In this modern era, people hardly get time for distraction-free reading. Everyone wants to read more in less time. For this reason, people have developed many speed reading techniques. Nowadays, the readings are mostly done on digital screens rather than on paper pages. You will be amazed to know that there are many speed reading tools made for your smart device or computer to speed up your reading. Some people have developed their skills so far that these tools let them read up to a thousand words per minute. This is insane, right? But this thing is possible. If you are a Linux user, you can skim a few news articles while waiting for the morning coffee using a Linux speed reading tool.
Best Linux Speed Reading Tools
Speed reading tools are mostly terminal-based or browser-based scripts. This is why these simple tools don’t affect the performance of your machine. Linux users always think about productivity. There are quite a few Linux speed reading tools available out there. Some are stand-alone apps, while some need a browser and an internet connection to run. Here we have enlisted the 10 best Linux speed reading tools, which will boost your reading journey.
1. SpeedRead
SpeedRead is a terminal-based speed reading tool for Linux. The user interface is pretty basic, but it has some useful features. It is almost similar to the popular speed reading tool, Spritz. The code is written in Perl. It uses the RSVP or Rapid Serial Visual Presentation method for speed reading. This technique shows the text word by word at a certain speed in the optimal eye position.
Key Features of SpeedRead
- This tool is very lightweight and simple.
- Users can control the speed in words per minute.
- It has a limited number of interactive support through the keyboard.
- Users can increase and decrease speed by 10% through assigned buttons.
- You can even enable joining the short words together for your convenience.
2. Uniread
Uniread is a command-line-based Linux speed reading tool. It functions just like any other common speed reading software. This open-source software is written in JavaScript and uses the node.js framework. For this reason, it can be executed independently outside of a browser.
Key Features of Uniread
- This tool supports a variety of file formats, including PDF, EPUB, TXT, etc.
- It can display EPUB files chapter by chapter.
- The navigations can be controlled by the keyboard.
- Uniread displays various statistics, like the current reading speed, reading progress, and estimated time remaining.
- This tool allocates double time for comma and full stop for better reading comfort.
3. Gritz
Gritz is an open-source tool for speed reading. It is written in Perl. For this reason, this tool is cross-platform and can be run on any machine supporting Perl and gtk2-Perl. The limitation of this tool is that it doesn’t support many file formats. It only supports UTF-8 TXT file formats. If you want to read from other formats, you must convert that to TXT before proceeding.
Key Features of Gritz
- It uses the Knuth-Liang algorithm to find the best possible position to break a line.
- It has an easy-to-use and simple graphical user interface.
- Gritz has integrated forward, backward, play, pause, fast, and slow buttons.
- The command-line option lets users jump to a specific sentence.
- It claims that it can do your reading twice as fast.
4. Spray
The spray is inspired by the open-source speed reading bookmarklet, OpenSpritz. It is a tool for Linux machines, which is written with JavaScript. You can copy and paste any texts, and it will show the words popping up one by one for your speed reading experience. It borrowed many useful algorithms from OpenSpritz. Besides, it looks almost similar to that software.
Key Features of Spray
- It has a beautiful graphical user interface.
- It has a virtual play and pause button for convenience.
- Spray features a large text box for pasting texts.
- Users can easily change the speed of reading by using the drop-down menu.
5. Sprits-it!
Sprits-it! is a browser-based speed reading tool for Linux. It can be used as a web app or bookmarklet. It allows the speed-reading of arbitrary web pages in a browser and almost similar to other speed reading tools. But “sprits-it!” has some extra benefits. The user interface is quite modern and classy too.
Key Features of Sprits-it!
- It has configurable reading speed, play/pause/rewind buttons.
- The night mode feature is very handy.
- It can hyphenate long words with automatic language detection.
- The drag-and-drop bookmarklet installation is very user-friendly.
- This tool supports EPUB file format and extracting texts from PDF.
- Users can save the settings, text, and reading position into the local storage of the browser, which can be restored later.
6. GutenFlash
GutenFlash is a fast text reader for Linux-based machines. It requires PyGTK and GTK2 installed for running this software. The main highlight of this tool is that it provides a variable amount of time between each line, depending on the context. This is why users can have a natural reading experience. It uses the same old RSVP method for popping up texts.
Key Features of GutenFlash
- It has three different modes for speed reading. These are one word, three words, and multiword modes.
- Users have the freedom to jump to a specific chapter, the next chapter, and the previous chapter.
- It can calculate and display the length and approximate time remaining.
- The variable contextual delay is a very important and convenient feature.
7. Spreeder
Spreeder is a powerful web app for speed reading. It claims that you can read anything 3x faster with their software. It is a PHP-based tool that will need a browser to run and has an easy-to-install bookmarklet option. There is a premium stand-alone version of this tool for Windows and Mac at a huge cost. But the free browser-based tool for Linux is quite enough for anyone.
Key Features of Spreeder
- The user interface is pretty clean and minimalistic.
- It features an advanced customization panel.
- This tool can change the font size, font size, and even the window size.
- The basic tweaks like chunk size, words per minute are available.
- Spreeder supports many keyboard shortcuts for a seamless reading experience.
8. Squirt
It is a simple JavaScript bookmarklet for speed reading on a Linux machine. It can scrap the contents from a website and displays it word by word, just like any other speed reader. The only limitation of this tool is that it can not take any text inputs. So you will only have the freedom to speed read your web pages with this tool.
Key Features of Squirt
- It has a beautiful and elegant user interface.
- You can choose between serif and san serif fonts.
- It has a wide range of keyboard shortcuts support.
- The graphical progress bar helps to navigate through the whole text.
- The speed can be adjusted up to 1130 words per minute.
9. AccelaReader
AccelaReader is a free web app for speed reading. Since it runs on any browser, it is fully compatible with Linux. There is also a one-click-install bookmarklet for this tool. You just need to copy and paste any text to the box, and then it will start showing the text in the RSVP method. If you select any text on a webpage and then click on the bookmarklet, then it will launch the web app with the selected text pre-inserted.
Key Features of AccelaReader
- This tool can change the font color, background color, and alignment of the pop-up words.
- Users can increase and decrease the reader window size inside the browser.
- It has some advanced controls like speed variability, skipping words without meaning, etc.
- Users can change different parameters according to their reading comfort.
10. Readsy
Readsy is a full-fledged Linux speed reading tool. This web app runs on any HTML5 based browser. It has a plethora of features built into it. The main feature of the tool is the ability to upload PDF files directly. You can even paste the URL of any website for scraping texts from that. It uses the same algorithm from the popular speed reading tool Spritz.
Key Features of Readsy
- Drag-and-drop bookmarklet installation feature for the browsers.
- The speed of reading can be adjusted between 50 to 800 words per minute.
- Users can upload PDF and TXT files directly to save time.
- The user interface is very beautiful and gives a distraction-free reading experience.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, these speed reading tools help to speed up reading. But when you read that fast, it’s tough for the brain to catch up with the information. So these tools are not suitable for technical papers or academic books. But these speed reading tools will improve the speed of reading blogs or newspapers. By practicing more and more, maybe you can even finish a NY Times bestseller in a single sitting! Fran Lebowitz said, “Think before you speak. Read before you think.” I would say, “Install a speed reading tool before you read.” Happy reading.
