Support

Open a book, then turn on a touch-free control in the reader’s settings. You can choose:

• Head turn — glance left or right past a comfortable angle.
• Wink — wink one eye to go forward, the other to go back. A normal two-eye blink is ignored.
• Finger — hold up your hand and flick it to turn the page.
• Voice — say “next page,” “previous page,” or “close book.”

The camera modes are mutually exclusive — pick the one that feels best. Voice can run alongside them. Ordinary taps and swipes always work too.

Gesture detection depends on the camera seeing you clearly. A few things that help:

• Light your face evenly. Strong backlight (a bright window behind you) is the most common cause of missed gestures.
• Stay in frame. Hold the device so your whole face — or your whole hand, in finger mode — is visible, roughly arm’s length away.
• Recentre. Face the device straight on and use the recentre/calibrate control so it learns your neutral head position.
• Turn a little further, a little slower. A deliberate movement registers far better than a quick twitch.
• Try a different mode. Head turn is the most robust across devices; wink is more sensitive to lighting and to how symmetrically you wink.
• Remove anything blocking the front camera, including a case lip or screen cover.

If it still misbehaves, email us with your device model and which mode you were using — that is usually enough for us to reproduce it.

Wink uses Apple’s ARKit face tracking, which needs an A12 Bionic chip or newer — in practice, iPhone XS / XR and later, and iPads from roughly 2018 onward. On devices that don’t support it, the Wink option is hidden and head turn is used instead, which works on any device with a front camera.

Only to recognise your gestures. The video is analysed on your device, frame by frame, purely to work out whether you turned your head, winked, or moved your hand — and it is never recorded, saved, or uploaded. There is no face recognition and no “faceprint.” Full details are in our Privacy Policy, including a dedicated Face data section.

Yes. The camera is entirely optional — decline the permission, or switch it off at any time, and the reader works normally with taps, swipes, the on-screen arrows, and (on the web) the arrow keys and space bar. Nothing is locked behind the touch-free features.

The touch-free controls use real movements of your head, eyes, and hands, so please use them gently:

• Move in moderation — don’t over-extend or strain your neck, eyes, or hands.
• Take regular breaks, and stop immediately if you feel any pain, dizziness, eye strain, or discomfort.
• Check with a medical professional first if you have any condition affecting your neck, spine, eyes, muscles, or joints.
• Don’t use the movement or voice controls while driving, walking, or anywhere distraction could be unsafe.

MagicReader is completely free. There are no ads, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions, and no paid tiers — every feature, including all of the touch-free controls and read-aloud, is available to everyone. There is also no account to create, and no analytics or tracking of any kind.

Yes. MagicReader’s built-in library offers public-domain books — works whose copyright has expired — from free sources such as Project Gutenberg and, for Japanese titles, Aozora Bunko. There is nothing to pay for the books, and no account is needed. Public-domain status can vary by country, so please check that a given title is in the public domain where you live.

Yes. On iPhone and iPad, MagicReader opens PDF files and comic archives (CBZ/ZIP and CBR/RAR), alongside the EPUB books you download in the app. To add your own files, either:

• Use Share → Open in MagicReader from Files, Mail, or another app, or
• Connect your device to a computer and drag files into MagicReader’s folder via Finder → your device → Files.

The web reader at leorivas.com/magicreader offers the built-in library only.

Read-aloud offers two voices. The standard voice is your device’s built-in speech and is available immediately. The Natural voice is a much more lifelike speech model that runs entirely on your device — because it is a real model rather than a system feature, it has to be downloaded once (around 200 MB) before first use. After that it works offline, and nothing you read is ever sent anywhere.

The Natural voice requires iOS 18 or later. On earlier versions the option is hidden and the standard voice is used instead.

• Check the volume and make sure the silent switch (or Focus mode) isn’t muting the device.
• If you chose the Natural voice, confirm the voice download finished — until it does, reading falls back to the standard voice.
• The Natural voice needs iOS 18 or later; on iOS 17 use the standard voice.
• Try stopping and restarting read-aloud, or reopening the book.

Voice control needs both microphone and speech recognition permission — check Settings › MagicReader and allow both. Then speak a supported command clearly, a little slower than normal: “next page,” “previous page,” “close book,” “read to me,” “stop.”

Background noise and read-aloud playing at the same time both make recognition harder. In the web reader, voice commands need a supported browser (Chrome or Edge).

Mostly, yes. Once a book is on your device you can read it — and use every touch-free control — with no internet connection, because gesture detection runs locally. You need a connection only to browse and download new books, or to fetch the Natural voice the first time.

Yes — leorivas.com/magicreader runs in your browser with no installation. It offers a selection of classics and the same touch-free controls, all processed locally in the browser. Note that browsers only allow camera access on secure (https) pages, and gesture performance depends on your computer.

Please email us — feature requests genuinely shape what gets built next. For bugs, tell us which touch-free control you were using, and a screenshot or a short screen recording helps enormously.