How to Use Helperbird for Reading Long PDFs

Long PDFs are tough. Research papers, textbooks, legal documents, course readings. The text is small, the pages feel endless, and it is easy to lose your place. Helperbird's PDF Reader gives you text to speech, a notepad, drawing and text box tools, and a menu of reading tools, so you can get through a PDF without burning out.

Overview

Helperbird opens PDFs in its own reader inside your browser. The reader is a separate workspace built for documents, so it has its own set of tools rather than the ones you use on a website.

What you get in the reader is text to speech, a notepad, drawing tools, text boxes, page navigation, and a Tools menu holding Immersive Reader, Translate, Summarize and Screenshot Reader.

The website tools you may already use keep running in the reader, but not all of them can reach a PDF. A PDF page is drawn as a picture with an invisible text layer on top, so color overlays and reading rulers sit over it and work as normal, while dyslexia fonts cannot change the document's own words. If you want a different font while you read, use Immersive Reader from the Tools menu: it has its own text size, spacing, font and line focus controls, described below.

Everything in this guide works on any PDF, including PDFs in Google Drive, Google Classroom, Gmail, and PDFs you open from your computer.

Opening PDFs in Helperbird

There are a few ways to open a PDF with Helperbird.

• From Google Drive, Classroom, or Gmail, right-click the PDF and choose Open with Helperbird. Full guide: Open PDFs with Helperbird in Google products.
• From your computer, drag the PDF into a browser tab or right-click and open with your browser, then click the Helperbird icon.
• For the full walkthrough, see How to use the Helperbird PDF reader.

Once the PDF is open in Helperbird, everything else in this guide is available.

Listening to PDFs

If you are reading a long PDF, listening is often faster and less tiring than reading silently. Helperbird can read any PDF out loud.

• Highlight a paragraph and click play to hear just that section.
• Or press play with nothing selected to hear the whole page you are on.

Text to speech reads one page at a time, not the whole document. Turning to the next page stops the read, so press play again on each new page.

See How to use text to speech in Helperbird for the details. You can change the voice, speed, and language to whatever feels natural.

Tip: start the text to speech, then walk around. Listening on the move works well for long readings where you do not need to take notes.

Keeping Your Place

PDFs are where most readers lose their place. The columns, footnotes, and page breaks all make tracking hard. The reader gives you two ways to stay with the text.

Search this page. Show PDF Tools from the header, then choose the search icon. Search is a Pro tool and looks only through the page you are on. The match counter and arrows move between its matches; changing pages reruns the query on the new page.

Choose a comfortable zoom. In the same bar, use the zoom slider or minus/plus buttons, or choose Fit width or Fit page. Hide PDF Tools from the header when you want more space.

Follow the voice. Press play with nothing selected and Helperbird can highlight each word as it is spoken, scrolling to keep it on screen so your eye always has something to follow. Word highlighting needs one of your device's own voices. With a neural voice, or when you have selected text first, the page is read without it. See how to listen to a PDF.

Read one passage at a time. Select a sentence or paragraph with your mouse before you press Play. Helperbird reads only what you selected, instead of the whole page. The same is true of Immersive Reader, Translate and Summarize.

Use Immersive Reader for a calmer page. Open the Tools menu in the toolbar and choose Immersive Reader. It reformats the text in a clean window with its own controls for text size, spacing, font and line focus, and it can read aloud as well. See how to use the Tools menu.

Marking Up and Taking Notes

The reader's own toolbar has no highlighter button. You mark a PDF up by drawing on it or by typing onto it, and you write longer notes in the notepad beside it. Highlighting is a separate Pro feature called Highlight Menu, which you turn on in the popup. It does work on the PDF's text.

The notepad opens beside your PDF so you can write while you read. You can dictate into it with voice typing, check what you wrote with the grammar checker, and place the text onto the page itself.

Your notepad text is not saved. It is cleared when you close the reader or open a different PDF. Before you leave, either place the text onto the page with Add Textbox to PDF and download the PDF, or copy it somewhere else.

Highlighting is switched on from the popup rather than the reader's toolbar. Sticky notes are a separate Pro feature you turn on in the popup. They float over the page and are not written into the file, so use a text box when you need the note to survive the download. See highlighting on any website and sticky notes.

Drawing and Text Boxes

For PDFs where you need to fill in a form, mark up a diagram, or add comments, Helperbird has drawing and text box tools.

• Drawing tools on PDFs let you sketch, underline, or circle anything.
• Text boxes on PDFs let you type directly onto the page.

You can export the marked-up PDF when you are done.

A Good PDF Reading Flow

If you want a step-by-step approach for working through a long PDF, try this:

1. Open the PDF in Helperbird. See how to open the PDF Reader.
2. Open the notepad so you have somewhere to write as you go.
3. Start text to speech on the page you are reading, and follow the highlighted word if you are using one of your device's own voices. Press play again on each new page.
4. Pause when something matters and type it into the notepad, or dictate it with voice typing.
5. Circle or underline it on the page with the drawing tools, or drop a text box beside it.
6. If a page is hard going, open it in Immersive Reader from the Tools menu, or use Summarize to get the gist first.
7. Before you finish, add your notepad text to the page and download the PDF, so nothing is lost.

Work at your own pace. The reader keeps one device-local recovery session, but download your annotated PDF before opening another file or handing in your work.

Related Guides

• How to Use Helperbird for Dyslexia
• How to Use Helperbird for ADHD and Focus
• How to Use Helperbird for Writing Essays and Assignments
• How to Use Helperbird as a Teacher
• How to Use the Helperbird PDF Reader
• How to Open PDFs with Helperbird in Google Products
• How to Use Accessibility Profiles in Helperbird

Need Help?

If you are working through a long PDF and want help setting Helperbird up to make it easier, reach out to our support team. We are always happy to help.