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RSVP Speed Reader

Read faster. Stay focused.

Free, forever

No account, no subscription, no paywall. Open the app and start reading — that's it.

Completely private

Your files never leave your device. Everything is parsed in the browser — nothing is uploaded, stored, or shared.

Built around you

Adjust speed, font, colour theme, and text size. Light, dark, sepia — make it feel exactly right.

70 classics, ready to stream

A built-in library of public domain books — Austen, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, and more. Free to explore and practice with.

FAQ

Common questions

Is warpread.app free?

Yes — completely free. No account, no subscription, no paywall. Open the app and start reading immediately.

Are my files private?

Yes. All file parsing (PDF, DOCX, EPUB, TXT) happens entirely in your browser. Nothing is ever uploaded to a server, stored, or shared.

What file formats are supported?

PDF, EPUB, DOCX, and TXT. You can also paste any text directly into the app.

What is RSVP speed reading?

RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) displays one word at a time at a fixed point on screen. Your eyes stay in one place and the reader holds you to a set pace, which helps you read lighter or familiar material faster. For dense text, slow down: RSVP stops you looking back, and that costs comprehension at high speeds.

Is there a built-in library?

Yes — 70 public domain classics sourced from Project Gutenberg, including Austen, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Woolf, Fitzgerald, Tolstoy, Kafka, and more. Free to read instantly.

Can I customise the reading experience?

Yes. Adjust reading speed (WPM), font, text size, and colours, and switch between dark, light, and sepia themes.

Do I need an account?

No. No account, no sign-up, no email address. Open the app and start reading.

Does it work on mobile?

Yes. Fully responsive with touch support — tap to play/pause, swipe up to speed up, swipe down to slow down.

Or pick from the library

70 classics, ready to warp read→

Austen · Dostoevsky · Shakespeare · Fitzgerald · Hemingway · Wilde · Tolstoy · Marcus Aurelius · Sun Tzu · the Brontës · Kafka · Nietzsche · Woolf · Machiavelli · Dumas · Homer

What RSVP removes from reading

Ordinary reading is not a smooth glide along the line. The eye jumps — saccades — and fixates, roughly four to five times a second, with brief blind periods during each jump. A substantial share of reading time goes on moving the eye and on regressions, the involuntary jumps back to re-read something.

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation removes that entirely by holding the position fixed and moving the text instead. One word appears where the last one was, so there is nothing to track and nowhere to regress to. What remains is the part that matters: recognising the word and building meaning.

The focal letter, and why the words look off-centre

Words are not centred on the screen. Each is aligned so that its optimal recognition point — a specific letter, usually slightly left of the middle — sits at exactly the same pixel every time. That is the point the eye naturally lands on when it fixates a word, and holding it still means your eye never has to adjust between words.

It looks wrong for the first minute and then becomes invisible. The highlighted letter is doing real work: without it, long and short words pull the fixation point around and the advantage of a fixed position is largely lost.

Being realistic about the gains

RSVP genuinely raises reading rate, and the effect is largest for straightforward prose read for gist. It does not make you a superhuman reader, and claims of several thousand words a minute with full comprehension do not survive testing.

The known limitation is that RSVP prevents regression — which is the point, and also the cost. When a sentence is genuinely difficult, re-reading it is the correct response, and a format that forbids it hurts comprehension on dense material. Use RSVP for volume and for text you can process in one pass; read complex argument normally. Start around 20–30% above your natural rate — the speed test will tell you what that is — and raise it only while comprehension holds. The speed reading course covers the eye-movement research in full, and the speed reading guide sets out which other techniques are worth combining with RSVP.

Common questions

Can I use a speed reader app with Kindle format books?
Not directly — Kindle .azw and .kfx files are DRM-protected, so no third-party RSVP reader can open them. What works is any DRM-free file: upload an EPUB, PDF, DOCX or plain text file here and it is parsed in your browser and never uploaded anywhere. For books you own on Kindle, the practical route is to read them in the Kindle app and use the RSVP reader for everything else — public domain classics, articles, PDFs and your own documents. Project Gutenberg EPUBs and the 70 books in the WarpRead library all work.
What is RSVP speed reading?
RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) displays words one at a time in a fixed position on screen. Eliminating left-to-right eye movement removes the largest bottleneck in reading speed. At 300 WPM, traditional reading involves roughly 200 saccades per minute; RSVP eliminates them entirely, allowing reading at 400–600 WPM with similar comprehension for practised readers. The focal-letter alignment technique keeps the eye anchored to the same screen position for every word.
What file formats does the RSVP reader support?
PDF, EPUB, DOCX, and plain text (.txt) files are all supported. You can also paste text directly into the reader. All file parsing happens in your browser — nothing is uploaded to any server. The reader also includes 70 free public domain classics ready to read immediately.
Is my data private?
Yes. Files are parsed entirely in your browser using JavaScript — nothing you open is uploaded, and no account is required. The site does run aggregate analytics and third-party advertising, which are set out in full in the privacy policy, but neither can see the contents of your documents.
What WPM should I start at?
Start at 20–30% above your natural reading speed — take the free WarpRead speed test to find your baseline. If comprehension feels comfortable after a page, increase by 25 WPM. If you are losing the meaning of sentences, drop back 50 WPM. Most readers settle into a comfortable RSVP range 100–150 WPM above their natural reading speed after one to two weeks of daily practice.

Keep going

Speed Reading FundamentalsSaccades, regressions and subvocalisation, in five lessons.Reading speed testFind the baseline to set your WPM against.Free classic library70 public domain books, ready to read in the reader.Diagonal readerFor triage rather than reading.