[HN Gopher] Show HN: Readwise Reader, an all-in-one reading app
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Show HN: Readwise Reader, an all-in-one reading app
Hey HN, cofounder of Readwise here. We've been working on this
cross-platform reader app for about 2 years, excited to finally
share it in public beta. Probably the most notable thing that
makes Reader unique is that it supports almost any content type you
could want to save/read/highlight: * web pages *
emails/newsletters * PDFs * ePubs * twitter threads * youtube
videos (with transcripts) * RSS feeds With all of your knowledge
content in one place, we built powerful reading and highlighting,
as well as a bunch of novel triage/organization features, so you
can actually consume & stay on top of that content! There are also
a lot of advanced features too, such as text-to-speech, GPT3
questions/summaries, super powerful highlighting (that includes
markup and images), complex filtering/search (with our own query
language), sleek mobile triage UI, keyboard shortcuts for
reading/everything, integrations with note-taking apps, a browser
extension for both saving pages and highlighting them, and much
more. If anyone's interested in more product details, as well as
our business model, etc, we wrote a detailed launch post:
https://blog.readwise.io/the-next-chapter-of-reader-public-b...
Predicting a common question: Reader is part of the Readwise
subscription pricing right now in beta -- there's a 30 day free
trial and then it's paid at ~$8usd/month. We also promise to not
raise this price for existing subscribers. Reader is also fairly
technically interesting -- our iOS, Android and webapp all work
fully offline and sync your reading data/progress with eachother.
Our search on web is built with wasm sqlite. We have a fairly
intense pipeline for cleaning web articles (removing ads/styling).
We share lot of modules around syncing/highlighting across all
platforms, etc... Happy to answer any questions :)
Author : tristanho
Score : 54 points
Date : 2022-12-15 21:44 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (readwise.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (readwise.io)
| beshrkayali wrote:
| Really interesting solution and I was very happy using it today!
| Some quick thoughts:
|
| - 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.
| xz18r wrote:
| I use a self-hosted Wallabag and FreshRSS very heavily. Am I the
| intended audience?
| bx376 wrote:
| Congrats! This is truly a game-changer.
|
| 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.
| tristanho wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| 1) Haha yeah, the inverted colors was kind of a quick hack to
| make some folks happy. That css looks great -- will definitely
| explore something like that with our designer :)
|
| 2) Not a bad idea at all...
| CrypticShift wrote:
| I think the original "read it later" app was "Pocket" 15 years
| ago. At the core it is still bookmarking with a "reader" mode. I
| still use it on my e-reader (kobo native integration)
|
| I'm looking back to the origins because Readwise is aggressively
| pushing this concept to the "limits". I mean, offering epubs and
| RSSs (and 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
| edwinwee wrote:
| YouTube feature is dope, congrats on launch
| sytelus wrote:
| With all the hype by authors, it is very poorly designed website,
| app frontend and documentation. I still cannot figure out how to
| use this thing. I installed the app and app has look of circa
| 2007. No help pages, how-to steps, guide or anything of value can
| be found. I go to Twitter and Safari on my phone and have no clue
| how do I bookmark/save anything to Readwise. Nothing on iPhone or
| Twitter shows "save to Readwise" or anything like that. Their
| webpage is just filled entirely with marketing fluff instead of
| actual user centric how-to content. At lease tell users how to
| use all the functionality you are relentlessly bragging about!!
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Whoa this is an amazing reader experience!
|
| 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?
| atto wrote:
| Been using Reader as my primary reading + save for later app for
| a few months. It's truly a joy -- it's fast, simple, and works
| really well. There's obviously a cold-start problem where you
| need to use it for a bit to get most of the value, so I'd
| encourage anyone here that's interested in a similar app to give
| it a couple weeks.
| janandonly wrote:
| So basically, a revival of Evernote?
| [deleted]
| Strongbad536 wrote:
| Switched over from instapaper and it's been great
| bberenberg wrote:
| Still waiting for a solution like what you have done with YouTube
| videos but for podcasts on the literal run. Easy way to tag a
| moment in a podcast from an Apple Watch for later review as a
| transcript I can cite. Best of luck building Readwise Reader, and
| I loved your post at
| https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01gewk3j3kt56v6w87qd1qqez1...
| and have been sharing it with lots of people I know.
| codq wrote:
| I've been experimenting with a new podcast app Snipd, which
| purports to do this: https://www.snipd.com/
|
| It doesn't yet have an Apple Watch app though, and since (I
| assume like you) I listen to podcasts while out on a run w/o my
| phone, that would be the killer feature I'd drop everything
| for.
| bberenberg wrote:
| Scribd (https://www.scribd.com) is supposed to also do this.
| I have downloaded it, and not yet gotten around to trialing
| it. But honestly I want to give my money to the Readwise team
| over a large corp if that's an option.
| wpietri wrote:
| Paradoxically, the fact that this is a do-everything app makes me
| much less likely to try it out. If it were just, say, an RSS
| reader, then I might try exporting OPML from my current feed
| reader and seeing what happens. But reading is important enough
| to me that I would be very reluctant to put all my eggs in one
| basket. Especially a startup, where the best case is that a lot
| of my most important stuff requires me to pay $100/year forever.
| cschmatzler wrote:
| Looks super interesting - don't have my usual setup nearby so
| I'll just ask before checking it out myself: given that you
| advertise super powerful highlighting, is there a feature that
| allows exporting/copying single/multiple highlights with proper
| references to what I'm reading (say, APA style)? That would be a
| killer feature for me.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| FYI the homepage is unreadably dim as I scroll down on iPhone -
| some bug with the behavior that's supposed to hide and reveal
| content as I scroll
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