Frequently asked questions

Readback is a Chrome extension that quietly captures the readable text of pages you actually read, indexes them on your own device, and lets you semantic-search and ask AI questions across your own reading — with cited answers.

Four ways:

• Automatically — Readback saves pages you genuinely engage with (see "Which pages get captured automatically?" below).
• The "+ Save current page" button at the top of the side panel.
• Right-click on a page, a link, or selected text and choose "Save to Readback."
• Keyboard shortcut — Alt+Shift+M (⌘+Shift+M on Mac).

It's optional. Scan history asks permission to read your browser history, then re-fetches your most-visited pages and adds the readable ones to your library — so search works from day one instead of starting empty.

Because it works from your history rather than from live reading, it can pull in pages that aren't clean articles. You can run it, re-run it, or skip it anytime from Settings.

Only pages you actually engage with: roughly 25 seconds of dwell time, real scrolling, and real readable text. Pages you bounce off of, and pages with no article text, are skipped. Browse in an Incognito window if you don't want a page captured.

Local-first. The pages you save, their search index, and their embeddings all live in your browser, on your own device. Nothing about your reading leaves your machine unless you click Ask.

Ask lets you pose a question in plain English and get a cited answer drawn from your own saved reading. When you Ask, your question and the most relevant excerpts from your library are sent to Anthropic's Claude to generate the answer. Read more in our Privacy Policy.

Open Settings and click "Delete everything" to remove every captured page and embedding from your device (and your cloud copy, if cloud sync is on). Uninstalling the extension also removes the local data.

Readback has a generous free tier, and an affordable Pro plan for heavier use and extras like cloud sync. Waitlist members get a founding-member discount on Pro when we launch. Exact pricing is shown in Settings inside the extension.

Cloud sync is a Pro feature: it backs up your saved reading and lets you restore it on another device. Turn it on under Settings → Cloud Sync.

Google Chrome and Chromium-based browsers (Edge, Brave, Arc) that support the Chrome Web Store and side panel.

Email support@getreadback.com — we read every message.