💡 WiseUp! Vol. 91 — Introducing Readwise Books!

📍 Let's start with a reading recommendation

25+ strategies for reading more

Since we've got books on our minds today, here's some great tips from Emma on reading more books, including reading a mix of genres at once: "I don’t only choose my current reads to represent diverse formats. I like to cover genres, especially the spectrum of levity and complexity. Sometimes I want to read a difficult nonfiction tome, others I want a light romcom, and a lot of the time I’m somewhere in between. This switching up happens throughout the day, and I’m always armed and ready when I get bored or my vibe changes."

If we had to add our own tip, it would be to give Readwise Books a try. 😏

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 Michael M:

Why have my Apple Books highlights stopped syncing to Readwise after updating my Mac?

If your Apple Books highlights stopped syncing after upgrading to macOS 27, restoring the Readwise Mac app's permissions in System Settings should get things working again. Alternatively, you can download the latest version, which checks for missing permissions and guides you to the right Settings page. It also improves syncing for larger libraries and updates itself automatically, so you won't need to download future versions manually.

❓ A Reader question from Jeremy B:

Can I import and highlight my Apple Books in Reader?

You can read and highlight your DRM-free Apple Books alongside everything else in your Reader library. To import one, drag the book file into Reader on the web. Reader handles EPUBs stored as folders or zipped files, automatically preparing them for reading without any extra steps. Your imported books will also be available in the new Readwise Books app, which was announced today.

📖 New help doc of the week

Hello, my name is Readwise Highlights

Readwise is becoming a family of three with the arrival of Readwise Books, so the app that started it all is wearing a new name tag. Its help docs have unpacked into a freshly labeled home, and old links forward along like a well-filed change-of-address card. Come take the tour.

🎬 New video of the week

How people are using our new app

Instead of sharing a singular video this week, we wanted to showcase some of the creators who tested Readwise Books while we were still in stealth 💙

📰 Oct 16 - Oct 23 updates

What's new in Reader and Readwise

📛 Readwise Is Now Readwise Highlights — The Readwise app has a new name: Readwise Highlights. On your phone's home screen it shows up as Highlights, and on iPhone and iPad, searching for "Readwise" still finds it. Everything inside the app works exactly as before. Tristan handled the rename.

🧾 NEW! Single-App Plans — You can now subscribe to Reader or to Highlights on its own, without the full bundle. The pricing page on readwise.io shows the Reader Only and Highlights Only plans next to Full Readwise, and if you already subscribe, you can switch between plans yourself from your account preferences. Thanks to Tristan for wrapping this up.

🌍 NEW! Lifelike Voices in More Languages — Text-to-speech in Reader now offers Lifelike voices for Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Artem calibrated 38 new voices and they appear in a "Lifelike - Beta" section of the voice picker under each language. Your current voice stays the default, so pick a Lifelike one from the voice menu whenever you want to try it.

🎙️ Improved Audio Reviews — Listening to your Readwise Daily Review could stall after the intro, go silent for a stretch, or cut a highlight short while the audio caught up. Tristan rebuilt the audio review on the Lifelike voices, with Jessica narrating and Arthur reading your highlights, so playback starts within a couple of seconds and a slow clip no longer holds up the rest of the review.

🎬 Improved YouTube Transcripts — Enhanced transcripts for YouTube videos saved to Reader kept the "uh"s, "um"s, and stutters, could drop or invent words, and took a while to arrive. Tristan reworked the cleanup so transcripts come back more than twice as fast, keep every word and timestamp the speaker said, and leave the fillers out.

📺 Fixed Videos Restarting — When a YouTube video's enhanced transcript finished while you were already watching in Reader, the whole view reloaded: the video jumped back to its thumbnail and the transcript shifted under you. Tristan made Reader swap in the new transcript quietly, so the video keeps playing.

🖼️ Fixed Documents Cut Off After an Image — Some older saved articles in Reader lost everything after a particular image: the text looked complete at first, then vanished after an edit, and search and the API only ever saw the first part. The image's proxied address had swallowed the rest of the page. Tristan repaired the reported documents and Krzys swept up every other affected one, so the full text is back in the app, in search, and in the API.

📦 Fixed Zipped EPUB Uploads — Uploading a .epub.zip file to Reader (what macOS produces when you compress an Apple Books title) showed "Upload successful" and then nothing appeared in your library. Rasul taught Reader to unpack those files and treat them as the EPUB inside, so the book shows up.

📚 Fixed Missing EPUB Covers — EPUBs that declare their cover the older EPUB 2 way, as some publishers' Sigil-made books do, uploaded to Reader with no cover at all. Tadek made the parser read that declaration, so these books come in with their cover art.

📏 Fixed Narrow Quotes in EPUBs — With a book's original styles on, block quotes in some EPUBs opened in Reader were squeezed into a narrow column, because Reader's own quote indent stacked on top of the publisher's. Artem removed the doubled indent, so quotes take the width the publisher intended.

📄 Fixed PDF Highlight Offset — Scrolling a long PDF with the mouse wheel in Reader on web could leave highlights landing a few lines above or below the text you selected. Mati fixed the scrolling container that threw off the cursor mapping, so highlights land where you select, however far down you've scrolled.

🔄 Fixed PDF Orientation — Rotating your device to read a PDF in landscape in the Reader app, then switching away and back, could leave the PDF stuck in portrait. Adam fixed it, so the PDF follows your device orientation again.

📖 Fixed Stuck Pages Near Highlights — In paginated mode, turning into a new chapter of a book with highlights in the Reader app could stop the pages turning entirely until you left the book. Artem fixed the loading hiccup behind it, so pages keep turning and your highlights come back with their chapter.

↩️ Fixed the Return Arrow While Listening — Tapping the return arrow while listening in the Reader app, with the spoken text already on screen, briefly scrolled the page away before auto-scroll caught up. Adam made the arrow leave the page alone when the text is already in view.

🖍️ Improved Highlight Resizing on iOS — Dragging a highlight's handles in the Reader app on iPhone or iPad could show a dark selection over the text on recent versions of iOS. Adam changed the selection tint to yellow, so resizing should look like the highlight it belongs to.

🔋 Fixed Battery Drain on Android — The Reader app on Android could drain your battery and run warm in the background, even when you weren't reading or listening. Cam found the causes: the audio player kept the phone awake from the moment the app started, an animation kept redrawing the screen with no document open, and text-to-speech kept checking its progress while paused. With all three fixed, Reader stays quiet when you're not using it.

🔁 Fixed Android Resubscribing — A lapsed subscriber on Android who paid again through Google Play from the Reader app could end up still locked out. Cam made the app identify you to the store from sign-in and put an Upgrade button on the inactive-account card on Android, so a Play resubscribe unlocks Reader right away.

✂️ Fixed Copy and Share on Android — With auto-highlighting turned off in the Reader app on Android, selecting text never showed Android's Copy, Share, and Select all menu, so there was no way to copy text without highlighting it first. Ibai brought the menu back for any selection Reader isn't about to act on, matching iOS.

◀️ Fixed the Android Back Button in Sheets — Pressing Android's back button with a bottom sheet open in the Reader app (Appearance, Font, and the rest) could close the document instead of the sheet. Andrew made back close the sheet, and for sheets that have their own back button, return to the previous one.

🔠 Fixed Android System Font Scaling — On Android, the system font size setting scaled the text in Reader's reading view on top of Reader's own size, which threw off layout and page breaks. Artem pinned the reading view to Reader's font setting, so text size is now controlled from Reader's Appearance options.

🤖 Fixed API Highlights in Long Books — Highlights created through the Readwise API, the MCP server, or by asking Global Ghostreader to highlight a passage weren't anchored to the right spot in long EPUBs, so they never showed inline in Reader. Adam fixed how those locations are worked out, so new highlights land on their passage.

🐦 Fixed Twitter Reconnect Prompt — When your Twitter/X bookmarks connection expired, the Imports page on readwise.io still said your Twitter account was connected, so there was nothing telling you to reconnect. Rasul fixed the status check, so the page now shows the disconnected state with a reconnect button.

🛒 Fixed Subscribing on Android — In the Readwise Highlights app on Android, the subscription screen could fail to load prices and keep asking you to retry. Cam tracked down the missing store configuration and pushed a fix, so plans load and purchases go through again.

✍️ Fixed Kindle Book Authors — Books synced from Kindle through the Readwise Highlights app could come in with "Last accessed on" as their author. Ibai pointed the sync at the right field on Amazon's page, so newly synced books carry their real author.

⌨️ Improved iPad Keyboard Tagging — With a hardware keyboard on iPad, pressing t in the Readwise Highlights app often didn't open the tag sheet, and once open, the sheet couldn't be driven from the keyboard. Ibai fixed the shortcut and added arrow-key, Return, and Escape handling, so you can add and search tags without touching the screen.

💻 Fixed Code Samples in RSS Articles — RSS posts that show HTML inside a code sample lost that text in Reader, and a stray tag could hide the rest of the post. Krzys fixed how feed entries are decoded, so code samples read as written and the odd special character no longer shows up as raw text.

🛜 Parsing Updates — Krzys improved how Reader handles documents from wired.com, martinfowler.com, blog.naver.com, bigthink.com, BBC, imdb.com, tldr.tech, gq.com, manuelmoreale.com, hbr.org, sfchronicle.com, science.org, and notion.so, with follow-ups for economist.com.

👍 Three recommendations from our team

From technical writer Cayla

Something to read 📖

Cayla loves a chonky fantasy book with expansive world-building, and The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon hit all the right notes for her. With a fascinating cast of characters, a unique take on dragons, and an epic-scale plot, Cayla was fully immersed for the entirety of its 850+ pages. (Bonus: she enjoyed its prequel, A Day of Fallen Night, even more!)

Something to focus ⌨️
Looking for a tactile mechanical keyboard that won’t send your office-mates running for their noise-cancelling headphones? The Logitech MX Mechanical keyboard with “tactile quiet” keys is Cayla’s favorite keyboard she’s ever owned. It’s satisfying to type on, connects to up to 3 devices, and stays quiet enough for her to type late into the night without waking everyone in the house.

Something to unwind 🪵
In her spare time, Cayla enjoys building dams, irrigating crops, and creating industrialized production chains in Timberborn, a colony management game set in a post-apocalyptic future where beavers have become the dominant intelligent life form after humans left the world in shambles.

💬 From the Readwise group chat

A Polish treasure hunt

Few things beat the specific joy of discovering your reading-obsessed coworker shares a corner of the map, or a dead Polish novelist, with you. Turns out the best finds are sometimes 15 minutes away. Check out Local Wikipedia here.