Speed Reader (RSVP)

Private source reviewed

Read a note or a selection one word at a time with rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP): an optimal recognition point (ORP) highlight, adjustable speed, smart pauses, chunking, a table of contents, saved positions, reading statistics, and optional text-to-speech through the system voice or the Unreal Speech cloud API. Requires Obsidian 1.13.0 or newer. Current version: 1.3.4.

Russian version: README.ru.md

Features

Reading and presentation

• One, two, or three words per frame, with optional bionic bolding inside chunks.
• ORP highlight with a configurable colour and a width of one to three letters.
• Redicle alignment (35/65) keeps the focus letter at 35% from the left edge, so long word endings do not push the word out of view. A centred 50/50 mode is also available.
• Variable timing by word length: very short words (1-2 letters) are shown 20% faster, medium words (3-8) at normal speed, long words (9-12) 15% slower, and extra-long words (13+) 35% slower.
• Fixation guides frame the word and can be turned off.
• Adaptive window: the frame, padding, and header scale with the height of the app window, so the word, progress bar, and controls stay visible in short windows instead of being clipped.

Pacing and rhythm

• Speed ramp-up starts at 65% of the target speed and reaches it over the first words.
• Rewind on pause steps a few words back so the context is not lost; the rewind is based only on words read since the last resume.
• Pauses on punctuation, paragraph breaks, numbers, and acronyms use configurable multipliers.
• Trainer mode raises the target WPM every N read words up to a configured ceiling.
• Pause summary shows words read, actual average WPM, speed-up against 200 WPM, time saved, time remaining, and a short coaching line.

Navigation and focus

• Table of contents: the reader header lists every heading of the note and follows the current chapter while you read; pick any section to jump there.
• Speed read from Cursor: a command starts the whole note at the word under the editor cursor; selected text also has a context-menu item.
• Highlight on the fly (H / Р): wraps the current sentence in ==highlight== directly in the open note, or copies the sentence when no editor is available.
• Interactive context: on pause, 15 words around the current position are shown and every neighbour is clickable for an instant jump. During playback the line stays compact.
• Zen mode (F / А): dims the header, context, progress bar, and controls during playback, leaving only the word in focus; pointing at the window restores them.
• Status bar estimate: shows the reading progress and remaining time for the active note (📖 42% · ~3 min); clicking it opens the reader.
• Touch gestures: on the reading frame, tap the left or right third to step, tap the centre to play or pause, swipe up or down by 25 WPM.

Technical notes: code, math, tables

• Fenced code blocks are skipped by default so a listing does not interrupt the rhythm; enable Read code in notes to read them word by word. Fences never reach the word stream.
• Display math ($$...$$, \[...\]) is skipped. Short inline math ($x$, $O(n)$) is read as plain text; long inline formulas are dropped instead of being spelled out symbol by symbol.
• Tables are flattened into their cells, pipes never reach the reader, cells keep their source offsets, and each row ends with a short comma pause.
• Markdown cleanup handles Obsidian comments (%%...%%), HTML comments, callout markers, footnotes, bare URLs (shortened to the domain), highlights, and table separators, while keeping snake_case names and comparisons such as a < b.

Interface language

• Russian and English UI with automatic detection from the Obsidian language, plus a manual Interface language setting (auto, ru, en).
• Reader buttons, hints, resume banner, pause summary, and notices follow the selected language.
• Speech language detection picks ru-RU or en-US for the system voice based on the current sentence.

Speech

• The speaker button and the M key toggle text-to-speech at a rate proportional to the chosen WPM.
• Two engines are available in settings:
  • System (Web Speech) - installed OS voices, works offline; quality and availability depend on the system.
  • Unreal Speech - cloud API, needs a key from unrealspeech.com/dashboard. The voice list follows the API (Amelia is the default; Charlotte, Emily, Giulia, Lucía and others are available). The API has no Russian voice, so Russian text is pronounced with an accent.
• Limits and reliability for Unreal Speech: requests are split into chunks of at most 1000 characters and sent sequentially with a 600 ms gap, staying inside the free plan's 2 requests/second. A request times out after 20 seconds; only one sentence is fetched or played at a time.
• Character counter: the settings show how many characters this vault has sent, with a reset button, plus a Test key button and a Test speech key command.
• Graceful fallback: a bad key, exhausted quota, rate limit, or network failure is reported once and playback continues with the system voice.
• The key is stored only in this vault's plugin data (data.json) and is never written to the repository.
• Speech is approximate rather than word-synchronised, and cloud voices may use online services; check those settings before reading sensitive notes.

Progress, cursor, statistics

• The reading position is remembered per note and saved while reading, on pause, and on close. Closing a freshly opened reader without any interaction keeps the previous position.
• On close, the editor cursor moves to the word being read; the offset is clamped to the current document length, so parallel edits cannot throw.
• Show speed reading statistics reports words read, time spent, top speed, and estimated time saved against 200 WPM. The saving is an estimate, not a measure or a guarantee of comprehension.

Reading fonts

• Golos Text has a large x-height, open apertures, and full Cyrillic and Latin coverage; recommended for Russian text.
• Atkinson Hyperlegible distinguishes similar letter shapes but has no Cyrillic, so Russian words fall back to another font; it suits Latin text only.
• Both fonts are embedded in styles.css as data URIs, so nothing is loaded from the network. OFL licence texts are in fonts/.
• The font is selected in Settings → Speed Reader (RSVP) → Reader font; the default is the theme font.

Keyboard shortcuts

Installation

Download the three files from a single GitHub release, or build them with npm ci and npm run check.

1. Create <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/rsvp-speed-reader/ (or use your vault's custom configuration directory).
2. Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into that folder.
3. Restart Obsidian, then enable Speed Reader (RSVP) in Settings → Community plugins.
4. If an older manual installation used the folder obsidian-speed-reader, disable it, back up data.json, and rename the folder to rsvp-speed-reader. Keep data.json to retain settings, the saved position, and the Unreal Speech key. Do not enable two copies.

Usage

Open a Markdown note, optionally select a passage, and click the book icon in the ribbon. Alternatively use the command palette:

• Speed read current selection or active note - reads the selection if there is one, the whole note otherwise;
• Speed read selected text - reads only the selection;
• Speed read entire active note - reads the whole note;
• Speed read from Cursor - starts the whole note at the editor cursor;
• Show speed reading statistics - shows your counters;
• Test speech key - sends a one-word request to Unreal Speech and reports success or the exact error;
• Run self-check - opens and closes a short probe window, checks parsing, offsets, timing, navigation, progress bounds, and the reader window itself, then reports how many steps passed.

Selected text also has a Speed read selection item in the editor context menu.

Settings

• Reader analytics: words read, reading time, top speed, time saved; reset the counters.
• Language: interface language (auto / Russian / English).
• Speed and display: default WPM, word step, reader theme, font size, reader font, ORP highlight and width, ORP colour, fixation guides, redicle alignment, variable timing by word length, zen mode.
• Pacing: ramp-up and its length, trainer mode with step, interval and ceiling, pause statistics, rewind and its length, pauses on punctuation, commas, paragraphs, numbers and acronyms with their multipliers.
• Chunking: words per frame, bionic bolding.
• Technical notes: read code blocks.
• Progress: remember position, sync cursor on close, show the status-bar estimate.
• Speech: engine (system / Unreal Speech), Unreal Speech key, voice, character counter with reset, test key; enable text-to-speech.

The settings tab uses the declarative settings API, so its controls appear in Obsidian's settings search.

Development and releases

Use Node.js 24 or newer and npm. npm ci installs dependencies; npm run check type-checks, lints, tests, and builds; npm run test:coverage prints coverage for the pure logic modules.

The registered plugin ID is rsvp-speed-reader and must remain unchanged. To publish, commit the changes and push a tag matching the version in manifest.json (for example 1.3.4, without a v prefix). The release workflow verifies the metadata, builds from that tag, creates GitHub artifact attestations for the assets, and publishes main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css.

Feedback

• Questions and suggestions: [email protected]
• Bug reports and feature requests: GitHub issues

Network use

The plugin works offline by default. The only network requests are made when Unreal Speech is selected as the speech engine: the current sentence is sent to api.v8.unrealspeech.com to synthesize audio, and nothing else leaves the device. No telemetry, no analytics, no ads. The API key is stored locally in this vault's plugin data. If you keep the system voice, the plugin makes no network requests at all.

Licence

Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0). See LICENSE. In short: you may use, modify, and redistribute the plugin, including in closed-source projects, but modifications to these MPL-covered files must stay under the MPL and be made available.