Readette

What it does

Paste an article link or type its title. Readette looks through public sources for free reading on the same subject and lists what it finds, each with the reason it is there. It promises related reading, not the same article: it never removes a paywall, never copies or scrapes articles, and never opens the link you paste.

Where it looks

• Hacker News, Substack and GitHub. Stories people shared on Hacker News (often on the writers' own sites), newsletter posts on Substack, and repositories with a piece's code or notes. All three are on by default; switch any off in Settings.
• The writer's own website. For a Medium link that names an author, Readette looks for a GitHub profile with the same name as the handle. If that profile lists a website, it appears marked Likely the author's site.
• You can see what happened. The Sources card says which sources answered, which found nothing and which could not be reached, so an empty list is never a mystery.

Ranked, with a reason

Every result says why it is there:

• Title match
• Close title
• Same author
• Code on GitHub
• Independent site
• Official docs

Paid posts are marked and sorted below the free ones. Results that share only some of the title's words fold away under Loosely related.

On the Mac, iPhone and iPad

• Mac menu bar. No Dock icon: a small book in the menu bar opens a panel. Search starts on Return.
• iPhone and iPad. Tap Share in Safari or any app and choose Readette: the results appear right in the share sheet. You can also paste a link or type a title in the app.
• Send the list. Copy list (Mac and the Share extension) or Share list (iOS app) sends the free reads as a short text list, handy for whoever shared the link with you.
• A reader of its own. Open a result in a plain web view that keeps no cookies and no history, or send it to your browser instead.

Requires macOS 14 or iOS 17 or later. Available in 34 languages.

Privacy in one paragraph

There is no account, no analytics and no tracking. Readette uses the network only to ask the sources you chose, sending the words of the title (and, for a Medium link, the author's handle to GitHub's public user API), and to load a page you open. The link you paste is never fetched. The full privacy policy says the same at more length.