Getting started
Lectern keeps the articles you mean to read, shows them without the clutter, and remembers what you thought of them.
Save something to read
Paste a link into the box at the top of your Queue and press Enter. Lectern fetches the page in the background and keeps a clean copy of the article, with who wrote it and how long it takes to read. Saving the same page twice keeps one copy, even from a different link to it, such as a mobile version or one with tracking added. Lectern also keeps a copy of each article's images, so it still reads well after the site changes or disappears.
Links to PDFs work too, which is handy for papers. Lectern reads the text out of the PDF into an article, with its title, author, headings and paragraphs in reading order across columns, and footnotes gathered at the end. Highlights, notes, progress and search work as they do for any article. Figures and equations are best seen in the PDF itself: Lectern keeps a copy, a click away under Saved PDF. A PDF that's only a scanned image, with no text in it, can't be read.
You can also save from your phone's Share menu, a browser extension or a bookmarklet (see Saving from anywhere), or ask an AI assistant to save a link for you.
Read
Open an article from the Queue. Lectern remembers how far you got and brings you back to the same paragraph next time, on any device.
Your Queue stays in the order you choose. New articles go on top; drag one by the handle at its left to move it, or use its ⋯ menu to send it to the top or the bottom. The handle works from the keyboard too: focus it, press Space, move with the arrow keys, and press Space again.
Resume, next to the Queue, lists what you've started and not finished, the most recent first.
Above the Queue, Archive, Favorites and each tag's page, Filter narrows the list to quick reads (under 5 minutes) or long ones (over 20), to what's unread, in progress or finished, or to a tag. The sort menu orders it by when you saved it, how long it is, or when it was published, either way round, or back in its own order. Shuffle opens one of the articles shown, at random. What you pick is kept in the page's address, so you can bookmark a view you like.
When you're done, Archive it to keep your Queue short. Favorite the ones worth coming back to. Your Archive and Favorites are in the header.
Highlight and take notes
Select any text while reading and choose Highlight, Note or Copy. Click a highlight to change its note, copy it, or delete it.
The Notebook button at the bottom right lists an article's highlights in reading order, with a note on the whole article. From there you can download or copy them as Markdown.
Highlights in the header gathers every highlight you've made, grouped by article, and can export them too.
Tag
Add tags in the reader under the article's title. Tags ignore case, so Essays and essays are the same tag. On the Tags page you can rename a tag; renaming it to the name of another tag merges the two.
Search
The search icon in the header searches titles, authors, sites, the full text, and your highlights and notes. Accents don't matter, and words match their beginnings: read finds reading.
| Type | Finds |
|---|---|
"slow web" |
the exact phrase |
-paywall |
articles without the word |
by:graham |
articles by an author |
site:example.com |
articles from a site |
title:habits |
a word in the title |
tag:essays |
articles with a tag |
is:archived, is:favorite |
archived or favorite articles |
Combine them, as in tag:essays -is:archived calm. A typo in a title still finds it when nothing else matches.
Keyboard shortcuts
Press ? on any page to see the shortcuts that work there. The ones you'll use most:
| Keys | |
|---|---|
j / k |
Next and previous article in a list |
o or Enter |
Open the selected article |
e |
Archive it (or, in the Archive, move it back to the Queue) |
f |
Favorite it |
h / H |
Highlight the selected text, in yellow or orange |
n |
Open the article's notebook |
u |
Back to the Queue |
g then q, r, f, a, h or t |
Go to Queue, Resume, Favorites, Archive, Highlights or Tags |
/ |
Search |
On the Queue, paste a link anywhere to save it, or press s to type one. In a text field, press Esc to leave it, and the shortcuts work again.
Take your library with you
Settings → Your data downloads everything: every article with its text, your highlights and notes, tags, and where you are in each. Import that file into any Lectern, on the hosted service or your own server, and your library comes along; articles that are already there are left as they are. There's also a list for spreadsheets.
Deleting your account, in Settings → Profile, removes your library, highlights, notes and connected apps for good.