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One reading surface, four addresses, and the controls that change how it looks.

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Four addresses, one reader

The reading view is the same component every time. What changes is who can reach the address and where the text came from. /item/<id> is the private one. The address is per-account: opening it signed out asks you to sign in, and opening it while signed in as somebody else is refused rather than silently showing the wrong library. /s/<id> covers two things behind one shape. A six-character id is a quote snippet — a passage you shared. An eight-character id is a full-article snapshot. Creating an archive at /archive/<id> is a Pro feature; reading one is open to anyone with the link. Both are covered in Sharing. Links to x.com and twitter.com open in that same reader. The only thing that differs is metadata: those two are readable by link-preview crawlers, and the plain reader is not indexed at all.

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Routes that are not what they sound like

Three URLs look like features and are not, which matters if someone sends you one.
  • /files is a redirect. It lands on your library dashboard filtered to files.
  • /rss is a redirect to /feeds, keeping whichever feed you had open.
  • /adhd-reader, /ai-reader and /text-to-speech are landing pages that describe reading tools. There is no separate “ADHD mode” or “AI reader” to turn on. /word-anchors is also a landing page, though its demo writes the real setting when you use it.

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Typography, theme and width

Two places change the reading surface, and they edit the same preferences.
Open the settings popover while reading. Changes preview live on the article in front of you.
Theme lives one section over, in Settings → General: light, dark, system, or one of the named variants, with a reset. Article translation is set there too.
Reader preferences are stored in the browser you set them in. They do not follow your account to another device. Highlights, notes, saved items and History do.

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Word anchors, the one real reading mode

Word anchors bolds the opening letters of each word so your eye lands sooner.
Three strengths — light, medium and strong — change how much of each word is bolded and where it stops. Medium is the default when you switch it on. It is off until you ask for it, deliberately: it changes how every word looks. It also changes nothing underneath. The text itself is untouched, so highlighting, listening and translation keep working exactly as before.

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What you can do to an article

These are reader actions, not separate pages. Every one of them is in the command palette, so ⌘K and a word is enough if you would rather not hunt. Focus mode, the speed reader, quizzes and mind maps are reader actions too, invoked the same way. The summary at the top is not one of these. It runs on its own as soon as the text arrives, unless you turn automatic summaries off in Settings → Summary.

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When the page will not load

Six outcomes exist and the reader names the one you hit: smry is overloaded, you are rate limited, nothing is cached for that link, the site is a hard paywall, the publisher is unsupported, or the URL was rejected as unsafe. Hard paywalls are refused rather than half-read — 28 sites are declared, and the failure links to the list. The New York Times and the Orlando Sentinel are blocked by name.

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Questions

The reader is marked no-index, no-follow, no-archive, and sends no referrer to the publisher. Your saved items add no-cache on top.
Yes — YouTube links go through the transcript path and get a briefing instead of article text. They cannot be read aloud.

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Next

Highlights and notes

What to do with the passage you just selected.

Listen to an article

Voices, speed, and where playback follows you.

Your library

Where an article goes after you save it.

smry for readers

Start over from the front door.
Last modified on September 13, 2026