What if we took the things that make doomscrolling so addictive and used them to make reading just as engaging? With Read Aloud and Pop Words In, you can bring the familiar feel of short-form video captions to your books, with words appearing in sync with a natural voice. All the dopamine of scrolling, but you're actually reading. Read Aloud A natural voice now reads along as the words show. Tap the speaker button in the reader, and the words keep pace with the voice at up to 450 wpm. Choose from 15 American and British English voices. The voice downloads once (about 160 MB) and runs entirely on your device, so it works offline. Read Aloud works with English documents on every Mac, and on iPhones and iPads with at least 4 GB of memory. Pop Words In Each word can now spring in as it appears, like word-by-word video captions. Turn it on in Settings, under Reading.

Strobe now syncs through iCloud, works from the share sheet, Siri, and your Home Screen, and is ready for iPhone Duo. The reader has a new look, and four features come from suggestions in reviews. ICLOUD SYNC • Your library and reading positions sync across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Pick up on any device at the word you stopped on. • Each device keeps its own copy of your books, so reading works offline. • If you already use Strobe, it asks before turning sync on. Change it anytime in Settings › iCloud Sync. • Imported the same book on two devices? Strobe merges the copies or offers to keep one, and your place carries over. • Signed in to a different iCloud account? Strobe asks before syncing with it, and the books on your device stay either way. SHARE TO STROBE • Share an article from Safari to read it in Strobe. You get the article's text, or just the part you selected. • Links and text from other apps work too. SIRI, SHORTCUTS, AND WIDGETS • Ask Siri to "Continue reading in Strobe," open a document by name, or ask "How far am I in Strobe?" • The Speed Read Text action in Shortcuts sends any text to Strobe. • The Continue Reading widget puts your current book and time left on your Home Screen, Lock Screen, or Mac desktop. IPHONE DUO • Read on the outer screen, then unfold and keep going from the same word. • Open, books show as a two-page spread, with the cover on one side and the chapters on the other. • Half open like a book, the reader moves onto one page so the word never sits on the fold. A NEW LOOK FOR THE READER • The reader and its full text view now match the rest of the app, with Liquid Glass controls on iOS and macOS 26 or later. • How far you are and how much time is left show right under the progress bar. • The chapter list shows which chapters you've finished and how long each one takes. FROM YOUR REVIEWS • Hands-free reading: tap with two fingers to start, then let go and the words keep coming. Tap again to stop. • Highlight Color (Settings › Reading): make the focus letter red, orange, green, teal, blue, purple, or pink. • Open Quotes and Parentheses now has Size and Opacity settings (Settings › While Reading). • Time left now counts your timing settings, like Punctuation Pauses, Smart Timing, and Blank After Sentences, so estimates match how long reading actually takes. FIXES • Library progress keeps the furthest point you've read, even if you went back before closing the book. Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a review or suggest an idea. Most of these features wouldn't exist without you. Happy reading!

What's new in 3.0: A new look for Strobe, plus a big update shaped by reader feedback: new display options, smarter timing, and cleaner text. A NEW LOOK • Your library shows every document as a cover, with New, your progress, or Finished underneath. • Continue Reading, at the top of the library, takes you straight back to your word and shows how much time is left. • Books with chapters open to a new book page where you can resume, check your progress, and see how long each chapter takes. • Settings is simpler, with a live preview of the word as you change its font, size, and color. Timing options have their own page. • Adding text is quicker, with a Paste button and a word count that shows how long it'll take to read. • Importing no longer covers the screen: the new document shows up in your library, with a Cancel button, while it's added. • The reading screen works just like before. ON MAC • A real toolbar with search, sort, and add, and no more doubled-up buttons. • New Text (⌘N) and Import File (⌘O) in the File menu. • Settings is now organized into tabs. NEW DISPLAY OPTIONS • True Black Background (Settings › Reading): pure black behind the words, great for OLED screens and reading in the dark. In Settings › While Reading (Settings › Display on Mac): • Document Title and Current Chapter: show the document's title and current chapter faintly at the top. • Previous and Next Words: see the words before and after the current one, dimmed, on either side of it. • Open Quotes and Parentheses: keeps an opening quote or parenthesis faintly above the word until it closes, so you always know you're inside one. SMARTER TIMING • Sentence Pauses is now Punctuation Pauses, in Settings › Timing. It also pauses at commas, colons, semicolons, dashes, ellipses, and closing brackets and quotes, and you can set each one's length. • Blank After Sentences: an optional moment of empty screen between sentences, with a length you can adjust. It doesn't trigger after abbreviations like Mr. or U.S. • Acronyms like FBI, NASA, and COVID-19 stay on screen a little longer, since they're read letter by letter. • Hyphenated words like well-known and long-term get a little extra time for each part. CLEANER TEXT • Chapter titles no longer play twice: after a chapter is announced, reading picks up right after its heading. This works for documents already in your library. • Words joined by a long dash, like "elements—stone", now appear one at a time. • Years and times like 2000 BCE, 44 B.C., and 10:30 PM stay together as one word. • Phrases like "pre- and post-war" now read correctly. The last three apply to documents you import after updating. IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES • The word now appears in the same spot on screen in every document. • The highlighted focus letter lands in a better place on numbers, years, and times.

A new look for Strobe, plus a big update shaped by reader feedback: new display options, smarter timing, and cleaner text. A NEW LOOK • Your library shows every document as a cover, with New, your progress, or Finished underneath. • Continue Reading, at the top of the library, takes you straight back to your word and shows how much time is left. • Books with chapters open to a new book page where you can resume, check your progress, and see how long each chapter takes. • Settings is simpler, with a live preview of the word as you change its font, size, and color. Timing options have their own page. • Adding text is quicker, with a Paste button and a word count that shows how long it'll take to read. • Importing no longer covers the screen: the new document shows up in your library, with a Cancel button, while it's added. • The reading screen works just like before. ON MAC • A real toolbar with search, sort, and add, and no more doubled-up buttons. • New Text (⌘N) and Import File (⌘O) in the File menu. • Settings is now organized into tabs. NEW DISPLAY OPTIONS • True Black Background (Settings › Reading): pure black behind the words, great for OLED screens and reading in the dark. In Settings › While Reading (Settings › Display on Mac): • Document Title and Current Chapter: show the document's title and current chapter faintly at the top. • Previous and Next Words: see the words before and after the current one, dimmed, on either side of it. • Open Quotes and Parentheses: keeps an opening quote or parenthesis faintly above the word until it closes, so you always know you're inside one. SMARTER TIMING • Sentence Pauses is now Punctuation Pauses, in Settings › Timing. It also pauses at commas, colons, semicolons, dashes, ellipses, and closing brackets and quotes, and you can set each one's length. • Blank After Sentences: an optional moment of empty screen between sentences, with a length you can adjust. It doesn't trigger after abbreviations like Mr. or U.S. • Acronyms like FBI, NASA, and COVID-19 stay on screen a little longer, since they're read letter by letter. • Hyphenated words like well-known and long-term get a little extra time for each part. CLEANER TEXT • Chapter titles no longer play twice: after a chapter is announced, reading picks up right after its heading. This works for documents already in your library. • Words joined by a long dash, like "elements—stone", now appear one at a time. • Years and times like 2000 BCE, 44 B.C., and 10:30 PM stay together as one word. • Phrases like "pre- and post-war" now read correctly. The last three apply to documents you import after updating. IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES • The word now appears in the same spot on screen in every document. • The highlighted focus letter lands in a better place on numbers, years, and times.

Easier on the eyes at night. • New Text Color setting: choose Bright, Soft, Sepia, or Night to tone down the reading word and the red focus letter. • Your tone carries through chapter titles and the passage view, so nothing flashes white in a dark room. Thank you to all the readers who make suggestions like this.

Fixed a bug that stopped EPUB files from importing on iPhone and iPad. If you saw "Could not read this EPUB file," your books should now import normally.

• Smoother chapter transitions: titles briefly fade in, then reading resumes automatically. • Better navigation for parts, sections, and subchapters in EPUBs and PDFs. • A quieter, book-like title design with lighter typography and more breathing room. Reimport existing books to pick up newly detected sections.

Updated marketing.

Smarter Smart Timing. New "Minimum word length" setting: choose how long a word must be before Smart Timing slows it down. Short words now fly by at your exact reading speed while long words still get the extra beat they deserve. Thanks to a community suggestion for this one! Phrase search, fixed. Searching a passage for a multi-word phrase ("banana pie") now actually finds it — every word of the match is highlighted, and you can jump between results as usual.

Control your speed without lifting a finger. • Hold to read, then drag up or down to fine-tune your speed on the fly. A live readout shows your current words-per-minute and fades away as you settle in. • Smoother, faster imports with better handling of plain-text files and clearer messaging for protected books. • Your furthest-read spot is now tracked separately, so you never lose your place. • Performance and reliability polish throughout.

NEW • Import plain text: .txt and Markdown files now work alongside PDFs and EPUBs • Long imports now show a Cancel button • DRM-protected EPUBs and password-protected PDFs get clear messages instead of garbled text or confusing errors FASTER • Opening the library and big books is dramatically faster • Word timing no longer drifts at high speeds: 600 WPM now means 600 WPM • Smoother playback on long books, and pasting long texts no longer lags IMPROVED • Playback pauses when you switch away, so words never fly by unseen • Reaching the end of a book now reliably shows the Finished screen, and clears it when you jump back in • Arabic books now flow right-to-left in the text view • Adaptive word timing now works on books imported before the feature existed • VoiceOver: the progress bar scrubs in useful steps and the font picker announces your selection • Bigger touch targets throughout • iPad: drag-and-drop import now works • Mac: quitting mid-read saves your spot, Escape closes every screen, and the Enter Text window is properly sized. Plus security hardening for imported files and lots of small fixes.

Quality of life additions.

What's New • Passage view. Pause anywhere to see the full text with your current word highlighted. Tap any word to jump there. • In-text search. Find any word or phrase and jump to the nearest match. • Fixed EPUB import errors caused by uncommon ZIP layouts. • Polish and stability throughout.

Chapters and hands-free reading • Jump straight to any chapter from inside the reader — tap the chapter title for the full list, or use the new prev/next buttons • Hands-free mode: turn off "Hold to Read" in Settings to tap once to play and tap again to pause • Previous-chapter button restarts the current chapter, or steps back if you're already at the start • Updated tutorial and on-screen hints to reflect the new controls Accessibility and polish • Dynamic Type: chrome now scales with your system text size • VoiceOver labels on the progress scrubber, WPM slider, and more • Reduced Motion respected throughout • Larger hit areas on every slider • Delete confirmation before removing a document • Refined disabled-button contrast and bigger font previews in Settings

Improved EPUB reading — richer text rendering with expanded support for special characters like em dashes, curly quotes, and ellipses Better error messages — clearer feedback when a PDF can't be opened instead of a generic error Security hardening — stronger protections when importing EPUB files Performance improvements — faster document analysis and smoother playback engine Stability fixes — resolved a crash that could occur during speed adjustments

Sentence pauses now work when punctuation is inside quotes, parentheses, or brackets.. Words like home." and fun!) now correctly receive the sentence pause delay.

Complexity Timing Strobe now locally analyzes every word in your document and adjusts display speed based on cognitive difficulty — not just word length. Common words like "the," "is," and "and" flash by faster. Rare vocabulary, proper nouns, and technical terms linger longer, giving your brain time to process them. The result: you can read at higher WPM without sacrificing comprehension, because easy content accelerates while hard content naturally slows down. Enable it in Settings > Reading Behavior > Complexity Timing, and dial the intensity from subtle to aggressive.

Now reads Chinese and Arabic. Smart word segmentation, mixed language support, and proper punctuation handling — all automatic. Added Chinese language support with intelligent word segmentation Added Arabic language support with proper cursive rendering Mixed language documents handled automatically Punctuation and sentence pauses work naturally across all languages Improved word count display for CJK text

- You can now import your own text - The settings view now has more customization options for pause multipliers. - The app is now available on iPad. - The source code has also been made public.