Yesterday, Ukrainian developer Readdle released a pretty big update to its PDF Expert 5 and Documents 5, apps that let you edit, annotate and manage PDFs and other documents on your iPhone and iPad.
I wanted to share a few key improvements with you quickly because the app’s now a showcase example of how iOS 8 enables a whole new level of inter-app integration.
A free update to existing owners, PDF Expert 5.2 features a number of enhancements, including a few iOS 8 exclusives such as support for iCloud Drive document storage and Touch ID authentication to unlock the app instead of a regular passcode.
Support for iCloud Drive on iOS 8 and Yosemite devices removes much of the friction associated with accessing documents that are not stored in PDF Expert.
To access your iCloud Drive, on the PDF Expert side bar menu tap ‘Open…’ and navigate to your document right within the app, as seen below.
To access, copy, move, delete and manage files stored on your iCloud Drive on your Mac or Windows PC, use the iCloud web interface at iCloud.com. OS X Yosemite is most likely launching next month with support for iCloud Drive built right into the Finder, as seen on the image top of post.
Using iCloud Drive is highly recommended because other apps which use the iCloud Document Picker can now access your PDF Expert files that are outside of the iCloud folder.
As illustrated above, simply tap ‘Locations’ in the Document Picker window and select PDF Expert from the list. This ensures that any changes made to your PDF Expert files in other apps sync back seamlessly, but without creating copies like in iOS 7.
Zoom Writing is another cool new feature.
Designed for precision writing, it makes only a part of the page zoom so you can handwrite more. And as you write, the zoomed part moves along the page constantly adjusting to your pace.
Here’s Zoom Writing in action:
Bookmarks manager has been improved as well with in-line bookmark name editing, in addition to the following new capabilities:
- The Position of the page you’re currently working on is now highlighted in your application PDF outline
- All the bookmarked pages are clearly marked in the PDF pages manager
- Annotations summary now includes the context from PDF outline.
And here’s the improved bookmark manager.
Finally, there’s something called AirTurn, a feature allowing musicians to turn pages of notes by pressing AirTurn pedals or using Bluetooth keyboard arrow keys.
As for Documents 5, a free document manager for the iPhone and iPad, it’s been updated with the following iOS 8 exclusives:
- iCloud Drive Support — Safely store all your documents, presentations, spreadsheets, images and any other kind of files in your Documents 5 iCloud folder. Directly access them from iCloud Drive on your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac or PC.
- Open files from iCloud Drive with Document Picker — You can get files stored on your iCloud Drive that are not in your Documents 5 application using Document Picker. It works almost like ‘Open…’ dialog on your Mac or PC. On the Documents 5 side bar tap ‘Open…’ and navigate to the needed document.
- Use other iOS apps to work with files from Documents 5 — In any Document Picker enabled application you can get access to all Documents 5 files that are outside of the iCloud folder. Just tap ‘Locations’ in the Document Picker window and select Documents 5 from the list.
- Touch ID Support — Use Touch ID, Apple’s fingerprint identity sensor, to unlock Documents 5 instead of a regular passcode.
By the way, PDF Expert 4.7 has some issues on iOS 8 so update to the latest version if you haven’t already. The universal 64.6-megabyte download costs ten bucks and requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad running iOS 7.0 or later.
[App Store via Readdle Blog]