Strobe: Speed Reader

About Strobe: Speed Reader

Ratings & reviews

A new look for Strobe, plus a big update shaped by reader feedback: new display options, smarter timing, and cleaner text. A NEW LOOK • Your library shows every document as a cover, with New, your progress, or Finished underneath. • Continue Reading, at the top of the library, takes you straight back to your word and shows how much time is left. • Books with chapters open to a new book page where you can resume, check your progress, and see how long each chapter takes. • Settings is simpler, with a live preview of the word as you change its font, size, and color. Timing options have their own page. • Adding text is quicker, with a Paste button and a word count that shows how long it'll take to read. • Importing no longer covers the screen: the new document shows up in your library, with a Cancel button, while it's added. • The reading screen works just like before. ON MAC • A real toolbar with search, sort, and add, and no more doubled-up buttons. • New Text (⌘N) and Import File (⌘O) in the File menu. • Settings is now organized into tabs. NEW DISPLAY OPTIONS • True Black Background (Settings › Reading): pure black behind the words, great for OLED screens and reading in the dark. In Settings › While Reading (Settings › Display on Mac): • Document Title and Current Chapter: show the document's title and current chapter faintly at the top. • Previous and Next Words: see the words before and after the current one, dimmed, on either side of it. • Open Quotes and Parentheses: keeps an opening quote or parenthesis faintly above the word until it closes, so you always know you're inside one. SMARTER TIMING • Sentence Pauses is now Punctuation Pauses, in Settings › Timing. It also pauses at commas, colons, semicolons, dashes, ellipses, and closing brackets and quotes, and you can set each one's length. • Blank After Sentences: an optional moment of empty screen between sentences, with a length you can adjust. It doesn't trigger after abbreviations like Mr. or U.S. • Acronyms like FBI, NASA, and COVID-19 stay on screen a little longer, since they're read letter by letter. • Hyphenated words like well-known and long-term get a little extra time for each part. CLEANER TEXT • Chapter titles no longer play twice: after a chapter is announced, reading picks up right after its heading. This works for documents already in your library. • Words joined by a long dash, like "elements—stone", now appear one at a time. • Years and times like 2000 BCE, 44 B.C., and 10:30 PM stay together as one word. • Phrases like "pre- and post-war" now read correctly. The last three apply to documents you import after updating. IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES • The word now appears in the same spot on screen in every document. • The highlighted focus letter lands in a better place on numbers, years, and times.

App privacy

The developer, Jaafar Abdeen, reported these privacy practices to Apple.