What is text-to-speech?

Text-to-speech (TTS) enables you to listen to virtually any document using the highest quality AI voices the big tech companies have to offer. Note that text-to-speech doesn't work on PDFs unless you switch to text view.

How do I start text-to-speech (TTS) partway through a document?

You can start the TTS from your current scrolled position by tapping into the ... menu and tapping Listen using text-to-speech. This will start the TTS at whichever paragraph is roughly centered on your screen when you start it.

What's the difference between pausing and stopping the text-to-speech?

You can pause the current playback using the pause button in the middle of the playback control bar. This will keep the playback control bar active and remember your place, so you can resume playback when you're ready.

You can stop the TTS playback of the current document by tapping into the ... menu and tapping Stop text-to-speech. This will cancel the TTS playback of the current document and hide the control bar. If you wish to resume the document after stopping TTS, you'll need to relocate where you ended and restart TTS playback from the ... menu.

How do I highlight while listening to a document using text-to-speech? Can I triple tap my AirPods?

Yes! To enable highlighting via triple tap, navigate to Account settings and then to Headphone gestures. By default, double tap is set to Jump forward and triple tap is set to Jump backward, but you can change either (or both) of these gestures to highlight instead.

Sometimes the highlighted word misaligns from the spoken word while using text-to-speech. How do I make sure the highlighted word maps closer to the spoken word?

Occasionally, the speech will disconnect from the highlighted text. We are constantly improving the accuracy of this feature.

How do I use text-to-speech offline?

Currently, it's not possible to use text-to-speech offline, but it's on our roadmap to add the ability to pre-download TTS before going offline.

How do I use text-to-speech in the web app?

You can start using text-to-speech in the web app by clicking the Listen button in the top right, above the document's title. You can also use the Command Palette (cmd/ctrl + K) to search for tts and start playback from any point in the document.

Can I use keyboard shortcuts to control TTS?

The web app has a full set of keyboard shortcuts to control TTS playback. P will play or pause, shift + P will stop playback, left arrow and right arrow will skip through the content, and shift + up arrow or shift + down arrow will control the volume. The built-in media controls on your keyboard will also work for this. To slow the speed of playback, press ,, and to speed it up, press ..

Does text-to-speech work on languages other than English?

Yes! To change the language while listening, tap on the waveform icon at the left side of the TTS bar, then tap View all languages at the bottom of the menu.

How do I import articles to Reader?

Reader can import articles from a variety of sources, including your Readwise account, Instapaper, Pocket, and Matter.

• If you have Instapaper or Pocket connected to Readwise, any articles you've saved previously will automatically import to Readwise. You can connect Instapaper and Pocket within Readwise by following this link. Any articles that were archived inside Instapaper or Pocket will appear inside your Archive in Reader; the ten most recently saved items not archived will appear inside your Inbox in Reader; everything else will go in Later.
• You can import your Matter articles to Reader by generating an export inside the Matter app, which will send you an email with a link to download your data, and forwarding this email to read@readwise.io. Reader will automatically follow the link and import your previously saved documents.
• You can also bulk import articles by uploading a CSV file containing all of the URLs you want to add. To ensure they import correctly, the CSV should have a column titled "URL" (or "Url" or "url") that contains all of the links. Optionally, you can also include a "Title" column that contains the title of each document.

How do I use the browser extension to save articles to Reader?

The Reader browser extension performs two functions: first, saving articles to Reader and second (optionally), highlighting the open web. To save a document to Reader, tap the icon in the browser bar or use the keyboard shortcut alt + R. (You can change the keyboard binding in the extension's options.) This will save a clean, readable version of the document to your Reader inbox.

Once you've tapped the icon, you can optionally begin highlighting on the website itself, or you can click the Open article in Reader button to switch the Reader app and take your highlights there.

How do I use the mobile app to save articles to Reader?

Once you have the mobile app installed on your iOS or Android device, you can share documents to Reader using your mobile operating system's share sheet.

If you don't see Reader among the apps you can share to, try restarting your device. Sometimes iOS has a bug where new apps do not immediately appear in the share sheet, but a restart should clear that up.

How do I subscribe to RSS feeds in Reader?

You can subscribe to RSS feeds inside Reader in multiple ways.

• First, whenever you save a document to Reader, Reader scans the domain for the presence of an RSS feed. If it detects an associated RSS feed, a Subscribe button will appear in the right sidebar on both web and mobile. You can tap this Subscribe button to add this RSS feed to your account. If you're already subscribed to the source, this Subscribe button will become Unsubscribe.
• Second, you can navigate to the Manage feeds section of the web app and click Add feeds (Shift + A) to search for or manually input a domain or RSS feed. On mobile, you can tap the "..." icon in the rop right of the Feeds view, then tap the Add feed button.
• Third, you can upload an OPML file of RSS feeds to Reader by exporting the file from an existing feed reader, dragging the OPML file on top of the web app or opening the upload dialog (keyboard shortcut: U) and selecting the file. This is typically how you would quickly migrate from an existing feed reader such as Feedly, Inoreader, Reeder, Feedbin, etc.
• Finally, you can subscribe in bulk to suggested feeds from the "Suggested" tab on the Manage feeds section of the web app. This tab contains all the RSS feeds detected on documents you've saved to Reader. If you're not a pre-existing RSS power user, we recommend subscribing to all feeds contained in the "High signal feeds" section and then pruning back sources you don't like over time.

How do I upload files to Reader?

You can upload a variety of different file types to Reader, including PDFs, EPUBs, and OPML files. To upload a file, drag it on top of the web app, or open the Upload dialog (keyboard shortcut: U) and select the file.

On mobile, use the "share" action from within your device's Files app and find the option in the share sheet labeled "Upload [file] to Reader".

How do I save Twitter threads to Reader?

You can save Twitter threads to Reader and they'll compile into beautiful, blog-like documents. To save a Twitter thread, you can use the browser extension while viewing the page of any tweet in the thread. (Note that this will only save tweets posted by the OP in their original thread, not any replies from other users.)

If you're on mobile, you can use the share sheet to share any tweet of the thread to Reader.

How do I organize content in Reader?

Reader uses a concept called Filtered Views to organize content. A Filtered View is similar to a query-based search in Gmail like title:Getting Started or author:Paul Graham. You can think of your Reader account as one flat database of documents and Filtered Views enable you to "filter" those documents based on a variety of different parameters.

How do I create custom Filtered Views?

• Filter by tag or feed source: On your Manage feeds and Manage tags pages, you can use the Views column to assign tags and feeds to specific views.
• Filter by author: In the Info tab of any document, you can click the name of the author to bring up a filtered view of all the documents by that author in your library. You can then name and save the view for easier future access.
• Filter by query: You can create filtered views within Reader that will automatically group various sources together based on the query. To do so, click into Manage filtered views, then click the Add filtered view button in the top right.

How do I use Filtered Views?

You can reference all the different parameters that can be used with Filtered Views (including examples) from this Filtered View guide.

How do I use the keyboard shortcuts to highlight and annotate in Reader?

Reader on web is designed with a "keyboard-based reading experience", enabling you to read, navigate, highlight, tag, and annotate without using your mouse. You can navigate the document using the up or down arrows, which moves the blue focus indicator paragraph-by-paragraph. If you want to highlight a paragraph, tap H. Once highlighted, you can tap T to tag the highlight or N to add a note. If you have a wide enough screen—or hide the sidebars using [ and ]—these annotations (notes and tags) will appear in the right margin.

What is auto-highlighting?

Auto-highlighting is a feature that converts any selected text into a highlight immediately. It's a great way to spare yourself an extra click every time you want to make a highlight, and to better simulate the experience of highlighting analog documents with a marker or pen.

How do I highlight more than one paragraph or less than one paragraph using keyboard shortcuts?

Right now, keyboard-based highlighting and annotating is limited to the paragraph level, but it's on our roadmap to make this finer grained so you can highlight less than or more than a single paragraph.

How do I highlight images in Reader?

Reader enables you to highlight images while reading. These images will carry over into Readwise and even into your note-taking app if you export your highlights. To highlight images, simply focus the image and use the keyboard shortcut H or select it with the mouse (plus any desired text) on web, or select it plus any desired text on mobile.

How do I use the browser extension to highlight the open web?

Once you've activated the Reader extension on a particular web page, you can begin highlighting text and images on the site itself.

What is Ghostreader?

Ghostreader is Reader's implementation of GPT-3.5 to create a "Copilot of Reading". Ghostreader can operate at the word, sentence, paragraph, section, and document levels.

At the word level, Ghostreader can define words in context, supply encyclopedia entries, define a term in context of the author's usage, and translate. At the sentence and paragraph level, Ghostreader can simplify complex language, summarize long passages, and translate. It can even create haikus and emoji strings. To use Ghostreader at these levels, select text or use the focused paragraph and choose Invoke Ghostreader from the context menu or use the keyboard shortcut G. On mobile, tap the highlight, open the context menu (...), and select Invoke Ghostreader.

At the document level, Ghostreader can summarize documents, answer questions likely to be contained in the document, and more. To use Ghostreader at the document level, tap the more menu in the top right and select Invoke Ghostreader or use the keyboard shortcut Shift + G. On mobile, open the ... menu in the bottom right and tap the Ghostreader icon. Note that answers to document-level questions will appear in the Document Note field at the top of the Notebook panel.

How do I use Reader with PDFs?

You can upload PDFs to Reader and annotate them with highlights and notes.

• To zoom in or out on a PDF, you can use the + and - icons in the top of a PDF or the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl/Cmd + - Ctrl/Cmd + +. On mobile, you can pinch.
• You can use the "snapshotting" feature to save screenshots of a PDF as a highlight via the icon in the top left that looks like a square with a plus in the corner. Click the icon, then click and drag to select the area of the PDF you'd like to save. The selected area will be saved as an image in the document's Notebook.
• You can download an annotated version of a PDF document by pressing Shift + D while viewing the document in the web app. The downloaded PDF will contain all of your highlights and highlight notes.
• Although customizing the actual PDF isn't possible within Reader, since PDFs are essentially just a series of images, you can switch the document to Enhanced text mode (via the Text view icon in the top left on web or ... > View as text on mobile) to view a plain text version. While in this mode, you can use the same appearance customization available in any other document type via the Aa menu.

How do I export my highlights from Reader?

Reader is innately connected to Readwise so every highlight you make in Reader will instantly sync with Readwise and then from Readwise to your note-taking apps.

• To copy or download all of a document’s highlights, go into the Notebook tab of the right sidebar and click Export at the very bottom.
• Copy to clipboard: Copies all of the notes and highlights as plain text for you to paste into any text editing app. (Shift + Option + C)
• Download annotations: Downloads the document’s notes and highlights as a markdown file. (Shift + Option + D)
• Edit export file: Opens the export template for the markdown template. This is editable and uses the Jinja2 templating language.

How do I share an annotated article with a friend, colleague, or family member?

You can share a clean, distraction free version of any document you highlighted and annotated in Reader (except for EPUBs or PDFs) by entering the more menu (...), choosing Share, and selecting Enable public link on web or Share with annotations on mobile. This will create a publicly viewable link with your highlights and annotations overlaid.

What is a Bundle and how can I create my own to share with friends?

Bundles are themed collections of documents with pretty landing pages that can easily be shared with others.

To create a bundle, first save a filtered view in the web app, click the down chevron next to its name, and select Enable public link. You can optionally add a description and a cover image to spice up the public landing page. When a recipient hits the Open in Reader call-to-action, a filtered view will be created in their account and populated with the documents you curated.