About

I built FocusReader because I couldn't finish books.

A solo project. One developer, one stubborn problem, one app that finally let her read again.

The honest origin

I've started something like a hundred and fifty books in the last decade. I've finished maybe twelve. Not because the books were bad — they were good books I genuinely wanted to read. My brain just couldn't stay on the page long enough. Three paragraphs in I'd realize my eyes had moved but nothing had landed. I'd re-read the paragraph. Same result. Eventually I'd put the book down, tell myself I'd come back tomorrow, and forget about it.

For a long time I thought this was a personal failure. A discipline problem. Read harder. Concentrate more. Make a habit of it. The usual advice for restless minds.

Then I learned that what I had was called ADHD, and that the way I read was completely normal for the way my brain works. I just needed a reading surface that actually accommodated it — not one that punished me for not being a different kind of reader.

Why nothing existing worked

Audio-first apps like Speechify are great if you want to listen instead of read. I didn't. I wanted to read. The act of reading matters to me. I wanted text that I could sit with, but text presented in a way that didn't let my eye wander off into the surrounding paragraphs every fifteen seconds.

Bionic reading helped a little — bolding the front of each word does give the eye something to anchor on. But the existing bionic tools were single-purpose converters. I wanted to read whole books that way, with my own files, on my own devices, with read-aloud when I was tired, and with the page dimming everything else so my attention stopped competing with itself.

So I built it.

What FocusReader actually is

A web app. Drop a PDF, an EPUB, or paste an article URL — it converts that into a reading surface designed around how restless attention works. Anchor emphasis on every word. Line dimming so peripheral text fades. Page-flip mode so you can never lose your place in an infinite scroll. Pomodoro sprints calibrated to ADHD attention research (15 minutes, not 25). Read-aloud built in with the line highlighted as it speaks.

The free plan covers three books with everything turned on. Pro is $4.99 a month if you want to upload more. I priced it to be cheaper than a single takeaway coffee per month, because I built this for myself and I want other people who struggle the way I do to be able to afford it.

What FocusReader is not

It is not a treatment. It is not a therapy. It is not a medical device. If you suspect you have ADHD or dyslexia, a real diagnosis from a qualified clinician matters far more than any app. FocusReader is an accessibility tool — it helps you read once you've decided to.

It is also not a venture-funded startup. It is one person building something carefully because the problem is personal. There is no growth team. There is no investor deck. There is just me, the codebase, and the people who use the app.

How I make decisions

Every product decision passes one test: does it actually help me finish more books? Not "does it look impressive." Not "does it convert better." Does it help. If I add a feature and find myself disabling it within a week of daily use, the feature comes out. If something I've built breaks in a way that interrupts my own reading session, that's a P0 bug. The app exists because I use it.

That's also why every reading control lives in one settings sheet instead of a sprawling preferences screen — I got tired of hunting for things mid-read. And it's why I removed the read-aloud button from the top toolbar after building it: I never used it from there, and it was just visual noise.

What's next

The current focus is making the reading experience itself better. Cloud TTS with higher-quality voices for Pro users. A "shorts" feed that extracts the most valuable lessons from any book you've added so you can absorb the core ideas even when you don't have time for the full text. Better mobile gestures. Faster PDF parsing for big academic papers.

I do not plan to add features that don't earn their place. The reading surface is the product. Everything else is in service to that.

Questions, ideas, bug reports — I read every message. Get in touch.