Five years ago, Andrew Shen created a browser extension, SEP+, that improved the experience of using the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in various ways. He has now released an update, SEP+ v2, which does even more.

The old version moved each article’s navigation outline to the side of the page, offered the option of “dark mode”, added keyboard shortcuts for search, removed irrelevant sections when printing, and improved the typography.

The new version does all that but also includes redesigned home, article, and search pages and a “command palette” for instantly searching and jumping to any entry.

It also includes two new functions that a lot of users will appreciate:

• Hover previews for footnotes and bibliography citations, with links to PhilPapers
• Ability to highlight or annotate articles, stored locally and exportable as JSON/Markdown/Word

Andrew Shen, who has an MA in philosophy, is a product designer at Notion. He has done a fantastic job bringing his design skills to the project of enhancing the SEP.

Here’s a demo:

Shen notes: “As before, it’s free, collects no user data, serves no ads, and only has access to plato.stanford.edu.”

It’s available here for Chrome, and here for Firefox.

Once SEP+ v2 is installed in your browser, you simply need to visit the SEP at its regular site; the extension operates automatically. Check it out.