Description
A quiet, serif-first read-later app for people who treat long-form articles like books.
— Save anything from the web —
Tap "share" in Safari, or paste a URL inside the app. ReadTrace pulls out the body and images, strips the chrome, and saves a clean copy to your private library. Once it's saved, the network can vanish. Articles, images, and fonts are cached for fully offline reading.
— Read on cream paper —
Every article renders in Fraunces — a warm contemporary serif — over a soft cream background that's easier on the eyes than stark white. No ads, no related stories, no tap-to-load-more. The reader remembers your scroll position so you can return weeks later and pick up exactly where you left off.
— Organize favorites with collections —
Drop favorites into custom buckets — "Work", "Travel", "Things to write about someday". Each collection is its own shelf inside the Favorites tab. Tap a chip to narrow the library; tap it again to clear.
— Search what you remember, not what you typed —
Built-in semantic search uses Apple's on-device language embeddings to understand intent. Search "AI startups" and find articles about Vibe Coding training camps — no exact keyword required. Combined with literal substring matching across titles, authors, hostnames and tags, you'll find anything you've read.
— Auto-tagging via on-device NLP —
Every saved article is read once by Apple's NaturalLanguage framework and labeled with 3–5 keyword tags. As your library grows from ten articles to a thousand, tags keep it browsable.
— Reading time, done right —
Counts Chinese characters and Latin words separately at native reading speeds, so a long bilingual article gets an honest minute estimate instead of an English formula glued onto Chinese prose.
— A safety net for what you save —
Deleted articles don't vanish. They sit in the Recycle Bin for 30 days, then quietly clear themselves out. Restore anything with one tap — no second-guessing your gestures.
— iCloud backup —
A single backup file holds every article and every cached image. Restore on a new phone in seconds — fully offline-restorable, no servers to depend on.
— Built for privacy —
No accounts. No analytics. No tracking pixels. Your reading is between you and your phone. iCloud Drive is the only network endpoint we touch, and only if you choose to back up.
— Built for iOS —
Safari Share Extension. App Intents. Dynamic Type-aware reader. SwiftData persistence. Light-only by design — the cream palette is the point.
— Quietly made —
ReadTrace Pro is small. One developer, one design system, one belief: the web is full of writing worth reading carefully, and that writing deserves a calm, paper-feeling home you can return to.
For people who want a smaller, quieter library — not an algorithmic feed.
Nouveautés (v1.4.2)
- Added status-bar mask: A new 64pt cream-to-clear gradient mask via `RTStatusBarMask` is overlaid on LibraryView and SettingsView, providing an opaque cream background for time and battery indicators with a soft fade at the top edge.
- Tap active tab to scroll to top: `CreamTabBar` now supports an `onReselect` callback. Tapping the currently active tab will smoothly scroll the library list to the top.
- Sticky article title: The article title now automatically shows/hides as you scroll (visible above 120pt, hidden below 90pt). Tap the title to quickly scroll to the top of the article.
- Improved long title display: Article titles are masked with a linear gradient that fades the right 14% to clear, ensuring long titles blend elegantly into the navigation bar.