Let the beta begin!

Update: Desktop preview for Mac and Windows now available

We’ve been hard at work finalizing the new desktop apps for both Mac and PC. We know that many of you are anxiously waiting for updated desktop apps, and we are excited to get it out to all of you as soon as possible.

Where we are now:

~~We are just wrapping up internal testing and will begin sending invites out to our private beta in the next few weeks.~~ We have begun sending out invites! As before with the web app beta, we send out additional batches each day starting with those early beta volunteers to the more recent.

If you signed up and participated in the beta of the Web App launched last November, you will automatically be added to the desktop beta community.

What to expect during the beta:

Please keep in mind that your experience will be different from that of the final and public version of the app. The first phase of the beta will align all of the features that are available in the web app, including full offline support. Any changes made offline will be saved locally and automatically synced with the cloud when you come online again.

Invitees will receive a link to download the beta, which will auto-update as we push updates. You will automatically be prompted when new updates are available to install within the app. During the beta testing phase, we highly encourage you to update to the latest version, as we will frequently be adding functionality and addressing bugs.

Once this edition is available in open beta, we will begin rolling out new features across the Web, Desktop and mobile apps, including smart collections, new search engines, collaboration functionality, and more.

Our development objective in this phase was to lay the technical foundation for a next-generation reference manager. This new architecture is significantly faster than any previous ReadCube or Papers application, capable of handling even the largest reference libraries with ease. And unlike traditional reference management, the new apps have been designed from the ground up to work with the cloud to facilitate collaboration, offer more flexible ways to access and interact with your papers, enrich your library with better metadata and article-level metrics, deliver smart reading recommendations, and provide enhanced versions of PDFs. We look forward to working with and sharing exciting updates on our product roadmap with you over the coming months.

Sharing your feedback:

As a beta tester, we lean on you to provide us with detailed feedback on any issues you encounter, which in turn helps us ensure the product is ready before we release the app to everyone. We ask for your understanding ahead of time if we need to come back to get more information to troubleshoot a particular issue or clarify a feature request.

You can share feedback via [email protected] or using the in-app feedback channel via the top menu: Help > Submit Feedback.