Reader: Frequently Asked Questions

Metadata

• Author: Daniel Doyon
• Full Title: Reader: Frequently Asked Questions
• Category:articles
• Document Note: Reader is a cross-platform reading application with a web app, mobile apps, and browser extensions. Users can get started by reading the “Getting Started with Reader” article. Reader uses Readwise account for authentication and allows you to save and sync documents offline. The application has an AI reading assistant called Ghostreader, an offline search feature, and enables users to customize the appearance of the Reader app.
• URL: https://blog.readwise.io/p/f8c0f71c-fe5f-4025-af57-f9f65c53fed7/

Highlights

• One of the coolest features of Reader is an AI reading assistant called Ghostreader (based on GPT-3). (View Highlight)
• Hit Shift + G to invoke Ghostreader at the document-level, select “Ask the document question” (View Highlight)
• Over time, the vision is to create a unified experience between Readwise and Reader within Reader. (View Highlight)
• How do I use Reader offline? Reader works offline on both web and mobile. On web, so long as you have read.readwise.io open before you go offline, Reader will continue to work and any changes you make (eg new highlights) will sync once you come back online. (View Highlight)
• Does Reader have a Command Palette? Reader has a Command Palette on web (Cmd/Ctrl + K) which contains virtually any action you can take in the application. The Command Palette is a great way to find out if actions you’re looking to take exist and, if so, what is the keyboard shortcut. (View Highlight)
• How do I import my Instapaper or Pocket articles to Reader? If you have Instapaper or Pocket connected to Readwise, any articles you’ve saved previously will automatically import to Readwise. You can connect Instapaper and Pocket within Readwise by following this link. Any articles that were archived inside Instapaper or Pocket will appear inside your Archive in Reader; the ten most recently saved items not archived will appear inside your Inbox in Reader; everything else will go in Later. (View Highlight)
• It seems some of my Instapaper articles are missing. How do I make sure ALL my Instapaper articles imported? If it looks like you’re missing Instapaper or Pocket articles within Reader, first note that any articles that were archived inside Instapaper or Pocket will appear inside your Archive in Reader; the ten most recently saved items not archived will appear inside your Inbox in Reader; everything else will go in Later. If you’ve checked those places and still don’t find the articles you’re looking for, it’s possible you might be hitting an Instapaper API export bug which caps the number of items export at 500. To get around this, you can download a CSV export of your Instapaper articles and then upload those on read.readwise.io/import. (View Highlight)
• If you’ve checked those places and still don’t find the articles you’re looking for, it’s possible you might have so many Pocket articles that Reader only imported the first 10,000. If you open the Command Palette and search for “Import entire Pocket library”, you can trigger an import of the rest. Note that we recommend you have a powerful machine and modern phone before you do this. (View Highlight)

New highlights added September 11, 2023 at 5:23 PM

• How do I use the browser extensions to save articles to Reader? The Reader browser extension performs two functions: first, saving articles to Reader and, optionally, highlighting the open web. (View Highlight)
• To save a document to Reader, tap the icon in the browser bar. This will save a clean version of the document to your Reader inbox. (View Highlight)
• Once you’ve tapped the icon, you can optionally begin highlighting on the website itself. This is purely optional, however. Note that the browser extension is the most robust way to save documents to Reader because the extension gets the underlying content rendered in your browser as opposed to just a URL. (View Highlight)
• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jjhefcfhmnkfeepcpnilbbkaadhngkbi (View Highlight)

New highlights added September 11, 2023 at 5:55 PM

• How do I use the browser extension to highlight the open web? Once you’ve activated the Reader extension on a particular web page, you can begin highlighting text and images on the site itself. You might do this for a couple reasons: First, although most users generally prefer the clean, distraction-free reading experience of the Reader app, there are some exceptions where the original site is more pleasing. In these cases, you can honor the original author and read what they wrote in the manner they intended. (View Highlight)
• Second, although Reader’s parsing already exceeds Instapaper and Pocket in our benchmark tests, we’ll never be able to parse 100% of the internet 100% perfectly. HTML and CSS are just too flexible. The web highlighter is an exception handler. (View Highlight)
• Will highlights made using the Reader browser extension show up in the Reader apps and vice versa? Any highlight you make on the native web using the browser extension will typically sync with Reader and vice versa. Most of the time, these highlights will appear in both places. In other words, if you highlight the open web using the Reader browser extension, this highlight will typically appear on top of the clean article in the Reader apps; conversely, if you highlight the clean article in the Reader app, this highlight will typically appear overlaid on the open web. (View Highlight)
• By default, you should be able to tap Alt + R to save a document to Reader using the browser extension. (View Highlight)
• Reader has two broad sections: Library and Feed. Library is further subdivided into a handful of locations like Inbox, Later, Archive, and Shortlist (depending on your Library configuration). Library is where things that you manually curate for yourself and choose to save permanently go. Feed is where things that are automatically pushed to you go. As you find documents in Feed that you want to read later and/or permanently save, you can move them to your Library. (View Highlight)
• How do I upload an OPML file to import all my RSS feeds from my existing RSS feed reader such as Feedly, Inoreader, Reeder, etc? You can upload OPML files to Reader by dragging the OPML file on top of the web app or opening the upload dialog (keyboard shortcut: U) and selecting the file. (View Highlight)
• How do I watch a YouTube video inside Reader? If you save a YouTube link to Reader, you’ll be able to watch it alongside its time-synced transcript, and take notes and highlights as it plays. You can also precisely navigate the video by clicking any fragment, clicking a highlight in the right sidebar, or using special keyboard controls. (View Highlight)
• How do I highlight images in Reader? Reader enables you to highlight images while reading. These images will carry over into Readwise and even into your note-taking app if you export your highlights. To highlight images, simply focus the image and use the keyboard shortcut H or select it with the mouse (plus any desired text) on web, or select it plus any desired text on mobile. (View Highlight)