The best reading app, by far. Yet, there is great room for improvement.
I will remove half a star every two weeks without an update addressing the problems I’m pointing out in this review. Yes, this is a threat. It’s how I show how much I love this app.
I’m starting with the problems deliberately—not because I dislike Readest, but because I think it’s an excellent EPUB reader and an impressive piece of app design. The best by far in this IOS prison. Download it, pay for their features, they have great pricing. Still, some issues, particularly with PDF reading, are too disruptive to overlook.
1. PDFs jump unexpectedly in scroll mode
The most horrible bug I’ve encountered is that PDFs jump to a different position when I touch the screen to continue scrolling. This makes you lose your place in the text and repeatedly interrupts the reading experience. I’ve tried several adjustments within the app, but I haven’t found any reliable fix. For sustained reading, this is more than a minor annoyance. It makes it impossible to stay immersed and focus in the text. This is the issue I most hope to see resolved soon.
Obs: I noticed this problem is related to the "reading ruler feature". Despite being careful to see if I was touching the ruler or positioning it badly, it keeps skipping.
2. Performance can become sluggish with a large library
The app sometimes slows down and occasionally needs to be force-closed and restarted. My large library may be a contributing factor, although only a small proportion of my books are actually downloaded locally. I’m not sure what causes the slowdowns, but more consistent performance would make a noticeable difference.
3. The focus-reading tools have great potential, but need refinement
The RSVP (“Fast Focus Reading”) feature is promising, but several aspects of its design undermine its purpose.
The context window display isn’t particularly helpful because it’s ugly and small and there’s no option to hide or customize it. Settings and controls also remain visible around the displayed word, creating distractions in a mode that should be designed to minimize them. But more importantly, we need a touch-controlled option, rather than relying entirely on a preset reading speed. Ideally, tapping the screen would advance one word, while pressing and holding would let the words flow continuously on a preset speed. Currently, tapping either pauses the automatic flow or jumps to another paragraph. Neither gives me the direct, word-by-word control.
I’d also like a dedicated guided-highlighting mode within the text, independent of text-to-speech: something that briefly highlights each word or paragraph in sequence, providing a visual guide to pace reading and help maintain attention.
The TTS feature already does something very similar, but its highlighting settings don’t seem to work correctly. Although it offers a choice between word-level and paragraph-level highlighting, selecting individual words still results in whole paragraphs being highlighted in my experience. Instead of helping me follow the text precisely, this becomes another distraction.
Readest already gets a great deal right, especially with EPUBs. Fixing the PDF scrolling bug, improving stability, and refining these focus-reading tools would make an already impressive app much more dependable and enjoyable to use. For now, it’s the best thing I found. It deserves the 5-stars for this precise reason. Yet, the app is still unreliable under these conditions. We need feedback and fixing.
I’m starting with the problems deliberately—not because I dislike Readest, but because I think it’s an excellent EPUB reader and an impressive piece of app design. The best by far in this IOS prison. Download it, pay for their features, they have great pricing. Still, some issues, particularly with PDF reading, are too disruptive to overlook.
1. PDFs jump unexpectedly in scroll mode
The most horrible bug I’ve encountered is that PDFs jump to a different position when I touch the screen to continue scrolling. This makes you lose your place in the text and repeatedly interrupts the reading experience. I’ve tried several adjustments within the app, but I haven’t found any reliable fix. For sustained reading, this is more than a minor annoyance. It makes it impossible to stay immersed and focus in the text. This is the issue I most hope to see resolved soon.
Obs: I noticed this problem is related to the "reading ruler feature". Despite being careful to see if I was touching the ruler or positioning it badly, it keeps skipping.
2. Performance can become sluggish with a large library
The app sometimes slows down and occasionally needs to be force-closed and restarted. My large library may be a contributing factor, although only a small proportion of my books are actually downloaded locally. I’m not sure what causes the slowdowns, but more consistent performance would make a noticeable difference.
3. The focus-reading tools have great potential, but need refinement
The RSVP (“Fast Focus Reading”) feature is promising, but several aspects of its design undermine its purpose.
The context window display isn’t particularly helpful because it’s ugly and small and there’s no option to hide or customize it. Settings and controls also remain visible around the displayed word, creating distractions in a mode that should be designed to minimize them. But more importantly, we need a touch-controlled option, rather than relying entirely on a preset reading speed. Ideally, tapping the screen would advance one word, while pressing and holding would let the words flow continuously on a preset speed. Currently, tapping either pauses the automatic flow or jumps to another paragraph. Neither gives me the direct, word-by-word control.
I’d also like a dedicated guided-highlighting mode within the text, independent of text-to-speech: something that briefly highlights each word or paragraph in sequence, providing a visual guide to pace reading and help maintain attention.
The TTS feature already does something very similar, but its highlighting settings don’t seem to work correctly. Although it offers a choice between word-level and paragraph-level highlighting, selecting individual words still results in whole paragraphs being highlighted in my experience. Instead of helping me follow the text precisely, this becomes another distraction.
Readest already gets a great deal right, especially with EPUBs. Fixing the PDF scrolling bug, improving stability, and refining these focus-reading tools would make an already impressive app much more dependable and enjoyable to use. For now, it’s the best thing I found. It deserves the 5-stars for this precise reason. Yet, the app is still unreliable under these conditions. We need feedback and fixing.
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终身套餐无法异端同步购买云空间内存
请问为什么手机账号上购买的终身套餐云同步空间内容不能同步到同一账号 Mac 上，Mac 上云同步空间只有 500G，不是说跨平台同步嘛？需要解答下我的困惑，谢谢～
Response from developer
看一下Readest账号是不是同一个，打开Readest账户页面最顶上的邮箱看看是不是一个。同一个邮箱登录的所有设备都是同步的。
Can you add support to sync files through iTunes/Finder?
Robust, powerful, pretty, functional reader app. The only reason I’m giving it 4 stars is that I would like to see the ability to sync files from my computer via iTunes/Finder.
Is this the best place to request this, or should I open an issue on GitHub?
Is this the best place to request this, or should I open an issue on GitHub?
Response from developer
Does the iCloud sync work for you? Please open an issue on GitHub for this.
Perfect reader
One of the best reader I found. Readset is really a fantastic app to read ebooks in the form of pdf and epubs formats.
Immediately exits the pdf I was reading on turning a page
title.
Response from developer
For some high resolution scanned PDF this could occasionally happen. We already fixed some crash cases and it will be available in the next update. If it still does not work please share the PDF file to readestapp@gmail.com and we will reproduce the issue and fix it.
