Reading on Your iPhone - Tracking, Sharing, & Leveling Up the Digital Literature

“I have listened to 573 hours and 20 minutes of science fiction and fantasy,” Micah Sargent reports, pulling up his Audible stats live on the show. He is a top-five-percent listener, and he is not ashamed. That sets the tone for an episode of iOS Today that is less about hardware comparisons and more about making peace with how you read — on a phone, with your ears, through a library app, or even with a $20 microscope lens stuck to your front-facing camera. The throughline is simple: your iPhone is a capable reading device on its own, and the ecosystem of apps around it rewards exploration, patience, and a little self-forgiveness.

Apple Books: The First-Party Foundation

The conversation starts where most iPhone users would: the Apple Books app. Micah walks through its interface, highlighting the reading goal feature (he has a five-minute daily goal, which the app tracks independently of his actual reading elsewhere), the library view, and the customization options under “Themes and Settings.” You can switch between white, paper, quiet, calm, focus, and bold themes, each adjustable for font (Georgia is his personal favorite), line spacing, character spacing, and brightness. There is also a “line guide” mode that moves a shaded bar down the page as you read — a digital version of the playing card a high school friend used to keep her place. The app supports PDFs, audioboo