The Recitare Guide

Recitare turns anything you have to read into something you can listen to, with an AI study partner named Max who reads it aloud, explains the hard parts, and helps you revise. Here is the whole loop, start to finish.

1. 1Create a free account. No credit card, and you start with a welcome grant of audio so you can listen to a full paper or two right away.
2. 2Add a document (drag a PDF in, paste a link, or browse a paper library, covered in the next section).
3. 3Pick a voice and press play. The words highlight one by one as they are read, so your eyes and ears stay in sync.
4. 4When something is dense, ask Max, open a summary, or make a study guide. Everything is one click from the reading screen.

Where to find it: Everything below lives on the reading screen once a document is open.

There are three ways to get something into Recitare. All of them land you on the same reading screen.

1. 1Upload a file: drag and drop, or click to browse. Supported formats are PDF, Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), plain text (.txt), and images (JPG, PNG, TIFF), which are read with OCR.
2. 2Paste a web link: drop in the URL of an article or webpage and Recitare pulls out the readable text.
3. 3Browse papers: search academic sources (arXiv, PubMed) and open classics from Project Gutenberg without leaving the app.

Where to find it: The upload area is the first thing you see on the dashboard after signing in.

This is the heart of Recitare. As Max reads, each word lights up in time with the audio (karaoke-style highlighting), and the page scrolls itself so you never lose your place.

1. 1Use the playback bar: Stop, Skip Back, Play/Pause, and Skip Forward. Skip moves a sentence at a time so you can re-hear a line or jump ahead.
2. 2Choose a voice: six voices across American, British, and Australian accents. Open the voice selector to switch anytime.
3. 3Set your speed: slow it down for a tricky method section or speed it up for review. Your place and highlighting stay perfectly in sync at any speed.
4. 4Toggle quality: a Basic and Premium switch lets you pick the voice model. Premium uses the highest-quality, most expressive delivery.

Where to find it: The controls bar sits just above the text while a document is open.

The same document can be shown four ways. Switch freely, your listening position carries over.

1. 1Original: the document as it really looks, on a clean paper card you can zoom in and out.
2. 2Reader: an edge-to-edge, distraction-free layout with generous line spacing for comfortable reading.
3. 3Flow State: reflows the page into clean, flowing text, ideal for dense PDFs on a small screen.
4. 4Document (PDF): the true PDF with the current passage highlighted and page navigation, so you can see figures and layout while you listen.

Where to find it: The view toggle is in the toolbar on the left of the reading screen.

Modes keep the screen uncluttered by showing only the tools that fit what you are doing right now. There are five.

1. 1Listen: clean playback with sentence highlighting, nothing else in the way.
2. 2Study: Max pauses to check your understanding with comprehension questions and coaching as you go.
3. 3Exam: the revision tools front and center, summaries, study guides, and quizzes.
4. 4Research: paper breakdown plus the text-analysis toolkit (see Research Mode below).
5. 5Simplify: tap any sentence for a plain-English version of it, with the original still on screen. Works sentence by sentence, on demand, so you choose what gets rewritten.

Where to find it: The mode picker is in the toolbar. Recitare may suggest a mode based on your document.

Max is the AI woven through Recitare. He reads aloud, answers questions about your material, and builds your study tools. Max adapts his energy to match how you are working: focused, hyped, or analytical, and speaks 14+ languages, detecting your document's language automatically.

1. 1Ask a question: open the chat and ask anything about the document. Answers come back with verified [Page X] citations so you can check the source.
2. 2Ask while listening: tap the raise-your-hand button mid-playback to ask a quick question without losing your place.
3. 3Let Max lead: in Study mode, Max quizzes you Socratically instead of just narrating.

Where to find it: Open Ask from the reading toolbar; the raise-your-hand button appears while audio plays.

Turn any document into revision material in a click. Free includes a daily allowance; Scholar and Researcher unlock the full set.

1. 1AI Summary: a clean summary with key document details. Great for deciding whether a paper is worth a deep read.
2. 2Study Guide: five formats, Key Concepts, Full Study Guide, Timeline/Flow, FAQ, and Practice Problems. Free includes Key Concepts; paid plans unlock all five.
3. 3Flashcards: flip-card review built from your study guide, right in the app, and you can send a real deck to Anki.
4. 4Audio Overview: a podcast-style conversation between two AI voices that discuss your document (a Researcher feature).

Where to find it: These live in the reading toolbar and open as panels over your document.

Figures, charts, and equations are where reading gets stuck. Snap-to-Explain lets you select any region of a PDF and have Max explain exactly what is in it, like a tutor looking over your shoulder.

1. 1Choose the Snap tool and drag a box around the diagram or equation.
2. 2Recitare captures that region at high resolution (300 DPI) so fine detail and small text read correctly.
3. 3Max explains it in a side panel and can read the explanation aloud. Add it to your notes with one click.

Where to find it: The Snap tool is available in the PDF reading view on the Researcher plan.

A quiet toolkit for triaging papers, built for literature reviews but useful to anyone. It runs entirely in your browser, no waiting on the network.

1. 1Word Cloud: the most distinctive terms, sized by importance. Click one to explore it.
2. 2Term Heatmap: see where a term concentrates across the pages, and jump to that page.
3. 3Context (KWIC): every place a term appears, shown with the words around it.
4. 4Collocates: the words that tend to appear near your chosen term more than chance would predict.

Where to find it: Open Research Mode from the toolbar; expand it full-screen when you want to dig in.

Nothing is trapped inside Recitare. Take your summaries, guides, and flashcards wherever you study.

1. 1Export to Markdown for a clean text file.
2. 2Copy as rich text and paste straight into Notion, Goodnotes, or a doc with formatting intact.
3. 3Save as PDF for a printable version.
4. 4Send flashcards to Anki as a real .apkg deck.

Where to find it: The export bar sits on the Summary and Study Guide panels.

Everything you open is saved so you can come back to it, and picks up right where you left off.

1. 1Reopen anytime: your documents wait in your library, with your listening position remembered.
2. 2Delete a document: it moves to a recoverable state for 30 days, then is permanently removed. Reopen it within that window and nothing is lost.
3. 3Delete your account: this removes your documents and data. Everything is recoverable for 30 days if you change your mind, then permanently deleted.

Where to find it: Your library is on the dashboard; deletion options are on each document and in your Account page.

Recitare quietly remembers your reading for you. The moment you add a paper it earns a capsule: a one-line summary, its key terms, and a ready-made citation. Listen for a few minutes and the capsule grows into a full reading record with your stopping point and a next-day recall check. You don't take notes or press anything.

1. 1Add a paper: within a minute of upload it has its capsule — summary, key terms, and citation — before you've read a word.
2. 2Read as usual: after about five minutes of listening (or one Snap-to-Explain), the capsule becomes a full reading record and the next-day recall email unlocks.
3. 3Find it in your library: an amber “Reading record” chip appears next to the paper in My Documents. Click it to see the summary and key terms at a glance, handy when you're deciding what to revisit.
4. 4Copy the citation: each record includes a ready-made Harvard reference, so referencing a paper is one click, not ten minutes of formatting. Papers with a DOI get a reference checked against the official publication record and marked “DOI verified”. Papers without one (some DOCX files, book chapters, older scans) get a best-effort citation built from the document itself — give those a quick look before they go into anything you submit.
5. 5Get a next-day recall check: the day after you read, Max sends one short email with a quick “can you still recall…” prompt and a button that takes you straight back to where you left off. Revisiting a paper the day after you read it is one of the best-evidenced ways to make it stick.
6. 6Stay in control: at most one email a day, every email has a one-click unsubscribe, and deleting a document permanently deletes its reading record with it.
7. 7Ask your whole library: the question bar at the top of your library (and on the dashboard) answers across every paper you've added — where they agree, where they pull against each other, what the evidence says. Max draws only on your papers, never the open web, and cites the paper and page for every claim.

Where to find it: The record chip lives in My Documents; the recall email arrives in your inbox the day after you read.

There is no app to install. Recitare is a website that works beautifully on a phone, so you can listen at your desk, while cooking, or at the gym.

1. 1Open recitare.app in Safari or Chrome on your phone and sign into the same account. Your library, playback, and highlighting are all there.
2. 2For an app-like feel, use the browser Share menu, then Add to Home Screen. Recitare gets its own icon and opens full-screen.
3. 3Audio keeps playing with the screen off and shows lock-screen controls, just like a podcast.

Where to find it: Any mobile browser, using the same login as your computer.

Your documents are yours. Here is what happens to them.

1. 1Documents are stored encrypted (in transit and at rest) so your library and audio replay work.
2. 2Personal identifiers are automatically redacted before your text is sent for AI analysis (questions, summaries, study guides). Listening audio is spoken exactly as written, protected by our providers' no-training terms.
3. 3Your content is never used to train AI models.
4. 4You can permanently delete any document, or your whole account, at any time.

Where to find it: Full details are on the Trust page and in the Privacy Policy.

Start free and upgrade only if you need more listening or the full study suite.

1. 1Free ($0): a one-time welcome grant, then 1,000 words a week, with the six voices and core tools.
2. 2Scholar ($9/mo): 100,000 words a month, roughly 12 to 16 papers or about 11 hours of listening, all voices, and the full set of AI study tools. Recommended for most readers.
3. 3Researcher ($18/mo): 300,000 words a month, for graduate students and intensive readers with a substantial monthly literature load. Your first 200,000 English words each month use the premium voice, then a natural standard voice takes over (other languages always use the premium voice). Plus Snap-to-Explain and Audio Overviews.

Where to find it: Compare everything on the Pricing page; manage or cancel anytime from your Account.

Stuck, or have an idea? We read everything, and during testing your feedback shapes what we build next.

1. 1Use the feedback button inside the app to send us a note directly, it lands straight in our inbox.
2. 2Email support@recitare.app for account or billing questions.
3. 3Browse the Support page for quick answers to common questions.

Where to find it: The feedback button is always within reach inside the app.