21 July 2010 by Ian

I’m thrilled to announce that we have launched our first iPhone app, and it’s free Yay!  You can head over to the app store and grab it here. This is our first app for the iPhone, and we have decided to start with a free ‘lite’ version app so that you can get the benefits right now of being able to read your papers on the go.  With that said let’s take a quick tour of the new app !

design research tools Our first iPhone app has Arrived!

In order to use the app you will need to sign up for an account with Mendeley.  You can get build up your digital library either through the web or by using the free desktop client.  Once you have created an online digital library you can then sync that library to the iPhone app.  In order to get the sync to work you just need to install the app via iTunes, and fire it up.  You will be asked to sign in to your Mendeley account and as soon as you login the app will sync your library’s metadata.  You will be able to see all of your collections, your list of favourites, your recent items and also any shared collections that you are a member of.

design research tools Our first iPhone app has Arrived!

Once you have your library in your pocket your can search within your collections.  In addition you can also share a citation for any item in your library via email. If you have the Pdf of a paper in your library, then there will be a ‘download’ icon to the left of the paper. You can download the Pdf straight to your device, and from there you can read it any time you like when you are offline.

design research tools Our first iPhone app has Arrived!

design research tools Our first iPhone app has Arrived!

You can also share the citation of a paper via email, straight from within the app.

design research tools Our first iPhone app has Arrived!

Obviously at the moment the biggest limitation with the new app is that you can’t edit any of the metadata for your papers, but don’t worry, we will be releasing a full version of  Mendeley for iPhone in the near future, and we are also working hard on an iPad version too.  We think Mendeley is perfect for the iPad and we want to make sure that you have the best experience available for managing the information that is important to you.  We are really keen to get feedback on the app that we are releasing today so that we can make some rapid improvements.  We really hope that you enjoy the Lite version!

  • July 22, 2010 at 8:46 am Björn Brembs
    It says: "error: authentication needed" But it also says I'm logged in...
  • July 22, 2010 at 8:48 am Björn Brembs
    Ah: wrong password does not result in error logging in!
  • July 22, 2010 at 8:50 am Victor / Mendeley Team
    I think this might be a bug we know about by now: When you mistype your username/password, it still looks like you're logged in without actually being logged in. If re-entering your account info doesn't fix it, could you let support@mendeley.com know? Thanks Björn!

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34 Responses to “Our first iPhone app has Arrived!”

  1. Matteo Says:

    Great work! Are there any plans for an Android app?

  2. Ian Says:

    Hi Matteo,

    We are planning on building for Android too. At the moment we are looking for motivated mobile developers, so it will be a little while yet before we get to Android, but it is definitely our intention to create something that works well on that platform.

  3. Mike Lawrence Says:

    A feature for the wish-list: bump-like sharing references between phones, so that if you’re in a meeting everyone can quickly (and literally) get on the same page when referring to a reference. (bump: http://bu.mp )

  4. Ethan Says:

    Supercool – though I have had a couple of crashes, it seems pretty stable, and it has a nice interface.

    The biggest improvement you could make (besides the iPad version) is to allow PDFs to be viewed in other viewers, something provided for in iOS4. Good Reader is a really great PDF viewer for academic papers, and it would be nice to use that to actually read documents, or to use iAnnotate to mark up papers.

  5. Sophie Says:

    Will there be an iPad app anytime soon?

  6. Victor Says:

    Thanks for the suggestions, Mike and Ethan. Annotation is definitely something which we’re planning to have in the Mendeley app itself (and being able to view/edit your Mendeley Desktop annotations).

    Sophie: Yes, the iPad app is on its way!

  7. Lukas Says:

    hooray, long awaited :)
    one little thing i noticed: it seems, the citations don’t show the journal the paper was published in, or am i missing something?

  8. Gunther Says:

    you guys at Mendeley are great, big thanks and applause. I definitely will switch over from zotero…
    Can’t really wait for the android app, but I have to.
    Good to read that you are working on that as well!

  9. martin Says:

    View PDF is greyed out (both on 3G and Wifi) :(

  10. Zhen Says:

    Before the iPad version is ready, it would help a lot if there’s an option to open a PDF externally via a choice of installed apps. Thanks for the great work!

  11. M Singh Says:

    There is no PDF download icon right next to the icon. I am using this on a iPod touch first generation device. View PDF is greyed out. I did upload PDFs for all my papers to the online site. What gives ? Right now, the app is useless to me. Disappointed.

  12. Michael Rowe Says:

    When I have Mendeley on my Android then my life will be complete. This can’t happen fast enough :-)

  13. Philipp Says:

    Are there any plans for supporting Samsung Bada in the future as well? As said above, with mendeley on my wave my life will be complete :)

  14. Sunchica Says:

    Wow! Please speed up the Android app! There are loads of Android tablets coming, and some of them will have a proper e-paper screen – perfect for reading.

  15. Rafael Says:

    This is great news!
    With the new iPhone app, I’m going to start switching from Zotero to Mendeley.

    Thanks.

  16. Dayat Says:

    Great app.

  17. Pastori Says:

    @M Singh Click \Edit Settings\ from the topbar in Mendeley Desktop and and choose \syncronize attached pdfs\. This will upload the files to your web space from your computer and make them viewable in iPhone. Took a while to figure this out but the pdf aren’t grayed out anymore in app.

    There is no PDF download icon right next to the icon. I am using this on a iPod touch first generation device. View PDF is greyed out. I did upload PDFs for all my papers to the online site. What gives ? Right now, the app is useless to me. Disappointed.

  18. Alex Says:

    Plus one on the Android App, I have a Droid X that is just craving Mendeley to be installed on it!

  19. Matt Says:

    I love the idea of the Mendeley iPhone app – however I just can’t get it to work. It downloads my list of collections, but they’re all empty, and when I try to update it downloads a few Mb and then the app just crashes. Is anyone else having this problem? Very frustrating!

    I have just over 2000 references in my library, am using an iphone 3G and iOS v. 4.1. Possibly an out-of-memory problem because of the iphone 3G’s limited RAM?

  20. Niels Says:

    This looks interesting, i’ll give it a test-drive.

  21. Paul Says:

    Mendeley is just what I was looking for. One feature that would make this a complete app for me is ‘citing while you write’, on the ipad that is. With multitasking soon to be released I think it would be a great addition for those of us that want to type on the go…will this be coming in the full app version?

  22. Paul Says:

    Also, would there be a way to reference within the text of pages on the ipad as well as making a bibliography?

  23. Prashanth Says:

    I have started using the app on my ipad and it works very smoothly. My entire literature is literally at my fingertips and it is extremely easy to share citations as I speak. No more am I going to be promising to share papers in the corridor to colleagues and forgetting it later!

    Great going guys! Hope the Android app comes out soon too.

  24. Frank J. Says:

    Any news on the Android Version?

  25. Aaron Says:

    Is there any thoughts of adding annotation capabilities to the iPhone and iPad applications?

  26. Ian Mulvany Says:

    Hi Aaron,

    We are working on a read/write version of the app with annotations.

    - Ian

  27. Katarina Says:

    Hi Ian,

    I am very much looking forward for the read/write version of the Mendeley app with annotations o iPad.
    Will we Mendeley users be notified when this app will be available? Is it possible to sign up somewhere so I can be notified?

    Thanks,
    Katarina

  28. William Says:

    Katarina, you can vote for this feature on our feedback forum and you’ll get notified when it’s completed.

  29. jaxx Says:

    Android !!!

  30. Thomas Says:

    Thank you so much for all of your hard work! I’m looking forward to the Android app!

  31. Petr Volny Says:

    For you guys who want the mendeley android app, you can follow the development of an unofficial one on http://droideley.posterous.com and on http://twitter.com/Droideley

  32. Milo Handelman Says:

    Hey, why can’t I open your page in Safari?

  33. Sarah Says:

    Thanks for the app.

    Would be great to have some kind of scanning function or a photo function so could take a photo of a reference in a book or something and for it to come up in your list so you can find the paper.

    I have NO idea if that’s even possible though.

  34. Ulysses1 Says:

    This app, even in the most current version, crashes so much that it’s completely unusable. I purchased Papers to have a solution that works. I would also pay for a stable version of Mendeley.
    (iOS 4.3, Ipad2, Mendeley Version 1.3.1 (build19)