SAPIENTIA Research
Daisaku Seto Reference iPhoneiPadiPod touch
SAPIENTIA Research is a free Reference app for iPhone and iPad by Daisaku Seto. Requires iOS 18.4. Updated July 27, 2026.
- Price
- Free
- on the App Store
- Size
- 3 MB
- Age 4+
- Updated
- Jul 27
- 2026 · v4.3.0
Screenshots
About SAPIENTIA Research
SAPIENTIA is a tool to search, read, and listen to your PDFs - from papers and dictionaries to everyday reading. Find with cross-PDF search, read in the reader, and listen with on-device text-to-speech. The AI exploration that breaks research silos is here too. [Instant search across thousands of pages] Import a PDF and full-text fuzzy search becomes available. Hiragana, katakana, full and half width are unified; Levenshtein distance allows for typos. Even a dictionary of thousands of pages returns results almost instantly. Two-phase (exact then fuzzy), Japanese normalization, context snippets, seven highlight styles. [Peripheral Exploration] AI extracts key phrases and generates cards in two ranges: Mid-range (adjacent fields) and Far-range (distant domains, including folk knowledge and crafts across cultures). Paper lookup runs in Japanese, English, and Chinese in parallel against Semantic Scholar, so even a Japanese keyword pulls in the right papers; otherwise it falls back to Google Scholar or Web search. [Multilingual Paper Search] A keyword in any language is auto-translated and searched across CiNii, J-STAGE, Crossref, arXiv, and Semantic Scholar at once. Result titles are shown in your UI language. [AI Summary - on-device when possible] Summarize the context around a hit, or all hits at once. On Apple Intelligence devices (iPhone 15 Pro and later) it runs fully on-device - PDF content never leaves your device. Otherwise it falls back to the Gemini API. [Write memos and return to the source] Leave a memo on any page. v4.0 introduces a dedicated Memos tab where every memo can be browsed and searched together. One tap returns you to the source PDF and page. [Read - resume, bookmarks, cross-PDF hits (v4.1+)] The app remembers the page (and read-aloud position) you closed on, so you can resume. Bookmark and jump from the bottom bar, and move through pages with the slider. After searching, step through exact-match hits one by one - across other PDFs too - each auto-highlighted. [Listen - on-device text-to-speech (v4.2)] Have your pages read aloud, continuing automatically to the next page. Adjustable speed, sleep timer (up to 2 hours), pages-to-read limit (up to 100), resume mid-sentence, an "extend" prompt when time/pages run out (tap or shake to continue), and a remaining countdown. Plays in the background and on the lock screen, with controls and extend. Runs on-device; text is never sent externally. Tip: add a high-quality voice in iOS Settings for a more natural sound. [Capture pages directly] No PDF? Photograph book pages and we OCR them via Apple Live Text, including vertical Japanese. Capture an entire dictionary or specialized book. [All major cloud providers] Import PDFs from iCloud Drive, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox. [Multilingual UI and translation] UI in Japanese, English, and Chinese. Tap to translate selected text; on Apple Intelligence devices, translation runs on-device too. [Pro features (14-day free trial)] The first 14 days unlock every feature for you to try. After that, Pro features can be permanently unlocked with a one-time purchase. Always free: unlimited PDF import & search, basic highlighting, memos, up to 3 folders, history. Pro features (one-time unlock): Peripheral Exploration, unlimited AI Summary (on-device when supported), multilingual paper search across 5 databases, translation, continuous-capture OCR, unlimited folders, no daily caps. v3.0 buyers keep Pro automatically. [Who is this for?] Researchers and students; faculty and postdocs; independent researchers; translators and editors who consult dictionaries; anyone managing many PDFs. [Notes on use] AI summaries are generated by Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite or Apple Foundation Models; always check the original before citing. Academic results come via each service's public API. PDF data is processed on-device by default (no external transmission on Apple Intelligence devices).
What’s new
Version 4.3.0 · Updated July 27, 2026
v4.3.0 new features. Search in your language and find English and Chinese PDFs too Your search term is automatically expanded across languages. Searching for a Japanese word also finds its English equivalents such as shock or impact, and its Chinese equivalent. On supported devices with Apple Intelligence, synonyms are expanded by on-device AI, with no network and no API key required. Search results now also highlight the word that actually matched, such as the English term. Note: Pro expands to broader translations and technical terms. Import text files (.txt / .md / .rtf) You can now import plain-text files directly. They are automatically converted to a searchable PDF on import, so search, highlighting, and read-aloud all work as usual. Send to SAPIENTIA via Share from any app From the share menu in Notes, Word (export as PDF), Files, Google Drive, OneDrive and more, you can send PDFs and text straight to SAPIENTIA. Open SAPIENTIA and they are imported into your library automatically. Stronger sorting and filtering in the library All PDFs and the folder-add screen now support name filtering and sorting (date added newest or oldest, name ascending or descending, and page count). In the folder-add screen, PDFs already in the folder are shown as Added to prevent duplicates. Thank you. We will keep refining the experience.
App privacy
The developer, Daisaku Seto, reported these privacy practices to Apple.
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
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| App | Rating | Price | Last updated | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAPIENTIA Research | – | Free | July 27, 2026 | |
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