# Synapse Reads — Book Scanner & Library Manager

> Book Scanner & Library Manager (iPhone/iPad app by Ansh Dave.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/synapse-reads/id6756804825 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Ansh Dave](https://appshunter.io/developer/1862968247)
- Category: Productivity, Education
- Price: Free
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 15.1 · 32 MB
- Languages: English
- Released: 2026-03-09
- Data updated: 2026-05-18
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/synapse-reads/id6756804825/reviews.md

## What is Synapse Reads?

Stop letting your reading disappear.
You finish a book, feel changed by it, and three weeks later can't remember a single idea. Synapse fixes that.

READING SESSIONS
Open any book and start a session. Synapse tracks your reading time while you capture highlights — scan a page, type a quote, or read it aloud and let AI transcribe it instantly. When you finish, see exactly how long you read, what you captured, and whether Synapse found a new connection during that session.

FLASH INSIGHTS
When two highlights from different books share an unexpected idea, Synapse surfaces it automatically. Powered by Claude, the connections go beyond the obvious — finding threads across books you read years apart that you never would have noticed yourself.

THREE WAYS TO CAPTURE
Scan physical pages with your camera. Type or paste quotes directly. Or hold the mic and read a passage aloud — Whisper transcribes it and shows you the text to confirm. However you read, capturing a highlight takes seconds.

CHAT WITH YOUR LIBRARY
Ask your entire collection a question. "What do my books say about focus?" "Find a quote I saved about habits." Every answer comes from your own highlights — not the internet.

IMPORT YOUR KINDLE HIGHLIGHTS
Upload My Clippings.txt and your entire Kindle library arrives instantly — with covers, metadata, and connection checks running automatically.

WHO IS THIS FOR?
Non-fiction readers who want their highlights to actually do something. People who finish books and want to remember them. Anyone building a reading habit who wants to see it grow.

Download Synapse and make everything you read count.


## Version history (last 3 releases)

### 2.0.4 — 2026-04-30

Reading Sessions — the biggest update yet
You can now track your reading time directly inside Synapse. Open any book, tap "Start Reading Session," and Synapse quietly tracks how long you read. When you're done, tap End — you'll see a summary showing exactly how long you read, how many highlights you captured, and whether Synapse found a new connection during that session.
Sessions give you a record of every time you sat down with a book. Open the Sessions tab on any book to see your full reading history for it — date, duration, highlights captured, and connections found.

Three ways to capture highlights
We've rebuilt how you capture highlights. Tap "Capture Highlight" on any book page and choose how you want to save it:
Text — type or paste a highlight directly. Fastest for quotes you're already looking at on a screen.
Scan — the existing camera flow. Point at a page, select the paragraphs you want, and the text is cleaned up automatically.
Voice — new. Hold the microphone button and read the highlight aloud. Powered by Whisper, it transcribes your voice accurately and shows you the text to review before saving. Hands-free highlighting while reading on the couch.
All three methods work with or without an active reading session.

Smarter connections
Flash Insights are now significantly more surprising. The connection engine has been upgraded and now considers both your most closely related highlights and a selection of random highlights from across your library — so connections come from places you wouldn't expect, not just the obvious ones.

Reading stats in your profile
Open your Profile from the Library screen to see your reading stats — total reading time, current streak, highlights captured, and books read. Everything you need to see how your reading habit is building.

Kindle import improvements
Uploading My Clippings.txt now correctly fetches cover images and book details for every imported book. Libraries with more than 100 highlights process in the background so the app stays responsive during large imports. After a Kindle import, Synapse now automatically runs a connection check across your new highlights so Flash Insights appear immediately.

Book search improvements
Search now runs two passes simultaneously — a title-focused search and a broad relevance search — so partial queries like "atomic" find Atomic Habits immediately without typing the full name. Academic papers, journals, textbooks, and publisher stubs are filtered out aggressively. You now see 7 high-quality results instead of 20 mixed ones.

Bug fixes and improvements
— Session summary card now correctly shows connections found during a session
— Kindle upload now triggers connection checks across imported highlights
— Highlight source tracking added so you can see whether you prefer scanning, typing, or voice
— Fixed cover images showing wrong books for genre-seeded library books during onboarding
— General performance improvements throughout

### 2.0.0 — 2026-03-23

Completely redesigned onboarding 
New users now choose their path from the very first screen — import years of Kindle highlights instantly via "My Clippings.txt", or start fresh with physical books. The fresh path walks you through picking your reading genres, then lets you search and add up to 5 books you've read or are reading. For each book you can toggle whether Synapse pre-fills it with key highlights so connections start on day one — before you've scanned a single page. A clean sticky bar shows your selected books and a Skip option is always one tap away without cluttering the screen.

New visual design — warm, consistent, dark mode ready
The entire app has been redesigned with a unified visual language. Every screen now uses a warm cream background with amber as the primary accent colour — replacing the generic iOS blue that was scattered inconsistently across screens. All screens fully support dark mode, switching automatically based on your system setting. 

Profile & Settings sheet
A new profile sheet is accessible from the Library header. It shows your account email, a toggle for daily insight notifications, and a clean sign out option. No more hunting for logout.

Add to Library — combined bottom sheet
The two separate header icons in the Library (plus and cloud upload) have been replaced with a single button that opens a clean bottom sheet. From there you can add a book by searching, or import Kindle highlights. First-time Kindle importers see step-by-step instructions with a "don't show again" option.

Smarter book search
The book search has been significantly improved. Searches now use precise title matching which filters out manuals, workbooks, study guides, and foreign editions that were cluttering results before. Results are ranked by relevance — books with ratings and covers appear first. You now see 7 high-quality results instead of 20 mixed ones.

Flash Insights screen redesigned
The connections feed has been renamed Flash Insights throughout the app to match the language used everywhere else. Each insight card now shows the mantra as a headline, the full insight below it, the two books being connected, and a direct "Explore in chat" link that opens the Chat tab with that insight pre-loaded as context. The empty state now explains clearly what Flash Insights are and how to get your first one.

Chat screen improvements
The chat interface has been warmed up visually — your messages appear in amber bubbles, Synapse's responses in warm surface cards. The send button is now a circular amber icon. When the chat is empty, three starter prompts appear so you always have a way to begin. The "Save as insight" button on AI responses is now more visible with a bookmark icon and clear label.

Book detail screen
Highlight cards now open with a large amber quote mark for a proper typographic identity. The scan button is prominent at the top. Share and delete icons are consistent muted grey instead of mismatched red and blue. The empty state explains exactly what to do with a direct path to the camera.

Scan screen improvements
The camera view now has a viewfinder with four corner brackets to guide framing. The permission screen is a proper branded screen. The block selection step shows live feedback — "2 blocks selected" — so you always know your taps are registering. The edit step shows a hint confirming the AI has cleaned your text.

Dynamic library pre-filling
When Synapse seeds your library during onboarding, highlights are now generated dynamically using AI for any book — not from a fixed list. This means pre-filled highlights work for every book you search and select, not just a hardcoded set of popular titles.

Bug fixes
Fixed an issue where selecting "Start empty" during onboarding would still pre-fill highlights. Fixed cover images showing the wrong book for genre-seeded library books. Fixed the book search returning manuals and summaries before the actual book. General performance improvements throughout.

### 1.0 — 2026-03-09

No release notes.

## Related topics

[synapse reads](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/synapse-reads)

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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 2026-05-18.*
