop tab reordering: Reorder tabs in the sidebar by dragging. Drop tabs across sections to pin/unpin them. Drag tab groups in the switcher to reorder.

  • "Move tab" menu: Right-click any tab to move it to another group, or create a new group inline without leaving the menu.

  • Auto-fill from PDF: Import a PDF without a DOI and Milton now reads embedded metadata and falls back to a CrossRef title search to fill in the rest.

  • PDF analysis quota: Free plan now includes 7 PDF analyses per 7 days. Counted server-side, refreshes on a rolling window.

Bug Fixes 🐛

  • Drag cursor: The cursor now correctly shows "grabbing" on the dragged tab clone and its descendants while reordering.

  • Tab focus during DnD: Fixed a case where dragging the active tab into a hidden group could leave focus in a weird state.

  • PDF text-selection color: Selection now uses Milton's brand blue so it stops clashing with annotations.

  • And many other small bugs fixed.

bug fix

Published by Pierre Jacquel