Version 1.0
The first release, sent to App Review on , and coming to the App Store.
Narrators and voices
- Eight English narrators: Edward, Martin, Casey, Sara, Helen, Emma, Adrian and Simon, each a native English speaker.
- Each narrator has a drawn portrait, a short profile and a sample in which it reads that profile.
- Narrators are grouped by the sound of the voice: Resonant, Textured, Warm, Clear and Easygoing.
- Every voice is generated by an AI model on the iPhone or iPad itself, and the app says so.
- On first start you can hear every narrator before anything is downloaded; Casey is chosen to start with.
- One download of about 160 MB brings the voice model and your chosen narrator; the files can also be copied from a computer instead.
- Further narrators download with a tap, about 24 MB each, and a swipe to the right removes one.
- In Voices, a tap plays a narrator's sample and, if it is already on the device, makes it your reader.
- One narrator reads all your books; tap "read by …" under the title in the player to change it.
- The Acknowledgements can be read aloud by your narrator, without counting against any listening limit.
Listening and speed
- Reads on in the background and with the screen locked.
- The lock screen and Control Center show the chapter, book and author; their buttons and your headphones' buttons skip one sentence at a time.
- Calls and alarms pause the reading and resume it afterward; unplugged headphones pause it.
- After a pause, the reading picks up exactly where it stopped, even in the middle of a word.
- No gaps between sentences or chapters.
- Natural pauses after each paragraph, before headings, at scene breaks and at the end of a chapter.
- Buttons skip to the previous or next sentence or chapter, and the play button gives a small tap under your finger, like a key.
- The progress bar counts sentences, not estimated minutes.
- Sleep timer for 5, 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes, or to the end of the chapter.
- A mini player above the tabs keeps the open book within reach.
- Every book remembers its place to the sentence.
- Six speeds from 80 to 130 %; each narrator has its own starting speed and remembers the speed you pick.
- At 80 and 90 % the narrator itself reads more slowly, with the pauses of a slow reader.
- Speeds your device can't keep up with are struck through.
Reading along
- The book is on screen as a printed page, with the spoken sentence marked inside its paragraph.
- The page follows the voice; scroll away and "Return to highlight" brings you back.
- Tap any sentence to read from there, or pick any chapter in Chapters.
- Reading mode hides the controls and pauses the reading; when you press play, it goes on from the line in the middle of the screen.
- Watercolor paper by day and the narrator's own paper by night, following the system's Light and Dark setting.
- Art Nouveau ornament throughout, changing with the narrator you choose.
Books and import
- Opens DRM-free EPUB, PDF with real text, plain text and Markdown, from Files or another app's Share sheet.
- Reads web articles from a link, without their menus, sidebars and comments, and turns pasted text into a book of its own.
- "Where to find books" lists places that offer DRM-free ebooks, free and paid.
- Three classics on the shelf from the first launch: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales and The Secret Garden.
- The library is a shelf of covers, each in its own color, with your progress under it.
- Starts where the story starts, skipping title and copyright pages, and stops before the back matter.
- Reads a numbered heading as Chapter 12, reads numbers as words, and says when a book shows a table.
- Skips footnote marks and stray page numbers, reads words in capitals as normal words, and reads a link as a link to followed by the site's name.
- In PDFs, skips page headers and page numbers, and joins paragraphs and hyphenated words that were split across lines.
- For text files with a line break at the end of every line, a switch in Chapters joins the lines back into paragraphs.
- Copy-protected EPUBs and scanned PDFs are refused with a plain message.
- A book in another language is flagged on opening, with the choice to read it in English anyway.
iPhone, iPad and iPhone Duo
- Runs on the iPhone XS and newer with iOS 18.0 or later, in portrait orientation.
- Runs on the iPad with iPadOS 18.0 or later, in every orientation, with the narrators shown as cards.
- On the iPad and the open iPhone Duo, the player's controls float in a rounded panel as wide as the text.
- Runs on the iPhone Duo with iOS 27.1, on both screens, carrying on without a break when you switch screens.
- On the Duo's inner screen held sideways, the first start is a two-page spread and the Voices tab splits at the fold.
Apple Watch
- A remote for the Apple Watch, watchOS 10.0 or later, is included; the iPhone plays the audio.
- Tap the middle to play or pause, either side to skip a sentence, or hold either side for the previous or next chapter.
- Shows your place in the chapter and can start the reading; it takes on your narrator's colors, with a pearl play button while the iPhone is in light mode.
Plans
- Ten minutes of listening a day are free, with every narrator, and come back at midnight.
- Candlelight: four hours of listening a week for $1 a month.
- Monthly: unlimited listening for $3 a month; if you move up from Candlelight, Apple credits the unused part of its month.
- Unlimited: unlimited listening for one payment of $30, not a subscription.
- The plans appear when the free minutes run out, and Settings has Restore purchases and Manage subscription.
- If you buy Unlimited while a monthly plan is still active, the app shows you how to cancel the monthly plan.
- A plan keeps working in airplane mode, with no account, and there are no ads on any plan.
Privacy and offline
- After the first download, Inklight reads entirely offline, and nothing you read or hear leaves your device.
- No account, no advertising, no tracking; it goes online only for downloads, web articles you ask for, the App Store, and the weekly summary if you opt in.
- An anonymous weekly summary is off unless you turn it on, and Settings shows exactly what it sends.
- Write to the maker from Settings: the letter goes from your own mail app, and you see everything in it first.
Accessibility
- Every control of the player has a spoken VoiceOver label.
- Text follows the system text size, up to the largest accessibility sizes.
New since 0.9.3
- Changed the sleep timer's moon button back to the player's bottom row.
- Added a pearl play disc on the Apple Watch remote while the iPhone is in light mode.
- Fixed playback after leaving the app and coming back: unplugging headphones now pauses the reading, and switching to another speaker carries on from the last word.
- Fixed a short stutter when the reading resumes after a pause.