Flincth Speed Reader is out. You can download it from the App Store for iPhone and iPad with iOS 17 or later.
It’s a speed reading app for the books and documents you already have. Your text appears one word, phrase or short sentence at a time, in one fixed spot, at the pace you set. Your eyes stop jumping along the line, and the text comes to you instead.
Why we built it
Most of us have a pile of things we mean to read: a book from a friend, a report for work, notes for an exam. Most speed reading apps flash words as fast as possible and leave you to keep up.
We wanted the opposite: an app that helps you go faster without losing the thread. When we looked at the research for do speed reading apps work?, the answer was “yes, within limits”: understanding drops as speed rises, and it drops more with dense text. So almost every feature in Flincth Speed Reader is there to keep you understanding at speed.
What it does
- Three ways to read. Read one word at a time, or let the app group words into short phrases or short sentences. If single words feel tiring, phrases at the same speed often feel calmer.
- Your own files. Open DRM-free EPUB, PDF (with selectable text), DOCX, TXT, RTF and Markdown from Files or share them from another app. A book’s table of contents becomes its sections.
- Quick Read. Paste or type a passage and start reading straight away, without adding it to your library.
- Pause for context. Pause at any moment to see the whole paragraph with your place marked, and tap any sentence to carry on from there.
- A pace that behaves like reading. Each time you start, the pace eases in over a few seconds. Commas and the ends of sentences get short pauses, and long words get a little more time. For help choosing a number, see what speed to use in a speed reading app.
- It keeps your place. Close the app and pick up exactly where you stopped.
- Made to be comfortable. Light and dark themes, a dyslexia-friendly font and accessibility settings are all free.
What it doesn’t do
It’s better to know this before you download:
- It can’t open Kindle or Apple Books purchases, or any other DRM-protected book. We explain why in can you speed read Kindle books?
- Scanned PDFs without a text layer can’t be read.
- It doesn’t import web pages from a link, and it has no built-in bookstore.
- There’s no AI of any kind. Text is split by punctuation and simple rules that work in any language.
Free, then Pro once
The app is a free download. The free plan includes every reading mode and every supported format, with a daily reading time, a few saved documents and an everyday top speed, which is enough to try it properly.
Pro is a one-time purchase. There is no subscription, now or later. Pro removes the daily limits, raises the top speed, lets you keep as many documents as you like, and adds more themes and fonts, focus letter and pause tuning, reading statistics and goals, and iCloud sync between your iPhone and iPad. Family Sharing is included.
You can try Pro free for 7 days. The trial asks for no payment details and never turns into a charge. When it ends, the app goes back to the free plan and keeps your documents.
What you read stays yours
There’s no account and no sign-in. Your documents are processed on your iPhone or iPad and never sent to us. With Pro sync on, they travel only to your own private iCloud.
The app counts usage events, such as a finished reading session, to learn what works. In the EU, the UK and Switzerland this stays off unless you agree; elsewhere you can turn it off in Settings. Your documents, their titles, file names and the text you paste are never part of it. The privacy policy has the details.
Try it
Download Flincth Speed Reader on the App Store, open the built-in demo, then bring your own book. If something doesn’t work the way you expect, tell us; we read every message.