💡 WiseUp! Vol. 83 — Learn to summon Global Ghostreader, recover your streak, and create a morning reading brief

📍 Let's start with a reading recommendation

The Egg by Andy Weir

This short story isn't our normal pick for WiseUp!, but many of us are still reeling from Project Hail Mary, yearning for more of Grace and Rocky's adventure. If you're in the same boat, please enjoy this free and quirky read from author Andy Weir. "You were on your way home when you died. It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless."

From the support inbox

Have questions about using Readwise or Reader in your workflow? We'd love to be your guide! Reply to this email with your question and you might be featured in an upcoming issue. Even if your question isn’t featured, we’ll respond to every message.

❓ A Readwise question from Derek G:

Is there a way to recover my Daily Review streak from within the app?

A missed review doesn't have to end your streak. The newly redesigned streak tracker at the bottom of both Daily and Themed Reviews shows check marks for completed reviews and empty circles for any you missed. Tap an empty circle within seven days to complete the review and get your streak back.

❓ A Reader question from Jan R:

Can you fix the author info on newsletters I've forwarded to Reader so they show the original writer instead of me?

Ever notice your forwarded newsletters show up under your name, instead of the actual writer's? The Readwise MCP can fix that. Ask Claude or the LLM of your choice to scan the forwarded headers, figure out who really wrote each piece, and clean up the author info across your library, no manual editing required. Just review and approve the changes, and your Reader library finally gives credit where it's due.

📖 New help doc of the week

Put a friendly ghost to work in your library

Global Ghostreader haunts every corner of your Reader account in the best way, surfacing forgotten saves, answering questions with cited passages, and even tagging and triaging documents when you allow it. Learn how to summon it, teach it skills, and keep its powers in check.

🎬 New video of the week

Build a morning reading brief with Notion Workers

This week, Dave de Cespedes walks us through syncing Reader articles and Readwise highlights into Notion. From there, he shows how to build a Custom Agent that turns them into a weekly brief with key quotes, themes, and new ideas to explore.

If you highlight everything and revisit nothing, this one's for you. It's a smart way to put your library back to work instead of letting it pile up.

📰 Aug 22 - Aug 28 updates

What's new in Reader and Readwise

🍎 Improved EPUB Uploads — Apple Books formats some EPUBs as a folder that looks like it's a single file, and dropping one of those books on Reader resulted in error messages instead of a book. Lior taught Reader to recognize those folders and pack them back into a proper EPUB right in your browser, so books dragged out of Apple Books now upload like any other.

🤖 Improved Ghostreader Skills — Running a skill like /find-similar on ten documents would leave you with ten identical chat titles, and asking Ghostreader to tag your documents could tag the wrong one entirely. Piotr fixed both: skill chats now name themselves after the document or selection they're about, and tagging targets the document you actually have open.

📊 Improved Chart Embeds — Articles with interactive Datawrapper or Flourish charts were showing a "some content could not be imported" notice where the chart belonged. Krzys made Reader swap in the chart's image, linked to the live interactive version, and cleaned up the notices already sitting in previously saved documents.

📺 Fixed YouTube Embeds — YouTube videos embedded in saved articles showed "Error 153 / Video player configuration error" in the Reader app. Krzys gave those embeds a real referrer, so they play again on both iOS and Android.

📐 Fixed Two-Column Pagination — The two-column Horizontal Pagination option had disappeared from the Appearance sheet on many Android tablets (Boox Note Air, Note Max, Galaxy Tab) because a pixel-density check decided they weren't tablets. Artem shipped a fix that asks the device what it is first, so the option is back where it belongs.

💭 Fixed Mobile Chat Sending — On iPhone and iPad, a Ghostreader question could appear in the thread and then nothing would happen. Ibai found that the app was waiting forever to read the visible page, and made sure the question goes out regardless.

🗨️ Fixed Hidden Chat Sheet — On Android, opening Ghostreader chat right after onboarding could leave the chat sheet stuck behind the reading view, so it looked like nothing happened. Adam fixed the layering, and the chat sheet now opens front and center.

📖 Improved EPUB Stability — Artem tracked down three things that could make a page shift under you while reading on mobile, especially on Boox devices: fonts loading late, images snapping to size after their bytes arrived, and highlight handles nudging the line height. Text now stays put once a page is laid out.

🌓 Fixed High Contrast Mode — Adam fixed the chat toolbar's top fade rendering as a solid black bar on Boox in light mode, and hid scroll-view shadows in high contrast mode.

📂 Fixed Feed Folder Deletion — Deleting a feed folder in the Reader app now takes you out of the folder screen instead of leaving you on an empty one, thanks to Adam.

💳 Fixed Billing Info — The account settings page could tell people subscribed through Apple that they were billed yearly even when they were on a monthly plan, which made for some confusing conversations with support. Tristan fixed the page to read the actual subscription, so what you see now matches what you pay.

📤 Fixed Messy Exports — Documents saved from certain sites (like WeChat articles) could arrive in Obsidian or in MCP Markdown exports stuffed with the page's CSS and JavaScript, sometimes ballooning a note to millions of characters. Rasul taught both exporters to strip scripts and styles, so exports now contain just the readable article.

📕 Fixed Apple Books Import — Importing your Apple Books library to Readwise could stop partway through if a single highlight carried a note containing only whitespace, leaving the rest of your books unprocessed. Rasul made the importer skip those empty notes, so the whole library comes through.

📬 Improved Send-to-Kindle Documents — Sending a Reader document with a Cyrillic or other non-Latin title to your Kindle was producing a blank cover, an empty email subject, and a file named ___.epub. Rasul added proper font support, so those documents now arrive with their real title on the cover and in the filename.

🫥 Fixed Empty Highlights — Selecting text in Reader that contained only invisible characters (like a stray zero-width joiner in a page's markup) could create a highlight with nothing in it, which then synced to Readwise as a mystery blank. Thanks to David, those selections are now treated as empty, so invisible highlights don't get created in the first place.

🖼️ Fixed Quoteshot Downloads — Saving a quoteshot image from Safari on iOS could show the download prompt and then silently write no file. Ibai changed how the image is handed to the browser, so tapping Save now actually lands the image in your Files.

📈 Fixed Stats Scrolling — Scrolling the Statistics screen in the Readwise app felt sluggish and stopped short instead of gliding like every other screen. Ibai restored native scroll momentum there, and also gave the Themed Reviews screen a proper loading skeleton so it no longer flashes empty while your reviews load.

⚡ Faster Highlight Scanning — Using the Scan tool on dense pages of text in the Readwise app could hang for several extra seconds while the scanner matched your marked text to the page. Johannes streamlined that matching step, so scanned highlights should land noticeably quicker.

🛜 Parsing Updates — Krzys improved how Reader handles documents from 3cat.cat, blogs.timesofisrael.com, ft.com, nyr.ruv.is, towardsdatascience.com, stuff.co.nz, and randsinrepose.com, and got better at spotting the bot-check screens some sites serve instead of their articles.

👍 Three recommendations from our team

From support specialist Angie

Something to read 📖
The more we learn about the vastness of space, the more infinitesimal a single human moment can feel. Klara and the Sun hit that same nerve for Angie from another direction. In the age of AI, it’s a quiet, unsettling look at how technology might change the way we love, connect, and understand what makes us human. It’s fiction, but maybe not for long.

Something to focus 🧋
Visiting family in California means access to a seemingly infinite number of Asian markets, and Angie’s latest discovery is ChaTraMue Thai tea mix. As the antithesis to Ambien, it keeps her wide awake through late-night customer support sessions. Locked in, no jitters.

Something to unwind 🧖🏻‍♀️
Angie was introduced to Biodance by a Korean friend who stocked up on the brand during her last trip to South Korea, where PDRN skincare is having a moment. She’s been hooked ever since, especially on the Rejuvenating Caviar PDRN Real Deep Mask, which turns clear after three to four hours. It’s the perfect way to unwind at the end of the day, and your skin will thank you.

💬 From the Readwise group chat

A grain-level threat

Whoever counted 4,639 rice has never taken a lunch break in their life. Maybe not something to disclose to HR, but this might be the kind of precision we want on the bug triage team.