Huge news: after 1.5 years of private beta, thousands of testers, and a looot of incredible work by the team...
@ReadwiseReader
is finally in public beta!
Save everything to one place, highlight like a pro, and replace several apps with one.
Better text-to-speech is possible, but none of AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc have released upgrades to their voices in years.
We're excited that
@UnrealSpeech
has filled this void and we'll be switching voices for
@ReadwiseReader
's TTS feature soon.
Check out a sample ๐ผ
We're delighted to announce that our Performance Refactor has finally shipped today ๐
The Reader mobile/web apps should now be 2x to 100x faster
across basically every metric (interaction speed, memory usage, loading times, etc)
So much new in Reader:
๐ Pagination
๐ฆ Bundles
๐ง Custom Emails
๐ป Windows App
๐ค Exportable Summaries
๐ต Price increase (unless you're already subscribed, then you're locked into your existing price for life!)
With the refactor is behind us, we're back to shipping a lot๐
We just shipped a ton of new features ๐ฎโ๐จ
๐ NEW SIDE PANEL (with RSS folders) on web
๐ฃ๏ธ Text-to-speech on web
๐ Entirely revamped search
๐ป Custom Ghostreader
โป๏ธ Resurfaced Later docs
๐ Original email styles
๐ Automatic PDF metadata
โก๏ธ Notion official API export
It's the new year, and we've shipped a lot of new improvements to Reader!
๐ค New ways to export your data
๐ Document-level notes
๐ฒRandom sort
๐ฅYoutube on mobile
๐PDF to text
๐Dozens of bug fixes + improvements
Let's get into it ๐
We just sent out a huge Reader product update email! Here's a quick tl;dr of what's new:
๐งMassively upgraded Text to Speech
๐พDownload highlighted PDFs
๐Better highlight management
๐Multiselect of feeds, tags, views
๐ Image actions
โ much much more!
Let's get into it ๐
Reader's AI just got smarter!
GPT4o-mini is now the default LLM used in Reader for autosummarizing your documents, asking questions, and everything else Ghostreader can do ๐ป๐ฅ
Better text-to-speech is possible, but none of AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc have released upgrades to their voices in years.
We're excited that
@UnrealSpeech
has filled this void and we'll be switching voices for
@ReadwiseReader
's TTS feature soon.
Check out a sample ๐ผ
Yesterday we sent out a huge product update email with some long-awaited announcements.
Hereโs a recap of whatโs new in Reader:
๐ผ๏ธ Quoteshots
๐ธ PDF Snapshotting
๐ Notebooks
๐ฆ Support for Long-Form Tweets
๐ฅ RSS Refactor
Letโs jump in!
We just hit โSendโ on the first Weekly Wisereads: a new newsletter containing the most highlighted articles in
@readwise
over the past week! ๐จ
This inaugural edition is extra special because
@p_millerd
generously shared his self-published book, The Pathless Path. For free.
โฌ๏ธ
๐ in Reader: share your annotated documents!
You can now share a public version of any article you read inside Reader with your notes and highlights beautifully overlaid
Last week we hit "Send" on Beta Update
#9
.
Here's what's new in Reader the past few months!
๐ป Ghostreader v2
๐ Mobile Folders
๐ก Upgraded Highlighting
๐ Ebook Upgrades
๐ชฒ So so many bug fixes/improvements
Lots new in Reader this week -- if you're in the private beta you should have received our 21st update email. Just in case, here's the tl;dr ๐
NEW HOME SCREEN ON WEB
powerful, customizable, and (hopefully) beautiful :)
Last week we sent out a massive product update email! Hereโs a recap of whatโs new:
๐ฃ๏ธ TTS is back for EPUBs & emails
โญ Document summaries just got even better
๐ Link between your documents
๐ PDF Upgrades
๐ Parsing and RSS Upgrades
Hey everyone using the beta -- we've noticed some slowness in parsing newly saved documents.
It's a temporary scaling issue since we just sent out a big batch of invites... we've scaled up our servers and should be fixed ASAP!
Thanks for your patience โค๏ธ
We just sent out the second edition of Weekly Wisereads: a newsletter showcasing most highlighted articles in
@readwise
over the past week! ๐จ
Spoiler: Elizabeth J. Zalman and
@ganeumann
are giving our readers an exclusive chapter from their upcoming book: Founder vs Investor
๐ปGhostreader prompt engineering workshop starts in 80 minutes!
Join our co-founder in the Readwise Discord server at 11am ET and learn how to customize our new Ghostreader auto-summary prompt for your own use case :)
Hey everyone! Just a heads up that our support team will have limited availability over the holidays.
During this time, we may be a little slower than usual to reply to your emails and other feedback, but weโll reply as soon as possible ๐
New reading header, ToC navigation, and info panel landing in the beta iOS app right now ๐ป
(is this the first public video of our app? perhaps...)
shipped by the insane
@ArtemLitch
&
@jessebc
Hey everyone!
Heads up that our team will be out of office from October 16th to 20th for our company offsite (in Santa Fe, NM). During this time, we may be a little slower than usual to reply to your emails and other feedback, but weโll reply as soon as we get back ๐
Hi everyone! The latest iOS/Android app version has some serious performance enhancements (fixing a regression in the previous version)
Make sure to update from the App Store / Google Play :)
One principle we've had with Reader (since it's earliest days) is that you should be able to do everything with the keyboard, including:
* reading
* navigating
* highlighting
* adding tags/annotations
* anything else
Have to say
@readwise
โs Reader app is definitely on the path to being the super tool folks will love โ with keyboard shortcuts galore! And wrapping it in Unite 4 on MacOS allows me to run it as its own app. The wait will be worth it.
Document-Level Notes ๐
Finally now, you can save document-level notes from ANYWHERE:
* The mobile app
* The iOS or Android share sheet
* Any of our browser extensions!
This feature is great for jotting down why you saved an article, right when you save it โก๏ธ
@ArtemLitch
๐ฆ Bundles
You can now create themed collections of documents (aka "bundles") with pretty landing pages for easily sharing with others!
This feature is still new and experimental, but we've found it surprisingly fun/useful :)
(props to
@TucciMatias
@tdkte
@jessebc
)
๐ง Text to Speech (TTS) Upgrade
* Seeking and starting text-to-speech anywhere in the document is now possible
* Listening is much faster/smoother
* You can now HIGHLIGHT WHILE LISTENING by tapping your AirPods
Here's a vid from
@erinmuur
showing how it all works :)
We know our filtering UI/language is pretty confusing right now ๐ we definitely plan to make it much more intuitive to filter your docs soon...
In the mean time,
@shacrw_
made an app to generate filters out of English!
I made a
@ReadwiseReader
Filter Generator using GPT-3๐ค
- enter what you want to read
- it'll generate a filter + open it in Reader app!
eg: "show me substack articles about AI from past 5 months"
Try here:
reply with your most complex filters below๐
๐จ Now in your inbox: Weekly Wisereads โ Vol. 4!
This week, weโre excited to share another exclusive preview chapter from The Coming Wave by DeepMind co-founder
@mustafasuleyman
โฌ๏ธ
Experimental: PDF to Text ๐
We all feel the pain of PDFs, strictly formatted and basically unreadable on mobile:
We've now added (a very experimental) way to reflow the text of your uploaded PDFs, and read them like any other article :)
As a...
โ user
I want...
โ a PDF file
so that...
โ I can view content with in a portable, compatible format with layout integrity, until this new โHTMLโ technology becomes widely adopted
Introducing Ghostreader ๐ป๐ค to
@ReadwiseReader
Your AI "Copilot of Reading" who will:
โข Define words in context ๐
โข Lookup people & places ๐
โข Simplify complex language ๐ถ
โข Summarize ๐ง
โข Generate flashcards ๐
โข And much more.
The only limit is your imagination ๐คฏ
thanks so much to everyone (especially our private beta testers) for all the love on
@ReadwiseReader
.. means the world to us, especially after working so hard to get it out โค๏ธ
to close off this launch, Reader is now on PH! would love any support there :)
๐ Automatic PDF metadata
PDFs have historically had poor metadata (we promise this isn't a bug on our end). Now whenever you upload a PDF, Reader will attempt to match it against various online databases to enrich the document with the right title and author.
๐ป Ghostreader v2
Reader's AI is now:
* Way easier to access (two taps on mobile!)
* Way more powerful & accurate
* You're able to write/customize your own prompts, to then use later while reading!
๐ Entirely revamped full-text search
If you've ever tried searching for a document in Reader and were frustrated by the results, you should try again. We've overhauled the full-text search algorithm to be vastly more accurate and fast ๐
Your metadata is now indexed, too!
๐ฃ๏ธ Text-to-speech on web
One of our most-requested features over the past few months, you can now use text-to-speech in the web and desktop apps just like you can in the mobile apps.
๐ Pagination aka Paged Scroll
You can now read with pages in the iOS and Android apps, just like in Kindle and other book reading apps.
However, there is one major innovation we landed on after much tinkering -- highlighting across pages should be effortless too :)
YouTube on Mobile ๐ฅ
When we entered public beta in mid-December, YouTube transcript follow-along worked on only web.
We now have full YouTube support on mobile! This uses youtube's transcript to let you follow along, add highlights/notes, and more!
๐ NEW SIDE PANEL (with RSS folders) on web
The next time you open Reader on web or desktop, you'll notice that the left sidebar has evolved into a left side panel with easier-to-navigate folders. As part of this update, you can now isolate certain feeds within the feed itself.
Introducing: The Readwise Discord Bot ๐พ
Now you can finally save important Discord messages and stay on top of the most valuable links shared in your servers. Hereโs how it works ๐
๐ป Custom Ghostreader summaries
Reader automatically summarizes your documents using GPT-3.5. Now, you can customize the prompt used to generate that summary, enabling all kinds of creative alternatives for your specific needs. Check out
@erinmuur
's before and after:
@deadly_onion
๐ก Upgraded Highlighting
You can now RESIZE HIGHLIGHTS! This is probably the biggest improvement to highlighting in years, and one of our most requested features ๐๏ธ
Beyond that:
* Punctuation is now auto-captured when highlighting
* Cross-page highlighting is much smoother
๐พ Download highlighted PDFs
Download PDFs with embedded highlights and notes or save any of your other articles as a PDF with your highlights overlaid.
This is the first of many PDF improvements our engineer
@TucciMatias
has been working on. Expect more soon ๐
@ArtemLitch
@mitchelljustin0
@TucciMatias
@homsiT
@lynchy010
@eliias
also ๐๐๐ง thousands of you have already started receiving the beta version of our new Summaries Email
there is so much to say about this feature, but we suggest you try it to find out ๐
save any 2 docs to your library in the same day, and you'll receive it the next day
@ArtemLitch
@TucciMatias
@tdkte
@jessebc
๐ง Custom Email Addresses
You can now personalize your custom Reader email address making it easier to remember when you're subscribing to newsletters or forwarding one-off emails.
You can find this option in the section of the webapp and the Profile
We have a much more detailed discussion of all the latest update and what we're working on next in the full Update post, which you can read here:
We have so much more in store for 2024, and we can't wait to share it with you :)
๐ Original email styles
You can now toggle emails between a parsed HTML view and a new original styles view that preserves the formatting and layout of the email itself:
๐ค Export Features
It's critical to us that everyone can export their data out of Reader if desired. You can now export:
* A CSV file of all of your saved links
* An OPML file of all of your feeds
* All of your uploaded files
* Your highlights, on a doc level or all at once
some big big news re:
@ReadwiseReader
next week
we've been grinding our asses off on it for 1.5 years, especialllly the past couple months -- all leading up to this :)
@ArtemLitch
@mitchelljustin0
@TucciMatias
@homsiT
@lynchy010
@eliias
we also shipped a gazillion bug fixes and small improvements/features, as always:
(you're gonna have to expand this tweet to see them all)
* better email parsing
* a google docs export integration
* PDF snapshotting on mobile
* a million article parsing fixes
* you can actually
@erinmuur
@jeremycaplan
@mattbirchler
@bearbig
This is the first 2023 update of many. We're intensely looking forward to making Reader much better by:
* improving performance (a lot!)
* Adding new features, and improving existing ones (especially PDFs, TTS, ePubs!)
* making Reader much easier to use
* fixing bugs
* more!
โป๏ธ Resurfaced Later docs in Summaries emails
We've added new section to your Summaries email that resurfaces two documents at random from your Later section. This is great for remembering to read something you saved months ago and clearing docs from your reading backlog!
Some
#protips
on how to get the most out of our new annotated document sharing feature ๐ฐ๐ค
๐ซ SHARE CONTEXT
Focus on environments where you share some context with the recipient(s) of the annotated document. (e.g a friend, colleague, family member, or spouse.)
๐ธ PDF Snapshotting
For a long time images, tables and charts in PDFs have thwarted our highlighting functionality.
Thanks to our new feature called snapshotting, you can easily capture these and export them as images to RW1.0 and your note taking app of choice. Thank you
P.S. โ Performance of the apps remains our
#1
priority this dev cycle.ย
The mammoth refactor weโve been working on is finally making god progress, and should 10x the speed of Reader across your desktop and and mobile devices. Hoping to ship later this summer ๐ฅ
Most importantly, you can even now customize or WRITE YOUR OWN Ghostreader prompts!
At Readwise we think a lot about products with low floors & high ceilings: this feature has a limitlessly high ceiling.
@deadly_onion
gets into how to customize prompts:
The version of pagination (and the included highlighting UX) we landed on was the result of months of engineering and tinkering by the inimitable
@artemlitch
.
There's a full discussion of the thinking/process in our full Update Post โฌ๏ธ
@deadly_onion
@homsiT
The truth is: this feature isn't actually social. In fact, we'd wager that if you try to share a random annotated article in public, it'll get almost no likes.
Instead, sharing an annotated article works best in small settings โ settings with what we call "shared context"
It might seem minor, but reading+annotating without having to touch your mouse is a powerful way to get into a state of flow while reading, and leave distractions behind ๐
Like many of our features, this was heavily inspired by
@Superhuman
โก๏ธ
@ArtemLitch
@mitchelljustin0
@TucciMatias
@homsiT
@lynchy010
@eliias
another new thing this week ICYMI, we shipped the biggest improvement ever to our Text to Speech feature. the voices are now ๐ฏ
also huge for our Android friends, you can now listen to ePubs, PDFs, emails, and anything else now too!
More deets on this:
4/ ๐ Links Tab:
The web is already an intricately connected knowledge graph -- our new Links tab makes those connections visible to you, and allows you to quickly scan and traverse documents that link to each other, both in and outside of your library.
Backlinks: documents in
@ArtemLitch
@TucciMatias
@tdkte
@jessebc
๐ป Windows App
Last update, we shared that you could install Reader as a local Mac app. This update, we're happy to share that you can now do the same on Windows! It's also a lot faster.
Get it here:
Props to
@mitchelljustin0
for nailing this!
@ArtemLitch
@TucciMatias
@tdkte
@jessebc
Bundles can be used for a variety of usecases such as sharing of favorite documents with friends, collecting anthologies of related docs, shared research projects, new hire onboarding, and more.
To create a Bundle, first save a filtered view in the web app & follow these images:
PS- while we couldn't squeeze it into this update, we've been internally testing a surprisingly fun+useful new feature on web๐
Should be out later this week ๐ฅ
More complex AI actions are now built into Reader:
* "Pick up where you left off" to get a quick recap of your last reading session
* A powerful "X Ray" prompt that explains exactly how a term (or character, or place) is defined by the author
* Many more!
@deadly_onion
@homsiT
So why build something that lets you share?
The tl;dr is that this sharing annotated articles feature is about utility, not about accumulating social capital.
๐Better highlight management
Perform actions on highlights like tagging, annotating, or deleting in the Notebook sidebar of the web app.
Say hello to better organization, and all doable with keyboard shortcuts โจ๏ธ
Announcing our
@ReadwiseReader
(new app by
@readwise
) autodata integration! Built by our own
@adamwwolf
Commit to whittling down your backlog of saved articles, i.e., make Readwise Reader a read-it-later app rather than a read-it-never app.
4/ How to Take Smart Notes
Youโve read about how to read. Youโve highlighted about how to highlight. But have you taken notes about how to take notes?
@beeamp_vicky
shares her approach to note-taking.
๐ผ๏ธ Quoteshots are now available in Reader!
For years youโve been able to generate a pretty image from your highlights inside of Readwise 1.0. Now you can directly in Reader too, with even more styles. To generate a quoteshot, open the more menu (...) on a highlight and select
When we first released our
@NotionHQ
export in 2020, there was nothing else like it. Since then, Notion has released a public API and we've rebuilt the integration from the ground up, with more stability and new categories for PDF and video highlights.
๐ Notebooks
The concept of a Notebook has been in Reader since day 1, but until recently itโs been confined to the right sidebar. Thanks to
@mitchelljustin0
and Rena, it's been elevated to a first-class feature enabling you to focus on a document's highlights without
@deadly_onion
๐ Ebook Upgrades
We've turned our attention to taking the ebook reading experience to the next level.
Namely, EPUBs will now be formatted much better, preserving the original stylings that the author/publisher originally set :)
(+ many other small book reading improvements!)
Hopped on the
@MuseAppHQ
podcast to chat falconry, the history of reading apps, and our philosophy behind Reader ๐ฆ ๐
Thanks so much for having us
@_adamwiggins_
๐
Metamuse 79 // Read-later apps
with
@homsIT
and
@deadly_onion
of
@readwise
โข Reading for betterment vs. reading for entertainment
โข The history of read-later apps like Pocket and Instapaper
โข The cat-and-mouse game of web parsing
Our
#1
priority the past few months has been stability and performance.
We're nearing the end of a huge performance improvement which, once shipped, should drastically improve performance for those with large libraries. In the meantime we've shipped A LOT of small bug fixes and