Uploading Content

Everything in Scholarly starts with your materials. Upload PDFs, documents, images, audio files, or paste URLs to get started. The platform processes your content and makes it available for AI chat, flashcard generation, quizzes, podcasts, video lectures, and more.

How to Upload

There are several ways to get content into Scholarly:

• Drag and drop -- Drag any file onto the page from your computer. A drop zone appears to confirm the upload.
• Upload button -- Click the upload button on the home page or in the sidebar to open the file picker.
• Paste text -- Choose Paste text from the segmented control at the top of the Add content window (or open More tools in the Home tool row and pick Paste Text) to paste notes, a transcript, or an article. It becomes a source just like a file. See Paste Text.
• Paste a URL -- In the upload modal, paste a website URL or YouTube video link. Scholarly extracts the content automatically.
• Google Drive -- Pick files straight from Google Drive without downloading and re-uploading them. Choose Google Drive in any create window, in AI chat, or in Deep Research. See Connections for the supported Drive file types and how to connect.
• From chat -- Attach files directly in the AI chat input by clicking the attachment button.
• On your phone -- Add content opens as a sheet: Cancel and the title in a bar at the top, then rows for Take Photo, Photo Library, and Choose Files, with your plan's size limit as a footnote. Underneath sit a single Paste a link field and rows for From Library, Paste Text, and Google Drive, each of which opens its own page with a Back button. The project you are saving to is a row at the bottom, and Next appears once you have added something. See Scholarly on Mobile.

Every create window shows a Saving to chip in its header naming the project your sources and finished work will land in. It defaults to the project you used most recently — switch projects, choose No project, or create a new one inline without leaving the window. See Projects.

Supported File Types

Each file can be up to 8 MB on the free plan, 300 MB on Premium, or 1 GB on Laureate. The free plan includes 1 lifetime file upload (it does not reset); paid plans upload without limits. See Plans and Limits.

Scanned PDFs (image-only documents with no selectable text) are supported. Clear, legible scans produce the best results.

Text and data files (notes, CSVs, code, calendars, and more) are saved automatically as editable library files — each gets its own page where you can preview, edit, or chat with it, and reuse it as a source for any AI tool.

For a detailed breakdown of what each format can do, see the Supported File Formats guide.

After Uploading

When you upload a file, Scholarly processes it and shows you follow-up actions depending on the file type:

• Ask AI -- Open AI chat to ask questions about the content.
• Create Flashcards -- Generate a flashcard set from the material.
• Create Video Lecture -- Generate a narrated video lecture.
• Create Podcast -- Turn the content into a multi-speaker audio podcast.

The most common actions are shown upfront. Open the rest of the grid or the More menu for quizzes, slides, and other tools:

• Create Quiz -- Build a quiz based on the content.
• Create AI Slides -- Generate a slide deck from 1 source on Free, up to 10 on Premium, or 20 on Laureate — PDFs, Word docs, PowerPoints, text files, or a pasted URL.

When you pick a podcast, video lecture, or slide deck, a short customization panel appears before generation starts — pick a style preset, voices, length, focus areas, AI model, or add custom instructions. Your choices are kept even if you step back to change the source files. For the details of each option, see the Podcasts, AI Video Lectures, and AI Slides guides.

On a phone the customization step is one screen with the core choices only: style, then language, voice, resolution and length, then instructions, then Create. Model, appearance, expert styles, and scheduling stay on desktop. If the creation would spend a free AI Creation Credit, Scholarly asks first, so a stray tap cannot use it up.

Generating from a long PDF? Every AI create window includes a page selector, so you can pick exactly which pages the AI works from before it generates.

Upload two or more related files at once and Scholarly offers to group them into a folder for you — one click keeps the batch together. See Folders and Organization.

You do not have to choose an action right away. Uploaded content is saved to your library and you can come back to it later.

Your files keep their names

Uploaded documents and audio keep the filename you gave them — Scholarly does not rename your files during processing. Names with spaces and non-English characters are preserved. A processed copy may use a different extension when the document is converted, such as from Word to PDF. Recordings keep the name you saved them under, and you can still rename anything yourself by clicking its title.

If an upload is rejected

A file that can't be accepted tells you why rather than failing quietly — too large for your plan, an unsupported type, or empty. Oversized files are caught before the upload runs, so you find out immediately.

A Word, PowerPoint, or Excel file that is too complex for our converter to render stops on the first attempt and tells you to try a smaller file or upload a PDF instead, rather than leaving the upload spinning.

See Fixing Common Problems.

PDFs

Uploaded PDFs get their own viewer page with:

• A full document viewer with page navigation.
• AI chat sidebar for asking questions about the content.
• Page-aware AI that knows which page you are reading.

When you generate slides, study guides, worksheets, video lectures, infographics, or mind maps from a PDF, the AI uses extracted text to locate relevant pages, then reads those pages visually when needed. This helps it account for diagrams, equations, tables, scans, and handwriting instead of relying only on extracted text.

Audio Files

Audio uploads (MP3, M4A, WAV, WebM, OGG) create a recording page with:

• Automatic transcription with timestamps.
• AI-generated summary and topic list.
• A playback controls with speed adjustment.
• AI chat grounded in the transcript.

Video Files

Upload a video file (MP4, MOV, WebM, M4V, AVI, or MKV) directly and Scholarly gives it its own page with:

• Automatic transcription, with chapters generated from the content.
• An AI-generated summary.
• AI chat grounded in the transcript.
• One-click flashcard generation from the transcript.

YouTube Videos

Paste a YouTube URL and Scholarly extracts the video transcript. You can then generate flashcards from the transcript or discuss the video content with AI chat. If a video has no readable captions or transcript, upload the audio or video file directly instead.

Website URLs

Paste any website URL and Scholarly extracts the page content. Use it to generate flashcards or as context for AI chat.

Organization

All uploaded content appears on your home page. From there you can:

• Move to folders -- Drag items into folders or use the menu to organize.
• Rename -- Click the title to rename any uploaded item.
• Pin -- Pin frequently-used content to the sidebar for quick access.
• Delete -- Delete content you no longer need. Deleted items move to the Deleted tab on the All Content page, where you can restore them at any time. See Deleting and Restoring Content.

Tips

• Upload multiple files at once by selecting several in the file picker or dragging a batch onto the page.
• After uploading a PDF, try "Give me the gist" in AI chat to get a quick overview before diving in.
• Use the upload modal from the flashcard creator to generate cards immediately from a new file.
• After a successful upload, the useful next step is making something from it or starting a chat — the file on its own is a source, not the result.

Related

• Supported File Formats — every format, and what each one can be turned into.
• Paste Text — adding material that does not live in a file.
• Connections — using Google Drive files as sources.
• Plans and Limits — file size, PDF pages, and how many sources you can combine.
• Turning Work Documents into Training Material — what to do with a policy, SOP, or deck once it is in.