Can you install ReadPlusOne as an app?
Yes, on phones and tablets. ReadPlusOne is a progressive web app, which means the browser can install it to your device the same way a store installs a native app. It gets its own icon, opens full screen with no address bar, and sits alongside everything else on your phone.
On a Mac or a PC, read it in a browser tab. Desktop install is not something we support yet, and a desktop screen is wide enough that the browser chrome costs you very little reading room anyway.
What it skips is the store. You do not need an Apple ID or a Google account, there is no download to wait for, and an update reaches you the next time you open it rather than when you next visit the store.
One thing to get right: install from app.readplusone.com, the app itself, rather than from this marketing site. Installing the wrong one leaves you with an icon that opens this page.
How do you install ReadPlusOne on iPhone or iPad?
Safari is required. iOS does not let Chrome or Firefox add apps to the Home Screen.
- Open app.readplusone.com in Safari.
- Tap the Share button, the square with an arrow pointing up.
- Scroll down the share sheet and tap Add to Home Screen.
- Tap Add. ReadPlusOne appears on your Home Screen with its own icon.
How do you install ReadPlusOne on Android?
Chrome offers this on its own once you have opened the app. You can also start it yourself.
- Open app.readplusone.com in Chrome.
- Tap the three-dot menu in the top right.
- Tap Install app, or Add to Home screen on older versions of Chrome.
- Confirm. ReadPlusOne installs like any other Android app and appears in your app drawer.
Does the installed app work offline?
Not fully, and it is worth being straight about why. Every ReadPlusOne story is written for you when you ask for it, using the words your reading history says you are ready for. That happens on a server, so a new story needs a connection.
Installing is about the reading itself. The app opens in one tap, fills the screen, and puts nothing between you and the page. On a phone, where most reading happens, that is most of the difference between a browser tab and something you actually return to.
What you get once it is installed
The reader takes the whole display instead of sharing it with a tab strip and an address bar, which on a phone is roughly two extra lines of story per page. You stay signed in. Your place in a story, your vocabulary, and your review schedule live on your account, so an installed phone and a browser on a laptop are the same reader looking at the same progress.
Nothing is held back from the browser version. Installing changes where the app lives, not what it does. If you would rather read in a tab, the web app is the same app.