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Highlight text into named categories, count the passages, and extract them into your document.
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Listing updated:October 20, 2026
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Overview
Google Docs™ can highlight, but a highlight is just a colour. Highlighter gives each colour a name, counts
what you marked, and pulls the marked passages out — grouped by category — so colour-coding becomes
something you can actually use: for qualitative coding, literature review, editing passes, teaching
feedback, or any close reading.

WHERE TO FIND IT AFTER INSTALLING
Highlighter opens in the SIDE PANEL on the right of your document, not in the Extensions menu.
Look for its icon in the narrow strip down the right edge; if that strip is hidden, click the
small arrow at the bottom-right corner to show it.

FREE, AND STAYING FREE

• Mark your selection into six named categories — Key point, Evidence, Method, Question, Agree, Disagree.
• Everything you mark is ordinary Google Docs™ highlighting. It stays in your document, collaborators see
  it without the add-on, and it survives if you uninstall. Nothing is held hostage.
• The panel counts the passages in each category, so you always know what you have.
• Extract passages writes them — grouped by category, in the category's colour — at the end of your
  document. The section is rebuilt on each press and says so on itself, so it never duplicates.
• Remove highlight takes the marking off exactly what you selected.

Marking, the categories, the counts and the extract are free. We will not move any of it behind payment.

PRO — $29 per year, or $69 once

• Mark every match of a word or phrase at once, across the whole document.
• Your own palette: rename the categories, pick your colours, and they follow you between documents.
• Coverage stats: character counts per category, so you can see how much of the document each code holds.
• One licence per add-on. The key you buy here unlocks Pro in Highlighter, on up to three Google
  accounts. A team licence covers every add-on we publish, for a whole organisation.

BUILT AROUND WHAT WENT WRONG BEFORE

The tool this replaces was loved and then abandoned, and its reviews say exactly what hurt: a sidebar that
"takes way too much screen space", permissions that made people uncomfortable, and marking that stopped
working while documents full of colour-coding lost their meaning. So:

• The panel is the native side panel — narrow, and it never blocks typing in the document.
• Your marks are plain Google Docs™ formatting. If this add-on disappeared tomorrow, your documents would
  keep every highlight and every extract.
• It asks for one permission, and nothing else.

ONE PERMISSION, AND NOTHING LEAVES GOOGLE

Highlighter asks for exactly one permission: access to the document you currently have open. Not your other
documents. Not your Google Drive™. Nothing in Gmail™, Google Calendar™ or your contacts.

It runs entirely inside Google Apps Script™. Nothing from your file is ever sent anywhere: there is no database and no analytics. Without a licence key the add-on makes no network request at all; with a Pro licence it asks our licence server once a day whether that key is still active, sending only the key and a random identifier for the installation. The licence key for Pro is verified inside your own Google account by checking its signature —
there is no licence server. Nothing is transmitted to us, because there is nowhere for it to be
transmitted to.

HOW TO USE IT

1. Install, then open any Google Docs™ document.
2. Select a passage and press a category — it is highlighted in that category's colour.
3. Watch the counts build up in the panel as you work through the document.
4. Press Extract passages to get every marked passage, grouped by category, at the end of the document.

Questions, bugs and feature requests: gheorghe.beschea@overheat.agency — a person answers.

Google Docs™ and Google Apps Script™ are trademarks of Google LLC.
Additional information
PricingFree of charge with paid features
Developer
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Privacy policy
Terms of service
Highlighter — Colour-Coded Notes & Extracts will ask for the permissions shown below. Learn more
Highlighter — Colour-Coded Notes & Extracts will need access to your Google account
This will allow Highlighter — Colour-Coded Notes & Extracts to :
View and manage documents that this application has been installed in
See your primary Google Account email address
See your personal info, including any personal info you've made publicly available
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