Markdown version of https://volary.pro/ios/inklight-changelog, generated from the HTML page. iOS apps / Inklight / Changelog # Changelog What each version of Inklight brought, the newest first. ## Version 1.0 The first release, sent to App Review on November 3, 2026, 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. ## Before 1.0 The development versions, numbered afterwards. Every TestFlight build was called 1.0; each version below names the builds it covers. ### 0.9.3 Ready for review November 2, 2026 · Builds 17 and 18, for App Review only - **Changed** the App Store version to come with the eight core narrators. - **Added** a floating player panel on wide screens (iPad, the open iPhone Duo): the controls sit on a rounded, bordered panel as wide as the text. - **Changed** the reading column on wide screens to grow with the text size, up to the full width of the screen. - **Changed** the player's buttons and play disc to grow with the text size, up to one and a half times. ### 0.9.2 VoiceOver fixes October 31, 2026 · TestFlight build 16 - **Changed** VoiceOver to announce where a paragraph is, as in *Paragraph 3 of 12*; double-tap to play from there. - **Changed** the speed card for VoiceOver: swipe left or right to choose a speed. - **Changed** VoiceOver to say *Play* the same way every time. - **Added** a VoiceOver hint to the player's title: it opens the narrators. ### 0.9.1 Two words fixed October 31, 2026 · TestFlight build 15 - **Fixed** the pronunciation of *rediscovering* and *cooperating*. ### 0.9.0 Numbers in words October 31, 2026 · TestFlight build 14 - **Fixed** numbers such as 165 sometimes losing a digit when read aloud. - **Fixed** playback stopping, or the app closing, at speeds other than 100 %. ### 0.8.3 Accessibility October 30, 2026 · TestFlight build 13 - **Added** an accessibility pass: VoiceOver labels and status announcements throughout, VoiceOver in reading mode, larger touch targets, Reduce Motion and Smart Invert support, and VoiceOver on the Apple Watch remote. - **Changed** headings on the reading page to be announced as headings. - **Fixed** several layouts at the largest text sizes. - **Added** a link to the privacy policy, and the voice credits now name who made each voice. - **Fixed** chapter titles appearing twice on the page. - **Fixed** dashes and heading numbers on the page sometimes showing as they are spoken instead of as printed. ### 0.8.2 Longer listening October 29, 2026 · TestFlight build 12 - **Fixed** the reading stopping after about 20 minutes with the screen locked. - **Fixed** years at the end of a sentence being cut short. - **Fixed** the Import tab on iOS 18 sometimes leaving the back button stuck and the tab bar missing. ### 0.8.1 Reads like a book October 28, 2026 · TestFlight build 11 - **Changed** playback to start where the story starts and stop where it ends; copyright pages, lists of the author's other books and the like are skipped, but still listed in Chapters. - **Added** a short pause before headings and at scene breaks; scene breaks show on the page. - **Changed** numbered chapters to be read as *Chapter 12* or *Part 2* instead of a bare number. - **Added** a spoken note where a book shows a table; the table appears on the page. - **Added** "Where to find books" under Import: ten places that sell or give away ebooks without copy protection. - **Changed** the core narrators: Adrian is now one of the eight. ### 0.8.0 Narrator speeds October 27, 2026 · TestFlight build 10 - **Added** a default speed for each narrator, and the app remembers your speed per narrator. - **Changed** the player's bottom row to read "Speed" and "Chapters". - **Added** a tap on the scrolling title to stop it, and another to start it again. - **Added** a note on the first screen and in the Acknowledgements that the voices are AI-generated. - **Added** a fade and a small arrow on wide screens, until your first scroll, to show there are more narrators. - **Changed** downloads to come from Inklight's own servers, each file checked before use. - **Changed** how sentences are split inside quoted speech. - **Fixed** hidden formatting characters in some books confusing the voice. ### 0.7.8 Smoother sentences October 26, 2026 · TestFlight build 9 - **Changed** how sentences join, for a smoother flow through long sentences on newer devices. - **Fixed** one-word sentences losing their ending, which had come back in 0.7.6 and 0.7.7. - **Fixed** a faint click where a sentence meets a pause. - **Fixed** Settings crashing when Inklight runs on a Mac. ### 0.7.7 Fewer broken sentences October 25, 2026 · TestFlight build 8 - **Fixed** sentences being cut short at abbreviations such as *Mt.*, *St.* and *U.S.* - **Fixed** a quoted question and the words after it being read as two sentences; *“Why?” he asked.* is now read as one. - **Fixed** some books starting in the wrong place because a chapter title began with the word *Beginning*. - **Changed** gray and orange text in light mode to darker shades, for better contrast. - **Changed** the letter to the maker: closing it now asks before throwing away what you wrote, and if Mail isn't set up you can copy the address and the letter instead. ### 0.7.6 Less battery October 25, 2026 · TestFlight build 7 - **Changed** the voice to use far less energy: about half as much on an iPhone XS, and about a fifth on an iPhone 16 Pro. - **Changed** iPhones with an A12 to A14 chip to a lighter way of making the voice, for longer battery life. - **Changed** the narrator pictures to sharper drawings that take less storage. - **Changed** the play button and the scrolling title to use far less power while paused. - **Changed** the scrolling title to slow to a halt after about two minutes; a tap brings it back. - **Changed** every download size the app shows to be exact. - **Fixed** the play button not working right after the app starts. ### 0.7.5 Pauses October 24, 2026 · TestFlight build 6 - **Added** natural pauses: a short one after each paragraph and a longer one at the end of a chapter, included in the progress bar and on the lock screen. - **Changed** the plan names and descriptions, and put the Terms of Use and Privacy links above the buy button. ### 0.7.4 Core narrators October 24, 2026 · TestFlight build 5 - **Changed** the voice list to start with eight core narrators. - **Removed** one of the new narrators. - **Changed** three narrators' profiles and samples to new, plainer texts. ### 0.7.3 Capitals October 24, 2026 · TestFlight build 4 - **Fixed** words in capitals, common on a chapter's first line, being read letter by letter; short acronyms are left as they are. - **Changed** the plans page to say more clearly that a plan is for Inklight itself and includes every narrator. ### 0.7.2 No limit in TestFlight October 24, 2026 · TestFlight build 3 - **Fixed** TestFlight builds stopping after 10 minutes of listening. ### 0.7.1 More narrators and three classics October 24, 2026 · TestFlight build 2 - **Added** eight more narrators, in three new groups: Seasoned, Easygoing and Precise. - **Added** three classics to every new library: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde's Fairy Tales and The Secret Garden. - **Added** a cover color for every book, worked out from its title and author. - **Added** "Write to the maker" in Settings, which opens your mail app with a note on how the app is doing, never anything from your books. - **Added** an optional weekly usage summary, off unless you switch it on. - **Changed** the narrator list to a new order at every launch. - **Changed** the Library and Voices pages to fade softly under the title bar as you scroll. - **Fixed** one-word sentences, such as *No.*, losing their ending. - **Fixed** a crash on iOS 18 when a subscription renewed. ### 0.7.0 First TestFlight build October 22, 2026 · TestFlight build 1 - **Added** drawn narrator cards on the iPad and the iPhone Duo's inner screen, by day and by night. - **Added** a round back button at the bottom of the iPhone Duo's sidebar, for closing pop-up panels. - **Changed** the player's title to stay centered and never end in an ellipsis; a long title scrolls. - **Changed** the app's pictures to take about 19 MB less space. - **Changed** TestFlight builds to listen without a limit. ### 0.6 Wide screens October 21, 2026 - **Added** narrator portrait cards on the iPad and the iPhone Duo's inner screen; on the Duo held sideways, the Voices tab splits at the fold. - **Added** a two-page first start on the iPhone Duo held sideways. - **Changed** each narrator to read on their own paper by night. - **Added** a "Read it aloud" button in the Acknowledgements; the credits don't appear in your library and don't count as listening time. - **Changed** importing so that a book already in the library is not added a second time. - **Removed** the language section from Settings while English is the only language. - **Fixed** a crash when pressing play on a device without a Taptic Engine. ### 0.5 New narrators, iPad and more ways in October 19, 2026 - **Added** ten narrators with new portraits and names: Edward, Marcus, Adrian, Martin, Victor, Casey, Helen, Morgan, Sara and Emma; each sample reads the narrator's own profile. - **Added** iPad support; every screen fits from the iPhone SE to the iPad at every text size, with narrators in columns on the iPad. - **Added** importing pasted text and web articles from a link. - **Added** opening books from other apps, and support for EPUBs with protected fonts. - **Added** reading mode: the book button hides the controls and pauses the reading, and play goes on from where you scrolled to. - **Changed** the narrator list: tap a narrator to hear and choose it, tap its button to download it, swipe right to remove it. - **Changed** the ornaments, metal accents and night paper to match the chosen narrator. - **Added** a haptic tap on play and pause, like a mechanical key. - **Changed** the Apple Watch remote to the phone's night style, with a ring that catches the light as the wrist turns. - **Changed** the app icon to a lantern between six glass beams. - **Fixed** long sentences stopping halfway. - **Fixed** a crash when pressing play and pause in quick succession. ### 0.4 Found its name October 18, 2026 - **Added** the app's name, Inklight, and its street-lantern icon. - **Changed** the whole look: a paper reading page with the spoken sentence marked, a pearl play button by day and a gold ring by night that catches the light as the phone tilts, Art Nouveau frames and flourishes, and a night paper for each voice. - **Added** a first start that asks who should read to you, with samples of every voice. - **Added** Library, Import and Voices tabs, a shelf of book covers, and a mini player above the tabs. - **Changed** the voice list to eleven English voices in four groups, each with a portrait and a one-line description (later ten). - **Removed** German, Spanish and Italian, and voices whose recordings may not be used commercially. - **Added** slower speeds at which each narrator itself reads more slowly, with six speed stops. - **Changed** the first start to be quicker: the voice is ready as soon as it has downloaded. - **Added** plans: ten free minutes a day, the Candlelight and Monthly subscriptions, and a one-time unlock. - **Added** an Acknowledgements screen with voice credits. - **Changed** the player: the "•••" menu is gone, the sleep timer moved to the top bar, and a long title scrolls. - **Added** "Join wrapped lines" under Contents, for plain-text books with a line break at the end of every line. ### 0.3 Speech starts sooner September 20, 2026 - **Changed** playback to start much sooner after a press of play: about 0.4 s on an iPhone 16 Pro and 1.4 s on an iPhone XS, down from 1.3 s and up to 7 s. - **Changed** the speed control to a pop-up on the player, from 75 % to 133 % in 5 % steps, where 100 % is the voice's natural pace. - **Changed** skipping to stop the current sentence at once. - **Added** a new app icon. - **Fixed** playback going silent after a voice download. ### 0.2 Faster voice, more formats September 14, 2026 - **Added** importing plain text, Markdown and PDF files. - **Added** an Apple Watch remote with play, pause and sentence skips. - **Changed** the voice to render faster and take less space. - **Changed** the voice to use about a third less energy on an iPhone XS. - **Added** a top speed that follows what the device can keep up with. - **Added** slower speeds for the default voice, at which it reads more slowly itself. - **Fixed** the app closing on very long sentences. - **Fixed** a ringing sound when the speed was changed past 100 %. ### 0.1 First working app September 8, 2026 - **Added** EPUB import from Files and the Share sheet, with a sample book included. - **Added** a neural voice that runs on the device: after one download, no network is needed. - **Added** English, German, Spanish and Italian, each book's language detected from its text and changeable by hand. - **Added** the player: play and pause, skip by sentence or chapter, tap a sentence to jump there, a scrubber, speed, a voice picker, a sleep timer, and a remembered place in every book. - **Added** background playback and lock-screen controls, with next and previous moving by sentence. - **Added** voice downloads in Settings, with a queue and a play button on each voice. 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