ShiftReader - Speed Read the Web ShiftReader - Speed Read the Web

Productivity
Version: 1.3.4.2
Last Update: 2022-06-07

User Reviews


avatar Chris Van Hoosier
2019-11-14

You guys are doing amazing work, this is easily my favorite chrome extension. Bravo.

avatar Stefane Guevremont
2019-11-09

Perfect

avatar Christian Genco
2019-10-13

What a fantastic improvement from this developer's previous Speed Reading chrome extension, Spreed. I love that I can read faster in the context of the full article instead of just getting flashed a single word at a time—I feel like consistently using this extension would make me a much faster reader even without ShiftReader.

The default colors were a little hard on my eyes, and jarring when the rest of my computer is in Dark Mode, but I was able to swap around the colors super easily in the app's settings.

avatar Kirill Yunussov
2019-10-13

Thanks, Troy! I've been needing this.

A couple of suggestions for the "tour" - to mention that back arrow will take the cursor back a paragraph, and that space button will pause it. Also - would be good to have a help ("?") link with the rest of the controls on top left, which would show all the keyboard shortcuts - Alt S, Back-Arrow, Space, etc.

avatar Tony Shu
2019-10-13

Fantastic extension. As a college student who has always struggled with slow reading, this is exactly the kind of tool I need to remove distractions and train myself to read more quickly and with focus. Thank you!

avatar London McDougal
2023-03-03

Doesn't work. Tried using ALT + S on a PDF and got an error message. I was asked to highlight the text and right click in order to use Shiftreader. The text was several pages but I wanted to test it with just a paragraph. After highlighting and right clicking the page just froze in place(but not frozen since I could still right click and type in the browser) forcing me to restart the page and try again. I wasted probably ten minutes trying to make this work when I could have been reading.

avatar Dorian
2022-03-04

It says that you have to create an account so it can save settings and statistics. That is BS, because those can be saved in chrome sync storage, and maybe I don't care about them. It should say that it wants you register so it can track you, and potentially leak your data a few years from now.

avatar Matthew Bennett-Lovesey
2021-06-04

Requires you to register, under the guise of needing a login to save your settings.

Blatant lies aside, you shouldn't need to send data to anyone.

avatar Daun Ozuna
2020-12-28

This extension behaves like my favorite speed reading solution "eyercise," and because it allows chunking per fixation point actually improves one's reading ability in general over that lousy rsvp method which will eventually lead to depth-perception issues (a _common_ outcome of staring at screens for hours). Morbid fact: The average person will spend 44 years of their life staring at screens. My personal favorite setup is green highlight color, dark red highlight background, and dark blue page text. Once the highlight background begins to fade, the previously marked text appears black until retinal rods and cones re-adapt. To the dev: Reason for 4 stars: I think the suggested donation is way too high. Feature request: 1. glowing text using webkit opacity transition effect. 2. keep highlight line at the top level (autoscroll for persistent top line). Thank you so much.

avatar Piyush Kumar
2020-09-02

I am a doctor from India and I'd like to share my feedback.

It's not a magic bullet, but since a lot of the reading material are PDFs, ePubs, other online resources, I found that using shiftreader very helpful.

It is a digital equivalent to a finger that you use to guide your eyes on a printed book. So reading complex and lengthy material doesn't feel intimidating because you are now going slowly word by word until it comes to an end. You just don't feel the pressure. And yes, for my first time with a difficult material (kaplan qbank for usmle), I go through slowly around 100 to 150 words per minute to go over the explanations. And no, I don't read non stop from first line to last line. I jump around up and down. Pause a lot. to digest the more complex concepts. After my first read, I do it again a second timej at a higher speed 200 to 250. I also print out the material I am using, because nothing, i mean nothing can replace a good old printed copy. Because looking at the screen for long is also not productive. Reading printed material has been associated with better retention as opposed to reading online. So perhaps find a balance between the best of both worlds. I for one.

The rules to successful learning still apply. So I recommend going through Make it stick : the rules of successful learning.

I'll have to keep this short. I'm sure many others will find more creative ways to use this wonderful tool.

Give it a try.

I finally caved in and got a premium subscription because it remembers my reading history. So I just like to keep a check on what I have read. So if I want to go back to an article I read on medium a few months ago, I can refresh my memory.

And if there are any bugs, the developer is very supportive and irons out whatever bumps there are along the way.

it still needs a little feature that allows you to switch to night or day mode. Looking at a bright screen for long gets tiring. and makes you unproductive. So the ability to easily switch between night and day mode as in spreed would be really helpful. As a work around I am using Dark reader chrome extension.

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