Apricity: Read, Write, Focus

Paste a link and hear the page at once. Free classics fill a second bookcase, comics and manga open as their pages, and ten more kinds of book come in. NEW • Read the Web: paste a link and the story on the page becomes a book, to read or to hear at once. • Share a page from Safari, or send one from Shortcuts, and Apricity makes it a book when it opens. • Classics: turn the bookcase to free public-domain books, shelved by kind as a bookshop shelves them. • A classic you pick goes on a shelf of its kind in your library, ready in seconds. • Word, OpenDocument, RTF, Markdown, text, HTML, web archive, FictionBook, MOBI and AZW3 files open as books. • Comics and manga open as their pages, one at a time or in spreads, manga right to left. • Four bookcases to choose from, with books standing by their covers, by their spines or in piles. • A cabinet under the arched bookcase and the wall unit opens to keep books, notebooks and decorations. • Fifteen new decorations to stand on your shelves. • Character Voice: in a story, what the characters say is read in a second shade of the voice, so you hear who's talking. • Expressive Reading: whispered, shouted, excited and weary lines sound that way, and so do the narrator's exclamations. IMPROVED • Contents and speed sit beside the cover in the listening bar, with play in the middle and room around each button. • Choosing a chapter from Contents while a book is read aloud takes the voice there too. • A line and its “he asked” are read in one breath, the way a narrator reads them. • Read Aloud begun from the cover starts where the story does, past the copyright page and contents. • AirPods or your car take the reading over as they connect, without a tap. • Kokoro voices need less work for each sentence, so your iPhone or iPad stays cooler while you listen. • Shelf labels are black on white by day and white on black at night, easy to read on any wall. • Fifteen wallpapers are made again from sharper pictures. • Scanned books reflow better, and keep their text without being read again. FIXED • Kokoro's voices no longer carry a faint whine or hum, and short words are no longer skipped. • Very long books, even serials of a thousand chapters or more, open in seconds instead of stalling at 100%. • The sleep timer lets the voice finish its sentence instead of stopping partway through. • A name after “Mr.” or “Mrs.” is read on, not taken for the end of a sentence. • Reflowed pages keep their lines in reading order, even where the page set them out of order. • The buttons on the Today card in Quotes & Words answer their own taps. Thanks for reading with Apricity.

NEW • A café to read by: quiet chatter, the espresso machine at work, cups on saucers and soft jazz. • Cotton paper for your notebooks, with a soft, pressed surface like the real thing. • On light paper, highlighters lay down their colour like real ones, and the words under them stay black. • Highlighters come in fresh colours: lemon, aqua, lilac, lime and peach. • Covers look like real books, with a rounded spine, paper grain or cloth, and a shine that moves as you tilt. IMPROVED • Kokoro voices read aloud on much less power, so your iPhone or iPad stays cooler through a long listen. • The walk into the library glows: lamps in bloom, dust in the light, and a soft arrival at your shelf. • The welcome opens on a living photo of the library that shifts like a window as you tilt. • The lamp's light falls away softly, like real light, with no rings on dark walls. • Shelves have real wood grain, in each wood's own colour. • A book tips forward off the shelf as you press it, then opens. • The speaker stands on the shelf, with a shadow under its base. • Add Pages is laid out like New Notebook. • Markup opens on the part of the page you were reading, at the same zoom. FIXED • After Markup, the page stays where you were and stays sharp, with your new ink already on it. Thanks for reading with Apricity.

Your books read aloud in the car with CarPlay, pens that write like ink on paper, and your tools down the side of a page that fills the screen. NEW • Listen in the car with CarPlay: choose a book on the car's screen and it reads on from where you left off. • On the car's screen, skip between chapters and change the reading speed without reaching for your phone. • Kokoro reads in eight languages, with 54 voices: English, Spanish, French, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese. • The book you were listening to waits at the foot of the bookshelf, ready to go on in a tap, even after the app has been closed. • Choose how far Back and Forward skip, from 10 seconds to a minute, by holding the buttons in the player. • Send the reading to an AirPlay speaker from the player. • Kokoro's voices have faces: a portrait beside each as you choose, and the face of the one reading in the player. • Choose the voice from the player, next to AirPlay. • Your pens finish each stroke the way ink does on paper: a little heavier where you press, and running out to a point as the pen lifts. • Every pen has a panel of its own: how its ends taper, how it answers pressure, its thickness and darkness, with a sample stroke. • Highlighters can lay down dots or dashes, and rule themselves straight. • Lined, dotted and squared paper can have lines in a colour and spacing of your choosing. • The paper itself, and its lines, can be any colour you like. • New notebooks start on pages the shape of your screen, so the page fills it edge to edge. • Apple's own pen palette, if you prefer it: switch it on under More. • Scroll or turn past the last page and a fresh one is waiting. IMPROVED • The tools stand down a rail at the side of the page, and the page runs the whole height of the screen. One tap folds the rail away. • Lines on the paper stay crisp however far out you zoom. • Starting a notebook is simpler: cover and first page side by side, and the paper's colour, lines and spacing to hand. • Kokoro's British voices speak with British pronunciation. • Play, Back and Forward answer at once: Kokoro keeps what it has just read, and begins a long sentence while the rest is made. • Kokoro is ready as a book opens, so the first tap on Listen isn't a wait. • Trying a voice pauses the book, which goes on when the sample ends. • Under their names: Heart is Kokoro's best, Nicole whispers, and the three Santas are who you'd think. • Come back from a pause and the voice starts its sentence again; after a long break, the one before it too. • When the sleep timer runs out, the voice finishes its sentence before it stops. • Kokoro's voices fade out gently as you pause, and back in as you play. • Kokoro's voices keep downloading while you use another app, and a download that stops carries on from where it got to. • On iPhone, typing past the foot of a page carries on at the top of the next. • A pen set lighter stays that shade where strokes cross, or where you go over a letter. • Neat Writing and tapered ends settle a word at a time as you pause, never under the pen. • Ink follows the paper under your pen, so it shows on a dark page beside a light one. • The pen panel's sample stroke is as thick as the line it draws on the page. FIXED • On iPhone, the keyboard stays up when you start typing in a text box. • Light ink no longer turns dark a moment after you lift the pen. • A line snapped straight no longer leaves the line you drew beside it. • A stroke you undo no longer comes back when you write again. • A stroke written just as a page is added or synced is no longer lost. • The preview of a shape you hold to snap shows in your own ink, not black. • Arrows no longer have a darker tip in a light pen or a highlighter. • In the zoom window, the box moves on as soon as you write into the margin. • If a Kokoro voice can't start, an Apple voice reads on rather than leaving you in silence. Thanks for reading with Apricity.