Passage Picker

What this is

Passage Picker lets you draw red or black vertical margin lines alongside selected passages in a PDF, the standard way to flag key evidence in case bundles. It runs entirely in your browser; no file is uploaded to any server.

Typical workflow

1. Open the Passage Picker tab.
2. Drop a PDF onto the drop zone, or click it to browse. The document renders page by page.
3. Use the toolbar to choose a colour (Black or Red) and a margin side (Left or Right).
4. Click and drag vertically on any page to draw a passage line beside the text you want to mark. Repeat for as many passages as needed.
5. To delete a line, click it once.
6. (Optional) Set Bookmarks: Yes in the toolbar: every highlighted passage will appear as a bookmark in the exported PDF's navigation sidebar, grouped under Highlighted passages. Leave it on No to export with margin lines only.
7. When you are done, click Export PDF. The marked copy downloads: the original is unchanged.
8. Use Clear All to remove every marker and start again on the same document.

The tabs

Passage Picker

The main working area: drop zone, full-page PDF render, and a toolbar for colour, side and export. The marker count in the toolbar updates as you add or remove lines.

Config

Notes on the database import model. Passage Picker has no per-tool configuration beyond the controls already on the Marker tab. App-wide font and theme are in the Settings tab.

Settings

App-wide font family and font size, shared across all GMIAU Shell tools via localStorage. Also controls the colour theme (GMIAU Light / GMIAU Dark).

Tips & gotchas

• The R key toggles line colour (Black Red); L toggles the margin side (Left Right); G focuses the Go to page toolbar input: type a page number and press Enter to jump. These keyboard shortcuts work while the Marker tab is active.
• Lines are drawn relative to the rendered page: zoom level does not affect where the marker lands in the exported PDF.
• Only one PDF can be open at a time. To mark a different document, clear first or reload the page.
• Very large PDFs (hundreds of pages) may take a few seconds to render. The progress bar shows loading status.
• The exported PDF embeds the markers as drawn lines, not as annotations, they cannot be edited in Acrobat after export.
• Right-margin lines are conventional for most UK legal bundles; use left-margin lines if the court or opponent uses the opposite convention.
• Bookmarks toggle is persisted across sessions: once you turn it on, every future export adds passage bookmarks until you turn it off. Existing bookmarks in the PDF (e.g. from Bundle Bookmarker) are preserved; the new Highlighted passages parent is appended at the end of the outline.

Questions

Q. Can I mark more than one colour on the same page?
A. Yes: switch colour in the toolbar between drags. Each line records the colour you had selected when you drew it.

Q. Will the markers cover any existing annotations in the PDF?
A. Passage lines are rendered on top of the page content. If the bundle already has annotations (from Bundle Builder, for example), those remain underneath and appear in the export.

Q. Does the tool work with password-protected PDFs?
A. No. Remove any password protection before opening the PDF (qpdf or a similar offline tool can do this).

More: the GMIAU Caseworker User Guide in your Obsidian vault covers evidence-handling and bundle-preparation workflows., Confidentiality: this tool runs entirely in your browser. No PDF or marker data is transmitted to any server. Case documents are sensitive, do not use this tool on a shared or public computer.