Themes & Styling

The Linkwise Reader strips an article down to its text, then hands you the entire look of that text. Paper colour, ink weight, typeface, column width, line spacing, alignment , all of it is yours, and all of it applies instantly to every article you open.

This page covers everything in the Reader's styling panel.

Opening the styling panel

Open any saved link in the Linkwise Reader, then tap the format icon ( TT ) in the Reader's bottom toolbar.

Every change applies live - you'll see the article behind the panel restyle as you tap. There is no "Apply" or "Done" button; just dismiss the panel when you're happy.

The TT button only appears on articles that Reader mode can handle. On a page Linkwise can't parse into an article, and on PDFs (which render natively, with no reader layer), there is nothing to style, so the button is hidden.

The panel at a glance

The styling panel has four blocks, top to bottom:

1. Appearance - Light / Dark / System

2. Reading Experience - Standard / E-Ink

3. Themes (Standard) or Paper, Contrast, Ink (E-Ink)

4. Layout - text size, column width, line spacing, alignment plus the Font row

1. Appearance - Light, Dark, System

How "System" resolves. Linkwise has its own app-wide appearance setting at Settings → Preferences → Appearance (System / Light / Dark). When the Reader is set to System it follows that; and when the app setting is also System, it follows your device's Light/Dark setting, including automatic sunset switching.

So: Reader = System → App = System → iOS = Dark gives you a dark Reader.

Your Light and Dark picks are stored separately. Choosing Cosmos while in Dark does not overwrite the Sand you chose in Light. Switch back and forth as often as you like - each side remembers its own theme, paper tint and everything else that is scheme-specific. This is also why the theme grid only ever shows four options: the four that belong to the side you're currently reading on. The section header tells you which - "Reader Themes in Dark Mode".

2. Reading Experience - Standard vs E-Ink

This is the switch the old page didn't mention, and it's the biggest one on the panel.

Both are free. E-Ink is not a Pro feature and not a paid add-on.

3a. Standard themes

Eight themes, four per side. You can only select from the four that match your current Light/Dark state.

Light themes

Dark themes

Each theme also sets its own secondary text, surface and accent colours, so pull-quotes, captions, code blocks, table rules and links all stay in key rather than being pasted onto a new background.

3b. E-Ink mode

E-Ink mode makes the Reader behave like an electrophoretic panel - a Kindle, Kobo or Boox screen. It is deliberately not a ninth theme, because it changes far more than colour.

Switch Reading Experience to E-Ink and the theme grid is replaced by three controls: Paper, Contrast and Ink.

What E-Ink actually changes

The panel itself, the font picker, the outline rail and the toolbars all take the same paper, so nothing bright is left floating over a monochrome page.

Paper

The substrate. None of these go near pure white - real Carta white is a pigment lit by the room, not a light source.

E-Ink respects Light/Dark too. Each paper has an inverted "night ink" variant, because real e-readers ship an inverted mode. Set Appearance to Dark (or leave it on System after sunset) and Warm paper becomes near-black #0E0C09 with warm bone-coloured ink.

Contrast

How hard the ink sits on the paper.

Three steps rather than a slider, on purpose: e-ink panels only resolve about 16 grey levels, so continuous tuning buys nothing real.

Ink, secondary text and hairline rules all move together, so the grey ramp stays evenly spaced and captions never collide with body text.

Ink

Faux-bolding, the way a Kindle's "Bold" setting works.

Bold thickens the outline rather than switching to a heavier face. That's deliberate: several of the built-in serif families ship only one weight, so asking for a heavier weight would silently do nothing. Outlining works uniformly across all nine faces - and across any font you import.

Headings are excluded from the outlining, so they stay crisp rather than turning into slabs.

4. Layout

The Layout block applies in both experiences.

Text size

Tap A− and A+.

• Range: 12px to 32px, in 1px steps

• Default: 18px

• Keyboard: ⌘+ (or ⌘=) and ⌘−

Column width

The two horizontal-arrow buttons narrow and widen the reading column.

• Range: 300pt to 1200pt, in 20pt steps

• Default: 680pt

On an iPhone the column is already narrower than the screen, so widening past a point stops changing anything visible. On an iPad - especially in landscape - this is the single most useful control on the panel. Narrow it to ~600pt for a book-like measure, or widen it to 900pt+ if you're reading technical articles full of wide code blocks and tables.

Line spacing

The two vertical-arrow buttons.

• Range: 1.1 to 3.0, in 0.05 steps

• Default: 1.75

Alignment - Ragged or Justified

This used to be buried inside the E-Ink panel. It's a typographic preference, not a property of the e-ink simulation, so it now sits in the shared Layout block and works in all eight standard themes too.

Automatic hyphenation is always on for both settings - it's what keeps a justified column from opening up rivers of white space. Ragged is the default because the column can go as narrow as 300pt, and justification in a narrow measure gets ugly fast.

Alignment is direction-aware: an Arabic or Hebrew article stays flush to the correct edge.

5. Fonts

Tap the Font row at the bottom of the panel. Every name in the list is drawn in its own typeface, so you can see what you're choosing before you choose it.

The nine built-in faces

OpenDyslexic

OpenDyslexic is included with Linkwise at no cost. Its characters have heavier bottoms and distinct, non-mirrored shapes, which for many dyslexic readers reduces letter rotation and transposition. It works in every theme and in E-Ink, and it pairs well with a slightly larger text size and line spacing above 1.8.

Import your own font

You can bring any typeface you own into the Reader.

How:

1. Open the Font picker

2. Tap Add Font from Files

3. Pick a font file from Files, iCloud Drive, or any file provider

4. It's imported, selected and applied immediately

Accepted formats and limits:

Where imported fonts live. The file is copied into Linkwise's own storage, so the original can be moved or deleted without breaking your Reader. Imported fonts are excluded from device backups (they're re-importable files and can be large), which means they do not transfer to a new device or restore from a backup - you'll re-add them from Files.

The "Reader only" label. .woff and .woff2 are web-only container formats. They render perfectly in the Reader, but iOS itself cannot register them as system fonts, so places outside the Reader - such as the YouTube transcript view - fall back to your built-in selection. .ttf and .otf work everywhere. If you have a choice, pick the .ttf or .otf version of a family.

Removing a font. Long-press (or right-click) any font under Your Fonts and choose Remove. You'll get a confirmation first, because the file is deleted from Linkwise and re-adding means going back to Files.

Two places to manage fonts

Both lists are the same list; a change in one shows in the other instantly.

Keyboard shortcuts

With a hardware keyboard attached (iPad with Magic Keyboard, or a Bluetooth keyboard):

⌘0 resets everything, not just text size. Despite being labelled Reset Text Size, ⌘0 restores all Reader styling to factory defaults - appearance, both themes, experience, paper, contrast, ink, font, size, line height, width and alignment. Treat it as "reset the Reader", not "reset the type size."

The full shortcut reference lives at Settings → Preferences → Keyboard Shortcuts (shown on iPad always, and on iPhone when a keyboard is connected).

Defaults

To restore all of these at once, press ⌘0 with a keyboard attached.

How your settings persist

• They apply to every article, immediately. There is no per-article styling - set it once and every link you open follows.

• They're stored on the device. Reader styling is not synced through your account, so your iPhone and iPad each keep their own setup. This is often what you want: a 680pt column is right on a phone and narrow on a 13" iPad.

• Your highlights, notes and reading progress are synced - it's only the look that stays local.

• Imported font files are local too, and are excluded from backups. See above.

Styling and the rest of the Reader

A few surfaces follow your Reader palette rather than the app's, so nothing bright is dropped
onto a Pitch or Cosmos article:

• The styling panel and font picker paint from the current theme, and harden in E-Ink (square corners, thicker borders, no press animation).

• The outline rail beside the article on iPad takes the same paper.

• The highlight minimap - the column of ticks down the trailing edge showing where your highlights sit - encodes highlight colour in E-Ink as tick length rather than hue.

• Read-aloud highlights the active sentence and word using tints derived from your theme, and inverts to a solid ink band in E-Ink.

Troubleshooting

I don't see the TT button.
It only appears on pages Reader mode can parse. If you're looking at the original web page, switch to Reader first (⌘⇧R, or the reader button in the toolbar). PDFs render natively and have no Reader styling.

I picked Dark but the article is still light.
Check Settings → Preferences → Appearance. If the Reader is on System, it follows the app's setting, and the app may be pinned to Light. Set the Reader's Appearance explicitly to Dark to override everything.

I can't find Cosmos / Sand in the theme grid.
The grid only shows the four themes for the side you're currently on. Sand, Paper, Aloe and Frost are light themes; Ash, Pitch, Deep and Cosmos are dark. Switch Appearance and the other four appear.

My font import was rejected.
Three reasons, in order of likelihood: the file isn't .ttf/.otf/.woff/.woff2 it's larger than 8 MB (common for CJK and heavily-hinted families look for a subset or a web-optimised build) or iOS couldn't read it as a font at all, which usually means a corrupted or variable-font-only file. You'll also be told if the same font is already in your library.

My imported font works in the Reader but not in transcripts.
It's a .woff/.woff2. Re-import the .ttf or .otf version of the same family. SeeThe "Reader only" label above.

My fonts vanished after switching devices.
Imported font files are stored locally and excluded from backups. Re-add them from Files on the new device.

E-Ink looks washed out.
Set Contrast to Sharp and Ink to Bold. If it's still soft, switch Paper from Gray to White. Gray is intentionally the lowest-contrast substrate.

Justified text has big gaps between words.
Widen the column (the right-pointing arrow button) or reduce text size. Justification needs roughly 60–75 characters per line to look right; in a narrow measure, switch back to Ragged.

Text is bunching up in E-Ink at small sizes.
Ink → Bold thickens glyph outlines, which closes up letter counters below about 15px. Either raise the text size or drop Ink back to Regular.

I changed something and want to start over.
⌘0 with a keyboard attached restores every Reader styling setting to its default.