💡 WiseUp! Vol. 88 — Introducing new TTS voices and reading themes (Sepia is here!)

📍 Let's start with a reading recommendation

How to remember everything you learn

We can't stop and won't stop reading fresh takes on retention. In this one, neuroscientist Dominic Ng debunks three myths that trip up even the most well-intentioned learners. "When new information enters your brain, your hippocampus creates a fragile, temporary trace - like dragging a stick through wet sand on the beach. For that trace to become a real memory, your brain needs a consolidation window: a period of rest where it replays the trace, strengthens the neural connections, and integrates it into your long-term cortical networks. The trouble is most people never stop to digest... It’s the learning equivalent of writing paragraph after paragraph in wet sand, never noticing the waves washing each one away behind you."

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 Bear O:

Can I update my Themed Reviews schedule from mobile?

You can now change when your Themed Reviews appear directly from the Readwise mobile app. Set them to show up daily, weekly, monthly, on weekends, or on specific days depending on what fits your routine. That means one less reason to switch over to the web when you want to adjust your reviews.

❓ A Reader question from Nikki F:

Can Reader’s text-to-speech voices sound more lifelike and natural?

You can find a text-to-speech voice you enjoy listening to before settling in for a longer article or book. Reader now has 16 new lifelike American and British English voices on web and mobile. While TTS is playing, select the waveform to open the voice picker, where you can preview each voice with the play button before choosing one. On mobile, Reader also keeps your recently used voices under Recent for quicker switching.

📖 New help doc of the week

Sweater weather, meet Sepia

The leaves are changing color, so why shouldn't your reading view? This week's docs show how to use Reader's new reading themes on mobile, and fall fans might spot a festive extra at the end of the list.

🎬 New video of the week

Turn any book into an AI skill you’ll actually use

Vicky Zhao created this useful tutorial that lets you turn your books and highlights into skills you can use with your preferred agent.

📰 Sep 12 - Sep 18 updates

What's new in Reader and Readwise

🎨 NEW! Reading Themes in Reader — Reading in the Reader app on iOS and Android used to mean a choice between light and dark. Thanks to Adam, you can now pick a reading theme from the Appearance sheet: Crisp, Sepia, Soft, Slate, Ink, Night, or a seasonal PSL 🍂.

🔊 NEW! Lifelike Voices (beta) — Reader's text-to-speech now offers 16 new and (we think) much-improved voices on web and in the mobile app, in American and British English. There’s now a play button next to each one so you can hear a sample before you pick, and on mobile, your last few voices also show up under Recent for quick switching. Props to Artem for spearheading this update.

🎧 Improved Text-to-Speech Controls — While listening in the Reader app on mobile, the playback controls lived inside the bottom menu, so they either disappeared when the menu hid or covered the text. Artem moved them into a floating player that shrinks into a small pill as you scroll, keeping play, pause and skip one tap away. The Return and Jump arrows also point the right way again, and auto-scroll picks back up when you return to the spoken text.

🚀 Improved Reader Launch — Opening the Reader app could flick through several screens: the splash, a waiting view, a blank library, a placeholder list, and finally your documents with their covers swapping in. Signing in had its own shuffle between the login and loading screens. Artem replaced all of that with a single launch screen and trimmed the work the app does on startup, so your library appears sooner and without the flashes.

🧾 Fixed Upgrade Confirmation — If your Reader plan had expired and you upgraded from inside the app, the success screen's buttons did nothing and the app had to be force-quit. Mati fixed the navigation behind it, so tapping Return or the X closes the screen and drops you back into your library.

📱 Improved Android Navigation Bar — In the Reader app on Android, the reading view stopped short of the system navigation bar, which made the toolbar look like it was floating and turned the translucent bar solid. Andrew extended the reading view and bottom sheets all the way down, so the page runs edge to edge.

🌓 Improved High Contrast Mode — With high contrast turned on in the Reader app, secondary labels such as dates, counts, and captions kept their usual muted gray. Johannes made them full black or white along with everything else, so the whole screen is easy to read.

📂 Fixed OPML Imports on Android — The Reader app's Add Feed sheet suggests sharing an OPML file to import your feeds, but on Android, Reader never showed up in the share sheet for those files. Mati taught the app to accept them, so you can import an OPML file from your Files app on Android just like on iOS.

📰 Fixed Stale RSS Feeds — Some RSS feeds in Reader could go weeks without new articles even though the publisher kept posting, and unsubscribing and resubscribing didn't help. A few sites tell readers to cache their feed for a month or even a year, and Reader was taking them at their word. Rasul changed the regular check so those feeds are polled like any other, and new posts arrive on schedule.

🔢 Fixed Citation Numbers Read Aloud — Listening to a Wikipedia article or any document with footnote markers in Reader meant hearing "one", "two", "twelve" after almost every sentence. Artem made text-to-speech skip those markers while keeping the word highlighting in sync, so articles read smoothly.

🎙️ Fixed Pocket Casts Episodes — Saving a Pocket Casts episode to Reader produced an "Unnamed podcast" after Pocket Casts started blocking our requests for episode pages. Rasul switched to Pocket Casts' podcast directory to look the episode up, so shared episodes come through with their title and audio again.

⌨️ Fixed Space Bar Skipping Paragraphs — In Reader on the web, pressing space to move one paragraph at a time could jump two if you'd nudged the page with your mouse or trackpad in between, because the focus moved to the next paragraph while you were still reading the current one. Rasul fixed how focus follows your scroll, so space advances exactly one paragraph.

📝 Fixed Note Box Position — In Reader on the web, the note box for a highlight that spans more than one paragraph could end up half off the screen after you scrolled away and back. Adam fixed its positioning, so the note box stays next to your highlight.

🗂️ Improved Manage Feeds Layout — At split-screen widths, the Manage Feeds page in Reader on the web squeezed the search box down to its icon and pushed the Delete and Subscribe buttons off screen, and the Suggested tab carried a "New" badge that never went away. Mati let the header wrap onto a second row and retired the badge, so everything fits in a narrow window.

🤖 Improved BYOK Models — If you bring your own OpenAI key to Ghostreader in Reader, the model list stopped at GPT-5.6. Tristan added GPT-6 Luna to the model pickers in chat and the skill editor.

📅 Improved Themed Review Schedules — The Readwise app only let you set a Themed Review to Daily, Weekly or Never, while the web offered more, and a review set to Monthly on the web showed up in the app as a raw "monthly" label. Ibai added Weekdays, Weekends, Custom and Monthly to the app, with a day-of-month picker for Monthly and a weekday checklist for Custom, so you can schedule reviews the same way everywhere.

🚫 Fixed "Never" Books in Themed Reviews — Books you'd set to Never could still turn up in Readwise Themed Reviews that pick their own sources, and in the theme preview. Ibai made Themed Reviews respect that setting, and also fixed the background job that keeps their highlight pools fresh, so new highlights find their way into your themes again.

🧠 Fixed Mastery Cards — Mastery review in the Readwise app cut every fill-in card to 60 characters, so a card whose keyphrase came later couldn't be answered. The card's menu also showed "Delete Mastery flashcard" for a moment before switching to "Master highlight". Ibai fixed both: cards show the full quote, and deleting a card turns it back into a plain highlight right away.

🔤 Fixed Review Keyboard Shortcuts — With a hardware keyboard connected to an iPad or other tablet, Daily Review shortcuts in the Readwise app opened the web versions of menus, so pressing t dropped a web tag list over your highlight. Ibai pointed t, n, e, s and f at the app's own sheets, so tagging, notes, edits, sharing and favorites work from the keyboard.

🌑 Fixed Black Screen After Saving — Picking a source to save a highlight to in the Readwise app on Android could leave you on an empty dark screen after a successful save. Johannes changed when the source list refreshes, so you land back where you expect.

📷 Fixed Sideways Scans — Photos taken with the Scan tool in the Readwise app on Android came out sideways when the phone was held flat. Johannes rebuilt the camera module so it reads the display rotation, and scans come out the right way up.

🖍️ Fixed Hyperhighlights on Android — In the Readwise app on Android, the yellow hyperhighlight markers on feed and book cards could land on the wrong words, especially at larger text sizes. Ibai switched Android to drawing them as a highlight behind the text, so they always cover the right words.

↩️ Improved Return Key in Chat — In the Readwise app's chat, the keyboard's return key sent your message, so there was no way to put a quote and your question on separate lines. Ibai made return add a new line, and the Send button sends, like other chat apps.

📻 Fixed Audio Reviews — Some audio versions of the Readwise Daily Review stopped partway through because the script behind them was cut off mid-sentence. Tristan moved that step back to a model that finishes the script, so audio reviews play to the end.

💵 Fixed Google Play Billing Details — If you subscribe to Readwise through Google Play on an annual plan, your account settings on the web said you were billed monthly, with a blank renewal date. Tristan taught that page to read your Google Play plan, so it's now accurate to your actual subscription.

🔀 Improved Roam Export Upgrade — Readwise's original Roam export, the one that logged in to Roam on your behalf, no longer runs, but its old links still led to a login form or a settings page that did nothing. Rasul now sends every old Roam link to the right place: the in-place upgrade to the Roam API export if you were on the old version (keeping your templates, excluded books and export history), or the Roam API setup if you're new.

📤 Fixed Reflect Exports — If you deleted or lost access to the Reflect graph Readwise was exporting to, every automatic export failed without a word. Rasul made Readwise treat that like a lost connection: exports pause and you get an email, and reconnecting lets you pick a graph.

🛜 Parsing Updates — Krzys improved how Reader handles documents from afr.com, Medium, The Atlantic, Le Monde, Courier international, inc.com, Handelsblatt, Axios, golem.de, twreporter.org, telegra.ph, examine.com, Baymard Institute, docs.delta.io, asquaredozen.com, boydrinksink.com, and blogs hosted on Ghost.

👍 Three recommendations from our team

From head of bizops Fernando

Something to read 📖
Fer is finishing Restoring Childhood, a thoughtful rebuttal to the popular The Anxious Generation. It challenges the simplistic idea that children’s anxiety can be solved mainly by restricting smartphone use and, instead, asks what has disappeared from childhood that may be driving the problem. The book points to unstructured play, freedom to explore, responsibility, and time with other children outside adult supervision. It argues that these real-world experiences help children become capable, resilient, and socially confident.

Something to focus 🎙️
Fer recently got an early version of Vox, a wearable microphone that lets him dictate to his computer or phone instead of typing, anywhere. It picks up quiet speech and still works in noisy places. It’s comfortable to wear all day, and Fer quickly forgets it’s there. And it comes with customizable buttons that make it easy to fit into his workflow.

Something to unwind 🎮
Fernando really enjoyed Furious. It follows a troubled FBI agent hunting a female serial killer, combining a tense investigation with strong character drama. He'd recommend it for its suspenseful story and compelling lead.

💬 From the Readwise group chat

It's a rough life

May I add: if you also live with a toddler, this becomes a loop so intense you might get dragged into a Bermuda Triangle type of situation.