Free macOS menu bar app

GigaRead

Claude just wrote you 600 words. Read them in 90 seconds. Select text anywhere, hit ⌃⇧R, and speed-read it one word at a time.

Download GigaRead

v1.4.1 · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon & Intel · 1.5 MB disk image

Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple

Try it right now

Watch the tour, or paste your own text below and speed-read it right here — no download needed.

This
380 WPM
space pause speed sentencesesc reset

click the reader first so it hears your keyboard

Read your own text

nothing leaves this page

Built for terminal output

ANSI colors, box-drawing chrome, spinners, and Claude Code tool-call framing are stripped automatically. You read the answer, not the noise.

Your eyes never move

Every word is aligned so its optimal recognition point sits on a fixed anchor. No scanning, no backtracking — just reading at 100–1000 WPM.

Code-aware

Code blocks collapse to a placeholder you can expand with Enter. File paths, inline code, and URLs stay intact as single tokens.

Reads anything on screen

Can't select the text? Drag a region like ⌘⇧5 and GigaRead OCRs it with Vision — protected apps, images, remote screens.

Keyboard-first

⌃⇧RRead the text you've selected in any app
⌃⇧VRead the clipboard
⌃⇧OSelect a screen region and OCR it
SpacePause — shows the full sentence for context
↑ ↓Speed up / slow down 25 WPM at a time
← →Jump by sentence (⇧ for paragraphs)

Every hotkey is remappable in Settings.

Installing takes 30 seconds

1

Open the disk image

Double-click GigaRead.dmg. A window opens with the app on the left, your Applications folder on the right, and an arrow pointing from one to the other. If Chrome says the file “isn't commonly downloaded,” click Keep — that's a download-popularity check, not a virus scan, and every new app trips it until enough people have grabbed it.

2

Drag GigaRead onto Applications

Follow the arrow. Don't skip this and launch it from the disk image or your Downloads folder: macOS runs an app from either spot out of a read-only copy it made, and an Accessibility grant can never stick to a copy. That's the whole reason the hotkey would otherwise keep asking for a permission the switch says it already has.

3

Open it from Applications

It opens straight away — no “could not verify this app is free of malware” warning, no trip to System Settings, no right-click-Open workaround. macOS checks Apple's notarization ticket, finds it stapled inside the app, and gets out of your way. A bolt appears in your menu bar.

4

Grant Accessibility

GigaRead asks for Accessibility access so the ⌃⇧R hotkey can see the text you've selected. Flip the switch it points you to and you're done. Because updates replace the app where it stands and keep the same signature, that grant carries across versions — if the hotkey ever stops seeing your selection, remove the GigaRead entry with the minus button and add it back.

It updates itself, in place

GigaRead checks once a day for a newer build. When there is one, the menu bar bolt turns into a download arrow and Settings tells you which version is waiting — nothing installs until you click Install.

One app, not a pile

The update replaces GigaRead where it already lives instead of leaving GigaRead 2.app in Downloads. The old copy goes to your Trash, recoverable if a build misbehaves.

Checked before it's trusted

The download is matched against a published checksum, assessed by Gatekeeper, and its signature read to confirm it's ours. Anything that doesn't line up is thrown away and your copy is left alone.

Restarts cleanly

macOS refuses to launch a second copy of an app that's already running, so the installer stops the running GigaRead first, swaps the bundle, and opens the new one.

Download GigaRead for macOS

Signed with Developer ID Brian Doran (CUH66KFZ33), notarized by Apple, and built with the hardened runtime. Reads selections via the Accessibility API. OCR runs on-device with Apple Vision. Nothing ever leaves your Mac.