Readwise Reader

What reviewers actually said

Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.

1. [R2] 5/5 · US Revolutionized how I consume media: I finally feel like I have a grasp on everything I read and a single place to read it all. Highly highly recommend
2. [R3] 5/5 · US Wow!: So I came from rss.app and Feedly cause I want to keep up with the playoffs.. I understand reader isn’t fast pace but it’s what I’m looking for .. use Flipboard and whatever is out there to find an article dump it in my library.. get feeds dump then then read them on my own time.. I been doing read later for now .. don’t get me started on chatting with highlights. I LOVE IT SO MUCH!! Using
3. [R39] 5/5 · US The Best Read It Later App: Reader allows me to consolidate my reading resources into one app. Digital books, journal articles, websites, RSS feeds, and e-mail newsletters all go into Reader and keep me from bouncing around from app to app. And best of all, my highlights and notes automatically sync to the Readwise app for later reference. Readwise and Reader are the foundation of my second brain.
4. [R47] 5/5 · US What I’ve been waiting for: Since all the old RSS readers died and every site has been adding paywalls it’s been harder and harder to be efficient with my reading. Enter Readwise Reader. It lets me funnel nearly all the content I want to read - emails, articles, even PDFs - into one experience. I churn through everything on my iPad in the morning and save content for work to access from the deskto
5. [R12] 5/5 · US Great tts app: Please add a sleep timer The app is great so far
6. [R14] 5/5 · US Elegant Interface - and a true 2nd Brain: I save everything in it - research, epubs, pdfs, feeds from twitter lists, and websites, blogs. The text to speech feature is excellent for anything from articles to books.
7. [R21] 5/5 · US My most used iOS app: I love the text-to-speech feature, making any media listenable while allowing for reading without losing one's place. The app receives consistent updates and provides excellent support. The highlight feature is transformative.
8. [R26] 5/5 · US Turned my books into audiobooks: I really like this app, I can read every kind of document I want, including YouTube where I can highlight text. Also, the text to speech feature I use to listen to my epub books before I go to sleep. Amazing.
9. [R15] 5/5 · US reader app made by readers!: read & highlight anything, including YouTube and podcast transcripts. I can feel the love put into this app.
10. [R20] 5/5 · US Excellent App: This is the app for those that read a lot and remember what they read.
11. [R1] 5/5 · US absolutely worth it: this is the only app I’ve found worth paying a yearly subscription for. impeccable interface. so easy to use, yet so many awesome features. when I first started using Reader, I was between jobs. when my (already generous) free trial ended, they extended it by three more months for me + were highly responsive to emails. I did not feel like a random user; the Readwise team has
12. [R24] 5/5 · US Didn’t know how much I needed this: I try to minimize my use of apps/heavy tooling but this is downright incredible. It’s intuitive and exactly what I needed.
13. [R35] 5/5 · US Didn’t know how much I needed this app until I used it: Title says it all. I am I school and it completely changed how I research. I was tired of social media apps trying to pull me away from my work. I started deleting them, but couldn’t fully disconnect. The feed in this app completely replaces any social media app i had before, all ad free. This app is truly a game changer. Highly recommend.
14. [R9] 5/5 · US Great app!: Battery and performance issues have been fixed :)
15. [R11] 5/5 · US The best all-in-one reader around: This app has changed the way I consume almost all online, and some offline content. While it’s not perfect (yet), it is very actively developed and supported. New features are coming all the time and when things break, they’re at least quickly acknowledged and usually resolved reasonably fast as well. It’s the best app I’ve seen in this category and I’ve tried pl
16. [R5] 3/5 · US Great app, disastrous quality control: The amount of bugs this app has is amongst the highest I've ever seen on any app, whether high quality or otherwise . It's too bad, because this thing is really, really, really good when it works. For at least a year or two now, my inbox on my iPhone just does not want to work properly. It takes forever to load, and I've cleared the cache and done everything
17. [R13] 1/5 · US TTS broken again: No QA testing before each update? Now when using TTS and you tap the button to jump back, it jumps ahead instead. Acceptable for a free or cheap service, not acceptable at this price.
18. [R25] 1/5 · US Last update introduced crashes.: Been us the Readeise reader app to have it read to me the details of a very large PDF and after the recent up the app crashes after about 5 minutes. This happens on both iPad and iPhone. I hope the developer fixes soon. All what good until then update yesterday.
19. [R28] 1/5 · US Buggy and poor UX for reading: Got this because I already use readwise highlights and wanted to sync e-books and reading states across devices to my android e-reader. I don’t enjoy reading with it. I would cancel if it weren’t part of the highlights subscription which I value more. - Buggy: highlighting a word doesn’t always bring up the menu to allow highlighting. Often it mis-registers a page t
20. [R42] 1/5 · US Extremely slow to refresh: App is extremely slow at initial open. It get better once everything is loaded but that takes forever
21. [R64] 3/5 · US Great app and service but performance issues: Really like using readwise reader for all my rss feeds and reading purposes but the big problem i have is performance issues with the app (on an iPhone 14 pro). The home screen and daily digest is basically unusable due to how slow it is and how much it lags while scrolling. The library and feed tabs are mostly fine, though reading articles can also la
22. [R92] 1/5 · US Please fix YouTube playback: Love the idea, waited a long time for the app, but it's embarrassing how after two plus years of waiting to release the app is to this day very laggy, slow and has many bugs. Yes, native connection to readwise is cool. But being honest there are many highlighter apps that do a much better job in general. Only unique feature is taking notes on YouTube videos. And yet it
23. [R4] 1/5 · US Just downloaded but my trial is expired?: This app must be connected to to original in terms of subscription. I’ve never used this one before but I’ve used the Readwise app; just downloaded this, signed up and it told me to subscribe to continue as my trial is expired. I can’t move past that page to even see what the app entails. Thats a real bummer, really wanted to try it as I get back into read
24. [R38] 3/5 · US Subscription: Can’t justify $12/m
25. [R54] 3/5 · US Good App, too pricey: I enjoyed my first day using the app, but learned that it costs about $10-13 a month! I read that a year ago it was $8-9. In a perfect world I would use this app, but this cost is ludicrously high for the service offered. Subscriptions are everywhere now and I’m frankly fine with a free version that is slightly worse.
26. [R83] 3/5 · US nice: but should be charge less 95$/yr for a reading app sounds crazy
27. [R7] 3/5 · US Unreliable: I love the idea of this app. I love the feature set. What I do t love is that a substantial portion of the articles I save get improperly saved. For example, I saved an article and the top and bottom sections (about 80% of the article) weren’t saved. I tried the same thing in GoodLinks, none. The article was as expected. Not sure what’s going on here but great features can’t make up f
28. [R29] 1/5 · US Missing functionality: I got this to be a good place to read all my favorite publications in one app. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that I’m unable to read any of these publications, such as the Economist, New Yorker, or History Today, in the Reader App. Whenever I try to import them, I only get the first paragraph, presumably because when Reader goes to grab the article, it does not ha
29. [R74] 5/5 · US life changer: can’t imagine my life without this anymore. but i hope they add more natural TTS voice options akin to speechify. ps. i’m experiencing slower load times and more pdf parsing errors, i hope the team can keep up the reliability standards of the past
30. [R158] 1/5 · GB Video problems: Lots of video pages won’t load in reader which is the main reason I subscribed for year - some do, most don’t, so disappointed
31. [R6] 4/5 · US Great, but no Widget support?: I’m enjoying the app and the service. But it would be great to see a widget for the news feeder.
32. [R16] 1/5 · US No RSS compact view: Unlike every other rss app or similar apps such as email clients that all offer compact view vs default or vs expanded etc, Reader still has 0 options to customize the RSS screen. Can’t hide the image, can’t hide the excerpt etc so it’s a terrible rss experience and seems more aimed for the view one would want for curated saved articles not all ones rss feeds. Every years more
33. [R27] 3/5 · US Disingenuous update re Apple Pencil: Yes, you can finally use an Apple Pencil to highlight. But it’s nothing like you’d expect. You can’t highlight PDFs unless you’re in “text” view. Ok, annoying, but maybe not the end of the world. Until you switch back to pdf view. Then you can’t see your highlights anymore. Forget about something basic like handwriting notes. Not available. I realize this is a
34. [R41] 1/5 · US Analytics/streaks?: As an avid reader, I optimistically switched over from my previous reader. However, I deeply miss being able to see my reading progress, streaks, goals, etc for the year at a glance
35. [R49] 3/5 · US Inexplicably not the web-app on iPad OS: I love Readwise on my phone, my Palma, and my web browser. It’s the best reading app & it’s expensive enough that I almost trust it’ll stick around (unlike Omnivore…). For unknown reasons, though: the iPad OS app is the web browser’s inferior in every way. The lack of a sidebar is nuts and it’s basically a high-res version of the phone app. What’s up with t
36. [R162] 3/5 · GB After a few years of use, I’m quitting Readwise: I’ll start by saying that Readwise is pretty good. I’ve been using it for the past few years, but I’ve recently reevaluated it and found it to not be value for money for me personally. A few things have contributed to this decision. First of all, the app are not the best designed apps, since Readwise is cross-platform and so the iOS app feels qu
37. [R200] 1/5 · AU Readwise Reader is awesome. Just avoid the ipad app.: Readwise Reader is an incredible, visionary unicorn. It’s so good it’s hard to imagine life without it… However, the ipad app doesn’t allow for the use of shortcuts… which is how I use the app. So, don’t install the app, but follow the creator’s recommendations to run in safari instead. That’s as great an experience as the rest of the platfo
38. [R201] 2/5 · AU Broken on iPad: Blank screen when going back from document to main screen
39. [R19] 5/5 · US Absolutely Life Altering: This reader has saved me so much time and also allowed mind to rest easier. All of my feeds and articles in one spot. I don’t get sidetracked as often with the focused UI. It’s a beautiful experience. I’m just kicking myself for not finding it sooner. I can’t wait for highlights view to be integrated!
40. [R31] 5/5 · US Packed with amazing features(but for the love of god change the app icon): I love this app. It basically combined my separate RSS and “read later” apps into a single amazing reading hub, and I am only scratching the surface of its functionality. But good god the app icon is ugly, please change it so more people can find out what an amazing piece of software this is!
41. [R196] 1/5 · AU Not transparent about pricing: Seems like a good app. But not transparent about pricing. Upon downloading the free app, you are automatically placed in a 30 day free trial. No free tier option like other Read later apps. Would’ve been better if you were upfront about the cost of your service rather than trying to trap users into another subscription
42. [R57] 5/5 · US Pays For Itself In The 1st Hour: THIS☝🏼is what I’ve been jones’n for for a decade. A Universal Vault to quickly, in seconds, store, categorize, play to watch or listen. Being able to 👂🏼LISTEN👂🏼to an article, at 2 or 3x Speed keeps me up with individual content, of ANY kind, into the dozens each day. WELL WORTH THE PRICE to all the butthurt who want everything Free. The Time savings for Me, Pays fo
43. [R51] 5/5 · US Best Centralized Reading App: After finally getting fed up with Pocket after 10+ years, I made the switch to Reader and haven't looked back. The subscription is definitely more expensive, but I've found the additional value to be worth it. I love the ability to triage and organize my read-later saves. I especially love the ability to send email newsletters to the Feed and then save interesting art
44. [R203] 3/5 · AU Good future but clunky right now: I see where the app is going and want to embrace ReadWise, however to have to pay for it now in its current state, I’m not sure if I can do it. The Reader interface is clunky - they need to observe real users using it to see where the improvements needing to be made are. Also, the iPad app has no Pencil support, making highlighting and annotating PDFs a truly frus