The Okular sidebar provides a searchable list of annotations added to a PDF.
Annotations that contain text (text fields, inline and popup notes) have that text appear on the sidebar, which means that this text can be searched.
However, when text in the PDF is highlighted, the content of the highlighted text isn’t visible in the sidebar and therefore can’t be searched:
The request is to have highlighted text show up in the Annotations sidebar in a similar way to other annotations. This would make it possible for the user to search for highlighted texts.
I’m not familiar with the development needs to implement this. If anyone has any idea, please reply with your suggestion for a fair price to sponsor this.
sune
May 26, 2026, 6:57am
2
I think you’re in luck.
merged for 26.08 - if you have the ability to test Okular master somehow, confirming it would be nice.
I’m sure the KDE eV would love a donation
Probably available in the Flatpak nightly.
We are also building "nightly" versions of most KDE applications and distributing them at cdn.kde.org/flatpak. Nightly versions build the latest source code of the application, so expect some unstable development quirks; on the bright side, if you...
Yes! Just tried it on my end and it’s 90% of what I wanted from this functionality. What’s the best way to sponsor this work?
ETA: Thanks for the suggestion, donation sent
sune
May 27, 2026, 9:40am
6
Given that this feature has already landed, I think just a donation is the best way.
Or use your money to sponsor something else.
I’m at least happy to review some changes like that another item.
