# Fireside: Speed Reading — Finish the books you start

> Finish the books you start (iPhone/iPad app by Mayer Unterberg.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/fireside-speed-reading/id6756298021 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Mayer Unterberg](https://appshunter.io/developer/1853681015)
- Category: Books, Productivity
- Price: Free
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 17.0 · 41 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-09-10
- Data updated: 2026-10-07
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/fireside-speed-reading/id6756298021/reviews.md

## What is Fireside?

You get to the bottom of the page and realise you have no idea what was on it. So you go back and read it again.

Fireside fixes that with a highlight that moves. It runs through the text at a speed you set, one phrase at a time, and the page dims behind it. Your eyes stop wandering because there is only one place to look. Set it to 300 words a minute to read at your usual pace without slipping. Set it to 800 and see what happens.

SPEED READING THAT KEEPS THE PAGE
Other speed readers flash words at you one at a time in an empty window. Fireside never moves your book. The text stays typeset on a real page and the highlight comes to it, so you can slow down, re-read a line, look something up, and carry on without losing the thread.

- 100 to 1,000 words a minute, changed whenever you like.
- Follow a marker, an underline, or just the light.
- Dim everything but the phrase you are on, or only what is ahead of you.
- Leave a soft trail behind so you can see where you have been.
- Rest longer on hard words. Breathe at the end of a sentence.

IT BREAKS WHERE YOU WOULD BREAK
A pacer that counts words cuts a phrase in half and hands you the pieces: "the old man / in the corner of / the room said / nothing." Fireside reads the grammar of the sentence and stops where a human would: "the old man / in the corner of the room / said nothing." It works the breaks out on your phone, using a model trained on sentences a person chunked by hand. 

PAPER MODE
Turn on Paper and the screen becomes a sheet. Grain, fibre, and ink that sits down in the page instead of glowing on top of it. Warm stock that stays kind to your eyes at one in the morning.

Three papers to begin with - Modern Print, Vintage, Worn Vintage - and twelve dials if you want your own. Save yours and it follows you into every book. Highlights soak into the sheet and pick up its grain.

THOUSANDS OF BOOKS, FREE
Open Discover and the whole Standard Ebooks collection is there - Frankenstein, Dracula, Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, Persuasion - beautifully typeset, public domain, free. Search all of it, tap once, and it is in your library. Add any other OPDS catalogue by address.

AND THE BOOKS YOU ALREADY OWN
EPUB. Kindle files (MOBI, AZW3, AZW, PRC, PDB). FictionBook (FB2, FBZ). Comics (CBZ). Markdown, HTML and plain text. Bring them in from Files, share them in from another app, or drop them into Fireside's own folder - your library is never locked inside the app. PDF is not supported: a PDF is a fixed page, and pacing needs text that can reflow.

SET THE PAGE UP THE WAY YOU READ
Nine typefaces, including OpenDyslexic, Atkinson Hyperlegible and Lexend. Size, line height, margins, alignment and hyphenation. Paged or scrolling. Light, sepia, dark, paper - or keep the publisher's own design. Everything previews live while you change it, and your place is kept through every one of those changes.

MADE WITH DYSLEXIC AND ADHD READERS IN MIND
Dyslexia-friendly typefaces, and a pacer that can dim the page down to the single line you are on. Full VoiceOver labelling, Dynamic Type, and Reduce Motion honoured throughout - including in the pacer, where the transition becomes a cut.

MARK IT UP
Highlight in five colours and five styles - solid, underline, wavy, double, dashed. Attach notes. Search inside a book with fuzzy matching, so you will find the line even when you half-remember it. Export the lot as Markdown, CSV or JSON.

AND IT ADDS UP
A streak for the days you have read, your year as a heatmap, hours read, books finished, and your real reading speed - which is what every "time left in this chapter" comes from.

SHARE A SHELF
Put the books you love on a shelf and send friends the link. They see what you are reading and the passages you picked, and need no account to follow along. Only sharing your own asks you to sign in, with Apple or Google.

NO ADS. NOTHING TRACKED.
Your books, notes and places stay on your phone.

Everything pictured is public domain, from Standard Ebooks.


## Version history (last 3 releases)

### 1.4 — 2026-10-06

Read PDFs
Open PDFs beside your books, with highlights, notes, the pen, search and every theme, Paper included.

Your own fonts
Add any family from Google Fonts, or a font file of your own, and try it on the preview page before you choose it.

Zen mode
Put the play button away and keep one row of controls. Turn progress off too, and the page holds nothing but the book.

Page curl
Turn pages with a paper curl, if you like it better than the slide.

Achievements
The trophy case fills in as you earn each badge, and a new widget shows the one you are closest to.

Edge to edge
The page runs under the status bar now, and the status bar steps aside when the controls do.

### 1.3 — 2026-09-26

Share a shelf
Pick the books you want friends to see, add the passages that stayed with you, and send the link. Friends follow along in Fireside or in any browser, with no account. Sharing your own shelf signs in with Apple or Google, and you can hide it, sign out, or delete your account at any time.

Reading goals
Set a goal — minutes a day, books a month, a date to finish a book by, or a streak — and watch it fill. The trophy case keeps what you have earned, and every badge is drawn for the thing it marks.

Widgets
Your reading record, a goal, or the books you are finishing, on the Home Screen at any size — and on the Lock Screen, where a tap takes you straight back to the page.

Discover works offline
The catalogue lives on your phone now. Browsing it costs no network, and opening a book asks for nothing. A new Editor's Picks shelf sits under Most Popular.

Better typesetting
Underlines and strikethroughs are drawn where a book asks for them. Drop caps float. Small capitals are set as capitals, even in faces that do not carry them. Pictures take the width the page gives them.

Faster
Long chapters open sooner — a chapter is now parsed across every core.

### 1.0 — 2026-09-10

No release notes.

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-10-07.*