What it does
Save to Folio lives in your browser toolbar. It captures anything worth citing (a paper, a news article, a book page, a report, a YouTube video, a blog post) into your Folio library in one click, with the metadata already filled in. It also carries two of Folio's research tools with it: a citation checker (Verify) and a page Q&A (Ask).
Installing and signing in
- Install Save to Folio from the Chrome Web Store and pin it to your toolbar. It also works in Edge, Brave and Arc; Firefox and Safari aren't supported yet.
- Sign in to Folio the normal way at usefolio.co. The extension picks up your session automatically; there is no separate login. As long as you are signed in on usefolio.co in any tab, the extension is authenticated.
- To sign the extension out without touching your Folio session, use the Sign out link in the popup footer.
Three ways to save
- Click the toolbar icon. On any page, the popup shows what it detected: title, authors, year, and type. Add tags if you like, then hit Save to Folio (or press ⌘/Ctrl+Enter).
- Right-click → Save to Folio. Works on the page you are on, on selected text, or on any link: right-click a link to a paper, an article, or a video, and Folio pulls in that link's target without you having to open it.
- Keyboard shortcut. Press ⌘/Ctrl+Shift+F to save the current page silently. A notification confirms what landed in your library.
What it captures
Not just papers. The extension reads standard citation tags, Schema.org data, and Open Graph metadata, so it recognizes:
- Papers and preprints: arXiv, Nature, Science, PubMed, bioRxiv, SSRN, and any journal with a DOI
- News articles (saved as newspaper), books, reports, and government pages
- YouTube videos, Medium posts, and general web pages
Each source is classified as the right type, and web captures get an access date so your citations are complete. Anywhere a DOI appears, even a syllabus or a blog post, Folio fills in the details from CrossRef.
On Google Scholar
Every search result gets an inline + Folio button in its action row, next to Cite and Save. Click it to capture that result without leaving the page.
Tags, duplicates, and integrity
- Add tags as you save; the popup even suggests a few based on the source.
- If a source is already in your library, the popup tells you, so there are no accidental duplicates.
- If CrossRef flags a paper as retracted or under an expression of concern, you will see a warning at save time. Folio is integrity-first: you should know before you cite.
Verify and Ask
The popup has two more tabs beyond Save:
- Verify checks whether the citations in a block of text match real records: paste anything, including AI-written text, and Folio checks each citation against CrossRef. See Checking AI citations with the Verify tab.
- Ask answers a question about the page you are reading, using only what is on it. See Asking questions about a page with the Ask tab.
Troubleshooting
- "Nothing to capture on this page." The page has no title or citable metadata (a blank tab, a settings screen). Open an article, paper, or other content page and try again.
- Asked to sign in? Make sure you are signed in to Folio at usefolio.co in another tab, then reopen the popup. It syncs automatically.
- A saved source looks thin. For right-click-link saves, Folio fetches the page on its server to fill in the details. Give it a moment, then check the source in your library.
Privacy
The extension reads a page only when you use it. Opening the popup sends the citation details it detected on the page (such as the title, authors, DOI and link) to Folio, which checks whether the source is already in your library and uses AI to suggest tags. Saving sends those details to your library, and Ask sends the page's text so it can be answered from. Every request the extension makes goes to usefolio.co and nowhere else. Full details are in the privacy policy.