BibDesk

New in Version 1.7; "New hidden preference to re-enable the Google Scholar web scraper" Where did you hide it? It isn't in the documentation. Dude.

Nice

Coming back to add 5 stars after 4 years. This is an amazing software, extremely stable and very convenient. My workplace offers a well-known paid alternative for which a pre-paid site-license was purchased (with tech support). No comparison, the free Bibdesk is just superior. Moreover, I just realized that (without doing anything) the two copies of Bibdesk on my two Macs are being synchronized through iCloud (including the links between the Bibdesk listing and the pdf files) ... I'm not sure how this is done but thanks nonetheless :)

Not bad for the first trial.

Last time I reviewed this application was almost 8 years ago. Since then it is just getting better and better. It is stable and faster than ever. A real lifesaver, thanks the developers.

I have been using this program for many years, in combination with Lyx and Skim. I am not a power user, but the automatic filing was easy enough to set up. Highly recommended for Academics!

WARNING: Would not run under OS X 10.4 (PB G4).

After using Endnote (when it was still a Mac product) and then Bookend and trying Sente, this is my absolute fav app, especially since it allowed me to toss Word. I use it for organize (very effortlessly) all my research and even my drafts in a Lyx - BibDesk combination. Perfect integration (as BibDesk basically edits the BibTeX file you need for Lyx). I strongly suggest for all folks who are frustrated with MS Word to give these two apps a try. Tons of other users are willing and able to support you and there's tons of information available on various user groups. I only wish that it would not have to index the content of PDFs each time you want to search (only one time until you close the app).

Using Bibdesk + Textmate + Latex for my science thesis. A little bit of a learning curve if you are new to these tools, but well worth it - so much more robust than the other options. The new features of Bibdesk such as being able to import references from webpages are welcome. A great product, just give it a little time.

For some who use this it may be worth looking into CiteULike http://www.citeulike.org/ It allows you to upload pdf files, and if you navigate to a journal's website you can automatically get all the details for the paper and it will assemble the bibtex for you. It's neat because I can get hold of my papers wherever I am and searching in it is nice too. Before CiteULike I used JabRef a lot.

I was very happy to see a free app that dose the job as reference manage, however,it crashes easily. Just then I tried to use this app again to see if it had improved, but it crashed the moment I started. Thinking back, I still remember the frustration of needing to attach files by hand which bugs me when I have lots of PDFs. The worst thing is that when it crashes, I lost all the data I entered. T_T Another minor issue: there is no scroll left or right when browsing a webpage. If you have lots of articles and need to work with papers for a long time, Sente is better. Otherwise, this app should work as well.

it took me awhile to warm up to bibdesk, but at this point i couldn't operate efficiently without it. a "must have" if you're into refereed journal literature. are donations accepted? fxt

Perhaps the best designed Mac application there is. It's a shame that more people aren't aware of BibDesk and end up buying one of the competitors instead. BibDesk makes managing large collections of pdfs easy, and you don't need to know anything about bibtex to use it. In fact, one of the best things about BibDesk is how well it integrates with Skim, the pdf reader/annotation app. Manage your database with BibDesk, double click on a pdf to open it with Skim, do all your highlighting and note taking, and when you go back to BibDesk your highlights and notes are waiting there as searchable text! In fact, it is simple to search across the entire text of a large library - searching both the text of the pdfs and your own notes. The screenshot (maybe it is time for a new one?) really doesn't begin to show you how well this program is designed or all of the features (including integration with a number of online databases). If you're looking for anything near the bibliography/note taking realm, I strongly suggest you give BibDesk a try.

BibDesk is absolutely wonderful software, far better than any other BibTex manager I've ever used. I've been using BibDesk heavily for a few years (writing my dissertation), and the only problem that I've ever had was fixed by the developers on the same day that I reported it. It's a deep program, with lots of features that I don't use, so it might seem a little overwhelming to the uninitiated, but it's so good that anyone who needs to manage a large bibliography--even if they don't use BibTex--really should try it out.

A great program. Makes the annoying tasks of organizing references, referring to them from an article, linking them to the corresponding pdf files and urls a pleasure. Thanks ....

An excellent program -- powerful and flexible. The export options are particularly nice. Thanks to all who contributed!

This program rocks. It is possible to use this program to organize articles. It even has automatic sorting and naming of pdf articles (ala iTunes). As a longtime BibTex user, I recommend this interface to BibTex entries highly. Also, combined with LyX, one can have a really awesome user-friendly scientific writing setup on their computer without much exptertise. Well, it won't be Word, but the upside is that it won't be Word.

The current version (0.99.3) seems to have introduced a bug that hangs the program when the user attempts to change format strings in the CIte Key or or AutoFile preferences. Keep v. 0.99.2 handy until this is fixed.

BibDesk is a wonderful and welcome addition to the TeX typesetting system. It greatly improves workflow and performs much better than similar software packages. With BibDesk, TexShop, and XeTeX one is able to produce stunning documents without the efforts of manually typesetting or painstakingly coding your documents.

I write technical articles with TeXShop and this is an absolutely indispensable complement to it. It makes bibliography management so much easier. No more manually editing BibTeX files. Even if you're not using LaTeX, this is a very good free bibliography tool (it can output bibliographies and citations in PDF, RTF etc.) It even has an RSS feature for you to share your index with like-minded peers who have newsreaders! (great for academics)