Welcome to Bindle

Bindle is a read-later app. You save links and articles from anywhere, then read them, listen to them, search them, and organize them later, on whichever device is at hand, online or off.

Your library lives on your own devices. There is no Bindle account, no Bindle server, and no cloud. Your iPhone, iPad, and Mac pair once into a personal circle, and after that they sync directly with each other whenever they meet over your local network or Bluetooth. No company holds your library, so no company can take it away.

What Makes Bindle Different

Read-later services have shut down before and taken their users' libraries with them. Bindle is built so that can't happen to you. These principles shape every feature:

Bindle fetches the pages you save, their pictures and icons, and the voice files its natural voice needs. Other than that, it talks only to your own devices. Privacy and Troubleshooting has the details.

Where Bindle Runs

Bindle runs on iPhone, iPad, and the Mac. It needs iOS 18, iPadOS 18, or macOS 15 or later. Each app follows the conventions of its device, so the same library looks a little different on each:

• iPhone: Tabs along the bottom of the screen.
• iPad: A sidebar at full width, and tabs in a narrow window such as Slide Over or a small Split View.
• Mac: A sidebar, a menu bar full of commands, and extras such as a menu bar item, Quick Add, and AppleScript. See Bindle on the Mac.

To get your devices talking to each other, see Your Devices.

Getting Around on iPhone

On iPhone, Bindle has tabs along the bottom:

Tap a link to see its details. They slide in over the list, and Back returns you to it. The reader covers the whole screen and can collapse into a bar at the bottom, so you can browse the library and come back to the article. See Reading.

Getting Around on iPad and Mac

On iPad and the Mac, a sidebar runs down the left side of the window. At the top are the same places as the iPhone's tabs: Links, Books (while Books is on), Collections, Ask, and Settings. Under them are three sections.

Library

The Library section holds the lists Bindle keeps for you. Each shows a count.

Collections and Tags

Under Library come your collections, with collections inside others indented beneath them, and then every tag you use, each with its count. A collection's context menu has New Collection Inside, Edit, Remind Me, and Delete. With no collections yet, the section holds a New Collection row to start one. See Organizing.

You can drop a link from another app onto a tag in the sidebar to save it with that tag, or onto Up Next to save it at the end of your queue.

Arrange the Sidebar

Each section collapses, so a long list of tags can stay folded away.

Mac: Drag the sidebar's edge to make it wider, so long names and counts fit.

iPad: Choose Edit Sidebar to drag items and sections into a new order, or to hide ones you don't use. When you hide the sidebar, it becomes a tab bar along the top of the window, which shows Links, Collections, Ask, and Settings (and Books, while it is on).

The arrangement is kept on each device and doesn't sync, so your iPad and Mac can each be set up their own way. Renaming a collection keeps its place.

Mac: The details of a link open in an inspector on the right side of the window. Settings is part of the window too: choose Bindle > Settings, or press Command-Comma.

Bindle Reopens Where You Left It

When you open Bindle again, each window comes back where you left it, even after your device closed Bindle in the background, after an update, or after you closed it yourself. It brings back:

• the tab or sidebar item, and the list you had chosen: a filter, a tag, a collection, Reminders, Nearby, or Dead Links,
• what was open over the list: a link's details, Downloads, an Ask conversation, Today's highlights, or a page of Settings such as Voices,
• what you had typed in search,
• the article you were reading, at your place, covering the screen or in the reader bar as you left it. Bindle never starts reading aloud on its own.

Anything deleted since, on this device or another, is left out, and Bindle shows the list it was in instead. A widget, a notification, a shortcut, or a link you open Bindle with goes where it points instead.

iPad: Each window comes back as it was. A window you open new starts at your library. If a window was wide and is now narrow, a collection, Reminders, Nearby, or Dead Links opens in the Collections tab.

Mac: If "Close windows when quitting an application" is on in System Settings > Desktop & Dock, Bindle opens one window, where the window you used last was. With it off, every window comes back.

If Bindle closes unexpectedly twice in a row right after opening, the next time it opens at your library instead, in case what it was reopening is the problem.

The Welcome Link

A brand new library isn't empty. Bindle saves one link for you the first time it opens on a device with no library: the Wikipedia article about bindles, titled "Bindle". It gives you a card to open, read, and try things on.

It is an ordinary link. It gets its picture and offline copy like any other, and you can read it, archive it, or delete it. It syncs like any link, so two devices that each saved it end up with one copy once they meet. An existing library never gets it.

Feature Introductions

Now and then Bindle introduces a feature with a card: what it does, why it helps, and a button to turn it on, with Not Now beside it. Each card shows once per device. Closing it any way counts as Not Now, and it never comes back. You can still turn the feature on in Settings later.

Cards wait until you have saved a link of your own, so the welcome link alone never brings one up. These are the cards:

Keyboard Shortcuts at a Glance

With a keyboard on iPad, or on the Mac, Bindle has a shortcut for almost everything. Press ? in the library, a link's details, or the reader, or press Command-/ anywhere, to see them all on one sheet. Done closes it.

The sheet groups them by where they work: the list, details, highlight review, reading, the reader, speed reading, and everywhere. Keyboard Shortcuts lists them all too.

A Quick Tour

Here is how a first day with Bindle might go.

1. Open Bindle. The welcome link is waiting in Links. Tap it to see its details, then choose Read Offline to read it in the reader.
2. In Safari, find an article you want to read later. Tap Share, then Bindle. Add a tag if you like, and tap Save. See Saving Links for every other way in.
3. Back in Bindle, the article is at the top of the list. Bindle starts saving an offline copy of it right away (on cellular, only if you allow it), so you can read it later with no connection.
4. Start reading. Once you have read 90% of an article, Bindle marks it read. To come back to it later, star it, or swipe it into Up Next.
5. Done with it? Archive it. It drops into a little archive box, and Undo is right there if you change your mind.
6. Pair your iPad or Mac from Settings. From then on, every link, highlight, and reading position follows you between them. See Your Devices.
7. On the way home, choose Listen on an article and let Bindle read it to you. See Listening.