TextReader for iOS

TextReader is a SwiftUI-based iOS application built for a focused text reading and narration experience. It lets you import, organize, read, and listen to plain-text content, with deep customization, background audio playback, and AI-assisted prompt workflows.

Custom Prompt for AI demo: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5b297d9c-38e1-41f1-996b-b519b604e81a

Screenshot

Features

Core Reading & Narration

• Paginated Reading — Text is automatically split into easily navigable pages.
• Text-to-Speech (TTS) — Audio narration powered by AVSpeechSynthesizer, with play / pause control.
• Customizable Narration
  • Voice Selection — Choose from available system voices (optimized for Chinese voices).
  • Speed Control — Adjust narration speed (1.0x, 1.5x, 1.75x, 2.0x, 3.0x).
• Sleep Timer — Long-press the Play button to reveal a radial timer picker and auto-stop narration after a set number of minutes.
• Background Playback — Keep listening while the app is backgrounded or the device is locked (audio background mode).
• Remote Controls — Play / pause and next / previous page via headphones or Control Center (MPRemoteCommandCenter).
• Now Playing Integration — Shows the current book title, page, and controls on the lock screen and in Control Center.
• Dark Mode — Switch between light and dark themes, with the choice persisted.

Book Management & Import

• Multiple Import Methods
  • File Import — Import .txt files via the system document picker (local storage or iCloud Drive). Supports UTF-8 and GBK / GB18030 encodings.
  • Paste Text — Create a book by pasting text. Title can be set manually or auto-generated from the first 10 characters.
  • Share Sheet Import — Receive text shared from other apps (Notes, Safari, etc.) through the iOS Share Extension, handling public.plain-text and public.text. Shared items are exchanged via an App Group inbox.
  • Wi-Fi Transfer — Push .txt files from a computer on the same network through an in-app web interface.
• Book Library
  • Lists all imported and built-in books.
  • Sorts by last-accessed time, surfacing the most recently opened book first.
  • Shows last-accessed time in friendly form (e.g. "Read just now", "Read 5 minutes ago").
• Progress Persistence — Automatically saves current page and total pages per book.
• Built-in Book — Ships with a "User Guide" (使用说明.txt) as a default book.

Search & Navigation

• Full-Text Search — Search within the currently open book.
  • Live Search — Results update as you type.
  • Keyword Highlighting — Matched keywords are highlighted (yellow background, bold).
  • Contextual Preview — Each result shows a snippet with surrounding context.
  • No Results State — Displays a clear "No relevant content found" message.
• Page Summaries — When the search bar is empty, shows up to 100 equally spaced page snippets for quick navigation.
• Interactive Page Slider
  • Tap or drag the progress bar to reveal a slider for quick page jumps.
  • The slider auto-hides after 1.5 seconds of inactivity.
  • Long-press the progress bar for continuous dragging.
• Haptic Feedback — Subtle vibrations on page changes and other interactions.

Advanced Text Interaction

• "Big Bang" Word Segmentation
  • Long-press the reading view to trigger word segmentation via NLTokenizer.
  • BigBangView renders tokens as selectable blocks.
  • Drag to select continuous tokens for copying.
• Prompt Templates
  • After selecting text in Big Bang view, apply a preset or custom template.
  • Placeholders {selection}, {page}, and {book} are substituted automatically.
  • The generated prompt is copied to the clipboard and can optionally open a Perplexity AI search.
  • Built-in defaults include "总结式" (summarize) and "翻译-EN" (translate to English); templates can be added, edited, and deleted.

UI / UX Enhancements

• Tuned paragraph / letter spacing and a larger base font for readability.
• Linear progress bar for visual page tracking.
• Prominent circular Play / Pause button.
• Segmented speed selector for quick adjustments.
• Removed the startup title flicker for a smoother launch.

Requirements

• iOS 26.0 or later
• Xcode 26.0 or later (for development)
• macOS 15.0 or later (for development with Xcode)

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/your-repository-url/TextReader.git
   cd TextReader

2. Open the project — Open TextReader.xcodeproj in Xcode.
3. Select a target — Choose an iOS device or simulator.
4. Build & run.

You can also build, install, and launch directly from the command line:

make install

If multiple devices are connected, specify one explicitly:

make install DEVICE_NAME="KAI"

Other useful commands:

make devices            # list connected devices
make install-simulator  # build and run on a simulator

Usage Overview

• Book List — Tap the book icon in the navigation bar; select a book to start reading.
• Importing — Tap "+" in the book list to import via Files, Paste Text, or Wi-Fi Transfer.
• Reading — Tap the upper area for the previous page or the lower area for the next; use the progress slider to jump.
• Narration — Tap Play / Pause to control narration; long-press Play to set a sleep timer; adjust voice and speed in the control panel.
• Search — Tap the magnifying-glass icon to search within the current book.
• Big Bang & Prompts — Long-press text in the reader to segment words, select tokens, then use the Templates menu.
• Dark Mode — Toggle from the control panel.

Key Technologies

• SwiftUI — Entire UI and app structure.
• AVFoundation — AVSpeechSynthesizer for TTS, AVAudioSession for audio session management.
• MediaPlayer — MPRemoteCommandCenter and MPNowPlayingInfoCenter for background control and lock-screen integration.
• NaturalLanguage — NLTokenizer for Big Bang word segmentation.
• Network — Powers the Wi-Fi file transfer service.
• Combine — Manages asynchronous events and state.
• App Groups — Shared inbox for handing off content from the Share Extension to the main app.
• Core iOS Frameworks — File management and persistence (UserDefaults, JSON for library metadata).

Project Structure

TextReader/
├── Shared/                      # Code shared between app & extension (SharedImportStore)
├── TextReader/
│   └── TextReader/
│       ├── Application/          # App entry point (TextReaderApp)
│       ├── Managers/             # Library, Speech, Settings, AudioSession, Template
│       ├── Models/               # Book, BookProgress, PromptTemplate, AccentColor
│       ├── Services/             # SearchService, TextPaginator, Tokenizer, WiFiTransfer
│       ├── ViewModels/           # ContentViewModel (central orchestrator)
│       ├── Views/                # SwiftUI views (BookList, MainView, Search, BigBang, …)
│       ├── Resources/            # Built-in books (使用说明.txt)
│       └── Supporting Files/     # Utilities & entitlements
├── TextReaderExtension/          # Share Extension target
├── TextReaderTests/              # Unit tests
└── TextReaderUITests/            # UI tests

Architecture

The app follows an MVVM design with clear separation of concerns:

• ViewModel — ContentViewModel is the central orchestrator between views and business logic.
• Managers — LibraryManager, SpeechManager, SettingsManager, AudioSessionManager, and TemplateManager, each with a single, well-defined responsibility.
• Services — SearchService, TextPaginator, and WiFiTransferService encapsulate discrete capabilities.
• Persistence — LibraryManager stores library metadata and reading progress as JSON; SettingsManager persists user preferences via UserDefaults; TemplateManager saves prompt templates to templates.json.
• Organized layout — Code is grouped into Models, ViewModels, Views, Services, and Managers for maintainability.

Testing

Unit and UI tests live in TextReaderTests/ and TextReaderUITests/, covering search composition state, the shared import flow, and core app behavior. Run them from Xcode (Product ▸ Test) or via xcodebuild test.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Copyright (c) 2024 KAI