Claritea User Guide

📚Overview

Claritea is a reading wellness app that combines book tracking, biometric insights, social features, and self-hosted integrations. It's built for readers who want more than a reading log — who want to understand how reading affects their body and mind.

📱Platforms

Claritea runs on four platforms, each with capabilities suited to the device:

🚀First Steps

1. Create an account — Sign up with email or Apple Sign-In.
2. Add books — Search for a book, scan a barcode, or import from Goodreads CSV.
3. Set your shelves — Mark books as "Want to Read", "Currently Reading", or "Finished".
4. Start a session — Open a book and tap "Start Reading" to begin tracking.
5. Connect health — Link Apple Health or Google Health Connect for biometric insights.

📚Your Library

Your library is the central hub for all your books. Every book you add goes onto a shelf with a reading status.

Shelves

• Currently Reading — Books you're actively reading.
• Want to Read — Your TBR (to-be-read) list.
• Finished — Completed books with optional ratings and reviews.
• Paused — Books you've put on hold.
• Did Not Finish — Books you chose to stop reading.

Custom Shelves

Create unlimited custom shelves to organize books your way. Each shelf gets an emoji icon and a custom name. Add books to multiple shelves via the context menu or book detail page.

Favorites

Mark any book as a favorite (gold heart icon). Filter your library to show only favorites using the Favorites filter pill.

Custom Covers

Don't like a book's cover? Upload your own. Right-click a book (Mac) or long-press (mobile) and choose "Add Custom Cover." Supports PNG, JPEG, and WebP.

⏱Reading Sessions

Reading sessions track your time, pages, mood, and (optionally) biometric data.

Starting a Session

1. Open a book from your library.
2. Tap Start Reading (or Continue Reading if you have progress).
3. A timer begins. Read your physical or digital book.
4. When done, tap End Session.
5. Log your ending page, select a mood, and optionally write a note.

Focus Mode

Focus mode provides a distraction-free environment with ambient sounds, a minimal timer, and optional screen dimming. Great for ADHD readers who need help staying engaged.

Session Summary

After each session, you'll see a summary with: duration, pages read, reading speed, mood, and (if health is connected) your calm score with heart rate data.

📖Built-in E-Reader

Read EPUB files directly in Claritea. Import EPUBs via file picker, drag-and-drop (Mac), or download from your Calibre server.

Reader Features

• Customizable typography — Font size, font family, line spacing, margins.
• Dark/sepia/light themes — Comfortable reading in any lighting.
• Highlighting — Select text to highlight with color coding.
• Text-to-speech — Have any EPUB read aloud with adjustable speed.
• Progress tracking — Automatic page/chapter progress sync.

🎧Audiobooks

Claritea supports audiobooks from two sources: your self-hosted Audiobookshelf server and free public domain recordings from LibriVox.

Audiobookshelf (Self-Hosted)

Connect to your Audiobookshelf server to browse and stream your entire audiobook library. Progress syncs bidirectionally — listen in Claritea, pick up where you left off in any other ABS client, and vice versa.

• Browse libraries — See all your ABS libraries and books with covers.
• Stream playback — Play directly, no download required.
• Chapter navigation — Jump between chapters, see progress per chapter.
• Speed control — 0.5x to 2.5x playback speed.
• Sleep timer — Auto-pause after 5 to 90 minutes.
• 2-way progress sync — Listen on any device, progress stays in sync.
• Upload to ABS — Send audiobook files from Claritea to your ABS server.

LibriVox (Free Classics)

Discover thousands of free public domain audiobooks read by volunteers. Search by title or author, and start listening instantly.

Player Controls

• Play / Pause
• Skip forward 30s / backward 15s
• Next / previous chapter
• Playback speed (0.5x — 2.5x)
• Sleep timer (5, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 min)
• Chapter list with progress indicator
• Mini-player bar (persists while navigating)

📝Highlights & Notes

Save meaningful passages from your reading. Highlights can be created in the e-reader (select text), manually entered, or imported from Readwise.

• Color coding — Yellow, green, blue, purple, and red highlight colors.
• Notes — Add personal thoughts to any highlight.
• Tags — Organize highlights with custom tags.
• Export — Export highlights to Readwise or as plain text.
• Browse — View all highlights across all books in the Highlights tab.

💚Biometric Tracking

Claritea reads your heart rate, HRV (heart rate variability), respiratory rate, and step count during reading sessions to calculate how reading affects your body.

What's Tracked

• Heart rate — Average, min, max during session.
• HRV — Heart rate variability as an indicator of relaxation.
• Respiratory rate — Breathing pace during reading.
• Steps — Activity level before/after reading.

Setup

Go to Settings > Health and connect Apple Health (iOS) or Google Health Connect (Android). Grant the requested permissions. Wear your Apple Watch or compatible wearable while reading for best results.

🧘Focus Score

The Focus Score (formerly Calm Score) is a 0-100 metric that measures how focused and relaxed your reading session was, calculated from your heart rate, HRV, and session duration. Higher scores indicate deeper engagement and relaxation.

• 90-100: Deep focus. Your body was in a restorative, engaged state.
• 70-89: Relaxed focus. A good, productive session.
• 50-69: Moderate. Some tension or distraction present.
• Below 50: Active. The book may have been exciting or you were restless.

Track your Focus Score trends over time in the Wellness tab to see which books and reading environments help you focus most. The Focus Score also feeds into the Focus Score Leaderboard if you opt in.

🎵Focus Sounds

Ambient soundscapes to help you focus while reading. Choose from rain, fireplace, cafe, ocean, forest, white noise, and more. Adjust volume independently from audiobook playback.

♥Reading Rhythm

Reading Rhythm is a biometric dashboard that visualizes your body's response to reading over time. It displays real-time heart rate charts during sessions and aggregates data into a personal Focus Score trend line.

What You See

• Heart rate timeline -- A live chart of your heart rate during the current session, overlaid with reading milestones (page turns, chapter breaks).
• Focus Score history -- A rolling graph of your Focus Score across sessions, showing improvement and consistency.
• Session comparison -- Compare biometric data between sessions to identify what conditions produce your best focus.
• Weekly rhythm report -- A summary of your reading patterns, peak focus times, and heart rate trends across the week.

How to Access

Open the Wellness tab and select Reading Rhythm. The dashboard updates in real time during active sessions and shows historical data when no session is running.

◎Reading Ritual

Reading Ritual is a guided breathing exercise that plays before your reading session begins. It helps you transition from screen time or daily stress into a focused, calm reading state.

How It Works

1. Start a reading session as usual.
2. If Reading Ritual is enabled, a 60-to-90-second guided breathing animation appears.
3. Follow the visual breathing guide (inhale, hold, exhale) synced to gentle haptic pulses.
4. When the ritual completes, your session timer begins automatically.

Customization

• Duration -- Choose 30s, 60s, or 90s rituals.
• Breathing pattern -- Box breathing (4-4-4-4), 4-7-8, or free rhythm.
• Skip option -- Tap to skip at any time.

Enable or disable in Settings > Session Preferences > Reading Ritual.

☁Reading Weather

Reading Weather provides ambient scene visualizations that match your current reading context. Based on the time of day, your recent biometric data, and the genre of your current book, the app renders a subtle animated background scene on the session screen.

Scene Types

• Morning mist -- Soft golden light for early sessions.
• Afternoon warmth -- Clear, warm ambient tones.
• Evening calm -- Deep blue and amber hues for wind-down reading.
• Night mode -- Starfield and minimal light for late-night sessions.
• Stormy focus -- Rain and cloud visuals for deep concentration sessions.

Reading Weather scenes are purely visual and do not affect audio. They can be turned off in Settings > Session Preferences > Reading Weather.

◈Mood Compass

Mood Compass is an AI-powered recommendation engine that suggests books based on your current emotional state. Unlike the existing Mood Quiz (which asks you to self-report), Mood Compass passively analyzes signals to build a recommendation.

How It Chooses Recommendations

• Recent biometric data -- Your Focus Score trends and heart rate patterns indicate stress, calm, or restlessness.
• Reading history -- Genres and books you have enjoyed recently are factored in.
• Time of day and day of week -- Weekend mornings get different suggestions than Tuesday evenings.
• Self-reported mood (optional) -- If you log a mood check-in, it refines the recommendation further.

How to Access

Navigate to Discover > Mood Compass. You will see a curated set of 3-5 book suggestions with short explanations for why each was chosen. Refresh anytime for new suggestions.

▶Previously On

Previously On generates AI episode-style recaps of where you left off in a book. When you return to a book after a break, Claritea summarizes the key plot points, character developments, and your last reading position so you can pick up without re-reading.

How It Works

• Open a book you have not read in more than 3 days.
• A "Previously On" card appears at the top of the book detail screen.
• Tap it to see a concise recap of what happened up to your current page.
• The recap is generated from publicly available book summaries and your reading progress -- it never accesses content beyond your current position.

■Spoiler-Safe AI

The AI Reading Assistant now enforces chapter-locked responses. When you ask a question about a book you are currently reading, the AI is constrained to only reference content up to your current reading position.

Key Behaviors

• Chapter awareness -- The AI knows your current page and chapter and will not discuss events beyond that point.
• Explicit warnings -- If a question inherently requires knowledge of future events, the AI will warn you and ask for confirmation before answering.
• Finished books -- Once you mark a book as finished, the AI unlocks full discussion of that title.

Spoiler-Safe AI is enabled by default. You can override it per conversation by tapping the spoiler toggle in the assistant chat.

◆Book DNA

Book DNA generates a shareable reader identity profile based on your reading history, genres, Focus Scores, and reading patterns. It distills your reading life into a visual identity card you can share on social media or within Claritea.

What's Included

• Reader archetype -- A label like "Night Owl Novelist" or "Morning Non-Fiction Scholar" based on your patterns.
• Genre fingerprint -- A radial chart showing your genre distribution.
• Focus profile -- Your average Focus Score and preferred session length.
• Top stats -- Books read, pages, hours, and streak data.

Sharing

From your profile, tap Book DNA to view your card. Use the share button to export as an image or copy a link. Book DNA cards update automatically as your reading data grows.

○Cross-book Character Tracking

Track characters that appear across multiple books in a series. The character tracker maintains a wiki-style reference of characters, their relationships, and which books they appear in.

How It Works

• Open a book's X-Ray wiki from the book detail screen.
• Characters are listed with descriptions and first appearance pages.
• For series, characters are linked across books with a relationship graph.
• All character data respects your current reading position -- no spoilers from later books.

☆Annual Reading Wrapped

Annual Reading Wrapped is an expanded year-in-review experience. At the end of each year (or on demand), Claritea generates a multi-slide, shareable story of your reading year.

What's Included

• Total stats -- Books, pages, hours, and unique authors read.
• Genre evolution -- How your genre preferences shifted month by month.
• Focus Score arc -- Your focus trajectory over the year.
• Top books -- Your highest-rated and most-read titles.
• Reading personality -- An AI-generated summary of your reading identity for the year.
• Shareable cards -- Each stat generates a card that can be shared individually.

Access it from Profile > Year in Review or from the Stats screen.

📡Activity Feed

See what your friends are reading, their reviews, session completions, and milestones. React to posts, leave comments, and share your own reading updates.

📚Book Clubs

Create or join book clubs for group reading. Each club has a current book, discussion threads, reading schedule, and member progress tracking.

• Discussions — Chapter-by-chapter discussion threads.
• Progress — See how far each member has read.
• Polls — Vote on the next book to read.
• History — Track all books the club has read together.

🤝Buddy Reads

Read a book simultaneously with a friend. See each other's progress side by side, share reactions at specific pages, and discuss as you go.

💜Support Circles

Small, focused groups centered around specific themes (anxiety, grief, personal growth, etc.). Circles feature guided prompts, book recommendations, and a supportive space for sharing.

🏆Reading Challenges

Join community challenges or create your own. Track progress toward goals like "Read 12 books this year" or "Read a book from every continent."

👤Profiles

Your profile showcases your reading identity: shelves, stats, highlights, reviews, clubs, reading streak, and identity tags. Visit other readers' profiles to see what they're reading and follow them.

Profile Tabs

• Stats — Books read, pages, time, genre breakdown, reading calendar heatmap.
• Shelves — Cover grid of your books by status.
• Highlights — Your saved passages and notes.
• Reviews — Star ratings and written reviews.
• Clubs — Book clubs you belong to.
• Posts — Your activity feed posts.

●Chapter Pulse

Chapter Pulse shows community-aggregated biometric heatmaps for each chapter of a book. See where readers collectively experienced peak focus, excitement, or calm.

How It Works

• Open a book's detail page and scroll to the Chapter Pulse section.
• Each chapter displays a colored heatmap bar: cooler tones indicate calm reading, warmer tones indicate elevated heart rates.
• Data is anonymized and aggregated from all Claritea readers of that book.
• Your personal data is only included if you opt in via Settings > Privacy > Share Biometric Trends.

▲Focus Score Leaderboard

Compare your Focus Scores with friends and the broader community. The leaderboard ranks readers by average Focus Score over the past 7 days.

Key Details

• Opt-in only -- You must enable leaderboard participation in Settings.
• Friends view -- See where you rank among people you follow.
• Global view -- See your percentile among all Claritea readers.
• Weekly reset -- Rankings refresh every Monday.

□Team Management

Team Management brings Claritea to organizations: book clubs at work, reading groups at schools, or any collaborative reading environment. Teams have their own dashboard, member management, analytics, reading lists, and challenges.

Creating a Team

1. Go to Profile > Teams and tap Create Team.
2. Enter a team name, description, and optional logo.
3. Choose visibility: public (discoverable) or private (invite-only).
4. Select a subscription plan (seat-based pricing).

Joining a Team

• Invite link -- Team admins share an invite URL or code.
• Search -- Public teams appear in Discover > Teams.
• Email invite -- Admins can send invitations by email address.

Team Dashboard

The team dashboard shows aggregate reading activity for the team:

• Reading activity -- Total sessions, pages, and hours across all members this week/month.
• Active readers -- How many members read in the past 7 days.
• Team challenges -- Progress toward team-wide reading goals.
• Leaderboard -- Top readers by time, pages, or Focus Score (opt-in, anonymizable).

Member Management

• Roles -- Owner, admin, and member. Owners can transfer ownership.
• Seat management -- Add or remove seats. Billing adjusts automatically.
• Member directory -- View all members, their reading status, and join date.
• Remove members -- Admins can remove members at any time.

Team Reading Lists

Admins can create shared reading lists for the team. Members see these lists in their library and can track progress individually while the team dashboard shows aggregate completion.

Team Challenges

Create challenges scoped to your team: "Read 100 books collectively this quarter" or "Everyone reads at least 15 minutes per day for 30 days." Progress is tracked on the team dashboard.

Analytics

Team analytics show reading trends, engagement rates, and popular genres across the team. All individual data is anonymized in team-level reports. No individual biometric data is ever exposed to team admins.

◉Focus Recipes

Focus Recipes are community-created session configurations. A recipe bundles together a focus sound, ambient layer, session duration, check-in frequency, and optional Reading Ritual into a single reusable preset.

Using a Recipe

1. On the Read tab, tap Focus Recipes below the session setup.
2. Browse community recipes or your saved recipes.
3. Tap a recipe to preview its settings.
4. Tap Start with this Recipe to begin a session with those exact settings.

Creating a Recipe

• Configure a session exactly how you want it (sounds, duration, check-ins).
• After the session, tap Save as Recipe on the summary screen.
• Name it, add a description, and choose to share it publicly or keep it private.

Community Recipes

Browse popular recipes created by other readers. Filter by genre affinity, session length, or focus style. Like and save recipes to your collection.

◇Smart Notifications

Smart Notifications are context-aware reading nudges that learn from your habits to send reminders at the times you are most likely to read.

How They Work

• Pattern learning -- Claritea analyzes when you typically start sessions and nudges you at those times on days you have not read yet.
• Streak protection -- If your reading streak is about to break, you receive a gentle reminder before your grace period expires.
• Wind-down nudge -- In the evening, a notification suggests winding down with reading based on your sleep schedule.
• Return nudge -- If you have not opened a book in several days, a notification reminds you where you left off.

Controls

All Smart Notification types can be individually enabled or disabled in Settings > Notifications > Smart Notifications. You can also set quiet hours during which no notifications are sent.

📇Flashcards

Create flashcards from your reading to retain what you learn. Supports three card types:

• Q&A — Standard question and answer.
• Definition — Term and its definition.
• Cloze — Fill-in-the-blank from a passage.

Spaced Repetition (SM-2)

Flashcards use the SM-2 spaced repetition algorithm. When reviewing, rate each card:

• Again — Reset the interval. You'll see this card again soon.
• Hard — Slightly reduce the interval.
• Good — Normal progression to the next interval.
• Easy — Skip ahead with a longer interval.

🤖AI Reading Assistant

Ask questions about books you're reading, get personalized recommendations, discuss themes, or explore literary analysis. The assistant has context about your library and reading history.

• "What are the main themes in this book?"
• "Recommend something similar to Project Hail Mary."
• "Explain the significance of the green light in The Great Gatsby."
• "Create flashcards from Chapter 5."

🗺Mind Maps

Visual mind maps generated from your highlights, notes, and reading patterns. See connections between ideas, characters, and themes across a book.

📊Reading Stats

Comprehensive analytics about your reading habits:

• Calendar heatmap — GitHub-style grid showing reading days.
• Genre breakdown — Pie chart of what you read by genre.
• Reading pace — Pages per hour, books per month trends.
• Time of day — When you read most.
• Streak — Current and longest consecutive reading day streaks.
• Totals — Books, pages, hours, and highlights lifetime counts.

🎯Goals & Streaks

Set annual reading goals (books per year) and daily reading goals (minutes per day). Your reading streak counts consecutive days with at least one reading session.

✨Year in Review

At the end of each year (or anytime), generate a beautiful wrap-up of your reading year: top books, total stats, genre evolution, reading patterns, and shareable cards.

🔌Integrations

Claritea connects to your existing reading infrastructure. All integrations are optional and configured in Settings > Integrations.

🎧Audiobookshelf

Connect to your self-hosted Audiobookshelf server to browse and stream your audiobook library.

Setup

1. Go to Integrations in settings.
2. Enter your ABS server URL (e.g., http://192.168.1.50:13378).
3. Enter your ABS username and password.
4. Tap Connect.

Features

• Browse all libraries and audiobooks with cover art.
• Stream directly — no need to download files.
• 2-way progress sync with your ABS server.
• Upload audiobook files to your ABS library (iOS, Android, Mac).
• Refresh library to pull latest changes.

📚Calibre

Connect to your Calibre content server to browse your ebook library, view metadata, and import books into Claritea.

Content Server (All Platforms)

Calibre's built-in content server lets you browse and download books over your network. Start it from Calibre: Preferences > Sharing > Content Server.

Local Calibre (Mac Only)

On Mac, Claritea can detect a local Calibre installation and add books directly using the calibredb command-line tool. This is the fastest way to add ebooks to your Calibre library from Claritea.

🗄NAS / File Server Upload

Upload audiobooks and ebooks directly to your NAS (Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, etc.) via the WebDAV protocol. Files are placed in the correct folder structure so Audiobookshelf can automatically discover them.

Setup

1. Enable WebDAV on your NAS (Synology: install the "WebDAV Server" package).
2. In Claritea, go to Integrations > NAS / File Server.
3. Enter your WebDAV URL (e.g., https://nas.local:5006).
4. Enter credentials and specify your audiobook and ebook folder paths.
5. Tap Test Connection, then Save.

Folder Structure

When uploading, Claritea automatically creates the correct folder hierarchy:

• Audiobooks: /audiobooks/Author Name/Book Title/file.m4b
• Ebooks: /books/Author Name/Book Title/file.epub

📖Readwise

Sync your highlights with Readwise. Import highlights from Kindle, Apple Books, and other sources. Export Claritea highlights to Readwise for daily review.

Setup

1. Get your Readwise API token from readwise.io/access_token.
2. Paste it in Integrations > Readwise.
3. Tap Connect.

💚Health Data

Connect your health platform to enable biometric tracking during reading sessions. Claritea reads heart rate, HRV, respiratory rate, and steps. It never writes health data or shares it with third parties.

📤Send To (File Upload)

The "Send To" feature lets you upload a file to multiple destinations at once. Pick a file, choose where to send it, and Claritea handles the rest — including creating the correct folder structure and metadata.

Destinations

How It Works

1. Right-click a book (Mac) or use the upload button in Audiobooks.
2. Select or pick the file to upload.
3. Review metadata (title, author) — auto-filled from your library.
4. Check the destinations you want to send to.
5. Tap Send — uploads run in parallel with progress bars.
6. See a success/failure summary for each destination.

📁Supported File Formats

📱Platform Feature Matrix

A complete overview of what's available where:

⌨Keyboard Shortcuts (Mac & Web)

◯Accessibility

Claritea is designed to be usable by everyone. All accessibility features are available on every subscription tier, including the free tier.

Visual Accessibility

• WCAG AA contrast -- All text and interactive elements meet or exceed WCAG AA contrast ratios (4.5:1 for body text, 3:1 for large text).
• Dyslexia-friendly font -- Toggle OpenDyslexic in Settings.
• Font scaling -- Adjustable text size from 14px to 24px, independent of system font size.
• High contrast mode -- Enhanced color contrast for all UI elements.
• Reduce motion -- Disables all animations and transitions.

Motor Accessibility

• Touch targets -- All interactive elements meet the 44px minimum touch target (Apple HIG).
• Keyboard navigation -- Full keyboard access on Mac and Web.

Screen Readers

• ARIA labels -- All interactive elements have descriptive labels for VoiceOver (iOS/Mac) and TalkBack (Android).
• Semantic structure -- Proper heading hierarchy and landmark regions throughout the app.

All accessibility settings are in Settings > Accessibility.

▣Offline Smart Sync

Offline Smart Sync ensures you can read and track sessions without an internet connection. When you come back online, all data syncs automatically.

What Works Offline

• Downloaded EPUB books and audiobooks.
• Starting and completing reading sessions (timer, page tracking, mood).
• Viewing your library and previously loaded data.
• Creating highlights and notes.
• Flashcard review (previously synced decks).

Sync Behavior

• Sessions completed offline are queued and uploaded when connectivity returns.
• Conflicts are resolved with a last-write-wins strategy, with server timestamps.
• A sync indicator appears in the navigation bar when offline data is pending upload.

🔧Troubleshooting

Audiobookshelf: "Network request failed"

If your ABS server uses HTTP (not HTTPS) on a local network, iOS blocks the connection by default (App Transport Security). Claritea includes the necessary exceptions, but you may need to rebuild after updating. Make sure you're on the same WiFi network as your server.

Calibre: "Connection refused"

Ensure Calibre's content server is running. In Calibre: Preferences > Sharing > Content Server > Start Server. Check that the port (default 8080) isn't blocked by a firewall.

NAS: "WebDAV not available"

WebDAV may need to be enabled on your NAS. On Synology, go to Package Center and install "WebDAV Server." On QNAP, enable it in Control Panel > Applications > Web Server.

Health data not appearing

Ensure permissions are granted in your device's Health app. On iOS, go to Health > Privacy > Apps > Claritea and enable all categories. On Android, check Settings > Health Connect > App Permissions > Claritea.

Slow audiobook loading

If audiobooks take long to start playing, it may be network latency to your ABS server. Try connecting via local IP instead of hostname. For large libraries, the initial load may take a few seconds.

EPUB won't open

Some DRM-protected EPUBs cannot be opened. Claritea supports DRM-free EPUB files only. If the file is corrupt, try re-downloading it from your source.

📬Need Help?

If you have questions, feedback, or run into issues not covered here, reach out at support@claritea.co.