Fallow keeps almost nothing on screen while you read. Here is what’s hiding.
The three screens
articles
Paste a link and it saves the article, cleaned up, to read offline. A row
tells you how long it takes to read — never how many are waiting, or
how long they’ve been there.
books
Search public-domain books and download them, or open an epub you already
own. A book with no cover gets one drawn for it.
reading
Nothing on screen but the page. A tap brings the controls back and takes them
away again; the line at the foot is tappable.
The bar at the top
back
Out of the reader, to the list or the shelf.
contents
Books only. Jump to any chapter.
bookmark
Marks this page. It fills in once the page is marked.
highlights
Everything you kept in this article or book.
Aa
how the text is set
The one that changes the page — theme, text size,
line spacing, margins, pages or scroll, where a tap lands, and what the
line at the foot counts.
settings
The app rather than the page — what the list shows, whether it
opens on what you were reading, and
something’s wrong.
A tap brings this back and takes it away again — in the middle of the page when you are reading in pages, anywhere at all when you are scrolling.
Two ways to read
pagesthe default. turn between themscrollone long page
Pages is the default, and nearly everything below belongs to it — the taps,
the drag, the volume keys. Scrolling is the plainer one: you scroll, and a tap in
a tap anywhere brings the controls back. Switch under Aa.
In pages — where a tap lands
sidesleft back, right forwarddiagonalbottom and right go onforwardeverything goes on
The middle always brings the controls back, and takes them away again. Pick a
scheme under Aa, tap zones — it draws your choice
on the page so you can see it.
In pages — or drag instead
dragpast a quarter, it turnspage onehold in the cornerpage twothe mark carries on
A passage can run past the bottom of the page. Keep dragging into the corner and
the page turns under you, with the mark carrying on where it left off. On Android
the volume keys turn pages too, once you switch them on.
In scroll — scroll or tap
scrollno pages to turntap anywherebrings the controls back
There are no tap zones here, because there is no page to turn — the whole
screen brings the controls back, and takes them away again.
Scrolling with them up puts them away and keeps scrolling, so you
never have to tap first to get on with reading.
No page turns, no volume keys, and no dragging into a corner. Those are things
pages do.
Marking, in either mode
hold, then dragchoose a passagehold one worda definition, offlinetop rightbookmarks the page
Nothing is kept until you press highlight — letting
go only offers it. Tapping a mark you already made offers to remove it, and the
highlighter in the top bar lists everything you kept.
The rest
Aachange how it reads, and watch the page as you adjustthe line at the foottap to change what it countspull a row leftdeletes it, and asks first
Adding things
an article
Paste a link, press save. It reads offline afterwards.
from anywhere
Share sheet → Fallow. Several at once is fine.
a book
add a book, then search. All free, all public domain.
your own epub
Same button. DRM-free only — Kindle and Kobo files are locked.
A few Project Gutenberg editions are enormous and take a couple of minutes to
unpack. If the percentage is moving, it’s working.
When something’s wrong
The cog, then something’s wrong — from the list
or from inside a book. It shows you the message first and sends nothing on its own.
There is no analytics in this app and there never will be, so
you are the only way I find out about anything. A wrong word counts.