GoodReader improves tabs

I’ve often said that the GoodReader app is the best $5 than an attorney can spend on an iPad, but apparently the word has gotten out.  The last few times that I have spoken to a group of attorneys about using iPhones and iPads, more than half of the folks in the room have raised their hands when I asked who is using GoodReader … and I’m sure that quite a few more folks just don’t like raising their hand in a CLE.  (I often feel that way too.  Why do I even ask questions like that?)  But one great feature of GoodReader that I don’t see many people using is the tabs feature, and it was improved in an update yesterday (version 4.9.1) so this is a good time to talk about it.

To start using tabs in GoodReader, you need to turn the feature on.  Tap the Settings button at the bottom of the main screen, tap General, and then turn on “File tabs enabled.”

Now, every time you tap a file to view it, instead of replacing the prior file that you had been viewing, the new file will open up in its own tab.  Keep selecting documents and you will get even more tabs.

Tabs in GoodReader are useful for the same reason that tabs are useful in other software, such as a web browser.  Tabs provide you with a quick way to jump between documents without having to go back and select the document again.  If you are comparing two documents, it is much faster to go back and forth between then with tabs.  Or if you are reading something like a deposition and you have key exhibits open in other tabs, you can quickly go back and forth between witness testimony and the evidence.

The row of tabs does take up space on the screen, so when you have tabs turned on, more of your document is covered when you tap in the middle of a document to bring up all of the menus.  But you can easily tap in the middle of the screen to make all menus go away, including the tabs, so that you only see the document on your iPad screen.

The new feature added yesterday is that you can now open the same document in multiple tabs.  That may sound duplicative and unnecessary, but there is a good reason for it; this feature lets you quickly jump between two important parts of the same document.  (Or if you have multiple documents in a single PDF file, gives you a quick way to jump between the multiple documents in the same file.)

To activate this feature, tap on the tab of the currently open document.  This brings up a menu from which you can duplicate the tab to create a second tab with the same document.  (It also gives you the option to delete the file or rename the file, without having to go back to the main screen of the app to do so.  The rename file feature is one that I know I will be using often.)

After you tap Duplicate Tab, you will now have two tabs for the same document.  Select the second tab and go to some important part of the document, and then you can tap on the first tab again to go back to the other part of the same document.

You can use up to eight tabs at a time.  Once you open the ninth document, the oldest tab goes away. This means that another advantage of tabs is that you have quick access to up to the last seven documents that you opened; the tabs feature works like a document history.  If you want to rearrange the tabs, just drag one left or right.

The main disadvantage that I notice when using tabs is that as you open more and more documents, you get more and more tabs even when you don’t need them.  If it bothers you to have a bunch of tabs open, you need to select them individually to close each tab.  But after using the feature for a while, you learn to ignore the tabs when you are not using them, but know that they are there when you need them. 

If you use GoodReader but do not yet use the tab feature, I encourage you to try it out.  You can always turn off the feature if you don’t like it, but I find that its many advantages make it worth it, especially after yesterday’s update.

And if you don’t yet use GoodReader, it is time for you to raise your hand and get the app.  Here is my review from last year when the app was updated to version 4 explaining the many virtues of this useful app.

Click here to get GoodReader ($4.99): 

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