What it does
Save to Folio lives in your browser toolbar. It captures anything worth citing โ a paper, a news article, a book page, a report, a YouTube video, a blog post โ 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. (Edge and Firefox to follow.)
- Sign in to Folio the normal way at usefolio.co. The extension picks up your session automatically โ 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 โ title, authors, year, and type. Add tags if you like, then hit Save to Folio (or press โ/Ctrl+Enter).
- Right-click โ Save to Folio. Works on the page you are on, or on any link โ 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 โ/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 โ 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 โ even a syllabus or a blog post โ 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 โ 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 are real โ 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 โ 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 only reads a page's metadata when you trigger a save, and every request it makes goes to usefolio.co and nowhere else. Full details are in the privacy policy.