💡 WiseUp! Vol. 85 — Introducing scan loupe and hide focus indicator

📍 Let's start with a reading recommendation

East of Eden guide 1, part 1

Kaylee, a former English teacher, writes reading guides at Thought and Title. Her six-part guide to East of Eden is well timed if you're planning to tackle Steinbeck's masterpiece before the Netflix adaptation arrives. (Not your vibe? She's also covered Stoner, Jane Eyre, and more.) "Are people destined to repeat the sins of their ancestors, or can they choose a different path?"

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 Tom G:

Could you make the scanning tool easier to see exactly which text I’m selecting?

You can now select text from scanned pages with much better visibility and control. As you move the selection handle in the Scan tool, a magnifying loupe shows the exact boundary while the handle stays out from under your finger. This is now available for manual selection and automatic scan review on both iOS and Android.

❓ A Reader question from Daria S:

Could there be an option to turn off the blue line highlighting the current paragraph?

Prefer reading without the colored bar beside the current paragraph? You can now hide it from Reader’s Preferences with the Hide focus indicator toggle. Once it’s off, arrow keys and the space bar scroll normally, though a few focus-based shortcuts won’t be available.

📖 New help doc of the week

Every document has an origin story. Filter by it

Ever wanted a view of just the articles you tossed into Reader from the share sheet while out and about? The syntax guide now lists every  saved_using value Reader records, from the browser extension and mobile share sheets to file uploads and RSS, plus a trick for stamping your own label on anything you save through the API.

🎬 New video of the week

What’s on a millionaire’s phone?

Gary Ashworth has built multiple $100M companies, and invested in countless more. This week we’re learning his favorite iPhone apps. Can you guess who makes a cameo? 🤭

📰 Sep 05 - Sep 11 updates

What's new in Reader and Readwise

🎬 NEW! YouTube Chapters — When you save a YouTube video to Reader on web, the video's own chapter markers now show up in the Contents panel, so you can jump between sections the way you would with an article's headings. Click a chapter and the player seeks straight to it, with the transcript following along. Thanks to Piotr, this works for every video saved from now on.

🫥 NEW! Hide Focus Indicator — Reader on web marks the paragraph you're on with a colored bar beside it. Some readers found this distracting, so Piotr added a "Hide focus indicator" toggle in Preferences. With it hidden, the arrow keys and space bar scroll the page the way they do on any other site, though a few keyboard shortcuts that rely on the indicator will no longer work.

🔎 NEW! Scan Loupe — Selecting text in a scanned page with the Readwise app's Scan tool now shows a magnifying loupe above your finger, and the selection handle sits offset from your fingertip so it no longer hides the exact boundary you're choosing. Johannes added this for both manual selection and automatic scan review on iOS and Android.

🔊 Improved TTS Speed Controls — The playback speed sheet in the Reader app used to be a fixed list of twelve rates. Artem replaced it with a native sheet where you can drag a slider anywhere from 0.5x to 3x in 0.05 steps, or tap a preset for 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, or 2x. The voice picker also got an upgrade: "View all languages" now opens a full list with a back button to return.

🧠 Improved Ghostreader Model Memory — Every new Ghostreader chat in Reader on web and desktop reset the model picker to Fast, so anyone who prefers Thinking had to pick it again each time. Piotr made the choice sticky, so a new chat now starts on whichever model you picked last.

📚 Improved Ghostreader Long Documents — Asking Ghostreader in Reader to work through a long book a section at a time could make it lose the thread after a few turns, because pulling in the whole document pushed your earlier conversation out of its memory. Piotr gave Ghostreader a tool that reads a document in order, one page of chunks at a time, so it can keep going through a long text and remember what you asked for.

🗨️ Fixed Ghostreader Raw Output — When a Ghostreader chat in Reader used up its research steps before answering a question about your library, it could reply with the raw search results and its own internal instructions instead of an answer. Piotr fixed the final pass, so Ghostreader now writes a proper answer from what it found.

📍 Fixed Ghostreader Position Prompts — Prompts like "Pick up where I left off" or "What have I read so far" in Reader could answer with material from past your reading position. Adam shipped a fix to the guidance Ghostreader uses to locate where you are in the document, so those prompts now stick to what you've actually read.

📝 Fixed Chat Note Formatting — Adding a Ghostreader chat answer in Reader to a document note or highlight note carried the Markdown symbols along with it. Adam fixed that, so answers now land in your notes as plain, readable text with their lists intact.

💬 Fixed Chat Prompt Dialog — In the Reader app, running a Ghostreader prompt that asks you for input first showed its dialog behind the chat sheet, where you couldn't reach it. Adam moved the dialog in front, so those prompts can be answered again on iPhone and Android.

♻️ Fixed Reparsed Documents — When the parsing team fixed a document and emailed you a link to the corrected version, opening it in Reader could still show the old text until you hard-refreshed. Mati made Reader drop its cached copy the moment the server reports a reparse, and Krzys made sure every document in a fix notification is marked for refresh, so the link now opens the corrected article on web and mobile.

📡 Fixed Stuck RSS Feeds — If a feed published an item stamped with a date in the future, Reader could stop pulling in anything new from that feed, since every sync only looked for items newer than that one. Piotr shipped a fix that ignores a future-dated marker, so affected feeds catch up on their backlog and keep delivering new posts.

⏱️ Fixed Chapter Time Remaining — Opening an EPUB in the Reader app could show "1 min left in chapter" until you turned a page, when the real figure was much larger. Johannes made the footer read your restored position as soon as the book loads, so the chapter time is right from the first page.

📑 Fixed EPUB Table of Contents — Books that arrived in Reader through a bundle subscription lost their table of contents, and in the Reader app, opening an EPUB with no table of contents right after one that had one could show the previous book's chapters. Cam fixed both, so bundled books keep their chapters and every book shows its own.

🖼️ Fixed Image Highlights — Highlighting an image in a Substack post could show up in the Readwise app, on the Readwise website, and in Reader's Notebook as a raw Markdown link instead of the picture. Johannes taught the renderers to accept those image URLs, so image highlights now display as images everywhere.

🏷️ Fixed Bulk Tag Palette — Using "Tag all as…" from Reader’s command palette in a view with lots of tags filled the palette with tag chips and pushed the actual commands off screen. Piotr capped the chip list and made it scroll, so the palette stays usable no matter how many tags you have.

🔃 Improved Sort Labels — Sorting by Length or Progress in Reader offered "0 → 100" and "100 → 0", which didn't mean much for either. Piotr relabeled them "Shortest → Longest" and "0% → 100%" on web and mobile, and the sort menu on web now opens to the left so it no longer runs under the Info panel.

📱 Fixed Feed Swiping on Android — Swiping through the Feed's Skim view in the Reader app on Android could settle on one article and then swap it out for a different one a moment later. Krzys shipped a fix that keeps every article in its slot while it loads, so a swipe lands on the article you expect.

⭐ Fixed Shortlist Icon Size — The shortlist star in the Reader app's reading toolbar was drawn noticeably larger than the icons beside it. Adam had it redrawn to match, so the toolbar lines up.

🐦 Renamed Twitter Articles Setting — The Twitter/X import setting in Reader labeled "Save articles linked in tweets" actually controls whether X Articles (Twitter's long-form posts) are saved, not links inside tweets. Rasul renamed it "Twitter Articles" on the settings page and in Reader so it says what it does.

📤 Fixed Android Share Sheet — Tapping Done twice in the Reader share sheet's tag view on Android could crash the app a couple of seconds later. Cam fixed the double-tap handling, so saving from the share sheet completes cleanly.

🔍 Improved Quick Lookup — Opening Quick Lookup in the Reader app scrolled the page much further than the sheet needed, sometimes causing it to lose your place. Krzys shipped a fix that scrolls only as far as the sheet requires, and usually not at all.

📐 Fixed Boox Text Scaling — Raising the per-app DPI on Boox devices pushed the Readwise app past the panel edges, and the home header's settings gear and streak counter were hidden behind a stray system bar. Ibai aligned the app's render density with the device setting and removed the bar, so text scales with your Boox DPI and the header controls are back.

📷 Improved Scan Uploads — Photos taken with the Readwise app's Scan tool are now sent straight from the device at a smaller size instead of being encoded in memory first. Johannes made the change for both manual selection and automatic scan review, so scanning dense pages on Android should no longer stall or run out of memory.

📋 Fixed Oversized Pastes — Pasting a very long block of text into the Readwise app's Add Highlight field on Android could freeze the app. Johannes added a length limit that trims the paste and tells you, so the editor stays responsive.

🔔 Fixed Notification Taps — Tapping a Daily Review notification while the Readwise app was closed could open the app without taking you to the review. Johannes made the app hold on to the tap until it's ready to navigate, so notifications land on the right screen from a cold start.

🔠 Fixed Chapter Labels — Long chapter names on review cards in the Readwise app could run on for several lines and crowd out the highlight. Ibai capped them at two lines, so the card stays about the highlight.

🦶 Fixed Footnote Editing — Editing a highlight that contained a footnote in the Readwise app hid the bold, italic, and highlight formatting bar. Johannes made footnote embeds behave as single units in the editor, so the formatting controls now appear for every highlight.

⚖️ Fixed Daily Review Buttons — On the Lite plan, the Daily Review's action row in the Readwise app and on mobile web showed its three buttons bunched in the middle of the card instead of spread across it. Ibai gave the middle slot the same width the missing button left behind, so the row reaches the card edges again.

🛜 Parsing Updates — Krzys improved how Reader handles documents from wsj.com and ft.com, and articles from both sites saved by URL are now far more likely to come through in full instead of as a paywall preview.

👍 Three recommendations from our team

From community manager Erin

Something to walk in 👟
Erin joined her brother for a spur-of-the-moment summit of Mt. Whitney. These Merrell trailrunners saw her up the mountain with zero blisters, and no break-in required!

Something to focus ⏲️
Erin struggled more than usual this trip with jet-lag. This calculator helped her figure out when to set her alarm to work in harmony with her sleep cycle and minimize morning grogginess.

Something to unwind 🍫
On her last day in California, Erin stopped by the infamous Erewhon, where she was introduced the Alice’s adaptogenic chocolates for sleep. While this may be soooo LA of her, she can confirm they really do work!

💬 From the Readwise group chat

The way Nolan intended

Turns out the iPhone Duo's killer feature is dividing your attention exactly 50/50 between high art and Subway Surfers. Apple really looked at our collective focus span and built a phone for it.