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

v1.2.0 · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon & Intel · 0.7 MB

Try it right now

This
380 WPM
space pause speed sentencesesc reset

click the reader first so it hears your keyboard

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 a minute

1

Download and unzip

Grab the zip below and double-click it. Drag GigaRead.app to your Applications folder.

2

Tell macOS it's okay

GigaRead is free and independently built — it isn't notarized through Apple's paid developer program, so macOS shows its standard “could not verify this app is free of malware” warning. That's Apple flagging the unknown, not a detection. Click Done (not Move to Trash), open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down, click “Open Anyway” next to GigaRead, and confirm. You only do this once. If your browser also warns about the download, choose Keep.

3

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 — a bolt appears in your menu bar.

Download GigaRead for macOS

Reads selections via the Accessibility API. OCR runs on-device with Apple Vision. Nothing ever leaves your Mac.