Category: mobile

Mendeley refocusing announcement: mobile app retirement

kristinblye

[Editor’s Note: We’ve updated this 2021 post to include a current link for sharing your input about mobile functionality for Mendeley.]

At Mendeley, we aim to help researchers work even more efficiently so they can spend their time making discoveries. Sometimes this means withdrawing lesser used products from service to allow us to focus on those products that are used by more of the Mendeley Community.

Users of the mobile app were informed on 10 February 2021 that the app would be withdrawn from the App Store and Google Play on 15 March and that they would no longer be able to sign in to the app.

While we understand that some users do indeed value the native Mendeley mobile apps, unfortunately overall usage figures show us that this feature does not support the majority of Mendeley users in the way that we had hoped. In line with our continued aim to support researchers as effectively as we can, discontinuing the mobile app will mean we can focus on the solutions that the majority of our users tell us they value most. This includes making improvements to Mendeley Reference Manager, Mendeley Cite and Mendeley Web Importer.

As Laura Thomson, Senior Director of Product Management explains, “Our team’s mission to develop solutions that most effectively support researchers means that we sometimes have to make some hard decisions about where we can focus our efforts. We’re really excited about our plans for 2021 and look forward to bringing researchers new and improved ways to simplify their workloads.”

In order to continue the use of their Mendeley library, app users are advised to sync their library to the cloud in advance of 15 March, 2021. Users can then access their library on Mendeley Reference Manager web or desktop application.

Offline reading is available for Mendeley Reference Manager web, more information can be found here.

Your experience matters

If you are a regular user of Mendeley on mobile devices, we would be interested to understand more about how you use it via this feedback form. This information will help us to improve the mobile experience on the main applications. While we will be unable to respond individually, your message will be reviewed by our team and suggestions may be incorporated in future releases of Mendeley Reference Manager or Mendeley Cite. Provide feedback.

2 New Reasons to Love Mendeley on your mobile

Christine

mendeley-mobile-suggest-copy

Did you know you can access your Mendeley library on your mobile and tablet? I often ask users, like yourself, this question and more often than not, people are surprised. Once in a while, someone tells me they would love to use our app, but are concerned about using too much storage space. When you try Mendeley for your mobile, you will discover you don’t have to worry about this. You choose what PDFs you keep on your mobile device, and the rest of the library will consist of your metadata only.

We’ve just launched a few exciting new features that make this the perfect time to get the app (if you don’t have it yet!).

Suggested Articles

When a friend or colleague tells you about that amazing new paper you absolutely must read, I hope the first thing you do is add it to your Mendeley library. Staying on top of new (and established) research in your field is tough, with so much being published every day. Our Mendeley mobile apps want to work alongside your friends, and also recommend content that you might be interested in. We’ve launched Mendeley Suggest on both Android and iOS, and this is where you can browse recommended articles that are based on the contents of your library. User feedback is incredibly important to us as we continue developing these features, so let us know what you’d like to see in the future!

Mendeley Profile

You go to conferences to absorb new knowledge, see what is happening in your field, but also to network. Meeting people doing interesting research doesn’t end there, and with your Mendeley Profile you can open the door to meeting more of those people. We’re now making it easier to update vital information on your profile by letting you do it from the mobile apps. It’s always nice to have a face to a name, so take a photo and add it to your Mendeley profile straight from your mobile!

mendeley-mobile-profile

Always improving

We’ve been, and continue to be, very busy in the mobile team. Both the Android and iOS app have seen new features and improvements since being launched. Sometimes these are under the hood, but sometimes they are visual. We’re working on improving our UI and as a consequence, always give you a better experience. If you’ve been using Mendeley on your mobile for a while, you’ll notice we’ve introduced some new colors and an improved navigation menu as well in the last release.

We’re all very proud of these new features and improvements on mobile, but they are just the beginning. We continue to collect feedback and we will continue expanding on these new features and functionalities in upcoming releases. In the mean time, enjoy using Mendeley on your mobile!

Christine is a product manager for mobile, covering iOS and Android apps. She loves all things tech and research, and you can chat with her directly on Twitter @christine_phd

Mendeley for Android – 3 month review

stevedennis

It’s been 3 months since we launched Mendeley for Android on Google Play.  The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive, with over one thousand 5-star reviews, and an average rating of 4.61.  Thank you all so much for helping to spread the word.

Screenshot 2015-09-17 16.11.18

In our launch announcement, we let you know what was coming up next, and now just wanted to quickly recap with the work we’ve done, the stuff we’re doing now, and where we’re going in future.

We’ve had 4 feature releases in 3 months, and we’re very happy with our ability to keep the pace up, respond to feedback, and give everyone the App we know they need. Here’s the major additions and changes from v1.0 to v1.4 (released today):

Recently Read (v1.4)

Earlier this year we rolled out a new Recently Read filter in Mendeley Desktop & iOS, to allow you to much more easily start reading on one device, and then continue reading directly where you left off on another device. This is now available on Android, and will be available in the web App in the next month or so.

The recently read list stores up to 20 recently read documents, including the page number and the position you last scrolled to in the document. It works offline too, just remember to press sync when you have an internet connection again.

SD Card storage (v1.4)

In Settings, you’ll find a new experimental setting to allow you to choose between storing downloaded PDFs on your device, or on external storage such as an SD card. We have limited devices here for testing (all Samsung), so please be aware that there may still be issues.

Note: Currently SD card storage is only available in Android KitKat and above, due to limitations in the older Android APIs.

Edit document notes (v1.3)

The Notes tab on a document will now let you tap in it and start typing straight away. Select words or phrases to add bold, italics, or underlines for emphasis. All your notes will be synced to the cloud automatically.

Sync all files setting (v1.2)

Overwhelmingly our top feature request after v1.0 was released. In Settings, you’ll find a new setting called Sync all files. When this is enabled, when you press sync the app will attempt to download all available PDF files that have not yet been downloaded. This has been asked for by a lot of you, but please be aware this could initially take a long time, use a lot of data, and take up a lot of storage space on your device. So please do this on a wifi connection if possible.

Jump to page (v1.1)

When scrolling a PDF you will now see an indicator in the bottom left telling you which page you’re on, and how many pages are in the document.

Tap on this indicator and type in the number of a page, to jump directly to it.

Stability

We’ve been keeping a careful eye on crashes, and fixing them as quickly as we can.  We have an internal target , which is to ensure that 98% of users in any given time period have not seen a crash.  This is really just our “warning sign” level though, and it’s quite a low bar. In reality, we’re trending at around 99.5%, and try to keep this as close to 100% as we can.

Stability graph

And more…

  • Remove from folder
  • Prompt to sign in again if password has been changed
  • Added tags to search index
  • A ton of bug fixes

The future

For the last couple of months we’ve been running an experiment in open roadmaps. We’ve created a public roadmap on Trello that you can check at any time, and see the status of the major features we’re working on now, what’s planned for the next release, and what’s planned for 1-3 months after that.  Subscribe to cards to see when they change status, comment, or vote.

It’s still an experiment, but we’re hoping everyone appreciates the transparency, and that it allows us to work together with the community to make better products.

In the sort term, we’re working on adding in folder management features, better filtering by tag, and metadata fetching improvements.

 

iOS 2.7 – It's all about search

stevedennis

MendeleyiOS2.7

We’ve been working on overhauling our search features in Mendeley for iOS for the last couple of month. With Mendeley 2.7 now available on the app store, you can get your hands on these improvements today! Here’s a rundown of what’s new:

Filter by tag

We’ve integrated tag filtering into the search interface.

  1. Start typing a search term into the search box.
  2. If that term matches the name of a tag, the matching tag will display as a suggestion above the search results
  3. Tap the suggested tag, and you’ll see a list of all documents with that tag

This works in folders or groups, and the filter will only show documents from the folder you’re in (and it’s subfolders) or the group you are in, just like regular search results.  Searching from the main screen searches “All documents”.  We are planning to add other suggested filters into this in the future, such as authors or publications.

Recent searches

Once you’ve searched a couple of times, you may notice that when you select the search box, it will display your last 4 recent search terms, or recent tag filters.  These are only saved on your device, so they’ll be cleared if you reset your database or switch to a new device.  Recent searches are only available on iOS 8 and above.

Search indexing improvements

In addition to the above, we also put a lot of effort into making the search indexing quicker and more efficient.  Previously, users with medium or large libraries may have noticed that search did not return any results after doing a first sync, or if you were unable to sync successfully for some reason.

We’ve completely overhauled the way we handle search (with some great tips from Apple at WWDC this year), and users that previously had these problems should find the search much better to use.

Let us know what you think!

Have a play with the new version, and leave us a rating or a review on the App store.  We love to hear what people think of the App, and it really does help spread the word about Mendeley.

You can look forward to more updates in the near future, thanks!

Introducing: Recently Read

stevedennis

recently_read_blog

We’re happy to announce the release of Recently Read, our newest feature to help you get the most out of Mendeley on any device.

The new ‘Recently Read’ feature saves your reading position for your 20 most recently read PDFs across your iOS and Desktop devices. If you start reading a paper on your Desktop, you can easily finish reading it on your tablet on the couch later, or even on your phone while you’re on the bus.

Even if you only use Mendeley on one device, it’s still a great way to pick up where you left off between sessions.

We are initially launching Recently Read on Win/Mac/Linux in Mendeley Desktop (v1.14), and iOS (v2.6) which are both available to download today. Mendeley for Android, and our Web Library will be implementing the feature in the coming months.

We hope you enjoy it, and would love to hear what you think in the comments below. Please help spread the word, and contact support@mendeley.com if you encounter any bugs or issues. Thanks a lot.

These releases also bring a few new features and fixes for each platform that you’re sure to enjoy too:

Mendeley Desktop 1.14
– DOI lookups are now better quality than they’ve ever been.
– Tabs are displayed in full-screen on MacOS
– and more…

Mendeley iOS 2.6
– New users can create a free account directly in the app
– Profile cards for authors of notes/highlights in private groups
– Top crashes resolved
– Misc fixes for issues with sync, tags, and folders

The Mendeley you love – Now on Android

stevedennis

You’ve been asking for it for a long time, and it’s finally here. Starting today you can download Mendeley for Android from Google Play for your tablet or phone.

Over the last year, we’ve been working with a small internal team alongside users from our passionate Android community to bring you a great experience for reading, annotating, and managing your research wherever you are.

Features include:

  • Read & annotate PDFs
  • Sync annotations & documents across all your devices
  • Save PDFs to your Mendeley library from other apps or your web browser
  • Use Mendeley offline during your commute, and sync when you have connection
  • Search your library for keywords in the Title, Authors, Publication or Abstract
  • Edit document details (Title, Authors, Publication details, etc…)
  • Download or remove PDFs on demand, to easily manage device storage space
  • All features are available on your Tablet or Phone
  • Free!

GooglePlay

 

Highlights & notes

The biggest failing of the third party Mendeley apps available previously, was the lack of synced annotations with Mendeley Desktop.  Addressing this was our top priority when starting the project.

AnnotateAndroid

Creating highlights or notes is currently done via text selection.

  1. Tap-and-hold on a PDF to select the text you want to annotate.
  2. Adjust the selection to your liking.
  3. Tap the “Add note” or “Add highlight” buttons that appear in the top toolbar to start annotating.  Adding a note will also highlight the selected text at the same time.
  4. If you’ve added notes or highlights while offline, remember to sync them next time you’re connected to see them on Mendeley Desktop.

We will be improving on and adding more flexible ways to create annotations, including better stylus support, and more efficient interfaces for adding multiple annotations quickly.

 

 Add documents to your library

We know there’s a very slight possibility that not everyone you collaborate with uses Mendeley yet, so maybe from time-to-time, you might get a PDF emailed to you instead of shared in a Mendeley Private group.  No problem! You can add PDFs from email clients, browsers, or other apps to your Mendeley library

AddPDF

  1. Tap on a PDF in your downloads folder, or a link to a PDF in your browser
  2. Select Open with Mendeley
  3. Mendeley will download it and attempt to find matching details for the document
    1. If details are found, it will prompt you to check them, before saving the document to your library.
    2. If no details are found, you’ll be prompted to enter the details manually.
  4. Tap the ‘Done’ icon in the top left to save.

You can also add references manually from the home screen by tapping the action overflow icon (3 dots) in the top right and selecting Add Document.  The menu button is the equivalent if you’re on a Samsung device.

Tip: Select ‘Recently Added’ from the library overview to easily find any documents you’ve added in the last 2 weeks.

 

What’s next?

We’re very proud of what the team has been able to produce in the last year, but this is only the beginning. There’s a lot left to build, and a lot to tweak based on your usage and valuable feedback.  We had to drop some valuable features from scope in order to make our release date (folder management, as one example), but we are aiming to iterate quickly and be as transparent as possible about what we’re working on as we add these features.

We’ll be taking a few weeks to react to any major issues found during the launch, and then we’ll be working on the following things:

  • Remember previous page position for PDFs
  • Folder management
  • Editable document notes
  • Sync all files setting
  • ‘Recently Read’ filter
  • Improvements to fetching details
  • Much more!

We’ve carved out the first few weeks just for reacting to critical issues, sync errors, crashes etc, so if you experience anything, please report the error to our support team using the feedback mechanisms in the app (Settings > Support).  You can also go there to suggest or vote on upcoming features.

So please, spread the word, let us know what you think, and rate the app on the Google Play store.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Mendeley for Android – Launching in June!

stevedennis25 Comments

MendeleyAndroidAnnouncement

It’s finally happening.  This June (three short months from now) we will be launching the first version of Mendeley for Android! We’ve done everything we can to ensure that we’ve built an app that sets a new standard for quality in the world of Android reference management apps.

Features

  • Read, highlight & annotate PDFs from anywhere
  • Sync annotations & documents across all your devices
  • Browse your Mendeley library and groups online or offline
  • Search your library for keywords in the Title, Authors, Publication or Abstract
  • Save PDFs to your Mendeley library from other apps or your web browser
  • Edit document details (Title, Authors, Publication details, etc…)
  • Download or remove PDFs on demand, to easily manage device storage space
  • All features are available on your Tablet or Phone
  • Fully compatible with Android Lollipop (supports Jellybean 4.1.2 and above)
  • Plus it’s FREE!

Design & Quality

When we set out over a year ago to create this Android app, our goal was to create an app that felt fully at home on your Android device, but was consistent enough with our iOS app to enable us to develop features quickly and easily across both platforms.  Like our other apps, we aimed for a clean, professional feeling design that fades into the background and lets you focus on the content as you work or study.

MendeleyAndroidScreens1

We’ll be busy finishing up and testing the final bits and pieces over the next couple of months, with the help of our 40 amazing beta testers.  Here’s what some of them have been saying:

 “Finally a free, robust, clean, simple and efficient application, the piece that was lacking in the reference management family. It takes academic productivity to another level.”

photoJorge Sinval
Researcher / Double PhD Student

“What makes having Mendeley on Android so significant for me, is that for the first time since I started my career I don’t have to print out papers to be able to read them. Reading them on a tablet works great, especially now that we can also highlight text.”

photo-1Dr. Jan Aerts
Assistant Professor

We know waiting is hard, but we can’t wait to get it into your hands and hear what you think.  Remember, this is only the beginning.  We have a bunch of great mobile improvements planned for later in the year on both iOS and Android.

Watch for the release announcement in June here on the blog, or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus.

iOS Update – iPhone 6 Plus & more

stevedennis

Mendeley iOS Update available now

Mendeley for iOS has just been updated featuring a flexible interface that can adapt to any iPhone or iPad size and screen orientation, allowing you to fully utilise the beautiful 5.5 inch screen of the iPhone 6 Plus.

All iOS users benefit from this upgrade though. iPhones of any type can now use the entire application in landscape mode. Icons and text weights have been given a bit of polish to make the app feel cleaner, and more consistent with the upcoming Mendeley for Android.

Mendeley for iOS in Landscape mode

The PDF reader has had numerous bug fixes and performance improvements, laying the foundation for more reading and annotation improvements that we will be sharing with you throughout the year.

We’ve fixed a few things that had unfortunately broken in the previous release, including sync options, sort orders, and reading positions not being remembered when they should, as well as common crashes and sync errors.

Mendeley 2.5 for iOS is available now on the app store.

If you have any problems, please send a request to our helpful support team at support@mendeley.com. If you like what we’re doing, leave us a review on the app store, or use the hashtag #Mendeley on Twitter. (it’s like our bat signal).

Release notes

  • Full iPhone 6+ support
  • Landscape mode now available on iPhone
  • Improved icons and font weights across the app
  • Improved PDF reading experience & fullscreen mode
  • ‘Define’ words now works offline and uses iOS dictionaries
  • Profile images show in annotations and link to the user’s Mendeley profile
  • Logging out and in as the same user no longer requires a full library re-sync
  • “Reset database” button has been added to settings, which forces a full re-sync of the library, which should resolve most common sync errors.
  • Adding a URL to a document works again
  • Sync options remember their settings again
  • Fixed multiple crashes on sync and when reading
  • And finally, the always informative ‘Misc. bugfixes’

Check the app store: Your iOS upgrade is here

Shruti Desai2 Comments

Mendeley for iOS

 

We’re happy to announce another update to Mendeley for iOS! This release helps bring our iOS app closer to your Mendeley Desktop experience, with metadata extraction. Additionally, it includes faster and more reliable sync, and several bug fixes, which takes advantage of the new Mendeley API, especially when syncing your iOS app for the first time.

The update is currently rolling out slowly on the app store, and should be available worldwide in the next few hours.

Previously, when PDFs were added from other apps, such as Safari or Mail, users would have to manually enter metadata. This new app helps you stay organised by attempting to import the correct metadata for the imported entry.

How to import documents into your Mendeley iOS library

So how do you go about importing documents into your Mendeley library from your web browser or Mail apps?

Use the Open option to open a PDF in MendeleyIt’s also possible to add documents to your library directly from an iOS device once the PDF file has been opened in another app. This can be done by using the ‘Open in’ command from within the application you use to retrieve the PDF.

To add a PDF to Mendeley which has been opened from Mail (such a file sent as an email attachment), tap the open icon in the top right of your screen. You should see Mendeley listed.

To add a PDF you’ve accessed through Safari or Chrome, tap once on the PDF whilst viewing it. The ‘Open in’ option should be displayed at the top of the view and you can select Mendeley from the list of applications.

Mendeley will attempt to retrieve document details automaticallyWhen opening a paper in Mendeley for the first time, the app will attempt to retrieve details of the paper and populate the reference automatically. This process will only take place once. Once the paper has been added to your library, it will be available on other devices or computers after syncing.

Once it’s completed importing, you’ll be able to make use of the Mendeley PDF viewer and start reading, highlighting and annotating.

As Mendeley needs an Internet connection to check a document’s details, you need to make sure you’re online when adding a document for the first time.

Want to learn more about the iOS app? Check out our handy guide “Getting started with Mendeley for iOS.”

Android

Mendeley_Android_mockup_v2So this is an iOS update, but we know you would ask if we didn’t tell you! Official Android app development is going very well, and we expect to release in the first half of this year!

 

 

 

Let us know what you think

Comment below, or, if you are having issues, please send send your activity log (located in the Settings menu) as our developers monitor and respond to them, or email support@mendeley.com.

 

 

Mendeley for iOS7

stevedennis1 Comment

Today we’re very pleased to announce the latest update to Mendeley for iOS.  This release brings a refined user interface, that is designed to feel at home on iOS7 and above, but still retains the familiarity and usability of the previous design.  It’s currently rolling out slowly on the app store, but should be available worldwide in the next few hours.

MendeleyiOS7

What’s new

  • Refined user interface
  • Look up word definitions while reading PDFs
  • PDF Filenames output correctly when exporting to other apps
  • Fixed errors when importing PDFs from other apps
  • Fixed problems where annotations sometimes wouldn’t sync, or were lost when made off-line
  • Improved sync speed and general app stability

If you like the new version, please help us out and leave a rating or review on the app store.  It helps us out immensely.

iOS Version Support

Unfortunately, this is the end of the road for our iOS5 users, so if you’re one of the few people on an iPad 1, we’re really sorry.  You’ll be able to use the previous version of the app if you have them installed already, but it’s lifespan will end later this year when we retire the old APIs that it uses.  If you can justify it, the iPad Air and iPad mini’s are worth the upgrade.

This version supports iOS6, but the number of users who have this installed has dropped significantly since iOS 7.1 was released (far quicker than we anticipated), so you can expect support for iOS6 to be phased out within the next 3-6 months, and definitely when iOS 8 is released.

What’s next?

We will continue working hard to bring you great updates, as quickly as we can manage.  We can’t get too specific yet, but we are taking all your feedback seriously, and the app will continue to improve a lot over the course of this year.

We want to make it easier to import documents to your library with metadata lookups, web importer support and the ability to manually add references and folders.  We also want to improve search and filtering options, improve annotation capabilities further, and improve the experience for users who are new to Mendeley.

Android

(Because you’d yell at us in the comments if we didn’t give an update) 😉

We’ve now hired a lead Android developer, and are still hiring additional developers for that team.  Design has been ongoing for the last couple of months, and development will begin in the next couple of weeks, and we’ll be keeping an open dialog with the community about our progress.  Please understand that we won’t be rushing out an app quickly.  This would result in a poor quality experience and no one wants that.  Based on our experience with iOS, we are expecting to deliver something towards the end of this year.