Reading documents

The reader is built on one principle: you succeed by understanding the text, not by translating every word. Help is one tap away when you want it, and the reading aids point out where you do not need it.

Bringing a text in

Open Documents and choose + (Create a new document). With no documents yet, the page offers Upload a document and Or start from a blank page; both open the same editor.
Give the document a title and add the text: type or paste it, or use Import from a file. Text, Markdown, PDF, and photos of a page (JPEG, PNG, WebP) are accepted, up to 10 MB. An uploaded file replaces pasted text.
Save. Immersive turns the text into tappable words and sentences. An imported file is converted after you save: the reader says the text is being extracted, and it appears a moment later. Scanned PDFs and photos are read by AI, so check the result.

No text of your own handy? Open the Library for texts with a known level and word count.

Reading

Open a document to read it. Under the title you see its translation in your language.

Tap a word or sentence: a small card shows its translation, with a speaker button and More.
Tap again to hear it read aloud. Tapping elsewhere closes the card.
The bar at the bottom keeps the last word you looked up, with its meaning and, when there is one, a look-alike from a language you know.
Every word and sentence you look up is recorded in your Vocabulary.

The View control (in the reading controls, below) sets what a tap selects: Sentences (the default) or Words.

The More panel

More opens the full detail for a word or sentence:

Translation, with Listen. For a word, Listen in context plays its sentence, shown with the word highlighted.
Reading aid, when the word or sentence has one.
Grammar of reading, when the sentence contains a construction it covers, with a link to the comparison.
Across the six: the word’s equivalents in all six languages, your languages in full ink.
Save to vocabulary marks it as saved in your Vocabulary.
Add to a deck lists your decks in this language; pick one to open its workspace with the word filled in, or start a New deck.
Ask about this opens the Coach with the word or sentence in view.

Reading aids

Some words and sentences carry a subtle underline: the aid layer, tailored to the languages you know and your level.

In the Words view:

Guessable from context: try the word before revealing it. The first tap nudges you; the second, or Reveal, shows the look-alike from a language you know or the meaning in context.
Listen first: the sound is clearer than the spelling.
Word parts: the word broken into parts, each with a related word from a language you know.
Seen earlier: links a word back to where it first appeared in the text.
Safe to skip: the gist survives without it.

In the Sentences view:

Safe to skip on a whole sentence.
A dotted underline marks a sentence with a construction the grammar of reading covers. Tap it for the comparison: whether the language you are learning differs from yours here or works the same way, with a link to the full comparison. That page brings you back to the same sentence.

Aids in the reading controls switches between Full and Light; Light keeps only the aids that matter most. Aids fade as your level rises (beginners see many, advanced readers few), and a language you marked as native has none. Aids are prepared in the background, so a document you just added may show them a little later.

The six-language equivalents and the dotted underlines are part of the cross-language comparisons, which are off until you turn them on in Profile → Account → Languages.

When you reveal a guessable word, Immersive creates a review card from that moment (the sentence with the word blanked out) in a From reading deck for the language, so your reading discoveries come back as reviews.

Reading controls

The sliders button opens the reading controls:

Ask about this text opens the Coach with the document in view.
View: Words or Sentences.
Line spacing (1, 1.5, or 2) and Paragraph indent (off or on).
Reading voice: Automatic voice or a named voice, shown when voices are available for the language.
Aids: Full or Light.
Read to me, and a print button.
The document’s level, word count, and reading time.

Immersive remembers your spacing, indent, aid density, and voice (the voice per language).

Read to me

Read to me reads the document aloud, one sentence at a time: each sentence is highlighted as it is spoken, and the reader scrolls along. You can pause and resume, jump by tapping a sentence, and switch between normal (1×) and slow (0.7×) speed.

Bookmarks

The bookmark icon at the top of the reader marks the document; the bookmark button on the Documents page then lists only your bookmarked documents.

Editing and history

Switch to Write at the top of the reader to edit the text; delete a document from there too. The document’s History keeps the previous version before each edit, import, applied correction, or restore. See Writing documents.