For readers whose minds wander.
Every character’s dialogue has its own color, so you always know who’s speaking. The scene stays in view. An audiobook reads along. ClickTap any of the 21 books above to read the full book right here.
Free on iPhone and iPad. On Android?
Chapter I
1801.—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's Heaven—and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name.
"Mr. Heathcliff?" I said.
A nod was the answer.
"Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir. I do myself the honour of calling as soon as possible after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange: I heard yesterday you had had some thoughts—"
"Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir," he interrupted, wincing. "I should not allow any one to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it—walk in!"
Two Catherines, no confusion.
In Chromatics, each character gets a color, used for their names and dialogue. This comes in handy surprisingly often.
Wuthering Heights has a small tangled cast of characters who share names. I am serious: Catherine, Cathy, Catherine Earnshaw, and Catherine Linton are one person and Catherine, Cathy, Catherine Linton and Mrs. Heathcliff are another.
Russian novels are even harder. To a first-time reader it can feel like there are two or three times as many characters as there really are, because Dounia and Avdotya Romanovna are the same person. So are Sonia and Sofya Semyonovna. And so are Raskolnikov, Rodion Romanovitch and Rodya.
Built for wandering minds.
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In Chromatics, a quiet banner keeps us grounded in the scene: where we are, when it is, and who’s telling the story.
In Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus is walking on a Dublin beach, closing his eyes, and dragging us into his swirling consciousness. And then… three pages later we are wondering: are we still on a beach? Or are we in nuncle Richie’s house?
—No, uncle Richie...
—Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!
—Uncle Richie, really...
—Sit down or by the law Harry I’ll knock you down.
The disorientation is part of Joyce’s game. The banner keeps us immersed in the story without having to flip back to figure out where we are.
Audiobooks and immersive reading. Read by real people.
When I’ve had a day, being able to focus on the first few pages of a book can be next to impossible. Immersive reading is the practice of listening to an audiobook while simultaneously reading the physical book or e-book.
Many books in Chromatics have curated LibriVox recordings, matched to the text page by page to support exactly this. Synchronized audio is also great for when you jump in the car and just don’t want to put the book down. Then, come nine o’clock, your book is on the right page for some quiet time.
Press play below to hear Karen Savage reading Pride and Prejudice, and note the unattributed dialogue Austen loves.
"They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he: "they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters."
"Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves."
"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least."
"Ah, you do not know what I suffer."
"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood."
"It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them."
"Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all."
Keep the lines worth keeping.
We didn’t invent the commonplace book. Marcus Aurelius had one, John Locke wrote a whole indexing system for his, Virginia Woolf kept hers for decades. In Chromatics, the “keeps” you make keep their speaker’s color. Revisit them in the app, download them as CSV or Markdown, or sync them to Readwise or Notion.
If this is something you’re interested in, we’ve got a whole page about it here →
Ready the moment you open them.
Over a hundred books are ready to read, and many more featured classics are completely free to read. Pro opens the rest of the catalog and the ability to create a Chromatics edition of any of over 50,000 other public-domain classics automatically, usually within the hour.
Pride and PrejudiceJane Austen
Jane EyreCharlotte Brontë
Wuthering HeightsEmily Brontë
FrankensteinMary Shelley
Crime and PunishmentFyodor Dostoyevsky
MiddlemarchGeorge Eliot
The Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald
The Picture of Dorian GrayOscar Wilde
Anna KareninaLeo Tolstoy
A Tale of Two CitiesCharles Dickens
The Brothers KaramazovFyodor Dostoevsky
SymposiumPlato
Plain pricing.
Free
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The featured classics, complete — the colors, the banner, the audio, every theme, keeps and exports. Wuthering Heights, Crime and Punishment, and The Great Gatsby are on the shelf now.
Pro
$4.99 a month · $29.99 a year, the first 14 days free · $79 once, as a Founding Reader
For the editions that don’t exist yet: any public-domain book in the catalog turned into a color-coded edition on request, and a ping the moment it is ready.
Questions
Is Chromatics free?
Yes. The featured classics are free to read in full, with the colors, the banner, the audio and your keeps. Pro is for turning any other public-domain book into an edition.
Where do the books and recordings come from?
The texts are from Project Gutenberg. The audiobooks are LibriVox recordings, read by human volunteers and matched to the page.
Is it on Android?
Not yet. Chromatics is on iPhone and iPad. Leave an email and we will write to you once, when it ships.
Does it work offline?
Yes. A book you have downloaded in the app stays readable without a connection.