# Readwise Reader — user reviews > 275 indexed App Store user reviews of Readwise Reader by Readwise, Inc, rated 4.60/5 from 574 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/readwise-reader/id1567599761/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/readwise-reader/id1567599761.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 484 · 4★ 26 · 3★ 25 · 2★ 9 · 1★ 30 ## What do users think of Readwise Reader? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 🚀 Fantastic reading experience - 👍 Seamless integration with Readwise - 🎨 Beautiful and intuitive UI - 📚 All-in-one reading solution - 🔍 Powerful search and organization - 🗣️ Excellent text-to-speech capabilities - 💡 Innovative AI-powered features - 🤖 Helpful ChatGPT integration **Cons** - 🐛 Occasional crashes and performance issues - 🔍 Cluttered interface for some users - 💰 Expensive subscription model - 🖥️ Lack of iPad-specific features - 📚 Missing basic reader features (e.g., bookmarks) **Commonly reported bugs** - Inconsistent sync between devices - Unreliable RSS feed updates - Frequent crashes on iPad - Issues with resuming reading position **Most requested features** - Improved PDF and ebook support - Customizable reading themes and layouts - Better integration with note-taking apps - Reading progress and statistics tracking - Bulk management of saved items ## Newest reviews (16 of 275) ### 4/5 — really good crossplatform app but the reader is very limited in terms of features *2026-08-06* it’s very versatile in terms of the content we can add to it. But it’s a shame that the reader is so limited in terms of customization: only two themes (light and dark) that apply to the overall interface rather than the reader itself, just one highlight color, and on a PC the ePub file takes up very little space on the screen (instead of spanning two columns), etc. I really would have liked to make Readwise my media library for all my content with note taking associated (for articles, books epub and pdf, videos, podcasts), but the reader isn’t customizable enough yet (same flaw as Notion, except this app is supposed to be dedicated to reading). For now, I’m using Readest (open source) to host my books, with iOS/Mac/Windows sync. But I’d really appreciate being able to migrate my books to Readwise reader, given all its cutting-edge features and versatility. ### 3/5 — Great app, disastrous quality control *2026-04-21, version 8.2.2* The amount of bugs this app has is amongst the highest I've ever seen on any app, whether high quality or otherwise . It's too bad, because this thing is really, really, really good when it works. For at least a year or two now, my inbox on my iPhone just does not want to work properly. It takes forever to load, and I've cleared the cache and done everything in the instructions and troubleshooting, but nothing seems to happen. I really do hope the developers get their act together. ### 4/5 — Great, but no Widget support? *2026-04-07, version 7.39.1* I’m enjoying the app and the service. But it would be great to see a widget for the news feeder. ### 3/5 — Unreliable *2026-03-24, version 7.39.1* I love the idea of this app. I love the feature set. What I do t love is that a substantial portion of the articles I save get improperly saved. For example, I saved an article and the top and bottom sections (about 80% of the article) weren’t saved. I tried the same thing in GoodLinks — none. The article was as expected. Not sure what’s going on here but great features can’t make up for unreliable parsing. ### 5/5 — Erlösung für mein Email Postfach *2026-03-13* Bin so froh, hier nun all meine Newsletter und Artikel an einem Ort zu haben. Macht für mich einen riesigen Unterschied. ### 5/5 — One app to rule them all *2026-03-13* I’ve tried every read-it-later app out there. Reader is the one that actually stuck. ### 5/5 — The BEST media organization app *2026-03-09, version 7.39.1* If you decide to use this app, prepare to expand your ideas of what is possible with a reader app. Wildly powerful and takes some time to get comfortable with, but for serious readers it’s 100% worth it. I wish there were TTS playlists but that’s not going to prevent me from happily giving 5 stars ✨ ### 3/5 — Good app but absolutely chews through battery in the background *2026-03-07, version 7.39.1* It’s the only app I’ve had on my iPad to show that it’s basically constantly running in the background and draining battery, with over six hours of background usage in a day (only one hour of actual usage) ### 5/5 — The best all-in-one reader around *2026-02-28, version 7.38.2* This app has changed the way I consume almost all online, and some offline content. While it’s not perfect (yet), it is very actively developed and supported. New features are coming all the time and when things break, they’re at least quickly acknowledged and usually resolved reasonably fast as well. It’s the best app I’ve seen in this category and I’ve tried plenty! ### 5/5 — Just missing one thing… *2026-02-24, version 7.37.1* Excited to see when text to speech will be able to automatically handle multiple articles in a row… Otherwise, this is the reading app you’ve been looking for! Loooove the Obsidian sync and YouTube/podcast handling too. One small critique is that it doesn’t play well with lots of Apple News content (WSJ, etc.) ### 5/5 — Worth paying for real learning!! *2026-02-22* You can educate yourself for free- and this app supports you. The app is my go to for reading books, articles etc. with a workflow to review highlights and use them in writing/learning new content. These highlights can have comments and tags to connect them (I connect them to Obsidian to link highlights with similar tags). The app ingests podcasts and YouTube videos to follow along with the transcript (i.e., no “click bait” distractions… so you take more in). The text to speech is great for reading and listening at the same time (multiple modes- better retention). The AI queries via Reader is excellent for deeper engagement and connecting ideas across all your reading (your content, your answers — no big business bias as in standard chatbots). This app goes beyond the surface and is on a mission to make a reading app that lasts the rest of time. I’m here for it, and happy to support developers by paying for this value. I hope others see this vision and support them along the way too. ### 5/5 — Super helpful app *2026-02-11, version 7.35.2* This app is helping me get through an MA with a one year old. A must have and half price for students. ### 5/5 — Just missing one thing… *2026-01-28, version 7.34.2* Excited to see when text to speech will be able to automatically handle multiple articles in a row… Otherwise, this is the reading app you’ve been looking for! Loooove the Obsidian sync and YouTube/podcast handling too ### 5/5 — Great tts app *2026-01-26, version 7.34.2* Please add a sleep timer The app is great so far ### 5/5 — Elegant Interface - and a true 2nd Brain *2026-01-19, version 7.33.1* I save everything in it - research, epubs, pdfs, feeds from twitter lists, and websites, blogs. The text to speech feature is excellent for anything from articles to books. ### 4/5 — Has plenty more potential - needs to allow for LLM API keys *2026-01-17, version 7.33.1* UPDATE Jan 2026: Thank you Devs! YouTube transcription implemented. Two stars added and text removed (May 2025). Additional notes: 1) Still lacking AI features IMO. Ghost reader (ChatGPT-4?summaries) gives you 50 word responses. Would be great to have bring-your-own-key functionality so the users can have the choice to pay for what they use (and better, cheaper models) 2) Wonder if there’s a clever way to save articles from those clever websites that archive pages. Find clicking on article sources on Perplexity quite frustrating. Imagine it’s kind of a parsing challenge, but would be very excited to see if you can crack that. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Just downloaded but my trial is expired? *2026-04-25, version 8.3.2* This app must be connected to to original in terms of subscription. I’ve never used this one before but I’ve used the Readwise app; just downloaded this, signed up and it told me to subscribe to continue as my trial is expired. I can’t move past that page to even see what the app entails. Thats a real bummer, really wanted to try it as I get back into reading. ### 1/5 — Video problems *2026-03-04, version 7.39.1* Lots of video pages won’t load in reader which is the main reason I subscribed for year - some do, most don’t, so disappointed ### 1/5 — TTS broken again *2026-01-24, version 7.34.2* No QA testing before each update? Now when using TTS and you tap the button to jump back, it jumps ahead instead. Acceptable for a free or cheap service, not acceptable at this price. ### 1/5 — Slow slow slow *2026-01-17, version 7.33.1* Amazing up but the slow loading of the inbox queue on iPhone renders it unusable ### 1/5 — Not transparent about pricing *2026-01-08* Seems like a good app. But not transparent about pricing. Upon downloading the free app, you are automatically placed in a 30 day free trial. No free tier option like other Read later apps. Would’ve been better if you were upfront about the cost of your service rather than trying to trap users into another subscription **Developer response:** Thanks for checking out Reader! The free trial doesn’t auto-renew, so you can explore everything risk-free — and we list pricing clearly on the App Store. Let us know if you have any questions at hello@readwise.io! ### 1/5 — No RSS compact view *2025-11-14, version 7.26.3* Unlike every other rss app or similar apps such as email clients that all offer compact view vs default or vs expanded etc, Reader still has 0 options to customize the RSS screen. Can’t hide the image, can’t hide the excerpt etc so it’s a terrible rss experience and seems more aimed for the view one would want for curated saved articles not all ones rss feeds. Every years more small random updates but this never gets addressed. So frustrating. ### 1/5 — Still no compact rss view *2025-09-22, version 7.19* Almost 2026 and still 0 updates on this major issue… Was so hopeful for this app. In so many ways it blows away the competition we’ve been all using for a decade except unfortunately fails in the most rudimentary ways. Open any basic or advanced rss reader app or save later app. In all, you can always just from showing large previews aka image, title, excerpt etc to a more streamlined version that shows just one line for each which includes title part of except source and date. This is even of course possible in other genhre’s think on Apple Mail or Gmail how they have cozy view or the one line view. Reader says on its websites it’s aimed toward power users but still doesn’t offer this basic functionality. Each month new exotic features are added but this core feature still never gets addressed. It’s baffling. The other issue for power users is it doesn’t support HackerNews. Nearly everyone who subscribes to that does so for the comments but unlike again every other rss reader, think feedly, reeder, you name it, Reader just links to the link and not to initial page that includes the comments. The same issue existed for many months for Daring Fireball, but they finally resolved that. My tech friends who I was the one who introduced them all to this app have had the same frustrations alas none are they type to complain publicly and all assume such obvious issues will be fixed without their intervention. Alas while I was the one telling people to be patient I like them are finally giving up as starting to realize my continued financial support is not helping the app fix these issues, and rather if enough stop supporting the app that may be more of an incentive for an app we all want to succeed and grow. ### 1/5 — Last update introduced crashes. *2025-09-09, version 7.18* Been us the Readeise reader app to have it read to me the details of a very large PDF and after the recent up the app crashes after about 5 minutes. This happens on both iPad and iPhone. I hope the developer fixes soon. All what good until then update yesterday. ### 1/5 — Buggy and poor UX for reading *2025-08-20, version 7.16* Got this because I already use readwise highlights and wanted to sync e-books and reading states across devices to my android e-reader. I don’t enjoy reading with it. I would cancel if it weren’t part of the highlights subscription which I value more. - Buggy: highlighting a word doesn’t always bring up the menu to allow highlighting. Often it mis-registers a page turn. Lots and lots of effort just to get a word definition or add a highlight. Then, - No offline/real dictionary: makes it completely unusable for difficult reads on planes and commutes so on… requires like 3 taps and 3-5 seconds of loading to get a watered-down chat-GPT definition as a highlight as opposed to a comprehensive dictionary definition. Infuriating with spotty connection, impossible with no connection. - Strange gesture controls for ebooks: No swiping left or right to change the page so all those years of muscle memory of reading real books and using a e-reader or any other reading app are really haunting me. Don’t understand why this seems not to be adjustable in the settings when other gesture controls are. Edit: further frustrations: - Can’t bookmark a page/location (I suppose you could do this with a Note or highlight but that makes no sense). Sometimes I want to return to a previous chapter or some other place in a book for reference but then I lose my current place. - No long-term saved/automatic location/progress markers. There’s a small dismissible notification which allows you to return to where you were if you jump around but once it’s gone, it’s gone. I live in fear of accidentally clicking this thing on a thousand page book I’m reading and losing where I was (it’s happened a couple times). I believe the Kindle app has this figured out, with multiple-device location. - More of a feature request: No document prioritization feature. Sometimes I just drop a bunch of things in to read later with some idea of which ones I’d like to read first. But you can’t reorder the documents in the home feed, nor can you add some sort of color or flag to mark which ones are higher priority or more important. ### 1/5 — Missing functionality *2025-08-02, version 7.15* I got this to be a good place to read all my favorite publications in one app. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that I’m unable to read any of these publications, such as the Economist, New Yorker, or History Today, in the Reader App. Whenever I try to import them, I only get the first paragraph, presumably because when Reader goes to grab the article, it does not have my credentials to access the articles behind paywalls. If I can get support to help me find a way to use Reader for my needs, I’d be happy to change this review. But until then, this app is disappointing and useless for me. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Must have *2026-08-11* All my reading and articles are here. Must have & worth the subscription. ### 5/5 — Best Read Later App - Hands Down *2026-08-10, version 8.16* This is the best read-it-later app that's ever been invented. Whether you are a power user or just a simple user, for $10 a month you can completely enhance your reading experience. With advanced AI features that you can use or not use, advanced tagging system, and beautiful design, you will enjoy this app no matter the use case. I read all my articles and books through this app using my E Ink reader, and the process is seamless and beautiful. Give this app a try. Learn how to use its basics, and you won't be let down. ### 5/5 — Good, falls behind other ePUB readers. *2026-07-22, version 8.11* Good app overall. I like the layout and how it functions. But it isn’t perfect by any means and falls behind other ePUB readers. Notably: progress lost when screen rotated or coming back to an ePUB, only by being a few pages out, yet still annoying, especially as I am only using one device. Time left in the chapter defaults to 1 min when starting a new chapter, only shows accurately on the second page onwards in a chapter, an obvious bug. Limited font options, only 10 in total, why? Unable to customise font per book/article - it would be much better if I could select one font for one book and one for another - increases a feeling of variety amongst my various ePUBs, which I believe is important for digital reading. Horizontal pagination is still beta, which is strange (horizontal pagination is default for other apps which support ePUBs). Unable to select text within the provided lookup feature (for example wanting to copy a selection of text within the Define or Lookup, rather than all of it). I would also personally prefer it if the Readwise and Readwise Reader were combined in one app. ### 5/5 — absolutely worth it *2026-06-30, version 8.7* this is the only app I’ve found worth paying a yearly subscription for. impeccable interface. so easy to use, yet so many awesome features. when I first started using Reader, I was between jobs. when my (already generous) free trial ended, they extended it by three more months for me + were highly responsive to emails. I did not feel like a random user; the Readwise team has repeatedly made me feel like a human. (I’ve now paid for the yearly subscription two years in a row, and I tell people how great this app is all the time.) another feature I love is having the ability to select the voice for the audio reader. I am hard of hearing with an odd kind of hearing loss. low pitched and especially high pitched voices are difficult for me to understand, so whether I can easily listen to an audiobook or podcast is dependent on the voice type. in Reader, I selected a voice that works great for me, so now I can listen to anything I can save. huge accessibility win. there are many other features I love as well. being able to search through things I’ve read all in one place is an amazing feature, among others. this is also one of the only apps where I actually appreciate the AI integration (even beyond the voice readers). ghostreader doesn’t feel forced on me, but it’s there for the occasional time I find it useful. I could go on, but I have some reading to do. I’m starting law school next year and SO glad I found this app before beginning. If this app exists for the rest of my life and the interface design + functionality stays this good, you’ve got a lifelong subscriber. I have major gratitude for the Readwise team. the ONE thing that would make this app even better for me is a Kobo (ereader) integration. if it had a Kobo integration, I’d officially call it the perfect app. I love the physical experience of reading on my Kobo rather than phone or tablet, and I wish I could save articles to Reader, read on my Kobo, and have my highlights sync up. overall, 5/5 app FOR SURE. ### 5/5 — Revolutionized how I consume media *2026-05-30, version 8.4.1* I finally feel like I have a grasp on everything I read and a single place to read it all. Highly highly recommend ### 5/5 — Wow! *2026-05-24, version 8.4.1* So I came from rss.app and Feedly cause I want to keep up with the playoffs.. I understand reader isn’t fast pace but it’s what I’m looking for .. use Flipboard and whatever is out there to find an article dump it in my library.. get feeds dump then then read them on my own time.. I been doing read later for now .. don’t get me started on chatting with highlights. I LOVE IT SO MUCH!! Using it on laptop and phone ! Thank you devs!! ### 5/5 — Лучшее! *2026-04-28* Лучшее приложение для чтения всего и вся! ### 5/5 — Superb *2026-03-21, version 7.39.1* Love this app. I use reader to have all my reading in one place and use feeds to auto send all newsletters, articles and subscriptions to it. Readwise superbly links. I use this professionally too. Superb products. ### 5/5 — Favorite reading app, have tried them all *2026-03-17, version 7.39.1* been using for around a year, just so well done. Forward everything here, just put on my fiancee with the app too. She loves it ### 5/5 — Great app! *2026-03-16, version 7.39.1* Battery and performance issues have been fixed :) --- *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 2026-08-30.*