Bionic Reading®

1What is Bionic Reading®?

Bionic Reading® changes how text looks, not what it says. The first letters of words are made bold. The rest of each word stays in regular type.

Its makers call the bold parts artificial fixation points. The idea is that your eyes jump from one bold part to the next. Your brain then fills in the rest of each word, using words you already know.

You can use it in the company's apps and browser extension. Some apps and books use it under license, too. It is designed for languages written in the Latin alphabet, like English, Spanish and German.

2How it works

How your eyes read

Your eyes do not glide along a line. They stop, jump, and stop again. Each stop is called a fixation, and it lasts about a quarter of a second. Each jump is called a saccade. A jump usually covers 7 to 9 letters.

You take in nothing new during a jump. You read during the stops. Your eyes tend to land between the start and the middle of a word. At each stop, you see only a few letters clearly: about 4 to the left and 15 to the right. Your eyes skip some words, mostly short ones like "the". And 10 to 15 percent of jumps go backward, often to the word just before.

Bionic Reading® borrows both of these words. Its bold starts are meant to work as stops for your eyes. Whether your eyes really use them is the question the research below looks at.

The three settings

You can change three things. Two of the names come from that eye research.

• Fixation sets how strongly the start of each word stands out. There are five levels, and 3 is the default. It treats long, medium and short words differently.
• Saccade sets the jumps from one marked point to the next. It runs from 10 to 50, and 10 is the default. Its makers say narrow columns of text tend to need fewer jumps.
• Opacity sets how visible the marked parts are. You can fade the rest of each word, too. It runs from 100 down to 0.

More options in the apps

The apps can base the marks on syllables instead of letters. The top paid plan lets you choose which kinds of words to mark. For example, you could mark only nouns, verbs and adjectives. You can also pick the font, text size, spacing, column width and colors.

3Where it came from

Renato Casutt, a Swiss typographic designer, came up with Bionic Reading® in 2009. He was studying at the Zurich School of Design. His class was designing a book by the Swiss author Pedro Lenz. It was written in a Swiss dialect that Casutt found very hard to read.

He noticed something. He only needed parts of each word to recognize it, because his brain already knew a similar word. That idea became Bionic Reading®. He set it aside, restarted the project in 2016, and has worked on it full time since 2020. Today it comes from Bionic Reading AG, a company in Chur, Switzerland.

One early home was Reeder, a news reader app, which had a Bionic Reading® mode by 2019. Then, in May 2022, posts about it spread fast on Twitter. Within weeks it had its own Chrome extension, and news sites were asking whether it really works.

4What the research says

Researchers have now tested Bionic Reading® many times. For skilled adult readers, the results point the same way. It does not make reading faster, and it does not improve understanding. We checked the research on 6 November 2026. Every study below is linked in the sources.

Skilled adult readers

• A 2024 study in the Netherlands timed readers on 100 short paragraphs. Reading times were the same with and without Bionic Reading®.
• A 2025 study in the United States tracked readers' eyes. The bold starts made reading a little slower than plain text. No group of readers benefited.
• A 2025 study in South Africa also tracked eyes. Speed and eye movements did not change. Readers' eyes still moved across whole words, not only the bold parts.
• A 2026 study tested 90 skilled adult readers. The bold starts changed where their eyes first landed in long words. But word skipping, reading time and understanding stayed the same.
• In 2022, the reading app Readwise timed 1,916 volunteers online. Their average speeds were almost identical with and without it.

People reading in a second language

Here the results are mixed. A 2026 study of university students learning English found they understood more with Bionic Reading®. Their eyes also paused less and jumped back less. Another 2026 study of second-language readers found no reliable benefit.

The company's own study

In 2022, the Zurich University of Applied Sciences tested Bionic Reading® for the company. Twelve students took part. Reading speed was the same with and without it. The group that read it scored higher on a test of what they remembered. With only 12 readers in two groups, that is a first step, not proof. Bionic Reading AG says it does not claim a speed benefit.

Readers with dyslexia or ADHD

Here there is much less research. The largest study, from 2025, included about 150 adults who had dyslexia or thought they did. Bionic Reading® did not improve their reading compared with plain text. A small 2026 pilot looked at 20 young people with learning disorders. They read more letters correctly with it. Its authors say the study was too small to be sure.

Research on ADHD is very limited. One 2025 study measured ADHD symptoms in college students. Readers with more symptoms did not benefit either.

School students

Results here are mixed, too. The largest classroom study, with 490 tenth graders in the Philippines, found no difference in speed or understanding. A smaller 2024 study with sixth graders in Turkey found faster reading and better understanding. It tested students only at the end, not before, which makes it weaker evidence.

The short answer

For most adults reading in their own language, Bionic Reading® does not make reading faster or better. For second-language readers and school students, the results are mixed. For readers with dyslexia or ADHD, the research is too thin to say. That fits a wider finding, too. A 2016 review of speed reading found that reading much faster usually means understanding less.

5Who it may help, and who it may not

Start with what it is not. Bionic Reading® is not a treatment for dyslexia or ADHD. The research also does not support the idea that it speeds up reading.

Some readers still like how it looks. They describe reading that feels smoother, with less rereading. If it feels better to you, that is a fair reason to use it. It is a preference, like choosing a font you enjoy.

Others find it distracting. In the company's own study, more than half the readers noticed it or found it odd at first. For most of them, that faded as they kept reading. It is also made for languages written in the Latin alphabet, so it does not suit every language.

The fairest test is your own. Try the free web app on text you read every day. Note how long it takes and what you remember, then compare with plain text. If it does not help, other changes might. See our pages on letter, word and line spacing, reading rulers and OpenDyslexic.

If reading is hard work for you or your child, talk to a teacher or a reading specialist. This page is information, not medical advice.

6How to get Bionic Reading®

Bionic Reading AG says bionic-reading.com is the only official source of its products. Its apps are also in the official app stores. This is what it offered when we checked on 6 November 2026:

• A free web app (opens in a new tab). Paste in text or a web address, then change the settings.
• An extension for Chrome, from the Chrome Web Store (opens in a new tab).
• Apps for iPhone and iPad (opens in a new tab), Android (opens in a new tab) and Windows (opens in a new tab), plus a Mac app from its apps page (opens in a new tab).
• A Microsoft Word add-in, fonts you can install, and a font keyboard for phones.
• An API (opens in a new tab), for companies that want to build it into their own apps.

Some other apps and publishers use it under license. Examples include the Fiery Feeds and Reeder Classic news readers, the Clear Read extension for Safari, and the Clear Focus Bible from Zondervan.

Free and paid plans

The free plan is called Discover. It needs no account. You can try the settings, convert up to 2,000 characters of text, and convert web pages.

The paid plans are Premium and Premium Plus. They add a reader with bookmarks and a library, and they convert files. You can upload Word, EPUB, RTF or plain text files. PDFs and copy-protected ebooks can't be converted. Current prices are on its pricing page (opens in a new tab).

Bionic Reading® is a registered trademark. Helperbird is not connected to Bionic Reading AG, and this page is not sponsored by it.