Shortform 12+

Highlight the words being read

I love this app and am able to read way more books than I ever could. The audio book function is incredible and sounds like an authentic person. The one thing I would request though is that the words being read by the narrator be automatically highlighted because I lose my place a lot when I’m trying to read it and listen at the same time.

Developer Response ,

Thank you so much and we're glad you love Shortform! I know that learning on the go is important, and it’s great to hear that you enjoy our content. Thanks for your feedback, we will make sure to take note of this and let our production know about it.
Have a wonderful day!

Fantastic content, poorly designed and buggy app

This app needs a major overhaul. It’s hurting their business. It’s buggy, crashes, and features just stop working. Ex: I clicked the “skip ahead” button while listening to audio and the screen turned from light mode to dark mode while the audio was unchanged. Sometimes the audio stops after you lock your screen, sometimes it doesn’t.

As far as the design, the default screen has a search box but it only searches content you’ve already put in your library. It should search for new books/articles by default. That’s what people are most likely to look for. The audio playback is a mess. I can’t scrub the timeline. The skip back/ahead buttons don’t tell me by how much or let me adjust the time interval. I can’t view a list of chapters and move between them from the audio controls. I have to back out of them. Clicking the next chapter/previous chapter buttons yield unpredictable results.

The app needs a lot of work.

Two main issues

I would love this app if they would fix one main issue that is keeping me from subscribing…
My gripe… that wherever you are in the app, if you tap for more details, when you go back, you are always taken back to the top of the screen!!! For example, say you are looking at the books tab, scrolling down to find some new books to add to your library. You’ve gone past 30-40 books and found one you are interested in, so you tap it to see more details… when you go back… boom, back at the top of the screen. Now you must scroll back down, find where you were, and then continue. Wha a PITA!
This is such an annoyance that I can barely use this app!
This behavior happen throughout the app. I know this can be fixed, since similar apps don’t behave this way.
Fix this, and I will most likely subscribe. Only thing holding me back is the extremely high asking price! It is double of Blinkist, which is the all around best app for book summaries! It is super polished, has a vast library, and never crashes.

Shortform looks to have very detailed summaries which I am interested in, but again, that stupid app behavior of always jumping you to the top of the screen after every tap for details is a definite no go for me.

Here’s hoping the dev will fix this, plus possibly consider lowering the price of admission to get more subscribers.