Lightkone Sharing and devices
Your library on several devices
With a bucket or a GitHub repository (see Where your library lives), every device that uses the same storage settings sees the same library. Move the settings with Settings → Backup: Export settings on one device (with a passphrase, the file is encrypted) and Import settings on the other.
Changes merge rather than overwrite: before each save, Lightkone reads what other devices (or Claude through MCP) saved and keeps both, paper by paper and field by field.
On a phone
Install Lightkone from the browser menu (Install app in Chrome, Add to Home Screen in Safari). Then:
- it opens offline, with the library and the last 25 PDFs you opened;
- on Android it appears in the share menu: share a paper's page, or an arXiv or DOI link, to Lightkone and it is added.
On a computer, drag the + Lightkone button from the Add panel to the bookmarks bar. Clicked on a paper's page, it adds that paper.
Shared libraries
A shared library lives where a group can reach it: a private GitHub repository with collaborators, or a bucket whose keys you hand out. It is opened next to your own library. Who may read and who may write is decided there, so Lightkone needs no accounts.
- Open Shared libraries (side bar, Organize).
- Join or start another: give it a name, choose where it lives, and give your own token or key for it. An empty repository or bucket starts a new shared library; one that already holds a Lightkone library is joined.
- Press the invite button to copy a link. The link carries where the library lives, never your token or key. Whoever opens it adds their own.
Set Your name in the same panel, so papers you add to a shared library show who added them. With a read-only token, the library opens read only. In a paper's details, Copy to… copies a paper, with its PDF, between your library and a shared one.