Helicon is a reader for the non-fiction you want to keep. Open a PDF or an EPUB, pin notes in the margin, and meet what mattered again a few days later. Helicon is free. Every feature, every pin. No account, no ads. NOTES IN THE MARGIN Long press the margin to pin a note beside the line it is about. Type in it, draw in it with Apple Pencil or a finger, add a photo, or record your voice. Tap the pin and the note opens where you left it. MARK WHAT MATTERS Select text to highlight it or look it up. Save a line as a pin: a claim, a term or a question. A pin asks for one sentence in your own words, so you keep fewer marks, and better ones. Write on a PDF with Apple Pencil, with inks, shapes, a ruler and an eraser. Snip a figure out of a page. READ FASTER Speed read lights a line, a group of words, or both, and moves at your pace. It opens paused on the first line in view: tap a line to begin there, then tap Play. Change the pace in steps of 5, 10 or 25 words a minute. It waits while the page scrolls, so your eyes can find the line, and the screen stays on while it runs. MEET IT AGAIN Review brings back the pins that are due. Not yet brings one back tomorrow. Got it spaces it out. Jump to the page from any card. KEEP YOUR PLACE Helicon keeps your page, your zoom and your place on the page. Pick from 4 light and 4 dark page themes. Your library syncs between iPhone and iPad through your own iCloud. Search finds the author's words and your own. Export a book's pins as Markdown, to anywhere the share sheet reaches. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO There is no account and no sign-up. There is no Helicon server: your books and notes stay on your devices and in your own iCloud. Helicon counts which features are used, and never sends a title or anything you write. There are no ads. Crash reports come from Apple's own system, are written to a file on your device, and are sent only if you choose to send one.
Find a note by what you wrote or said. - Search finds a margin note by the words in its handwriting or in its audio recording. A recording shows what you said under the player, turned into text on your device. - Add photo in a note works again. It opens your photos, and the one you pick goes into the note. - Speed reading works in EPUB books too, paged or scrolled. - Speed reading waits a little at sentence ends, can group words by letters, and shows a focus letter. You choose how dark the rest of the page goes. It shows the time left in the chapter. - Tap the right edge of the page to read faster, and the left edge to read slower. - Choose 1 to 9 words at a time on the speed-reading bar. The controls hide while it plays; tap the page to pause and bring them back. - At the end of a run, leave a note to review later. - Select a word, and every other place it is in the book gets an underline. Save a word, and Apple Intelligence writes what it means in its sentence, on your device. - Fixes: highlights show on dark pages. A PDF opens at the full page width. A note's pin never hides under the reader's controls. Deleting the last note in a PDF takes its pin off the page. A to-do takes your typing while the drawing tools are open. A PDF you share to Helicon keeps its file name. In an EPUB, the lit words stay on their words while a chapter loads, and a word split over two lines lights as one.
| Size | 24.4 MB |
|---|---|
| Initial release | |
| Price | Free |
| Platforms | iPhone and iPad |
| Languages | English |
| Category | Productivity |
| Website | helicon.pages.dev |
| Compatibility | |
|---|---|
| iPhone | Requires iOS 26.0 or later. |
| iPad | Requires iPadOS 26.0 or later. |
| Mac | Requires macOS 26.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. |
| Apple Vision | Requires visionOS 26.0 or later. |
App's data is regularly updated.
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