Glossa Support

Email glossareader@gmail.com — replies within 2 working days.

Getting started

1. Open a PDF — File › Open, drag it onto Glossa, or pick it from the Library.
2. Highlight — choose the highlighter in the toolbar (or ⌃⌘2) and select text. Pick the colour from the toolbar.
3. Ask AI — select text and click ✨ Ask, or use the ⌄ for Explain, Define, Simplify, Example or Counter-argument. The answer is saved with the highlight, inside your PDF.

Setting up AI

• No setup on Apple Intelligence Macs — Glossa uses Apple's on-device model for free. Turn it on in System Settings › Apple Intelligence & Siri (your Mac and Siri languages must match).
• Stronger models — Settings (⌘,) › AI: choose a provider, type a model name and paste your API key. OpenRouter gives one key for Claude, GPT, Gemini and more, including free models.
• Fully local — run a model on your own Mac with Ollama (free, private, works offline). See below.

Set up Ollama (free, runs on your Mac)

1. Install Ollama — download it from ollama.com and open it (it lives in the menu bar). Or, with Homebrew: brew install ollama then brew services start ollama.
2. Download a model — open Terminal and run:
   ollama pull qwen3:1.7b-q8_0
   That's a small, fast model (about 2 GB). In our tests it gave better answers than Apple Intelligence and Llama 3.2. Bigger models answer better but need more memory; any model from ollama.com/library works.
3. Choose it in Glossa — Settings (⌘,) › AI › Provider: Ollama (on this Mac), Model: qwen3:1.7b-q8_0 (the same name you pulled), then Test and Save. No key needed.
4. Ask away — select text › ✨ Ask. Nothing leaves your Mac.

For figures ("Ask about a figure"), use a model that can read images, e.g. ollama pull llama3.2-vision, and type that name in Glossa.

Troubleshooting

• "Couldn't connect" — Ollama isn't running: open the Ollama app (or brew services start ollama).
• "model … not found" — the name in Glossa must match one from ollama list; run ollama pull <name>.
• Long books or chapter summaries get cut short — Ollama sizes its memory from your Mac's RAM. To force a bigger context, quit Ollama and run OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH=32768 ollama serve (or set it for the Ollama app with launchctl setenv OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH 32768, then reopen Ollama).
• Ollama on another computer — in Glossa open Settings › AI › Advanced and set the Base URL to http://<that-computer>:11434/v1. Glossa then asks your permission once, since your text leaves this Mac.

Open a web page, paper or PDF link

In Glossa choose File › Open Link… (⇧⌘O) and paste a link. If you copied it first, it's already filled in.

• A PDF link opens as it is, even when the address doesn't end in .pdf.
• An arXiv paper: paste its page, its PDF link or just its ID (like 2412.13337) and Glossa fetches the PDF.
• Any article or blog post is saved as a clean PDF, without menus or ads, with a header that links back to the original. Highlights, chats and page citations then work as in any PDF.

Saved pages live in Glossa's own folder; use File › Move To… to keep one somewhere else. Pages behind a login may save only what the site shows to visitors who aren't signed in.

From any browser in one click: make a bookmark named Open in Glossa and paste this as its address:
javascript:location.href='glossa://import?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)
Click it on any page and Glossa asks whether to open it.

Common questions

Will Glossa change or damage my PDFs?

Glossa never rewrites your PDF. It adds your highlights to the end of the file and checks every save; if anything would change the original content, it refuses to save and tells you.

Can other apps see my highlights?

Yes — they're standard PDF annotations, visible in Preview, Acrobat, PDF Expert and others. AI chats appear as the highlight's note text.

Where are my AI chats?

Inside the PDF, on each highlight. "Ask this book" chats are kept by Glossa on your Mac.

What does Glossa Pro include?

Book Notes, Ask about a figure, Ask this book and chapter summaries — a one-time purchase, no subscription. Restore it any time in Settings › Glossa Pro.

The answer cites a page — can I check it?

Click the [p. 12] link to jump there. Glossa checks quoted words against the page; a greyed link means the quote wasn't found.

Export to Obsidian, Notion or Anki?

File › Export… (⇧⌘E): Markdown, Markdown with images (TextBundle), or Anki CSV — or save next to the PDF in your vault.

Reporting a problem

Please include your macOS version, what you did, and a screenshot. Never send your API key.