Read diagonally. Keep the ideas.
Finish the books you keep meaning to read.
Snap any printed page with your phone. Seconds later you're reading it in half, as a few key points, or as a single sentence, in the author's own voice and the page's own language. Then turn the page and keep going.
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- 100 free pages every month
Real page · real output
You can't make more hours. You can make pages shorter.
Here's a page from Arnold Bennett's How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1908) and what Diagonal Reader returned for it. Pick a level and compare.
You have to live on these twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you must spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its correct use is a matter of the highest urgency; your happiness depends on that. Strange that newspapers are full of “How to live on a given income of money,” instead of time, when money is the commonest thing there is, encumbering the earth in gross heaps.
If one cannot live on a certain income of money, one earns more or adjusts. But failing to arrange an income of twenty-four hours to cover expenditure means muddling one’s life definitely, for the supply of time is cruelly restricted. Which of us is free from the uneasy feeling that his daily life is mismanaged, always promising to alter it “when I have a little more time”? We never shall have any more time. We have, and have always had, all the time there is.
- Words
- 161
- Read in
- ~41 s
- Shorter
- 54%
You have twenty-four hours a day to spin health, pleasure, money, and content—it is the most urgent resource of all, yet newspapers obsess over money instead of the vital income of time. While we easily adjust when money falls short, failing to manage our twenty-four hours leads to a muddling existence, plagued by the eternal, false hope that we will “alter that when I have a little more time.” We never shall have any more time; we have, and have always had, all the time there is.
- Words
- 88
- Read in
- ~22 s
- Shorter
- 75%
Your happiness, your very life, depends entirely on the proper use of your daily twenty-four hours, yet while money is common and easily adjusted, time is cruelly restricted and we vainly delude ourselves that we will somehow find more of it later.
- Words
- 42
- Read in
- ~11 s
- Shorter
- 88%
You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness—the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends!—depends on that. Strange that the newspapers, so enterprising and up-to-date as they are, are not full of “How to live on a given income of time,” instead of “How to live on a given income of money”! Money is far commoner than time. When one reflects, one perceives that money is just about the commonest thing there is. It encumbers the earth in gross heaps.
If one can’t contrive to live on a certain income of money, one earns a little more—or steals it, or advertises for it. One doesn’t necessarily muddle one’s life because one can’t quite manage on a thousand pounds a year; one braces the muscles and makes it guineas, and balances the budget. But if one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one’s life definitely. The supply of time, though gloriously regular, is cruelly restricted.
Which of us lives on twenty-four hours a day? And when I say “lives,” I do not mean exists, nor “muddles through.” Which of us is free from that uneasy feeling that the “great spending departments” of his daily life are not managed as they ought to be? Which of us is quite sure that his fine suit is not surmounted by a shameful hat, or that in attending to the crockery he has forgotten the quality of the food? Which of us is not saying to himself—which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: “I shall alter that when I have a little more time”?
We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.
Reading times assume 238 words per minute, the average adult silent reading rate for non-fiction (Brysbaert, 2019). Summaries vary slightly each time.
What changes
Be the one who's actually read it.
Diagonal Reader turns the ten minutes you do have into real progress through the books you care about.
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Finish what you start
Ten spare minutes can cover a chapter, so books stop stalling at page 40 and start landing on the “read” shelf.
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Walk in prepared
The book-club pick, the business book your team keeps quoting, Thursday's seminar reading: have the ideas before the conversation starts.
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Say yes to more books
Sample more authors and subjects. Read the ones that grab you cover to cover; take the gist from the rest.
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Crack the dense ones
Old prose, textbooks, jargon: switch the voice to Plain language and get the same ideas in everyday words.
How it works
Three taps. No sign-up.
Snap the page
Open the app in your phone's browser, point the camera at any printed page and tap the shutter.
Choose how short
Low halves it. High keeps the key points. Max gives you one sentence.
Read, flip, repeat
The summary streams in within seconds. Turn the page, snap again, and swipe back through everything you've read.
Multilingual
Reads the book's language. Keeps the author's voice.
Summaries come back in the language printed on the page. Three real results at Max:
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Español
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, vivía un hidalgo cincuentón, de modesta hacienda y aficionado a la lectura de libros de caballerías hasta el punto de perder el juicio.
Cervantes, Don Quijote · 266 words → 35
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Français
En l’année 1872, Phileas Fogg, gentleman énigmatique et impassible aux habitudes aussi régulières qu’inconnues des Londoniens, habitait au numéro 7 de Saville-row.
Jules Verne, Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours · 235 words → 22
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Deutsch
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, musste er zu seinem Entsetzen feststellen, dass er sich in seinem Bett in ein ungeheueres Ungeziefer verwandelt hatte und all seine verzweifelten Versuche, in seine gewohnte Seitenlage zurückzukehren, kläglich scheiterten.
Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung · 249 words → 39
Questions
Good to know
Is it really free?
Yes. You get 100 pages every month with no account and no card. Reading more than that? Subscribe to Unlimited in the app with one monthly plan, and cancel anytime.
What happens to my photos?
Each page is sent to our AI provider only to write your summary and is not stored on our servers. Photos and summaries stay on your device until you delete them. Details are in the Privacy Policy.
Which languages does it read?
It writes the summary in the language printed on the page, like the Spanish, French and German examples above.
Does it replace reading the book?
It gets you the gist, so more books actually get finished. When a page grabs you, the full text is right there in your hands.
Do I need to install anything?
No. It runs in your phone's browser. You can add it to your home screen if you like.
“We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.”
Your next big idea is one page away.
The pile on your nightstand won't read itself, and every week it waits, the ideas inside stay closed. Try Diagonal Reader on the very next page you pick up.
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