Version 0.12 · Beta

Your BibTeX library,
beautifully kept

Bibliofile is a desktop bibliography manager for BibTeX libraries: a modern, cross-platform rewrite of the classic macOS BibDesk. Browse, search, group, annotate and cite your references in a three-pane window with typeset mathematics and formatted citations, while your plain-text .bib file stays the single source of truth.

Download for macOS 0.12.0 Feature Guide Read the Manual
The Bibliofile window: a groups sidebar, the publications table, and a typeset preview card for Euler's paper on the Basel problem, with mathematics rendered in its title and abstract
The three-pane window: groups, publications and a typeset preview, with real mathematics in titles and abstracts.

Download

Bibliofile 0.12.0 is available as a signed and notarised app for Macs with Apple silicon. Windows, Linux and Intel Macs are fully supported by the code, but aren't packaged yet; build from source for those for now.

macOS

Apple silicon · .dmg · v0.12.0
Download

Windows

x64 · from source
Build

Linux

x64 · from source
Build

The disk image is 177 MB, and Bibliofile requires macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later. To build from source you need Node.js 20+ and pnpm; the README has the four commands. Optional extras: a TeX installation for the LaTeX preview, and an Anthropic API key for the Claude assistant.

Bibliofile is in beta. It never writes your .bib until you save, and every save keeps the previous version as yourfile.bib.bak, but keeping your library under version control or in a backup is still wise.

Highlights

Everything a working academic needs from a reference manager, built around one plain-text file that BibTeX, biber and BibDesk can all still read.

Your .bib, Byte for Byte

A custom parser and serialiser reproduce BibDesk's exact format, so macros, groups and attachment links survive every save. No sidecar database, no import step.

Search, Even Inside PDFs

Live, ranked search over every field with quoted phrases, plus an optional full-text index of your attached PDFs. OCR adds a text layer to scanned ones.

Groups That Keep Up

Static and smart groups, nestable folders, and Author and Keyword categories that rebuild themselves from your entries as you edit.

A Typeset Preview

MathJax in titles and abstracts, journal covers, keyword tags and a live CSL citation for every entry, in light or dark.

Markdown Notes

Notes and abstracts in Markdown with maths, [[citeKey]] links between entries, \citep{…} citations and @references lists, stored brace-safely in the file.

Papers, Filed for You

Drop a PDF to create a complete entry from its DOI or arXiv id, fetch open-access copies, and let AutoFile move and rename papers into a tidy folder.

References from the Web

Search CrossRef, OpenAlex, PubMed and arXiv, or look up a DOI or an ISBN, and import results as new entries with one click.

Scriptable & Customisable

A JavaScript console with a synchronous bibliofile API, Handlebars templates for panels and exports, and an optional Claude assistant.

Take the full tour in the Feature Guide

Screenshots

A quiet interface that gets out of the way of your references, and renders them properly when you look closely.

The Bibliofile window in the dark theme, with a typeset preview card
Dark mode, down to the typeset equations.
The Tabbed bottom panel showing Markdown notes with headings, a numbered list and typeset equations
Markdown notes with maths in the bottom panel.
A preview card in the dark theme with a Markdown abstract, keyword tags and link chips
A Markdown abstract on the preview card.
The standalone annotation editor: the entry's preview card above a syntax-highlighted Markdown editor
The annotation editor, which saves as you type.

Documentation

Two ways in. The feature guide is a single page you can read in one sitting; the manual is the complete reference, the same one that ships inside the app under the Help menu.

Feature Guide

A guided tour of every feature on one page, with a Casual/Nerd switch that reveals how things work under the hood.

Start the tour

The Manual

Twelve chapters covering every menu, field, preference and shortcut, with troubleshooting for each topic.

Open the manual

Manual Chapters

1

Getting Started
2

Browsing & Searching
3

Editing Entries
4

Attachments
5

Notes & Abstracts
6

Preview & Citations
7

Importing & Exporting
8

Online Search
9

Shortcuts & Reference
10

Configurable Panels
11

Customizing Panels & Outputs
12

Scripting with JavaScript

About

For more than two decades BibDesk has been the bibliography manager of choice for many Mac-using academics who write in LaTeX. Bibliofile is a respectful, modernised port of it: BibDesk's source was consulted as a reference, never copied, and its best ideas were rebuilt for every platform rather than for the Mac alone.

The two live happily side by side. Bibliofile reads and writes BibDesk's exact file format, including its groups, attachment links and macOS file bookmarks, so the same library can be opened in either, on any machine, with no conversion in between.

The .bib Is the Library

No hidden database. The search index is a cache that rebuilds itself from your file and your PDFs.

Never Clobber Your File

Explicit saves, atomic writes, a .bak of the previous version, and a check before overwriting outside changes.

Offline First

Citations, maths and OCR all run on your machine. Online search, open-access lookups and the assistant reach out only when you ask.

Open Source

Developed in the open on GitHub, with a platform-agnostic TypeScript core and nearly two thousand tests.

Thanks to BibDesk's authors for decades of a great bibliography manager.