The Chromatics app
Every character’s dialogue has its own color, so you always know who’s speaking. The scene stays in view. An audiobook reads along. Free on iPhone and iPad.
What it does
Two Catherines, no confusion.
Each character gets a color, used for their names and dialogue. Wuthering Heights has a small tangled cast of characters who share names; Russian novels are even harder, because Dounia and Avdotya Romanovna are the same person. The color settles it.
Built for wandering minds.
A quiet banner keeps us grounded in the scene: where we are, when it is, and who’s telling the story. The disorientation is part of Joyce’s game; the banner keeps us immersed in the story without having to flip back to figure out where we are.
Audiobooks and immersive reading. Read by real people.
Many books in Chromatics have curated LibriVox recordings, matched to the text page by page. Synchronized audio is also great for when you jump in the car and just don’t want to put the book down. Then, come nine o’clock, your book is on the right page for some quiet time. More on the immersive reading and read-along pages.
Keep the lines worth keeping.
The “keeps” you make keep their speaker’s color. Revisit them in the app, download them as CSV or Markdown, or sync them to Readwise or Notion. More on the commonplace book page.
The books
Over a hundred books are ready to read, and many more featured classics are completely free to read. Pro opens the rest of the catalog and the ability to create a Chromatics edition of any of over 50,000 other public-domain classics automatically, usually within the hour. The texts are from Project Gutenberg; the recordings from LibriVox. The books with pages of their own are listed on the books page.
Plain pricing.
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Free
$0
The featured classics, complete — the colors, the banner, the audio, every theme, keeps and exports. Wuthering Heights, Crime and Punishment, and The Great Gatsby are on the shelf now.
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Pro
$4.99 a month · $29.99 a year, the first 14 days free · $79 once, as a Founding Reader
For the editions that don’t exist yet: any public-domain book in the catalog turned into a color-coded edition on request, and a ping the moment it is ready.
Questions
Is Chromatics free?
Yes. The featured classics are free to read in full, with the colors, the banner, the audio and your keeps. Pro is for turning any other public-domain book into an edition.
Where do the books and recordings come from?
The texts are from Project Gutenberg. The audiobooks are LibriVox recordings, read by human volunteers and matched to the page.
Is it on Android?
Not yet. Chromatics is on iPhone and iPad. Leave an email and we will write to you once, when it ships.
Does it work offline?
Yes. A book you have downloaded in the app stays readable without a connection.
On Android?
Chromatics is on iPhone and iPad today, with Android close behind. Leave an email and we will write to you once, when it ships.
Free on iPhone and iPad. Point your phone’s camera here. On Android?