HotGato Speed Reader


How to use HotGato

Bump up the font size, sit back, and relax your eyes. Do not try to read, just try to relax. Your brain will pull the words in all by itself.

When getting used to this sort of reading, use one or two paragraphs, start at 300 wpm, and reread it until you get the hang of it. It might take a few tries, but it will click for you and become easy. After that you can start experimenting with speed, chunk size, and punctuation pauses.

Everyone has different preferences for their settings, so once you found something comfortable, add new text and see what you can do!


About HotGato

  • Editable - You can edit the code to suit your needs, or fork in Github.
  • Secure - All code is client-side, you can download for offline use, and even get IT approval for use with confidential materials.
  • Accessible - Font selector includes "bionic reading" setting for ADHD and non-fungible 'cursive' fonts for Dyslexia.
  • Comfortable - Speed automatically slows for all numbers and special characters so you can read 3.89 and 3.98 with ease.
  • Thoughtful - Your settings are remembered in your browser for convenience.
  • Forkable - You are welcome to fork HotGato on Github

Note from the author

In grad school I relied on Spreeder to comb through hundreds of research papers. That would have been impossible without the service. I even submitted a suggestion for the Amazon Kindle for Android team to build the feature, and half a year later Amazon released Kindle WordRunner. Years later while working at Amazon, the doc writing culture meant dozens of Privileged & Confidential materials and no 'secure' speed reading options. HotGato was built to enable all of us to speed read in any circumstance, including for confidential materials. HotGato is entirely client-side (ONCE YOU REMOVE THE GOOGLE ANALYTICS TAG), and you can download a copy from GitHub for your IT team to review. HotGato even supports a handful of features competitors like Spreeder and WordRunner lack. I hope you enjoy.

- Robert Allen (Github) July 2023

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