Reader for Watch turns your Apple Watch into a fully standalone EPUB & TXT reader. Import books from your iPhone Files app, send them to your paired Apple Watch, then read offline or listen with Read Aloud (TTS) anytime—completely phone-free!
Perfect for workouts, commutes, running, or leaving your phone behind. The app beautifully adapts your books for the watch screen with auto-scroll, chapter parsing, and customizable text styles.
Key Features:
• Standalone Reading: Read fully offline on Apple Watch after a quick transfer.
• EPUB & TXT Support: Easy import from the iOS Files app or other apps.
• Text-to-Speech (TTS): Listen via the Apple Watch speaker or Bluetooth headphones.
• Smart Layouts: Automatic chapter parsing, reading progress sync, and bookmarks.
• Smooth Auto-Scroll: Enjoy hands-free reading while on the move.
• Quick Resume: Continue Reading widget and watchOS complication/control for fast resume.
• Library Management: Pin books, track progress, and manage finished books.
• Highly Customizable: Adjust font size, themes, custom colors, and speech rates.
• Local Archiving: Option to archive local copies on iPhone after sending them to your watch.
• Privacy First: Completely private. No data collection.
Reader for Watch is designed for book lovers who want a clean, private, and simple way to carry their personal library on their wrist.
I read 2 or 3 books a week with this app since I’m stuck without a phone at work. Scrolling with the Digital Crown is smooth and easy. With small text it’s very readable. I often even find myself reading on my watch when I have my phone with me. I have never had any issues whatsoever. It’s quite a powerful little reader.
Works Great!
jan_enjo
This works great! i was hestiant because of some of the bad reviews, but either there was a bug (that was fixed) or they dont have the files and expected it to connect to books or something (which is not how it works.) It is as advertised and is super handy if I’m bored and lost my phone.
Awesome reader
Steve_in_Dallas
This is probably the best ebook reader for the watch. It’s simple to use and very powerful. The only thing I wish it had was a way to bookmark where you left off. But has only been out for a few weeks so I can’t expect everything. I will upgrade my rating to 5 stars when that happens.
Love the app go epubs!
SafeAppleUser
Overall your the best epub watch app. Great work on fixing the next chapter bug. No other epub app is as good as this on watch. The text scrolls really smoothly too.Hopefully one day hyperlinks that link to various chapters can be supported or images can be supported. But if not this app is great regardless.
Developer Response
Thanks for the feedback! The ‘Next Chapter’ button bug has been fixed in v3.0
What's new in this version:
• Listen to books on Apple Watch with the new Read Aloud experience, including natural voices, chapter announcements, Now Playing controls, cover artwork, and background audio.
• Customize Read Aloud with per-language speech rates, voice quality choices, and preferred voices for each language.
• Keep reading and listening in sync with speech position restore, Follow Speech on Wake, and quick scrolling back to the spoken paragraph.
• Move between chapters during Read Aloud with spoken chapter cues and smarter handling when the chapter title already appears in the text.
• Read Aloud handles startup, pause and resume, interruptions, rapid chapter changes, and auto-scroll restoration more reliably.
• Continue Reading widgets and controls now show book covers more reliably and refresh when cover art changes.
• Improved book import, EPUB parsing, metadata preservation, and cover thumbnails.
What's new recently:
• This is a major update with a fully redesigned and optimized reading experience across iPhone and Apple Watch.
• Continue Reading widgets and watchOS controls now show your current book and reopen the last reading position more reliably.
• Improved bookmarks with multiple recent reading positions per book and more accurate paragraph-based restoration.
• Tune your reading experience with more themes, a clearer theme picker, improved custom color controls, refined Watch reading controls, and better chapter titles.
• Book transfers now show progress percentages, waiting states, cancellation, retry, and clearer availability messages.
• Improved auto-scroll and manual scrolling behavior, including smoother behavior near chapter boundaries.
• Improved TXT and EPUB parsing, including better TXT chapter navigation and support for numbered chapter headings.
• See richer Watch book details, including current chapter, last read time, progress, and storage size.
• Rename local books, delete Watch books, clean up archived books, and filter unsupported imports more reliably with clearer status feedback.
• Search your iPhone and Apple Watch libraries, including matches from chapter titles.
• Pin favorite books on Apple Watch and keep finished books in a separate Done Reading list.
• Manage storage from iPhone with clearer counts, file sizes, cleanup tools, and better controls for local, archived, and Watch books.
• Added Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), and Polish localizations.
• Fixed crashes that could happen when opening some EPUB books and when loading the watch Lock Screen widget.
• Improved library startup performance, transfer refreshes, transient bookmark resets, empty states, haptics, animations, and Liquid Glass layout.
Version 26.6.6
The developer, 磊 汪, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. Learn More