iPhone · iPad · Mac · Private beta
It doesn't sell you books. There's no store, no feed, no recommendations, no reading streak. You bring the EPUBs and PDFs you already have, and it gives them a reader worth using — one that opens without an account and works with the router unplugged.
We built it as Inkling. Then a large AI company shipped a model with the same name, which is a bad neighbour for a quiet reading app. It is Capybara now — same app, same team, different sign on the door. If you followed a link to the old name, you are in the right place.
What it looks like
The three that matter
01
Ask who a character is or what happened in book two, and you get an answer built only from the pages you have actually read. What's ahead of your bookmark isn't summarised, hinted at, or hedged — it shows up as a sealed count and nothing more. It runs on Apple's on-device models, so the question and the book never leave your phone.
Apple devices with Apple Intelligence
02
Write in the margins with Apple Pencil the way you would in a paperback — pen, marker, a real eraser, pressure and all. Each stroke is anchored to the sentence it sits beside, so it stays put when you change the font size. Open the same book in a browser and your ink is still there.
iPad with Apple Pencil
03
Most libraries quietly mangle metadata and let you find out later. This one reads what's actually embedded in the file, and when it isn't confident it sets the book aside and asks you instead of guessing. Every import leaves a receipt you can read, so no book ever silently goes missing.
Every platform
The rest of it
Save a whole look — type, spacing, margins, warmth — as a named room. Bedside. Study desk. Migraine calm. Switch in one tap and get back exactly the page you like.
Three red-shifted night themes that dim and warm the book covers too, so opening the library at 2am doesn't blind you.
Highlights, notes, ink, and voice memos collect in one searchable notebook across every book — and export to plain Markdown or JSON whenever you want them elsewhere.
Talk instead of typing. Transcription runs on your device with no cloud fallback, so the audio never reaches a server — not even ours.
Listen with the current sentence highlighted as it's spoken, with lock-screen controls and a sleep timer. Hand off between reading and listening without losing your place.
EPUB, PDF, CBZ, and more. Run it entirely on your own machine if you like — it speaks OPDS, so other readers can borrow from your library too.
Privacy
Open a file and start reading. There's no sign-up wall, no email capture, and no server involved in local reading at all.
The reading companion, the recaps, the voice transcription, and the handwriting recognition all run on Apple's on-device models. Your books and your questions stay with you.
When sync arrives it rides your own iCloud private database. Your notes are encrypted to your Apple account, and we have no way to see them.
There is no analytics pipeline and nothing to sell. The business model is you paying us for an app, which we think is the honest one.
Where it actually is
Shipping today
The reader, the library, notes and highlights, the notebook, read-aloud, and the import pipeline. It runs a real 4,000-book library every day.
In private beta
The iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps. Small internal group only — no App Store listing yet, and no public TestFlight.
Not built yet
Moving book files between your devices (notes and progress sync first), premium voices, and an Android app. We'd rather say so than imply otherwise.
Private beta
We're taking a small group of readers first — people who'll actually tell us when something is wrong. If that's you, email us and say a little about what and how you read. Requires iOS 18 or macOS 15; the on-device AI features need Apple Intelligence.
Ask for an inviteFAQ
Yes — Inkling, until an AI company shipped a model by that name. The app is Capybara now. Nothing changed but the wordmark.
You. It's a reader for files you already own — EPUBs, PDFs, and a long tail of other formats. There's no store, and we don't sell or supply books.
Yes. Local reading needs no server and no account. Downloads resume if they're interrupted, and notes you make offline are queued and saved when you reconnect.
That's the plan, through your own iCloud, and it covers notes, highlights, and reading position. Moving the book files themselves comes in a later update — for now a book shows on your other device as a greyed-out row.
It's built so it can't. The companion only draws on text up to your furthest-read position; anything past that is sealed and shown as a count, not a summary. That constraint is the feature.
The reader itself is free forever — unlimited books, notes, highlights, themes, and read-aloud with device voices, with no account required. Capybara Plus adds iCloud sync and the reading companion for $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial and Family Sharing. You buy it through Apple; we never see a payment detail.