Helicon

Notes in the margin of every PDF.

A free PDF and EPUB reader for textbooks and papers, on iPad and iPhone. Hold a finger beside a line, and a pin keeps your note there.

No account. For iPhone and iPad with iOS 26 or later.

Download on the App Store

A pin is a whole notebook.

Type in it, draw in it with Apple Pencil or a finger, and keep drawing: when you get near the end, a new page opens below. Add a checklist, a photo, or your voice. Snip a figure off the page and draw on top of it.

  • Typing
  • Apple Pencil
  • Handwriting to text
  • Checklists
  • Photos
  • Voice
  • Snipped figures

Give a pin a kind, so you see what it is from across the page: Note, Question, Idea or Action.

One pin for the whole book.

Some thoughts are not about one page. The book pin holds them: the questions you bring to the book, a to-do list, a note to read later. It stays on screen as you turn pages, wherever you drag it.

Read faster, with a guide.

Speed reading lights the words in front of your eyes and moves at your pace. Your eyes follow the light, and stop going back over lines you already read.

Four styles
Light the line, a group of words, or both. Or show the words large in the middle of the screen.
Your pace
Set the words a minute, and change it in steps of 5, 10 or 25. Tap the right edge of the page to read faster, and the left edge to read slower.
Start anywhere
Tap a line to start there. Tap the lit line to pause.

All your books, on all your devices.

Helicon keeps your library in your own iCloud. Add a paper on your iPad, and it is on your iPhone too, with your pins, highlights and notes. No account to make, and no server of ours in between.

Remember what you read.

Review brings your pins back a few days later and asks your own questions again, so you remember what you read. Find searches the author's words and your own. Export a book's notes as Markdown, for your notes app.

  • PDF and EPUB
  • Text from scanned pages
  • Your place and zoom, kept
  • 4 light and 4 dark page themes

Your reading stays yours.

Your books, pins and notes stay on your device and in your own iCloud. We never see them. We count page visits and which features people use, with no book titles and no note text. When you join the beta, we keep your email to know who tests. The privacy policy says the rest.

Pin your first note.

Download on the App Store

Try the next version early on TestFlight

Or get the beta link and news by email.

We write only about Helicon.