💡 WiseUp! Vol. 87 — Exploring the redesigned Readwise, and habits for betterment

📍 Let's start with a reading recommendation

Why I started writing about every book I read

Sam Rinko has always read carefully, saving quotes and taking notes. But a simple writing practice transformed his reading from consumption into a two-way conversation, which he shares in a recent piece on Knowledge Lust. "Even if a book changes you in imperceptible ways (which it does), and is fun to read, almost nobody wants to spend 20 hours reading a classic novel, Plato’s Republic, or the latest psychology book without anything to show for it."

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 Bernard M:

Can I pay for my Readwise subscription through the Google Play Store?

Android users can now pay for Readwise through the Google Play Store, giving you more flexibility in how you manage your subscription. Depending on your country, Google Play supports options like credit or debit cards, Google Play balance or gift cards, PayPal, and other local payment methods. If you prefer keeping your app subscriptions together in Google Play, you can now do the same with Readwise.

❓ A Reader question from Jason H:

Can I translate my entire document in Reader?

Reader can now translate an entire document or selected text into a language of your choice at once. Run the Translate skill in Ghostreader and the translation will appear in the right-hand chat, where you can read it, copy it to your clipboard, or save it as a document note. You can also customize how translations work by editing the prompt under Ghostreader Prompts and skills > Single document skills > Translate.

📖 New help doc of the week

Capture highlights from physical books in the Readwise app

Scanning got a serious upgrade in the Readwise app refresh. Point your camera at a page you've marked up, and the app detects the highlighted passages and extracts the text, in any language. Cayla has rewritten the documentation with updated instructions and visuals to cover both scanning modes, as well as the dictation and typing entry methods.

🎬 New video of the week

What happens when you start walking

Our teammate Max recommended this great video that explains why walking is life-changing. Using TTS on a daily walk could be the ultimate life hack.

📰 Sep 12 - Sep 18 updates

What's new in Reader and Readwise

👻 NEW! GPT-6 Luna For Ghostreader Summaries Default — Tristan and Ibai upgraded Ghostreader’s default model for preset prompts, including the automatic summary and document tagging, so they’re now powered by GPT-6 Luna. As with previous default models, this is included with your Reader subscription.

🏠 NEW! Redesigned Homepage — Ibai and Christina gave readwise.io a new front page to match the app’s own glow-up.

📄 Fixed PDF Dark Mode on Android — When reading a PDF in dark mode with inverted colors in the Reader app on Android, the inversion would vanish as soon as you opened a sidebar. Tadek shipped a fix that reapplies your color setting whenever the viewer rebuilds, so PDFs stay inverted on Boox devices and other Android tablets.

🔲 Fixed Two-Column Mode on Tablets — With the two-column Horizontal Pagination option turned on, the Reader app on Android tablets such as Boox devices and Samsung Galaxy Tabs showed a single full-width column instead. A rounding difference of less than a pixel meant the second column never fit. Mati gave the layout the tolerance it needed, so both columns appear as expected.

⚡ Improved Opening Heavily Highlighted Books — An EPUB with a lot of highlights could take half a minute to open in the Reader app on iOS, with the phone warming up while it waited. Cam found that drawing each highlight briefly took over the system text selection, and changed the renderer to skip that step, so those books open in a few seconds.

📦 Fixed Large PDFs on Android — Opening a very large PDF in the Reader app on Android (an 80 MB magazine, for example) could spin forever, even though the same file opened fine on iOS and the web. Tadek fixed the download so the server no longer gives up partway through, and big PDFs open on Android too.

🕰️ Fixed Clock Over Emails — With “Show clock” turned on in the Reader app, opening a newsletter in its original view while the app was in dark mode painted the clock in white over a light page, so you couldn't read the time. Thanks to Mati, the status bar now switches to dark text over those emails.

🔠 Fixed Daily Review at Larger Text Sizes — With a larger accessibility text size set on iOS, parts of the Daily Review in the Readwise app were clipped and the streak counter wrapped onto two lines. Johannes reworked the layout so everything fits at any text size.

📲 Improved Daily Review Email Links — Tapping a link in a Daily Review email on your iPhone or iPad always opened the browser, even with the Readwise app installed, so there was no way to reach the app's share sheet for a quoteshot from the email. Ibai made the app claim those links, so highlights, stats, and chat open directly in the Readwise app.

🧭 Fixed iOS 26 Tab Bar — On iOS 26, the Readwise app's bottom tab bar could lose the labels on unselected tabs until you tapped each one, and for anyone running iOS in dark mode with Readwise in light mode it flipped between light and dark glass. Ibai fixed both, so the tab bar keeps its labels and matches your Readwise theme.

⌨️ Fixed Tablet Keyboard Shortcuts — Pressing E to edit a highlight on an iPad with an external keyboard did nothing in the Readwise app, because the native lists had no keyboard handling. Ibai brought the highlight shortcuts back on iPad and Android tablets, so you can move through and act on highlights from the keyboard again.

🃏 Fixed Focused Highlights on iPad — Tapping a highlight on an iPad in landscape showed the focused highlight card much wider than the actions sheet beneath it, and a short highlight opened from a book page had its text cut off. Ibai matched the card to the sheet and sized it for its chapter line, so focused highlights look right on iPad.

🔁 Fixed "Review More Highlights" — When a Themed Review was waiting for you, the Daily Review done screen in the Readwise app swapped "Review more highlights" for "Continue to" that theme, which read like a daily cap. Ibai kept both options on the screen, so you can carry on reviewing either way.

🔑 Improved Login Errors — Every failed email login in the Readwise app said Network error. Please try again., whatever the cause. Ibai made the app say what actually went wrong and report the failure to us, so a stuck login is quicker to sort out.

💾 Fixed "Save to" Crashes — Saving a highlight in the Readwise app on iOS could crash on the "Save to" screen if you had a lot of manual books. Johannes made the list render only what's on screen, so the picker stays responsive with any library size.

💌 Improved Redesigned Emails — Following up on last week's redesigned Readwise emails, Ibai made the new design the default for new accounts, added a "Prefer a new look for this email?" link at the bottom of the original emails so you can switch without logging in, and made the "Mark review as finished" button appear for everyone, not only readers with an active streak. Covers that aren't book-shaped no longer look squished in the new header, and the same design switch now lives in the Readwise app's Email Preferences screen too.

💬 Fixed Chat Reading Position Mentions — Asking Ghostreader a question about a document in the Reader app could get an answer that tacked on how far you had scrolled, whether or not you asked. Tadek shipped a fix so chat only brings up your reading position when the question is about it.

🔄 Improved Re-Saving Documents — Saving a page you had already saved to Reader showed a tick but did nothing, so there was no way to recapture an article after a bad parse. Krzys changed that: saving again now re-parses the document from the page in front of you, keeps the existing version if the new parse turns out worse, and refreshes any open copies.

📑 Fixed Kindle Digest Outline — In the Kindle digest EPUB from Reader, headings from inside an article showed up in the outline as if they were separate articles. Tadek fixed the digest so sub-headings nest under their article, and the outline reads cleanly on your Kindle.

🎙️ Fixed Podcast Episode Links — After last week's fix for podcast feeds whose episodes all pointed at the show's homepage, opening one of those episodes from Reader landed on the raw feed instead of anything playable. Mati made those episodes link to their audio, so Open takes you to the episode itself.

🎬 Improved YouTube Chapters — Reader now shows a YouTube video's chapters in the Contents panel, but videos parsed before that feature arrived had none, even when someone new saved them. Piotr backfilled chapters from the descriptions Reader already stores, so saving a popular older video brings its chapters along, and existing copies pick them up too.

🍎 Fixed Sign in with Apple — Signing in to Readwise with Apple could fail with an error page, once because Apple's key server was returning empty responses, and for some longtime users because Apple stops sending an email address after the first authorization. Tristan fixed both, so Apple sign-in works whether or not Apple includes an email.

🔊 Improved Feed Text-to-Speech — Some RSS items in Reader still had no Play button (Paul Graham's essays, for one, arrive as a single block separated by line breaks), and others were read aloud in the wrong language. Tadek gave those items proper paragraphs and Krzys fixed the language detection, so new feed items get the Play button and the right voice.

📤 Fixed Export Interruptions — Three Readwise exports could stall for their own reasons: one highlight with oddly formatted Markdown quietly cut a Notion export short, a Markdown export spun forever if any book's tags were still processing after a Kindle sync, and reconnecting OneNote dropped you back on a page that still said "Reconnect". Rasul fixed all three.

🔀 Fixed Import Interruptions — An Instapaper bookmark with an empty address stopped a Reader import, a Raindrop sync to Readwise could halt on a stale rate-limit timestamp, and a Twitter list digest failed to generate when a tweet's link was missing its full address. Rasul fixed these as well, so imports and digests run through to the end.

📚 Fixed Japanese Kindle Clippings — A My Clippings.txt file that included highlights made while the Kindle was set to Japanese failed to import into Readwise. Rasul taught the importer the newer Japanese layout, so mixed-language clippings files upload cleanly.

📬 Fixed Kindle Archive Links — The "archive all documents" link in a Reader Kindle digest relied on a bit of JavaScript to close the window, which the Kindle browser doesn't run, so nothing seemed to happen. Rasul replaced it with a plain confirmation page that shows how many documents were archived, and it works on the Kindle itself.

🧷 Fixed Extension Toast — In the Reader browser extension, the "Saved to Reader" toast covered the first options of the location menu for a few seconds, so moving a page to Later or Shortlist right after saving meant waiting it out. Mati made the toast disappear as soon as the menu opens, and Adam shipped it in the latest extension update.

🧩 Improved Reader API Highlights — Previously, the Reader API had no support for editing or deleting highlights, and listing highlights always returned an empty note. Thanks to Piotr, PATCH /api/v3/update/ and DELETE /api/v3/delete/ now work on highlights, the list endpoint includes each highlight's note and tags, and deleting an article through the API removes its highlights with it. The API docs have the details.

🛜 Parsing Updates — Krzys improved how Reader handles documents from Substack (posts, feeds, and newsletter emails), afr.com, Bloomberg, BBC News, Medium, wsj.com, and our own docs.readwise.io.

👍 Three recommendations from our team

From product designer Christina

Something to read 📖
Christina is reading Holy Sister by Mark Lawrence, the last installment in the Book of the Ancestor trilogy. It's about Nona Grey, a girl who ends up at a convent where the nuns are trained to fight. Think assassins, magic, and really wholesome friendships. She's been hooked on this series and can't put it down!

Something to focus 🌶️
Christina has been on a gochujang udon kick. Chewy noodles tossed in a spicy yet slightly sweet sauce that comes together super easily. Make sure to add some panfried oyster mushrooms, too. It's the perfect lunch when she needs something comforting to power through the afternoon. If you need extra spice, you can always add some chili oil.

Something to unwind 🎮
Christina has been rooting for ADÉLA ever since Pop Star Academy, so she's been playing PRIMA, her first album, on repeat. Her favorite song right now is "Ain't in LA".

💬 From the Readwise group chat

Spotted: Readwise in the wild

If you find yourself in San Sebastian, get some cheesecake from La Viña and spot our "mark" near the beach!