Getting Started with Highlighty: Your First Five Minutes

Most people install Highlighty, run one search, and only later discover the part that actually changes how they work: saving a list of words once and watching all of them light up on every page afterward. This guide gets you there fast. In about five minutes you'll do your first multi-word search, save your first keyword list, and learn the handful of habits that make the tool pay for itself.

The core webpage workflow works without an account. Free use allows up to five active queries and two saved lists; the PDF workflow below requires a PRO trial or subscription.

TL;DR

• Install from your browser's store, then refresh any tabs you already had open.
• Press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on Mac) on any page to open Highlighty's search bar and start highlighting as you type.
• Add each keyword as its own query in the popup list to highlight several at once, each in its own color.
• Save the words you search often into a list — they'll auto-highlight on every page from then on.
• Use the scrollbar markers and X-Ray panel to jump between matches, including ones hidden in collapsed sections.
• With a PRO trial or subscription, open a PDF through Highlighty to search it, including scanned English PDFs.

Step 1 — Install and refresh

Add Highlighty from the Chrome Web Store (it also works in Edge, Brave, Opera, and Arc, and on Firefox 109+). One thing that trips people up: after installing, refresh any web pages you already had open. Extensions only attach to pages loaded after they're installed, so a quick reload on existing tabs gets Highlighty working everywhere.

That's the whole setup. There's no account to create and nothing to configure before you can use it.

Step 2 — Your first search

Open any long page — a news article, a documentation page, a Wikipedia entry — and press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on Mac). Highlighty's search bar opens. Start typing, and matches light up as you go, with a count so you know how many are on the page. Press Enter to jump to the next match, just like you'd expect.

If you'd rather keep the browser's built-in find for a moment, press Ctrl+F a second time within a beat and the native dialog takes over. You never lose access to either.

Step 3 — Highlight several keywords at once, each in its own color

This is the part the browser's Ctrl+F can't do, and it's the heart of Highlighty. Open the popup and add each keyword as its own query in your list. Every query gets its own color, and they all highlight at the same time on the page. Reading a market report and want "revenue," "churn," and "guidance" to jump out together? Add all three and scan the page in a single pass instead of running three separate searches.

Each query has its own color you can change — pick from the palette or let Highlighty randomize it — so your eye can tell the terms apart. The Cmd+F bar from Step 2 is for quick one-off finds; the query list is for the keywords you want lit up everywhere.

Step 4 — Save a list so it highlights everywhere

Here's the habit that turns Highlighty from a better Ctrl+F into something you rely on. When you find yourself searching the same words across many pages — the requirements in a job description, the defined terms in a contract, your competitors' names, the symptoms in a medical paper — save them as a list.

Once a list is saved and active, those words highlight automatically on supported pages, no retyping. Close the search bar and they stay lit. The free plan lets you save two named lists; PRO removes that limit.

Have a list already sitting in a spreadsheet? You can import queries from an .xlsx file. On the free plan, the active list is limited to five queries; PRO supports larger lists.

Step 5 — Move between matches quickly

Two features make a page full of highlights easy to navigate. The scrollbar markers put a tick next to every match along the page's scrollbar, so you can see at a glance where the dense sections are and click to jump to them. The X-Ray minimap is a draggable panel that shows a snippet of text around each match — including matches tucked inside collapsed sections, tabs, and accordions that you'd otherwise have to expand to find.

Together they answer the question "is what I want even on this page, and where?" without endless scrolling.

Step 6 — Use it on PDFs too

PDF Search requires a PRO trial or subscription. Open a PDF through Highlighty's viewer to use multi-word search, saved lists, colors, and navigation. For image-only scans, bundled on-device OCR reads English text so you can search it. The document is not uploaded for that processing.

A few settings worth knowing early

You don't need to touch any of these to get value, but they're the ones people reach for first:

• Filters: turn on case sensitivity, whole-word matching, or diacritic sensitivity from the search bar when a search is too broad.
• Whitelist / blacklist: choose which sites Highlighty runs on, so it stays off pages where you don't want it.
• Colors and font: change highlight colors per term, and bump up the highlighted-text size for readability.
• Backup & restore (PRO): export your lists and settings, then import them on another computer.

What to try this week

Pick the one workflow that matches what you do most and build the habit: save the keywords for your current project as a list, then notice how often they're already highlighted before you've searched for anything. That moment — opening a fresh page and seeing the words you care about already lit up — is what Highlighty is really for.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an account to use Highlighty?

No account is needed for the core webpage workflow: up to five active queries, two saved lists, colors, and X-Ray. PDF Search and English OCR require an active PRO trial or subscription.

Why isn't Highlighty working on a page I already had open?

Refresh that tab. Browser extensions only attach to pages loaded after they're installed, so any tabs open before you added Highlighty need a reload before it can highlight them.

How do I highlight more than one word at a time?

Add each keyword as its own query in Highlighty's popup list. Every query gets its own color and they all highlight at once on the page. Save the list and those keywords keep highlighting automatically on every page you open. (The Ctrl+F / Cmd+F bar, by contrast, is for quick one-off finds of a single term.)

Can I load a big list of keywords instead of typing them?

Yes. Highlighty imports queries from an .xlsx file (Excel or Google Sheets). The free plan supports up to five active queries; PRO supports larger lists.

Does it work on PDFs and scanned documents?

Yes, with a PRO trial or subscription. Highlighty's PDF viewer supports multi-word search and navigation; on-device OCR makes scanned English PDFs searchable without uploading the document for processing.

Which browsers does Highlighty support?

Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, and Arc, plus Firefox 109 and newer.