Everything Glyph can do

Requirements

• iPhone or iPad running iOS 26 or later
• An Apple ID (for App Store install and optional iCloud sync)
• An internet connection for Rune — the reader itself works offline

First launch

1. Install Glyph from the App Store.
2. Open the app — a short walkthrough highlights the library, the import button, and the Rune summary entry point.
3. Bundled sample books are pre-loaded, so you can try every feature without importing anything first.
4. When you're ready, tap Import… in the top-right to add your own books.

Guided tours

Glyph ships short, interactive walkthroughs that point things out right in the app. Replay any of them anytime from Settings → Walkthroughs — pick a tour and it drops you into the library and guides you step by step. A New badge marks tours you haven't done yet.

Glyph supports three formats:

Three ways to import

From inside Glyph

Library → tap Import… in the top-right → choose Import Files… or Import Folder… (entire folders at once).

"Open in Glyph" from anywhere

From Files, Mail, Safari, Chrome, AirDrop, or any app — tap a supported file → Share Sheet → Open in Glyph. Glyph switches to your library so you can watch the book import.

Drag and drop (iPad)

Drag a file directly onto the Glyph icon or the open library view.

What happens during import

• EPUBs — parsed and added; usually under a second.
• PDFs — converted into reflowable chapters with cover extraction. Scanned PDFs trigger on-device text recognition. Conversion happens once; later opens are instant.
• CBZs — unpacked; reading direction auto-detected.
• Rune auto-categorization Pro — new books are tagged with up to three categories on import.
• Live progress — a new book shows a single progress ring pinned to the top of your library and only settles into its sorted spot once it's fully ready to read.
• Already imported? — re-importing a book that's already in your library shows an "Already in Library" alert instead of silently skipping it.

Fetch missing metadata

Settings → Library → Appearance → Fetch missing metadata looks up missing publisher, publication year, series, and ISBN info for your whole library. EPUB and PDF books look up against OpenLibrary, favoring a book's print edition over audiobook listings; comic-archive (.cbz) files use Comic Vine, which has better coverage for manga and graphic-novel volumes.

You can also tap Fetch metadata from the web inside any book's More Info sheet to refresh a single title, then review each proposed change before applying it. Tap the ISBN in the More Info sheet to copy it to your clipboard.

Where to find free books

Glyph doesn't bundle a store — bring your own EPUBs. These reputable sites offer free public-domain ebooks you can download and import:

Standard Ebooks

Hand-curated, beautifully typeset public-domain ebooks. Smaller catalog, premium quality — every book is proofread and reformatted from source scans.

Project Gutenberg

The original free-ebook archive. 70,000+ titles across classic literature, history, science, and more. Formatting can be plain but the breadth is unmatched.

Internet Archive

A vast collection of scanned books with downloadable EPUBs, plus a controlled-digital-lending program for modern titles.

Open Library

The Internet Archive's book catalog, with many free downloads and borrowable titles. Searchable by author, subject, or ISBN.

All four sites are also surfaced inside Glyph: tap Find free books from the empty library, the Library ⋯ menu, or Settings → About.

Glyph's reader is built for long, focused reading sessions. Open a book and a slim bar sits above and below the page. This section starts with what every control does, then drills into each menu.

The reader at a glance

Tap the center of the page to hide the chrome for a clean, full-page read, and tap again to bring it back. While it's showing, here's the layout.

Top bar (left to right):

Back (‹)

Saves your exact spot and returns to the library.

Title readout (center)

The book or chapter title. Pick which one shows, per theme, in Settings → Theming.

Rune (✨)

Opens the Rune menu: summaries, Catch Me Up, and Ask for this book.

Bookmark

Tap to bookmark the page you're on (the icon fills in); tap again to remove it. Long-press to open the full bookmark list.

Reader menu (⋯)

Table of Contents, Bookmarks, Highlights, and Find in Book.

Bottom bar:

Progress bar

Shows how far through the book you are. Drag it to jump anywhere, with a bubble previewing where you'll land.

Status readout (left)

Page number, percent, or time left. Pick which one shows, per theme, in Settings → Theming.

Reader settings (⚙)

Reading mode, theme, typography, and brightness for the book you're in.

Focused Mode

Tap the center of the screen to hide all chrome for a distraction-free, full-page read. Tap again to bring it back. What stays visible in each mode (chapter title, progress %, time) is customizable per theme in Settings → Theming.

The Rune menu (✨)

The sparkles button in the top bar opens Rune for the current book. The Rune section covers what each entry does.

• EPUBs and PDFs: Ask · Catch Me Up · Summarize Chapter · Summarize Book
• Comics: Ask · Catch Me Up · Summarize Page · Summarize Issue

The reader menu (⋯)

The ellipsis button in the top bar is where you find your way around the book.

Table of Contents

Jump to any chapter.

Bookmarks

Every spot you've bookmarked in the current book, with chapter and page for quick jumps.

Highlights

Every highlight in the current book, shown with surrounding context and organized by chapter.

Find in Book

Full-text search of the open book (EPUB and PDF). See Search.

Bookmarking a page

Tap the bookmark button in the top bar to bookmark the page you're on; the icon fills in to show it's saved, and tapping again removes it. Long-press that button (or open ⋯ → Bookmarks) for the full list, where each entry shows its chapter and page for a quick jump. Bookmarks sync via iCloud, so they survive reinstall and follow you across devices.

Reader settings (⚙)

The gear at the bottom-right opens a quick panel of per-book overrides for theming and reading. The common options are shown up front, and a More button reveals additional ones — though not every reader setting lives here. Changes apply to the book you're in and stick across launches and devices.

Reading mode. Switch between Page-flip (turn pages with a swipe, like a real book) and Continuous scroll (scroll vertically through the whole book without page breaks). Your position is preserved when you switch and the page holds steady as the layout changes, with no flicker back to the start of the book.

To return a book to its theme defaults, tap the red Reset button in the panel — font size, alignment, margins, layout, and brightness all snap back to whatever the active theme specifies in one tap.

Zooming PDFs

Pinch to zoom a PDF page in or out — your zoom and exact spot are remembered the next time you open the book, and they fit your screen comfortably whether you're on iPhone or iPad. A zoomed page pans freely by default; Settings → Reader → Other → PDF → Lock panning to page pins it to the page edges instead.

Rune, Glyph's built-in reading companion, runs through a privacy-respecting backend that talks to a leading frontier provider. Five entry points.

Keeping the conversation going

After a summary or an Ask, keep the thread going — "Why did character X do this?", "What's the symbolism of the river?" Each Rune reply ends with three tappable question suggestions tailored to the answer; tap one, or type your own. Turn the suggestions off in Settings → Rune → Summarization if you'd rather drive every turn.

Continuing an Ask conversation is free. In any Ask chat (select text → Ask, or ✨ → Ask), keep asking as many questions as you like. Each one draws on your daily Rune allowance like any other answer, with Pro simply raising the cap.

Every Rune conversation is saved automatically. Revisit them anytime from Settings → Rune → History; browsing and re-reading your history is free. With iCloud sync on, that history and Rune's summary cache follow you across devices.

Allow spoilers (per book)

Spoiler protection is the default, but some books — a textbook, a reference, or a re-read — are better answered with the whole book in play. In any Ask chat (text or comic), open the ⋯ menu in the top-left and turn on Allow spoilers for that book. Rune can then draw on later chapters or pages to answer, while still flagging anything past your current spot as not-yet-reached ("you haven't reached this yet, but…"). It's remembered per book and applies only to Ask — Catch Me Up and the summaries stay spoiler-safe.

Allow outside knowledge

By default Rune may answer using general real-world knowledge — real people, places, history, and the like — when your question reaches past the book's own text. Ask "Who is this?" about a name a book only mentions in passing and Rune can tell you who they are in the real world. This is separate from spoiler protection: even with outside knowledge on, Rune still won't reveal anything past your current spot in the book.

It's on by default. Turn it off globally under Settings → Rune → Summarization → Allow outside knowledge, or per book from the ⋯ menu in any Ask chat. Turning it off keeps Rune's answers inside the book. That's useful for younger readers — with outside knowledge off, Rune stays grounded in what's on the page rather than answering open-ended questions about anything in the wider world.

Report a problem

If a Rune answer is wrong, unhelpful, or off, tap Report a problem beneath it. Add an optional note about what went wrong, then send — the conversation is shared with the Glyph team so we can look into it. It's entirely opt-in: nothing leaves your device unless you tap send.

Where Rune settings live

Under Settings → Rune:

• Summarization — usage card (% used today), the "Suggest follow-up questions" toggle, and the "Allow outside knowledge" toggle.
• History — browse, export, or prune past Rune conversations.

Views

Toggle between Grid (cover thumbnails) and List (compact rows) from Settings → Library → Appearance or directly from the toolbar.

Books you've added but never opened show a New badge on their cover, so you can spot what you haven't started yet. The badge clears the first time you open the book.

Sorting and filtering

The Sort and Filter toolbar button lets you:

• Sort by recently added, recently opened, title, author, progress, or series.
• Filter by reading status.

Reading statuses

Change the default for new imports in Settings → Library → Appearance → Default Status for Imports.

Categories

Glyph auto-detects categories (Fiction, Non-fiction, Sci-Fi, etc.) from book metadata. Tap a chip in the category chip bar above the library to filter. Hide the chip bar via its own eye-slash button or in Settings → Library → Categories.

Adding categories without Pro. You can always categorize by hand for free: open any book's info sheet and type into its Categories field. Auto-detected categories from book metadata are free too.

Series

Books that share a series are grouped automatically. Each series has its own detail view (grid or list per-series, configurable in Settings → Library → Series).

Bulk actions

Long-press a book to enter selection mode → use the action bar to change categories, change reading status, or delete in bulk.

Manual edits

Open any book's info sheet to override title, author, categories, or series by hand.

Hiding & deleting books

Long-press a book and you'll get two choices:

Hide

Removes the book from this device only. It stays in your iCloud library and on your other devices, and you can get it back here anytime — nothing is lost.

Delete Everywhere

Removes the book from iCloud and from all your devices. This can't be undone.

Hidden books

Books you've hidden are still one tap away on this device:

• Open the Sort and Filter menu and pick the Hidden filter to see only hidden books, or flip Show Hidden to fold them back into your library alongside everything else.
• Tap a hidden book to download it again and bring it back — or use Unhide on the book to restore it without opening.

Keep the books you're reading one tap away. The Glyph widget shows your current reads right on your Home Screen and opens straight to where you left off.

Adding the widget

1. Touch and hold an empty area of your Home Screen until the apps jiggle.
2. Tap + in the top corner, then search for Glyph.
3. Pick a size and tap Add Widget.

Sizes

Small

Your most recently opened book — cover, title, and progress.

Medium

Up to three current reads side by side with progress.

Large

Up to five current reads in a list with cover, title, author, and progress.

What it shows

• Books marked Reading, ordered by the one you opened most recently.
• Opening a book automatically marks it Reading, so it shows up in the widget right away.
• No current reads? It falls back to your Want to Read shelf.
• Nothing on either shelf shows a gentle prompt to start a book or mark one Want to Read.
• Tap any book to open it in the reader; tap the prompt to open your library.

Choosing the order

1. Touch and hold the widget, then tap Edit Widget.
2. Tap Sort By and pick how books are ordered.

Recently Opened

Your current reads with the one you opened last at the front.

Progress

Current reads ordered by how far along you are, furthest first.

Reading

Only books marked Reading — no Want to Read fallback, so it stays empty until you start something.

Comics get a purpose-built reader, separate from EPUB/PDF.

Features

• Native pager with buttery-smooth page transitions.
• Pinch-to-zoom, both ways — magnify a single page (paged view) or the whole strip (vertical scroll), and pinch out below fit to pull back and see more, with momentum panning. Double-tap or the reset pill snaps back to fit.
• LTR / RTL auto-detection from ComicInfo.xml or filename heuristics (manga reads right-to-left).
• Single-page or two-page spread layouts.
• Manual reading-direction override if auto-detect gets it wrong.

Vision-based Rune for comics

Because comics are images, Rune reads them visually to summarize them:

Long-press a speech bubble

Rune reads that bubble and answers "What's happening here?"

Summarize Page

Narrative summary of the current page.

Summarize Issue

Full-issue recap.

Built-in themes

Each theme owns its full palette, typography, header/footer chrome (Normal and Focused mode), default page layout (page-flip vs. continuous scroll), and screen brightness. Switching themes switches all of them.

Custom themes

Settings → Theming → New theme lets you author your own with:

• Background, text, and accent colors (color picker + swatch grid).
• Font family, size, line-height, and alignment defaults.
• Hyphenation (off by default) — breaks long words across lines to even out the spacing in justified text, shown live in the theme preview.
• Per-mode chrome (what's shown when chrome is visible vs. hidden in Focused mode).
• Paged or continuous-scroll default.
• Screen brightness, with an optional Reduce White Point for very dark rooms — shown live in the theme preview.

Preview your changes

The theme editor and the Bookmark and Highlight settings pages each have a Preview pill at the bottom of the screen. Tap it to open a sample reader page and see exactly how your colors, fonts, bookmark style, or highlight style will look in the real reader before you commit.

Per-book theme

Each book remembers its own theme. New books follow your app appearance until you change them.

Global app appearance

Settings → Appearance has a separate Light / Dark / System toggle for the rest of the app's UI (library, settings, sheets) — independent of which theme is active inside the reader.

Find in book

Reader ⋯ → Find in Book opens a bottom sheet. Works in both EPUBs and PDFs.

• Case- and diacritic-insensitive substring matching.
• Up to 200 results per query (footer shows "Showing first 200 of N" when capped).
• Each result shows chapter, page, and a snippet with the match highlighted.
• Tap any result to jump to it; every match on the page is highlighted, with the active one brighter.
• A slim bar stays pinned to the active match as you scroll, with next and previous controls to step through results.

Library search

The library's top search bar filters by title and author across your entire collection.

Highlights

Select text in the reader → Highlight. Glyph ships five preset colors drawn from the brand gradient, plus a custom color picker (any hex value).

Open the reader's ⋯ → Highlights to see every highlight in the current book with surrounding context, organized by chapter.

Notes on highlights

Tap any highlight → Add Note to attach a free-form note. Notes are searchable and exportable along with the highlight.

Bookmarks

Use the bookmark button in the reader to mark the current page. The bookmark list shows every saved spot with chapter and page number for quick jumps.

Glyph syncs two things, independently:

Settings & reading position

Sign in with Apple to turn this on. A Sync toggle then appears in Settings → Account (on by default) and backs up:

• Reader preferences (font, size, theme, layout).
• Reading position in every book — down to the exact scroll spot and zoom level in comics and PDFs when you reopen on the same device — so you resume right where you left off. Pick a book back up on a different device and it opens where that device left off, mapped to the same passage at a clean, fit-to-screen view.
• Highlights, notes, bookmarks.
• Rune summary cache and conversation history (see the Rune section).

When another device has read further, Glyph shows a tappable Continue from your other device pill at the bottom of the reader — when you open the book, and live while you read if that device moves ahead. Your page never moves on its own: tap the pill to jump to that spot, and it keeps up as that device reads further. It waits there until you tap it or dismiss it, so you never lose your place.

Book files

The .epub, .pdf, and .cbz files themselves.

Always on — there's no toggle to turn it off. Glyph stores every book you add in your private iCloud automatically and downloads it on demand on your other devices. You can see the status in Settings → Account under Books in iCloud.

Download on demand

A book you imported on one device shows up on your others as a complete entry — cover, title, author, and reading progress are all there — but the file itself isn't pulled down until you ask for it. Your shelves stay full without filling up storage on every device.

• Not yet downloaded. A synced book that isn't on this device shows a slightly dimmed cover with a download icon.
• Tap to download. Tap the book once to start the download — a spinner shows while it transfers. Tap again once it's ready to open and read.
• iCloud unreachable. If iCloud is temporarily offline, downloading is paused and you'll see a brief "iCloud unavailable" hint. Try again once you're back online.
• Progress travels separately. Your reading position, highlights, notes, and bookmarks sync across devices whether or not the file has been downloaded yet — so an undownloaded book still shows how far along you are.

Free up space on a device

Long-press a downloaded book and choose Hide to delete the local file from this device while keeping the book in your iCloud library and on your other devices. Your reading progress, highlights, notes, and bookmarks all stay put. Find it again under the Hidden filter and tap to download it back — see Hiding & deleting books.

What doesn't sync

• Per-device diagnostics logs and Glyph's verbose-logging toggle.

Glyph is free to download with a generous free tier. Pro unlocks Rune at full strength.

Free trial

New subscribers get 7 days free. All Pro features unlock the moment you start the trial — the much larger daily Rune allowance (summaries, Ask, and Vision), follow-up conversations, conversation export, and auto-categorization — with no card charge until day 8.

• How to start: open the paywall (Settings → Rune, or any locked Pro feature) and tap Subscribe. The App Store sheet will show "Free for 1 week, then $4.99/month" before you confirm.
• If you cancel before day 8: you keep Pro access for the remainder of the trial and are never charged.
• If you do nothing: your subscription auto-renews at $4.99/month starting day 8, charged to your Apple ID.
• Where to cancel: Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions on your iPhone or iPad, then tap Glyph → Cancel Subscription.
• One per Apple ID: Apple offers the free trial to new subscribers only. If you previously redeemed the Glyph Pro trial on this Apple ID, you'll subscribe at the standard $4.99/month.

What Pro unlocks

The free tier covers casual reading; Pro is for anyone who wants Rune in their daily routine. Manage subscriptions in Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions on your iPhone or iPad.

Restore purchases

Subscribe and restore both live in the Paywall (visible from any locked Rune feature, or from Settings → Rune). For a new device or after reinstalling: tap Restore Purchases.

Family Sharing

Currently not supported. On the roadmap.

The full privacy policy lives at /privacy. Highlights:

What stays on your device

• Your books (unless you opt into iCloud sync).
• Reading position, highlights, notes, bookmarks.
• Rune summary cache.
• Rune conversation history.

What's sent to our backend

• Book text chunks (only when you request a Rune summary or selection summary) — sent to our backend, which forwards to our provider.
• A device-derived hash — for per-device rate limiting; not linked to your Apple ID.
• A book identifier hash — for cross-user summary caching.

What we never collect

• Your name, email, or Apple ID.
• Reading habits or analytics on what you read.
• The contents of your library (we only see chunks you actively send for summarization).
• Highlights, notes, or bookmarks.

Diagnostics (opt-in)

Settings → Support → Report an issue turns on verbose logging, lets you reproduce the bug, then collects the logs with an optional short description and uploads them to the Glyph support team. You'll get a short ticket ID to reference. Nothing is uploaded automatically.