How to Use the Tools Menu in the PDF Reader

The Tools menu holds four of Helperbird's reading tools inside the PDF Reader, so you can use them on your document without opening the extension.

The four are Immersive Reader, Translate, Summarize and Screenshot Reader. These menu actions require Helperbird Pro and an open document. See how to open the PDF Reader.

What the Tools Menu Is

The menu is the round dots-grid button labelled More options. It is separate from PDF Tools, which shows or hides the page-search and zoom bar.

Choose the Whole Page or One Passage

Decide how much of the document you want to work with before you open the menu.

• The whole page. Do nothing. Helperbird uses all the text on the page you are reading.
• One passage. Highlight the sentence or paragraph with your mouse first. Immersive Reader, Translate and Summarize then use only what you highlighted.

Highlighting is worth doing when you need one section, or when a page is too long to send in one go.

Open the Menu

Click the More options button. The menu opens underneath it with the four tools listed, and closes on its own once you choose one.

What Each Tool Does

Immersive Reader opens the page, or your highlighted text, in a clean reading view. You can have it read aloud, change the text size and spacing, and use the picture dictionary. See how to use Immersive Reader.

Translate opens the same text in Immersive Reader with translation already switched on, in the language you have saved. There is nothing to set up inside the reader. See how to translate PDFs.

Summarize gives you a short summary of the page, so you can see what a long document covers before you read it. See how to summarize text.

Screenshot Reader pulls the text out of a picture. Drag a box over part of the page and Helperbird returns what is inside it. Words and equations come back together in reading order, and there is no mode to pick. Where the result goes follows your Screenshot Reader settings. Use it when your PDF is a scan, so the page looks like text but cannot be selected or read aloud. See how to use Screenshot Reader.

When a Tool Will Not Run

"Open a PDF first" means the reader is still empty. Load a document with the Open PDF button in the top right, then try again.

"Select some text first" means Immersive Reader or Translate could not find any text on the page. This almost always means the PDF is a scan rather than real text. Use Screenshot Reader from the same menu to pull the text out first.

"Can't summarize this page" means the same thing when you chose Summarize.

If you see a Pro notice, check your subscription in Helperbird Settings. If a reading service rejects the amount of text, select a shorter passage and retry. The page-search tool does not send the whole PDF to these services.

Related Guides

• Open the PDF Reader - Get the reader open and a file loaded.
• Read a PDF and take notes - Pages, the text to speech player, and the Notepad.
• Using the PDF Reader - What every button in the toolbar does.
• Immersive Reader - Read anything in a clean, distraction-free view.
• Screenshot Reader - Pull text out of scans and images.

Need Additional Help?

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