Free Speed Reader (RSVP)

Worked example

Press "Try a sample" to load the demo passage, which has 117 words once the dash is dropped. At the default 300 WPM the line under the progress bar reads "~1 min read". Press "Play" with "Smart pacing" on: ordinary words stay for 200 ms, the six sentence endings for 400 ms, the five commas for 300 ms and the three words longer than 10 characters for 260 ms. The run takes about 25 seconds, and the "Finished" box says "You read 117 words at an average of 278 WPM (time paused is not counted)." with a button "Save 275 WPM as my comfortable speed". With "Smart pacing" off the average is exactly 300 WPM. The teal letter in each word is where to rest your eyes: the 2nd letter of a word up to 5 letters ("read" highlights e), the 3rd of 6 to 9 letters ("reading" highlights a) and the 4th of longer words ("presentation" highlights s).

Which settings to use, and the limits

• Find a speed you can follow. "Speed" runs from 100 to 1,200 WPM in steps of 25 and starts at 300. The up and down arrow keys change it by 25. After a run, the "Finished" box shows your average speed with paused time not counted, and offers a button such as "Save 275 WPM as my comfortable speed". The saved value stays in this browser and becomes your starting speed next time. Above 800 WPM the page suggests showing 2 or 3 words per flash.
• Show more than one word when you speed up. "Words per flash" can be 1, 2 or 3. A chunk is shown for the single-word time multiplied by its number of words, so 600 WPM with 2 words per flash shows a new pair every 200 ms, and chunks are drawn a little smaller. "Text size" has five steps (A− and A+). "Focus mode" fills the screen with the reader; press Esc or "Exit focus mode" to leave.
• Keep Smart pacing on for natural reading. With "Smart pacing" on, the reader stays twice as long on the last word of a sentence, 1.5 times as long after a comma, semicolon or colon, and 1.3 times as long on words longer than 10 characters. At 300 WPM that is 400, 300 and 260 ms instead of 200 ms. Turn it off for a constant beat. "Ramp up" starts at 75% of your speed and reaches full speed after 20 seconds of reading.
• Import a document instead of pasting. "Import PDF, Word, EPUB or text" opens PDF, DOCX, EPUB, TXT, Markdown and HTML files up to 200 MB, and you can also drop a file on the text box. The file is read in your browser, and the readers for PDF, Word and EPUB are downloaded to your device the first time you use them. Only PDFs that contain real text work: a scanned PDF is a set of pictures and has nothing to read.
• Move around without losing your place. Space plays or pauses, the left and right arrow keys move one word and Shift with an arrow moves ten. The keys do nothing while the cursor is in the text box. "Back 10" jumps back ten words and "Reset" returns to the start. While paused, the ten words before and after the current word are shown under the reader so you can find your place again. The reader also pauses by itself if you switch to another tab.
• Your place is remembered on this device. For texts of 200 characters or more, the tool saves your position in this browser's local storage every few seconds while you read, and saves the text itself when it is under 1,500,000 characters. Next time the empty tool offers "Pick up where you left off" with "Resume" and "Forget it" buttons. Pasting the same text again also reopens at the saved word. Nothing is uploaded; clearing site data or using a private window removes it.

Common problems and how to fix them

It says "No text was found in that file. A scanned PDF is only pictures of pages: run it through the OCR tool first, then paste the text here."

The PDF is made of page images, so there is no text for the reader to take. Try selecting a line of text in a PDF viewer: if you cannot, run the file through the OCR tool on this site first, then paste the recognized text into the box. The same message appears for a Word, EPUB or HTML file that holds no text.

It says "Could not read the clipboard. Click in the text box and press Ctrl+V instead."

The browser refused to let the page read your clipboard; some browsers ask for permission and some settings block it. Click in the text box and paste with Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac), or long-press and choose Paste on a phone. If instead it says "The clipboard has no text in it.", copy the text again first.

It says "That file could not be read. It may be damaged or password-protected." or "The file reader could not be loaded. Check your connection and try again."

The first message means the file could not be parsed. Open the original, remove any password, and save a fresh copy as PDF, DOCX or plain text, then import that. The second message means the PDF, Word or EPUB reader did not download. Check your connection and press the import button again; typing or pasting text works without it.

It says "That file type can't be read here. Use a PDF, Word (.docx), EPUB, TXT or HTML file." or a message such as "report.doc is a DOC file, which this tool can't open."

The tool reads PDF, DOCX, EPUB, TXT, Markdown (.md) and HTML files, but not the older .doc format, images or spreadsheets. Open the file in its own program and save it as .docx, PDF or plain text, or copy the text and paste it into the box.

The reading stopped by itself when I switched tabs, or I came back to a paused reader.

This is intended: when the tab is hidden the reader pauses instead of running on unseen, so you never return to find the text a page further on. Press "Play" or Space to carry on from the same word. The paused view also shows ten words either side of your place.

How it compares

Reading the page normally lets you glance back at a sentence, skip ahead and look at the layout whenever you like. This tool takes those choices away on purpose: each word appears in the same spot so your eyes do not travel along lines, and the pace is set by you or the tool, not by where you look. It does not test comprehension, so the average WPM it reports measures speed, not understanding; use "Back 10" and the paused context view to check that you are still following. It is silent, so it is not a replacement for having text read aloud. It suits articles, chapters and documents you can paste or import, and not scanned PDFs.