iPhone Chromatics, a classics reader where every speaker keeps their own color

m@chromatics · 08-25-2026, 09:02 AM

Hello and good to meet you all! -- I make Chromatics, an iOS reader for public-domain classics, and this community is the one I actually built it for, so I'd like to show it here and take the grilling.

So what does it do? At its simplest it's a reader with the normal features you'd expect (five typefaces -- Atkinson Hyperlegible, Lexend, and OpenDyslexic among them -- line-spacing tiers, themes). But the reason I built it was a wild idea that coloring dialogue with a unique color per character would help make reading some of the more difficult classics easier. It turned out there had actually been research done on exactly this. So I built what it pointed at, and then kept doing my own research on top.

What I've ended up with is an app that I genuinely love to use myself and have continued to improve on during all my spare moments for the past 4 months. I'm not the only one using it either: pardon my flex but both my girlfriend and one of my best friends use it all the time too.

Some of my favorite features (aside from every speaker on the page keeping their own color, which actually made it possible for me to get through Ulysses) are a scene line at the top of the page so you always know where and when you are. I've also really grown to love the widget, which serves as a great reading reminder and makes my phone screen look really nice because it features hand picked public domain art from open museum collections.

Chromatics also supports optional immersive reading by flesh and blood readers. Read-along audio. No karaoke word highlighting. Press play and the complete LibriVox recording (Ruth Golding's Wuthering Heights, Karen Savage's Pride and Prejudice, etc) starts at the top of the page you're on and stops at the bottom. Turn the page and it follows. The book stays a book. And when you jump in the car it becomes an audiobook until you arrive and then your reader is on the exact right page.

It also works well with the reading apps & reading adjacent apps I already use and love - Readwise, Notion & StoryGraph. Your highlights ("keeps") live in the "Commonplace book" which exports to Markdown, Notion, and Readwise. Featured classics are free in full (Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice among them); a paid tier exists only to summon books beyond the featured shelf out of the ~52,000 on Gutenberg.

Since this crowd will ask how the colors happen: a pipeline does structural parsing plus a language model for speaker attribution, human-checked; it produces color metadata only. No generated text anywhere; the words are Gutenberg's, verbatim.

What it does not do yet, honestly: no importing your own EPUBs (public-domain catalog only for now), iOS only, an account gate at the door (email or apple login), and it's on TestFlight while the App Store release is being prepared: https://testflight.apple.com/join/3R2Sya4Y

Link to the full site (including app download at "Get app") here https://chromatics.mobile

My question, especially for anyone who tried immersion reading and bounced off it: does syncing at the page level instead of the word fix what was distracting about it — or is reading-while-listening just not for you, full stop? That answer steers what I build next.

Screenshots attached. Happy to answer anything.

DJUNGELSKOG · Today, 02:59 AM

I would never install a book reading app that requires me to log in, no matter how good it is or what features it offers, and there is a big chance that you app will be rejected as it violates Apple's app review guideline 5.1.1(v)

m@chromatics · Today, 08:18 AM

Hey -- thanks for the reply! I know that's a sticking point for some folks, which is exactly why I called it out in the post, and I definitely won't argue with you on the principle.

The account is what lets your keeps (the commonplace book), reading positions, and any books you summon out of the catalog survive a lost phone and follow you into the exports (Markdown / Notion / Readwise). No password either way, Sign in with Apple works fine with Hide My Email, or you can get a one-time emailed code.

On 5.1.1(v): thanks for the pointer -- on the sign-in half, my read is that sync and purchases are the "significant account-based features" it carves out, the same footing Kindle and Libby stand on. And the account-deletion half of that same clause is already a hard item on my pre-App-Store checklist.

For anyone who'd rather see the reading surface before touching a sign-in: the book pages on the site have solid demos right in the browser.

08-25-2026, 09:02 AM	#1
m@chromatics M @ Chromatics Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Aug 2026 Location: United States Device: iPhone	Chromatics, a classics reader where every speaker keeps their own color Hello and good to meet you all! -- I make Chromatics, an iOS reader for public-domain classics, and this community is the one I actually built it for, so I'd like to show it here and take the grilling. So what does it do? At its simplest it's a reader with the normal features you'd expect (five typefaces -- Atkinson Hyperlegible, Lexend, and OpenDyslexic among them -- line-spacing tiers, themes). But the reason I built it was a wild idea that coloring dialogue with a unique color per character would help make reading some of the more difficult classics easier. It turned out there had actually been research done on exactly this. So I built what it pointed at, and then kept doing my own research on top. What I've ended up with is an app that I genuinely love to use myself and have continued to improve on during all my spare moments for the past 4 months. I'm not the only one using it either: pardon my flex but both my girlfriend and one of my best friends use it all the time too. Some of my favorite features (aside from every speaker on the page keeping their own color, which actually made it possible for me to get through Ulysses) are a scene line at the top of the page so you always know where and when you are. I've also really grown to love the widget, which serves as a great reading reminder and makes my phone screen look really nice because it features hand picked public domain art from open museum collections. Chromatics also supports optional immersive reading by flesh and blood readers. Read-along audio. No karaoke word highlighting. Press play and the complete LibriVox recording (Ruth Golding's Wuthering Heights, Karen Savage's Pride and Prejudice, etc) starts at the top of the page you're on and stops at the bottom. Turn the page and it follows. The book stays a book. And when you jump in the car it becomes an audiobook until you arrive and then your reader is on the exact right page. It also works well with the reading apps & reading adjacent apps I already use and love - Readwise, Notion & StoryGraph. Your highlights ("keeps") live in the "Commonplace book" which exports to Markdown, Notion, and Readwise. Featured classics are free in full (Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice among them); a paid tier exists only to summon books beyond the featured shelf out of the ~52,000 on Gutenberg. Since this crowd will ask how the colors happen: a pipeline does structural parsing plus a language model for speaker attribution, human-checked; it produces color metadata only. No generated text anywhere; the words are Gutenberg's, verbatim. What it does not do yet, honestly: no importing your own EPUBs (public-domain catalog only for now), iOS only, an account gate at the door (email or apple login), and it's on TestFlight while the App Store release is being prepared: https://testflight.apple.com/join/3R2Sya4Y Link to the full site (including app download at "Get app") here https://chromatics.mobile My question, especially for anyone who tried immersion reading and bounced off it: does syncing at the page level instead of the word fix what was distracting about it — or is reading-while-listening just not for you, full stop? That answer steers what I build next. Screenshots attached. Happy to answer anything. Attached Thumbnails

Today, 02:59 AM	#2
DJUNGELSKOG Groupie Posts: 185 Karma: 1162312 Join Date: Nov 2023 Location: Belgium / Vlaanderen Device: Kobo Libra 2 + Vivlio Light HD + (ancient) iPad Pro	I would never install a book reading app that requires me to log in, no matter how good it is or what features it offers, and there is a big chance that you app will be rejected as it violates Apple's app review guideline 5.1.1(v) Last edited by DJUNGELSKOG; Today at 06:38 AM.

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Today, 08:18 AM	#3
m@chromatics M @ Chromatics Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Aug 2026 Location: United States Device: iPhone	Hey -- thanks for the reply! I know that's a sticking point for some folks, which is exactly why I called it out in the post, and I definitely won't argue with you on the principle. The account is what lets your keeps (the commonplace book), reading positions, and any books you summon out of the catalog survive a lost phone and follow you into the exports (Markdown / Notion / Readwise). No password either way, Sign in with Apple works fine with Hide My Email, or you can get a one-time emailed code. On 5.1.1(v): thanks for the pointer -- on the sign-in half, my read is that sync and purchases are the "significant account-based features" it carves out, the same footing Kindle and Libby stand on. And the account-deletion half of that same clause is already a hard item on my pre-App-Store checklist. For anyone who'd rather see the reading surface before touching a sign-in: the book pages on the site have solid demos right in the browser.