Speed Reader (RSVP) for Obsidian

Read a note or selected text one word at a time using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), with an optimal recognition point (ORP) highlight, adjustable speed, smart pauses, chunking, saved positions, reading statistics, and optional text-to-speech. Requires Obsidian 1.13.0 or newer.

Russian version: README.ru.md

Features

Spritz-style presentation

• Redicle alignment (35/65) keeps the focus letter at 35% from the left edge, so long word endings do not push the word out of view. A centered 50/50 mode is also available.
• ORP highlight marks the optimal recognition point with a configurable color and a width of one to three letters.
• Variable timing by word length: very short words (1-2 letters) are shown 20% faster, medium words (3-8) at normal speed, long words (9-12) 15% slower, and extra-long words (13+) 35% slower.
• Fixation guides frame the word and can be turned off.

Pacing and rhythm

• Speed ramp-up starts at 65% of the target speed and reaches it over the first 15 words.
• Rewind on pause steps three words back, so the context is never lost.
• Pauses on punctuation, paragraph breaks, numbers, and acronyms use configurable multipliers.

Chunking and bionic reading

• Show one, two, or three words per frame.
• Optionally bold the first part of each word inside a chunk (bionic reading).

Speech

• The speaker button and the M key toggle text-to-speech through the platform Web Speech API, at a rate proportional to the chosen WPM.
• Speech uses installed system voices, is approximate rather than word-synchronized, and may use online services depending on your system settings. Check those settings before reading sensitive notes.

Progress, cursor, and statistics

• The reading position is remembered per note and saved while reading, on pause, and on close.
• On close, the editor cursor moves to the word being read.
• Show speed reading statistics reports words read, time spent, top speed, and estimated time saved relative to 200 WPM. The saving is an estimate, not a measure or a guarantee of comprehension.

Reading fonts

• Golos Text has a large x-height, open apertures, and full Cyrillic and Latin coverage. It is the recommended choice for Russian text.
• Atkinson Hyperlegible distinguishes similar letter shapes but has no Cyrillic, so Russian words fall back to another font; it suits Latin text only.
• Both fonts are embedded in styles.css as data URIs, so nothing is loaded from the network. OFL license texts are in fonts/.
• The font is selected in Settings - Speed Reader (RSVP) - Reader font; the default is the theme font.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
Space	Start or pause (with rewind)
M or the Russian Ь	Toggle text-to-speech
Up / Down	Increase or decrease speed by 25 WPM
Left / Right	Jump by the configured number of words
[ / ]	Move to the previous or next sentence
R or the Russian К	Restart from the first word
Esc	Close the reader (saves progress and cursor)

Installation

Download the three files from a single GitHub release, or build them with npm ci and npm run check.

1. Create <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/rsvp-speed-reader/ (or use your vault's custom configuration directory).
2. Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into that folder.
3. Restart Obsidian, then enable Speed Reader (RSVP) in Settings - Community plugins.
4. If an older manual installation used the folder obsidian-speed-reader, disable it, back up data.json, and rename the folder to rsvp-speed-reader. Keep data.json to retain settings and progress. Do not enable two copies.

Usage

Open a Markdown note, optionally select a passage, and click the book icon in the ribbon. Alternatively use the command palette:

• Speed read current selection or active note - reads the selection if there is one, the whole note otherwise;
• Speed read selected text - reads only the selection;
• Speed read entire active note - reads the whole note;
• Show speed reading statistics - shows your counters;
• Run self-check - opens and closes a short probe window, checks parsing, offsets, timing, navigation, progress bounds, and the reader window itself, then reports how many steps passed.

Selected text also has a Speed read selection item in the editor context menu.

Settings

• Speed: default WPM, step size, speed ramp-up, rewinds.
• Display: theme, reader font, font size, ORP color, ORP width, fixation guides.
• Pacing: punctuation, comma, paragraph, number, and acronym multipliers.
• Chunking: words per frame and bionic bolding.
• Progress: remember position, sync the cursor on close, show pause statistics.
• Speech: enable or disable text-to-speech.

The settings tab uses the declarative settings API, so its controls appear in Obsidian's settings search.

Development and releases

Use Node.js 24 or newer and npm. npm ci installs dependencies; npm run check type-checks, lints, tests, and builds; npm run test:coverage prints coverage for the pure logic modules.

The registered plugin ID is rsvp-speed-reader and must remain unchanged. To publish, commit the changes and push a tag matching the version in manifest.json (for example 1.0.3, without a v prefix). The release workflow verifies the metadata, builds from that tag, creates GitHub artifact attestations for the assets, and publishes main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css.

License

Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0). See LICENSE. In short: you may use, modify, and redistribute the plugin, including in closed-source projects, but modifications to these MPL-covered files must stay under the MPL and be made available.