How to Highlight Text on Any Website

What This Does

Select text, pick a color, and the text stays marked.

Every highlight you make is saved. Come back to the same page next week and your marks are still there.

Who is This For?

This feature helps if:

• You study from web pages and need to find the important lines again
• You research across many pages and want the useful parts in one place
• You read better when you mark up the text
• You sort information by color
• You return to the same reference pages often

How to Turn On the Highlight Menu

1. Click the Helperbird icon in your browser toolbar.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the menu and open All Features.
3. Find Highlight Menu in the list.
4. Turn its toggle on.

Now select text on a page. A small menu appears next to your selection.

That menu holds more than the highlighter. Read aloud, dictionary, web search, Immersive Reader and translate all sit in the same bar. The Highlight Menu guide covers every button in it.

How to Highlight Text

1. Select the words you want to mark.
2. Click the Highlighter button in the menu.
3. Pick a color. There are six: Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, Gray and Purple.

The text takes that color straight away. Select more text to add another highlight, in the same color or a different one.

Making a highlight is a Helperbird Pro feature. On the free plan the menu still opens and the six colors still appear, and clicking one shows a note about Pro.

The six colors in the menu are fixed. The Highlight color control in the Colors panel does not change them. Its toggle turns your saved highlights on and off, the same as the Highlights toggle. See Helperbird color features.

Where Your Highlights Go

Every highlight is saved to Notes as well as painted on the page.

Click a highlight, or press Enter or Space when it has focus, and Notes opens in a new tab. From Notes you can export what you have gathered as a PDF or as plain text.

Clicking a highlight does not remove it. You delete a highlight in Notes.

Your saved highlights keep appearing even when the Highlight Menu toggle is off. The menu is only how you make new ones. To take the color off the screen without deleting anything, use the Highlights toggle. That toggle is a Helperbird Pro feature. See how to hide your highlights.

Limits and Browser Support

Your highlights come back when you open the same web address. Links that carry extra text after a question mark, such as tracking links and search result links, can count as a different address. When that happens the marks do not appear.

By default your highlights follow you to the browsers you are signed in to. If you have turned Sync off in Helperbird's settings, they stay on this device. See how to sync your Helperbird settings.

Storage space can run out. If it fills up, Helperbird saves to this device instead. If that is full too, the highlight is not saved.

Video Tutorial

Related Guides

• Word spotlight - A yellow highlight that follows your mouse and saves nothing.
• The Highlight Menu - Every button in the selection bar, not only the highlighter.
• Highlight words as they are read aloud - Word highlighting that follows the voice.
• Notes - Where your highlights collect and how to export them.
• Hide your highlights - Clear the color from the screen without deleting it.

Need Additional Help?

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please contact the Helperbird support team. You can reach us at Helperbird support. We are happy to help you get the most out of Helperbird.