In-app Browser
Scholardo has a browser built in. Not to save you a window switch, but to make web pages first-class citizens — things that can enter your library and be seen by your agent.
When it comes up
The in-app browser opens automatically when you:
- Click an external link in a preview window (PDF / web page / EPUB / note)
- Click a web link in an agent's reply
- Open a
.weblocbookmark file - Choose "Open URL in browser" in Feeds
It's a tab in the middle pane, alongside every other preview window.
The toolbar
| Button | Does |
|---|---|
| Save page to Sources / Docs | Extract the article body as Markdown into Docs |
| Save bookmark to Sources / Docs | Save just the link, as a .webloc |
| Share this page with AI | Give the agent the page's contents |
| Open in default browser | Hand off to the system browser |
Back / forward / reload / stop are as you'd expect.
Saving a page
Save page doesn't archive a snapshot — it extracts the article body, dropping navigation, ads, and sidebar recommendations, and converts what's left to Markdown in Docs.
What's saved that way can be indexed, searched semantically, and read by agents — the same pool as your PDFs.
Extraction failures degrade visibly
On unusually structured pages, body extraction can fail. Scholardo then falls back to the page's plain text and marks the result as degraded. Degraded output is never quietly filed into Docs — Scholardo tells you the extraction was poor and leaves the decision to you.
Sharing the current page with AI
With Share this page with AI on, the agent can read what you're looking at over MCP (tool web_page_context, resource scholardo://active/web-page-context).
That makes questions like "how does this method differ from the one in that paper in my library?" possible — the agent sees both your screen and your library.
Click again to stop sharing. Sharing is explicit and under your control; it isn't on by default.
Annotating web pages
Pages opened in the in-app browser can be highlighted and annotated like a PDF, and the annotations collect in Highlights. Anchoring is by text selector and can break when a page is redesigned — see Annotations.
Interactive mode
Local HTML previews run no scripts by default — the page is static. When you need a page's interactive components (a live chart, a demo), turn on Toggle interactive mode in the toolbar.
Off by default for safety: HTML files you downloaded can carry arbitrary scripts.
Commercial databases
The in-app browser can't get past aggressive bot detection
Elsevier, Wiley, and other commercial databases deploy DataDome / Akamai-style bot detection. The in-app browser (WKWebView) gets blocked on those sites — a structural limitation, not a fixable bug.
The workflow that does work:
- Sign in with your institutional account in Safari or Chrome
- Find the paper and get the direct PDF link
- Back in Scholardo, import it via Docs → From Web…
Or simply download the PDF in the system browser and drag it into Docs.
Preprint servers (arXiv, bioRxiv), open-access journals, and most lab pages and blogs have no such problem.
Popups and external protocols
When a page tries to open an external protocol such as mailto:, Scholardo asks first rather than launching another app outright.
See also
- Docs — Papers & Documents — where saved pages land
- Preview Windows — how browser tabs relate to other preview windows