Show HN: Readwise Reader, an all-in-one reading app (opens in new tab)

I had originally started using Readwise to sync my Pocket and Memex highlights with Roam and it looks like you guys have removed the need for both by building Reader.

My pocket (pun unintended) thanks you, provided price isn't going up. But I think there is a lesson here. Pocket has done no innovation for years - a classic 'cash cow'. But then you guys show up and make a product that (for me) is 10x better. It is also clever that you haven't taken any VC funding because I don't think this a product that will ever be venture scale. Now, you guys can build cool stuff and make a good living in peace without chasing that elusive venture exit.

The main thing in bookmark/offline readers is ability to search. I see tons of bragging on highlights and not much on search. Can I search by tags? How can I tag anything any way? Can I import my tags from places like Diigo? My primary question is always "where did I saw that?", not highlighting everything I read.

I use Diigo and they are almost opposite for the better. Solid and clear way of how to migrate from competitors should also be #1 focus but here basic stuff is missing.

Here's the issue I had with Pocket, and one I'm sure you will run into as well. Around 2018 or so, I noticed Pocket stopped going to the offline version of the article, and would load the awful full web page, with ads and popups and everything. I would have to keep my phone in airplane mode to force Pocket to default to the offline article. I imagine they did this due to complaints from site owners.

Pocket at its peak probably had millions of users more than Readwise does. How will you handle similar requests when you reach that kind of scale?

FYI, my system now is to simply "save to PDF" in a labeled folder and keep devices in sync with Syncthing Fork.

The killer feature is exporting highlights to Obsidian for me though. I get a lot of utility from being able to find things I read in the past while doing writing or research.

Might still be worth a shot on personal devices, but with the say Safari syncs history across devices via iCloud, I'm not so sure…

Is it still demonstrably better than other reading apps (Reeder, Instapaper, etc.) without the plugin?

I'm looking back to the origins because Readwise is aggressively pushing this concept to the "limits". I mean, offering epubs and RSSs (and much more) is pretty inclusive. This may blur the original "simplicity" goal. However, The UX design is flawless. Nothing to say. So, this will surely help order all that disparate input.

HN readers, don't be discouraged by the price tag. Give it a go, and make sure you "invoke the ghost" [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/deadly_onion/status/1592990487257829376

Also when syncing with Pocket, perhaps mention it might take a bit to sync and you'll find the article in your Inbox - I thought the sync didn't work, but eventually appeared under Inbox, as opposed to where I expected in recently added.

Tangent: for me, the Readwise brand as a whole has been damaged by its Twitter bot. There are so many people using it that it spams the replies to just about any Twitter thread. I hate seeing it, but I know these people are getting lots of value - just at the expense of everyone else’s reading experience.

Chrome 108.0.5359.98, MacOS 11.7.1

I opened the Chrome Task Manager and the "GPU Process" was pegging the CPU.

I closed the Readwise tab and CPU usage dropped to normal.

I opened https://readwise.io/read again. After a minute the "GPU Process" CPU usage went back up to 73%.

I like reviewing long HN threads and would love to save them to read later. However, when I go to a saved thread in Readwise, it only renders the root comment (and none of the replies). I can't find a way to escape the styled view to get to the original. Am I perhaps just missing something or if not, consider it a suggestion!

The improvements are a lot more apparent on desktop. I love the fact that I can do pretty much anything using the command palette and keyboard shortcuts. Feels like this is the kind of browsing experience that I'm most contend with. The GPT-3 "ghostreader" feature was also great; most of the summary / text generations fulfilled my expectations.

If I have to pick on something: the mobile app browsing experience isn't that much better from Pocket or Instapaper. The scrolling and animation feels a bit laggy in my iPhone. The "ghostreader" feature in the app feels very limited and awkward to enable here as well.

$7.99/month

This seems rather steep when there are already reader apps that do cloud bookmarks for free.

TLDR: do you have plans for an interface to implement your own interactions like in VSCode/Emacs/Vimscript?

I’ve got a to-do item to implement a software artifact that’s hyper-specific to the keyboard configuration I like when it comes to reading, but this app has so many nice features that I can’t help but wonder if I can fit it to my functionality. I’m a big tweaker when it comes to personal software interaction configuration, and I’m curious if your app has any functionality through which to tweak interactions.

An example of something I’ve always wanted: find the first currently visible paragraph break and move the top line of the immediately following paragraph to the top of the view window (similarly, find the last visible paragraph break, and move the last line of the previous paragraph to the bottom of the viewing window). I have lots of little micro-configurations that I hope to implement, and I’m wondering if there’s a route to bring this functionality to your app. Little things like this help to micro-optimize intensive research sessions. Happy to contribute if it’s that sort of project.

The previously-mentioned interactions could be extended to only apply to a single monitor if the window is sized over multiple monitors. I have lots of ideas, and would love to discuss the prospects of accepting community requests and feedback concerning these sorts of personal settings.

Personally, I have two suggestions for a future release:

1). Invert-color PDF dark mode harms readability.

Simply invert the color will make serif fonts less readable. I use PDF.js with the following canvas renderer snippet to create a more pleasant reading experience.

```css

#viewerContainer > #viewer > .page > .canvasWrapper > canvas { filter: sepia(23%); filter: saturate(45%); filter: hue-rotate(181deg); filter: brightness(90%); filter: contrast(93%); filter: invert(81%); }

#viewerContainer > #viewer > .spread > .page > .canvasWrapper > canvas { filter: sepia(23%); filter: saturate(45%); filter: hue-rotate(181deg); filter: brightness(90%); filter: contrast(93%); filter: invert(81%); }

```

Try this with this PDF.js extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pdf-reader/ieepebp... by pasting it to the option page.

2). Custom Font support.

As a power user, I'd like to render the article with my personally preferable font (locally installed in most cases.) Why not simply give users the option to set css:font-family? It's really easy to implement.

Anyway, the current product is pleasing enough! I'm already spiritually a paid-user.

Been using it for several months now and it’s my default reading location and I read a lot. Reading is essential to my life and work and I have been looking for a solution that solves all my information consumption problems. Readwise has a good chance to be that solution as long as they don’t go the way of Google or Evernote.

One continuing irritation: PDF reading on iPadOS isn’t as good as dedicated apps (I use PDF Expert). Highlighting works fine, but writing by hand using the Pencil is nowhere near as responsive or accurate as PDF Expert. I hope you invest resources into making PDF consumption the best in class - it’s the only thing preventing me from fiully embracing Reader as a complete solution.

A suggestion - not arising from irritation, but a matter of positioning - much of the communication of Readwise/Reader’s utility is around productivity, of reading to optimize information uptake or insight maximization. I would prefer if it also highlighted creativity and imagination. I read to make new connnections and (hopefully) think new thoughts that I haven’t thought before. It’s an idyllic vision of the vocation of reading but one that has a long history in the annals of bibliophilia. Perhaps you should target not just the Tech Bro, but also the Romantic Reader.

PS: an unexpected delight - I liked how I was onboarded by an existing user and had to turn around a couple of weeks later and help onboard the next generation. If done well, Readwise/Reader can become an essential social reading app for nerds, with the tool being the hub for a community of serious readers. Books are already read in circles - perhaps you should try to replace Google+ as well as Google Reader

Whoever can present me a cross-platform app that lets me add sources, bookmark stuff AND comment, has my money.

The internal links seem to be not working, though. I mostly read books with a lot of footnotes, so I won't be able to try it as my daily reading driver right now, but good luck! There's not a single one good reading app out there, so the market is yours to take.

- It would be great if you add a feature to import an OPML

- Definitely needs a way manage feeds in folders/tags

- I would also really like a way to export my stuff in JSON/XML in case I want to move somewhere else (not sure if that exists already)

Keep up the good work! Would be happy to pay for this.

I don't mind paying US$8/m when I'm actively using it, but I wouldn't want to continue that if I have a period when I'm just using it a little.

So, when/if that happens, can I easily export all my configuration data?

I'm interested in avoiding lock-in, and would love to be able to export every note as an individual markdown file ("export all your highlights to a single CSV file" is clunky, and unusable for me).

It looks like:

* I have to export every item individually, manually ("export highlights on a document-by-document basis to Markdown by going to your Library and clicking the down arrow as shown below")

* I have to do this every time I edit an item inside Reader.

Have you considered building a "folder sync" plugin that exports each item/note as a separate .md file, and keeps it sync'ed? Even a one-way sync would be better than the manual flow you currently have.

Thanks for sharing the post and for taking questions here!

The Pocket import was a bit tricky, but probably not entirely Readwise Reader's fault. Pocket failed to log me in at first and just redirected me back to the login page. After an application data clearing it seemed to connect, but none of my articles were imported from Pocket. So I had to disconnect Pocket again, which oddly puts you on the Readwise page, and after connecting Pocket for the second time, it finally synced my articles.

I use Firefox and default it to private mode, so I get a nasty little "no storage available" and a spinner that never ends.

One feature that I'm curious about is whether or not it is possible to see the most highlighted quotes for a piece of content similar to what Kindle provides(popular highlights) and what Goodreads surfaces: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes

You could even bring this to your YouTube feature with the recent "most replayed" feature they launched earlier this year: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/3888

I did a video recently on YT where I walk through the app if anyone wants to take a look before you sign up.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vRHa18fRYhU

Will try it though :) Just dropping the informal ticket

I'd like to upload my books to somewhere that is under my control (google drive, dropbox, etc...). I've had bad experiences with services basically locking my library to them and making it nearly impossible to export/move them elsewhere.

It's a nice plus for you, since you don't need to pay the storage costs yourself.

I'd appreciate if you would consider regional pricing at some point. As it's priced today, it's more expensive than all the streaming services I use (including Netflix, Disney+). I can certainly understand why regional pricing is not for everyone and its drawbacks but just wanted to ask.

- Can you import from Pocket?

- Can you import from various bookmarks?

- How much do I own my data? If you go under, what's my backup plan? Open source, data exports, APIs...?

I would love to use such a product, but I only use open source wherever I have the option, and especially with subscription based services.

Either way, congrats on releasing a seemingly excellent product!

How do I set up email feeds, especially paid substack feeds?

I think it’d be enough for this product to match zotero for me to move to it!

i have collected thousands of unread articles as bookmarks. and they all have the tags "unread" and "article". i remove the "unread" tag on articles i have read. the process of going through my list became tedious. so i wrote a chrome extension that opens a random unread article for me in a new tab.

the first thing i looked for, when i opened this app, is how to import bookmarks. and it surprised me that the authors overlooked local bookmarks or bookmark files. that's how most people save what they want to read later, no?

looking forward to seeing that feature.

thanks.

* What is the amount of storage provided for users?

* How is content managed when offline? If/When I start traveling more, there will be times when I like to read without internet access.

Readwise Reader is the first thing I’ve come across that makes me seriously consider switching over. I’m definitely going to try it out.

There is a place for SaaS apps, no doubt, but somehow in the increasing information hostile environment and official government's positions on fighting the "disinformation, conspiracy and political incorrectness" my hunch moves me to decentralization of processes and future-proof solutions.

In my use case, this resulted in using the web browser with maximum protection available and creating a specific workflow for bookmarking and research through Obsidian. I can capture any article and directly move it to a specific folder in my vault. Then I can revisit, tag, organize and export it as PDF or HTML.

If, for some reason, Obsidian ceases to exist, the folder structure and markdown are usable in Emacs/Vim on any operating system.

Somehow, I don't trust any company which will have any form of access to my reading process. Nothing personal, just privacy.

P.S. I know, Emacs is an operating system:)

Does anyone know if it's a proper native app - or is it an electron chrome wrapper?

One question, how do I enable full text justification?

As an aside (and maybe this is my inner Unix proponent talking), architecturally it would be much cooler if some of these things were separated into smaller microservice-style products, e.g. a URL that you pass a YouTube URL to and it gives back an "article" with video and transcript. Then you can chain that URL with another that gives a GPT-3 TLDR on top (perhaps even passing your own API key to keep provider costs down/free). Seem like killer use cases for Cloudflare Workers. If in the end everything's RSS, users can have their choice of readers and still have cool features, though of course that would make your product less compelling.

> Upload EPUBs…

> …compile [Twitter] threads… inside Reader

No thank you. I'm sure it's a wonderful app, but I've been burned so many times that falling for it again would be firmly into "shame on me" territory. No more trusting online services for me — I'm in data-hoarder mode now.

I struggled to find how to change it from dark to light mode for a really long time, then found it hidden within the Aa button which is only accessible after opening a bookmark. Could you please surface that to the main screen?