The Archive Reader User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience36.8% of reviews
Neutral7.4% of reviews
Negative experience55.9% of reviews

~ Based on 68 written reviews from the US App Store.

What users say

Is The Archive Reader Safe?

The Archive Reader has mixed safety signals based on user ratings. AppsHunter Safety Score for The Archive Reader is 63/100.

This assessment is based on 49 user ratings, with an App Store average of 3.0/5.

Safety Analysis

49.0% of ratings point to a safe experience
10.2% of ratings suggest some concerns
40.8% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 49 App Store ratings for The Archive Reader.

Is The Archive Reader Legit?

The Archive Reader is no longer available in the App Store. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for The Archive Reader is 35/100.

Based on 35 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Score capped because this app is no longer listed.

Top reviews

Comments not working

There’s something wrong with the comments I wanted to post a comment on the app, but it won’t let me and other people were able to post comment on the. story I was reading on and I hope you fix it. Because every was great on till now

At first was good but now..

Bro it was so good at first.. no interruptions, no ads , unlimited reading time, etc.. but now it randomly stopped working? Like I’ve been trying for like 6 hours but it just crashes and says it can’t pull anything up and that there’s an error.
I’ve been downloading and redownloading, powering off my phone, exiting out of the app but it’s just not working 😭 this was the only app that actually worked for me so I don’t have to use my browser but now it’s not working and now I’m pretty sad :,)
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eh

i want to love this app so bad but the adds are just unbearable when the website has none. the concept is amazing though!

Thief

I am a writer, and I most definitely didn’t give anyone permission to put my stories on this app. If I could, I’d give it 0 stars. Stop stealing from writers! This app should be removed! This app is fake. It’s not the real AO3. Stop using it. They’re profiting off of the writers!

If anyone knows how, is there a way to get my stories removed from this app?
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Thief

I am leaving 1 star comments to all of these unofficial ao3 apps as a fandom writer because they are THIEVES. These apps are abusing free fandom works on ao3 for commercial purposes without any authorization. If you love those fandom works, go to the official website, and you can leave kudos and subscribe. Downloading this app does not make your life any easier, instead it seriously violates fandom writers’ copyright.
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Really good!!

Rlly good!! My mom has an app where she can see my search history so this helps! Now I can read what I want without it showing :p

Great App

Having used this app for over a year and 50+ hours, I can confirm that it is an absolute godsend. The app runs really smoothly even on my old 6s, despite the site proper chugging along at times. The app has a plethora of features with no sign-in required (although you can anyway) including custom themes, saved searches, saved works, tag blocking, reading time tracking and charts, everything else in the site itself, autoscroll, etc., but the ui is still super clean and easy to use.

I don’t usually leave reviews, but this app needed one. About half of the reviews are about a mistake the dev made one time by adding a monetisation system. It was only up for like a week (I think?), but it got the app review bombed, and like, if it were some corporate entity, then sure, but this is one person. People make mistakes.

Anyway yea vewy gud app 10/10 wud recommend
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Doesn’t work very well

I’ve tried all the ao3 apps and this one is not good

Great!!!

love it. Does exactly what it says: easy to load the work. No adverts seen the whole time using it. Able to view writings offline. Thanks for thiss LOVE the dark mode. 🥹🥹🥹♥️

Idk why this isn’t five stars

Maybe I am just lucky, but I have not had any of the problems with paywalls anyone else is talking about.
I find this app easy to use. The tags search is very easy for me and helpful in a way that the website doesn’t have.
The other search is more general and can be used to find specific titles.
:)
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Some suggestions and experience feedback ^^

Just wished it was organised similar to the website, where I can easily create a new work and easily access bookmarks and inboxes.

Possibly to the point of a social media app format of buttons like explore, post new, notifications, and profile—since that’s what most people are used to.

Something that needs fixing would be the sync of works from the website. There’s only drafts so far, but the drafts haven’t synced. It has my history though, lmao.

Would certainly want to see this become official though!
Often using a private browser on my search engine makes me continually log in every time. So this app would be incredibly helpful ^^
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😓

Honestly just disappointed.

.

idk what everyone is talking about with the paywall bc i can’t find any fics. like literally i typed in the names of popular fics/authors from ao3 and nothing popped up. 0/5 stars if i could

HUMAN VERIFICATION?!!

I opened the app this morning to a pop up asking to verify I’m a human but it doesn’t actually do that. It says they can’t verify and refuses to load so I can do absolutely nothing!

Much of a surprise

It has all the function as the web browser version, advanced search, commenting, sending kudos etc. Even better, it has a green “Read x/x” label (x being the number of chapters that story has) that marks the story that you’ve finished on the app and a yellow label “Read y/x” (e.g Read 3/5) if you’ve started but haven’t finished.

This makes browsing through relevant fandoms and tags soooo much easier, especially for someone who have short memories like me.

The only thing that I found may be a bit inconvenient, is that when putting a bookmark, you seem to be unable to select the collection you want to store it (or maybe it’s because I haven’t discovered how yet….( ? _ ? )). But that’s not too much of a problem, you can always tidy up your bookmarks into collections on the web browser version.

To me, this app is really exceeding the expectations.
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Slight issues with a great app

I’m paying for the monthly subscription so I don’t get ads and yet …. I still am. This is incredibly frustrating especially as I do enjoy the app otherwise

I LOVE IT

It is completly free for me and in plus we can read it offline I will probably read this for hour on the plane ☺️🤭

Better than before

I approve that they removed the 1hr reading time paywall, ads ARE a little annoying but atleast we can read for as long as we want again, love this app tbh, so much easier to use than the site

Disgustingly Bad, Not Accessible

I have dyslexia and the mobile website for AO3 does not work well with the Settings I have in place to read and with the already 1 hour reading limit as a slow reader this is disgustingly bad. I don’t recommend. If I could give 0/5 stars I would.

i <3 this app

dude i use this to read fanfictions daily