How to Tag Highlights and Notes with Hashtags (#Tags)

Great ideas rarely stay confined to a single book. An insight on human nature in a 19th-century Russian novel often illuminates an argument in a modern psychology treatise. When highlights are filed only under individual book titles, these cross-disciplinary threads remain hidden.

GemReader introduces intuitive tagging for your marginalia and highlights. By typing simple tags (such as #philosophy, #metaphor, or #thesis), you build an interconnected web of thoughts. When it comes time to draft a paper or reflect on a theme, you can summon every relevant passage across dozens of books in a single view.

To tag your notes and highlights, make sure you have:

• Platforms: GemReader installed on your device (Android or iOS).
• Prerequisites: Any book open with an active highlight, or an existing note in Library Gems.
• Connection: 100% offline (tag indexing happens entirely on-device with zero lag).

1. 1
   In your open book, tap any existing highlight (or select a sentence to highlight it).
2. 2
   In the annotation toolbar, tap the note icon to open the note editor.
3. 3
   Add your tags using either method:

   • Type a hash symbol (#) followed immediately by your tag word in the note text (such as #stoicism or #architecture).
   • Tap Add tag and select from your existing library tags or enter a new one.
4. 4
   Tap Save to store your note and tag.
5. 5
   To browse tagged thoughts later, open the Notes tab to view Library Gems, then tap Tags or select Grouped by tag to view all matching highlights across your library.

• Multi-Word Tags: For phrases with multiple words, use hyphens or camel-casing (such as #moral-philosophy or #MoralPhilosophy) so the tag index recognizes the entire concept as a single topic.
• Exporting to Obsidian & Notion: When you export your notes to Markdown or Obsidian, your #tags are preserved faithfully, transforming directly into native tags and clickable graph nodes in personal knowledge management tools.
• Locked Collection Privacy: Tags attached to highlights inside a locked collection remain completely private—they will never appear in your general tag view until that collection is unlocked with your PIN.