Getting Started

Last updated July 21, 2026

This is the same guide that lands in every new Squirrel Reader library the moment you sign up. If you already have the app, you have already got a copy — this page exists so it also works as a link, and so anyone can read it before installing anything.

Don’t have the app yet? Download Squirrel Reader for iPhone and iPad first, then come back to this any time.

Welcome — this library is yours now. Save things to it, read them on your own schedule, and let the app get out of the way. Here’s the quick tour: what everything does, and where to find it.

Save anything, from anywhere

Share an article, video, or podcast episode into Squirrel Reader from Safari or any other app using the share sheet. On a computer, the Chrome extension does the same thing in one click. You can also paste a URL directly, or just copy a link before opening the app — it’ll notice and offer to save it. Everything lands parsed and readable within moments, no matter where it came from.

Stuck behind a paywall or a login wall? Open the article in a browser tab where you’re already signed in, then save it from there — Squirrel Reader captures the real page you’re looking at, not a locked-out stub.

Read it your way

Every saved article is stripped of ads and clutter and reset in clean, book-quality typography. Tap Aa in the reader toolbar to change the font, size, line height, margins, and justification, or switch between five themes — Light, Sepia, Gray, Dark, and True Black for reading in bed. Prefer turning pages to scrolling? Paged mode is in the same panel, with a two-page spread on iPad.

Highlight it, note it, find it again

Select any passage to highlight it in one of five colors and attach a note. Highlights stay anchored to the exact text, so they survive font changes and even a re-parsed article. For a thought that doesn’t belong to any one passage, use the note button in the reader toolbar to attach a note to the whole item instead. Everything you highlight or note gathers in its own hub, filterable by collection or tag.

Keep a calm inbox

New saves land in your Inbox. From there, each item has a few places to go: Stash it if you’re not ready to read it but don’t want it cluttering the inbox either, Archive it once you’re done, or favorite it if you’ll want it again soon. Archived items aren’t gone — they quietly resurface later on Home’s Rediscover shelf. Tag items with autocomplete, file them into collections (an item can live in several at once), and swipe from the Library tab for fast triage.

Make Home yours

The Home tab is a set of shelves — Recent Saves, In Progress, Quick Reads, From the Feeds, and others — and you decide which ones show up and in what order. Open Settings → Home screen to reorder shelves, hide the ones you don’t use, and change how each one sorts. If you filled out the short survey when you signed up, Home already started arranged around what you said you’d use the app for most.

Subscribe with Feeds

The Feeds tab holds every podcast, blog, and newsletter you follow by RSS. New subscriptions default to manual: entries show up as a browsable list, and nothing becomes a real saved item until you tap to add it — your inbox stays yours to fill, not something a feed fills for you. If you’d rather every new post or episode arrive automatically, open the feed and switch on auto-add.

Ask the article

On iOS 26 and later, open the ••• menu in the reader and tap Ask & Explore for four tools that run entirely on your device: a Summary, Key Points, thought-provoking Questions, and Ask — a chat where you can put a question to the article directly and get an answer grounded in its actual text. None of it ever leaves your phone to make that happen.

Bring your own books and PDFs

Have an EPUB or a PDF already? Add it from the library, or open it with Squirrel Reader straight from Files or Mail. Books get the complete reader — themes, paged mode, highlights, synced progress. PDFs open in a native page viewer that remembers exactly where you left off, on every device.

Recipes worth cooking from

Save a link to a recipe and, on most recipe sites, Squirrel Reader recognizes it and builds a proper recipe view instead of a wall of text: servings you can scale up or down, a unit toggle between Original, Metric, and US, checkable ingredients, and a hands-free Kitchen mode that walks through the steps one at a time. Add your own photos once you’ve made it.

Search everything, offline

Search looks across titles, authors, notes, tags, and podcast transcripts — instantly, with no connection required, because your whole library already lives on this device. That’s true of everything, really: reading, saving, tagging, and highlighting all work with the phone in airplane mode. Changes just wait quietly and sync the moment you’re back online.

One more thing

Curious how much you’ve actually read? Settings → Reading Stats keeps a private tally of your reading, listening, and watching time — nothing about it is sent anywhere to produce it.

Everything above works on the free plan. Premium removes the numbers — unlimited items, collections, and highlights, full-text search inside every article and book, a custom theme builder, and Send to Kindle — if you ever want more room. Find it any time in Settings.

That’s the tour. Go save something — this article has done its job the moment there’s a better one sitting above it in your library. Questions or feedback any time: support@squirrelreader.com.