The 10 Best Linux Speed Reading Tools Available in 2020

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. So, if you are a Linux
user, you can skim a few news articles while waiting for the
morning coffee by using a Linux speed reading tool.

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 10 best Linux speed
reading tools, which will boost up your reading journey.^[1]

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.

Get SpeedRead^[2]

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 node.js framework. For this reason, it
can be executed independently outside of a browser. ^[3][4]

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.

Get Uniread^[5]

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.

Get Gritz^[6]

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.
^[7]

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.

Get Spray^[8]

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. It is 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.

Get Sprits-it!^[9]

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.

Get GutenFlash^[10]

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 which will need a browser to run. It 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 the seamless
  reading experience.

Get Spreeder^[11]

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.

Get Squirt^[12]

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.

Get AccelaReader ^[13]

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 for saving
  time.
• The user interface is very beautiful and gives a
  distraction-free reading experience.

Get Readsy^[14]

Final Thoughts

As you can see, these speed reading tools help to speed up
reading. But when you are reading that fast, it’s tough for the
brain to catch up with the information. So these tools are not
suitable for a technical paper 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.