---
title: "04 The Highlighter"
canonical_url: https://mdflow.cz/share/c/h0L7MvX5Cy5sST3qPnApqHOmrQ36JTVy169qJMtDMya9Kc30zm04cg9OuPSSPwvj/466d2aba-91b7-4325-b55f-0cd310785c03
md_url: https://mdflow.cz/share/c/h0L7MvX5Cy5sST3qPnApqHOmrQ36JTVy169qJMtDMya9Kc30zm04cg9OuPSSPwvj/466d2aba-91b7-4325-b55f-0cd310785c03.md
visibility: public
---

# Web Clipper: The Highlighter

Highlight web pages in your browser the way you would mark up a book — then clip only what you marked.

## Highlighting

You can highlight:

- **Text** — a selection.
- **Individual elements** — a paragraph, a code block, an image.
- **Entire pages.**

Toggle highlighter mode with its keyboard shortcut, or start from the right-click menu.

**Undo and redo** work while you highlight.

## Highlights persist

Highlights **survive reloads and repeat visits**. Come back to the page next week and your marks are still there.

They are stored **locally in your browser**, not in MDflow. Which means: they do not sync between machines, and clearing your browser data removes them. **Export** them if they matter — see below.

## When highlights appear

Two modes:

- **Always show saved highlights on page load** — your marks are simply there whenever you return.
- **Only while highlighter mode is active** — the page reads normally, and your marks appear when you ask.

## Getting highlights into a clip

Three options control how highlights are saved:

| Option | Result |
| --- | --- |
| **Keep them inline** | The full page content, with your highlights marked within it |
| **Replace the page content with them** | Only the highlighted passages — everything else discarded |
| **Save without highlights** | The page as normal, marks ignored |

The middle option is the interesting one. It turns a 4,000-word article into the six passages you actually wanted, in your workspace, in markdown.

## Managing highlights

A **dedicated view** lists everything you have highlighted, with:

- **Search.**
- **Sorting** by name or date.

## Deleting

Delete highlights:

- for a **page**,
- for a whole **domain**,
- or **all at once**.

## Exporting

**Export highlights to a file.**

Do this periodically if you highlight seriously. Highlights live in browser storage — they are not in your MDflow workspace unless you clipped them into a document, and they do not follow you to another machine. The export is your backup — see [09 Settings, History and Language](/doc/18e5ce0b-882b-41d3-9153-8ecfcf605e5f).

## The reading workflow

The highlighter is at its best combined with clipping (see [03 Ways to Clip](/doc/16f31233-5d90-427d-acc7-bc9e2c1b7e9a)):

1. Read the page normally.
2. Highlight the passages that matter.
3. Clip with **replace the page content with them**.
4. Add a note explaining why you saved it.

The result is a short document of exactly the parts you cared about — far more useful than an archived copy of a page you will never re-read in full, and far better material for an AI agent than 4,000 words of which six sentences mattered.