Bookends
13.4.8
13.4.8
See all Versions

Name: Bookends
Price: 59.99 $
Rating: 4.5833 (98 reviews)

08 December 2020

Reference management and bibliography software.

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Overview

Bookends is a full-featured bibliography/reference and information-management system for students and professionals.

Bookends uses the cloud to sync reference libraries on all the Macs you use. Access the power of Bookends directly from Mellel, Nisus Writer Pro, or MS Word (including Word 2016): Bookends allows you to scan your existing word-processor files and automatically generate finished manuscripts with properly formatted bibliographies. You can also scan Apple Pages '08, '09, and 5, Manuscripts.app, and LibreOffice/OpenOffice 4 files, or RTF files saved from any word processor.
Bookends allows you to share your references over the Internet with anyone, on any platform. And with Bookends, you can directly search and import references from numerous sources:
- PubMed
- Web of Science
- JSTOR
- Google Scholar
- Amazon
- Library of Congress
- arXiv
- and hundreds of other online sources
Or use a built-in browser to download references with PDF's and/or Web pages. Also, with automatic searches of PubMed, you can discover articles as soon as they're published. Bookends allows for powerful group-based searches, with static, smart, virtual groups, and smart folders as well as tag clouds that make hierarchical searches easy.
Bookends also offers a robust assortment of file attachment features:
- Attach any file (such as a PDF) to a reference and view or open it instantly.
- Automatically rename and organize PDF files on-the-fly.
- Automatically download and attach the PDF of an article from the Internet if you have access permission.
- Automatically locate and attach PDF's on your hard drive.
- Annotate and markup PDFs and have the information instantly accessible in notecards.
Easily migrate references and attachments from other reference managers to Bookends.
Sync your library with Bookends for iOS on your iOS devices, so that you have your references and PDF's with you wherever you are.

What's new in Bookends

Version 13.4.8:

New Send Feedback menu - This is under the Help menu and creates an email to support@sonnysoftware.com in your default email client.
Invalid responses from Google Books will be ignored instead of being reported as an error
The Cited Works Inspector has been updated for Dark Mode
Messages in the PDF viewer are word wrapped and displayed in their entirety even if the width is narrow
Live searches will update immediately if you change the search field while text is entered
The currently active search field is checked in the Live Search menu
Improved connection error detection when downloading PDFs
Add a PDF underline annotation to the Bookends database with a right-click in the note stream - Previously, this was only available for highlighted text.
Updated the JSTOR parser to deal with changes made by JSTOR
Fixed a bug where a newly created reference didn't immediately appear in the reference list if a smart group was selected. Fixed a bug where the background color obscured the white text when editing a PDF note in Dark Mode. Fixed a bug where the font of a field could be changed to the System default when consolidating terms in a Term List.

Bookends for Mac Old Versions

88 Reviews of Bookends

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Been using for many years, usually with Nisus, but sometimes Word and Mellel. It has never let me down. I've tried others and nothing else works as well. Constantly updated. Support is fantastic.

(6)

Nontroppo

29 January 2018

Version: 13.0.5

Microsoft released a major rewrite of Word, which broke compatibility with Endnote and Bookends. Bookends had a workaround available to users in hours, and has been updated (V13.0.5, and a backport for V12 users too!) now to fix this . Endnote? Forces users to run beta software and no ETA when an official fix will come. This just gives you a flavour of the difference in support you will receive with both pieces of software (apart from the fact Bookends is far more powerful than Endnote, and far cheaper).

(3)

Bookends may not be the prettiest software out there but it does the job done. The support is outstanding with the main developer being super-responsive. The community is booming on the forums with a lot of people writing scripts or filters for the others. Bookends has a VERY comprehensive format editor/generator. The manual is something like 450 pages long. The software is also very stable despite being a new major release (as of 01.12.2017, v13.0). I also find Bookends support in almost any third-party software (where applicable) which is a nice surprise as well. The only thing I miss there is the ability to insert a citation without fully switching to BK. Something like Magic Citations in Papers (from which I switched to BK, hence I might be spoiled). This and the somewhat old-looking interface are the reasons I cut half the star.

(4)

Show comment (1)

I'm using Bookends for more than 10 years. Since then, the developper has stayed focused on its software with regular updates and the support is just great. Clearly one of my best choice of software.

Best reference manager ever.

I have tried all of them. I like Zotero. I also use BibDesk and Jabref for my latex references. I have been user of Sente for many years. I have also used Papers for a while. But, Bookends stands as the richest and most reliable of all. I love the Global tools that help me to manipulate my references.
The automatic data extraction has gone from DOI to Justor and recently even to iSBN. You don't have to go and search for reference data from Google Scholar. It magically picks the data from the PDF and autfills it.

(2)

Well, probably the best supported, and as a result, flexible, reference managers on the Mac just received a significant update. I purchased it immediately, with a fair amount of relief. Relief since Bookends is easily the most frequently updated applications of all my Mac apps, and I had been wanting to pay again, as appreciation for all the work that is put in to both the Mac (and iOS companion) application. If you are looking for a reference manager, across iOS and macOS, look no further. The others might be bigger, but how many of them frequently pose a question in their forums asking how many would support a user-request change, and then implement that change within weeks, if not days? Bookends has been in existence since the very early days - and it shows, in a mature and powerful app that often is an example of "way more than what you expect under the hood"!

GranadoMJ

12 November 2017

Version: 13.0.0

Actually I like what I see from this new version (13.0) thus far. I've always had a license for Bookends, but ended up gravitating towards Papers (so many years ago till the 2nd version started crashing), followed by Sente (till it stopped receiving regular updates a couple of years ago), and now Mendeley. However, now that people using Macs are having problems with Mendeley on HIgh Sierra (with no official support for 10.12 or 10.13), I've begun revisiting Bookends. I always had problems with how Bookends managed and viewed PDFs, which is where Sente and Mendeley excelled (full screen, tabbed views, easy to read, simple and straightforward UI, etc).

This new version of Bookends (along with its reputation of always being updated with stellar support) has me hopeful. I don't have a license for this new version, but I'm going to spend the better part of the next 30 days or so experimenting with it to see how it goes. In the end, I'm not so sure if there really is any viable alternatives on the Mac right now (and don't talk to me about Endnote). Unless Mendeley gets updated or Readcube finally puts it together, I'm going to seriously look at Bookends and I like what I see thus far. We'll see after a month or so.

Bookends is overall the best reference manager for macOS. The major advantage lies in the fact its database engine is the most flexible/accessible, allowing powerful group editing of the reference data. Bookends has been continuously developed for the Mac since 1984, and still receives regular updates. In V13 there have been major improvements to the way you can view and annotate PDFs. For example, there is a sticky tab bar for multiple reference PDFs so you can quickly add several PDFs then switch between them effortlessly, while being able to view the annotations note stream (metadata about your PDF annotations are automagically extracted into the main database for you). Full screen is now contextual, if you are editing reference lists, it opens into the reference list, if you have a PDF panel open, it opens into the PDF. The automated Pubmed search has been improved, and it greatly enhances the speed at which we can scan through new potentially interesting references. There are many more interesting features and Bookends really offers the best mix of detailed reference management, search interface, PDF handling, flexible bibliography generation and more.

Bookends
13.4.8
13.4.8
See all Versions

Overview

What's new in Bookends

Join over 500,000 subscribers.

88 Reviews of Bookends

More apps

Bookends13.4.813.4.8See all Versions

Overview

What's new in Bookends

Join over 500,000 subscribers.

88 Reviews of Bookends

More apps

Bookends
13.4.8
13.4.8
See all Versions