Strobe reads web articles through the share sheet. Share a page from Safari, and Strobe adds its headline and text to your library without the menus, ads, and comments around it. Links and text from other apps work the same way, and Shortcuts can send Strobe any text.
Share an article from Safari
Open the article in Safari, tap the Share button, and choose Strobe. On a Mac, click Share in the Safari toolbar and choose Strobe. If Strobe is not listed, tap More at the end of the row of apps on iPhone or iPad, or choose Edit Extensions on a Mac, and turn it on.
Strobe finds the article on the page and shows a preview: the headline, which you can edit, the site it came from, the opening text, and the word count with an estimated reading time at your default speed. Choose Add, and the article joins your library, labeled WEB, ready the next time you open Strobe.
The article arrives as text. Navigation, sidebars, comments, newsletter sign-ups, ads, figures, captions, and tables are left out, and footnote markers such as [1] are removed. Keep the page open if you need a chart or a table.
Read only the part you selected
To read one section of a long article, select it in Safari before you share. When there is a selection, Strobe adds only the selected text, which suits a single chapter of an online book, one answer in a long thread, or a passage you want to reread slowly.
Links and text from other apps
Links shared from Mail, Messages, a news reader, or any other app work too. Strobe loads the page in the background, finds the article the same way, and shows the same preview. Shared text, such as a passage from a document, is added directly.
A shared link opens without your Safari sign-ins, so a page behind a subscription or login may come through incomplete. For those, open the article in Safari while signed in and share it from there. If Strobe finds nothing to read, it says so before anything is added.
Send text with Shortcuts and Siri
Strobe adds a Speed Read Text action to the Shortcuts app. It takes any text, adds it to your library as a new document, and opens it in the reader. Give it a title, or leave the title empty and Strobe names the document with the date and time.
Speed Read Text works at the end of any shortcut that produces text. A shortcut that gets the clipboard and passes it to Speed Read Text, for example, turns copied text into a reading session in one tap.
Siri works with the rest of your library. Say “Continue reading in Strobe” to open the document you are in the middle of, open one by its title, as in “Open Moby-Dick in Strobe,” or ask “How far am I in Strobe?” for your progress.
Read it on any device
With iCloud Sync on, an article you share on one device appears in the library on your others, and your place follows it. Each device keeps its own copy, so a saved article is readable offline.
The Continue Reading widget shows what you are reading and the time it has left on the Home Screen and Lock Screen of iPhone and iPad, and on the Mac desktop. Time left includes your timing settings, so the estimate matches how long the rest of the article will take.
Sources
Product sources
This guide is written by Jaafar Abdeen, Strobe’s developer. For current app compatibility and features, check the Strobe App Store listing. The public source code documents the implementation.