Looking for a Matter Alternative?
Matter is a polished reading app with a strong text-to-speech engine. Screvi focuses on what happens after you read: collecting highlights from every source, reviewing them with spaced repetition, and finding them again with AI search.
14-day free trial. No credit card required.
What Matter does well
Matter earned three "App of the Day" awards from Apple, and that reputation is deserved. The reading experience is clean and fast. The text-to-speech engine sounds genuinely human, and it's one of the best implementations in any reading app. The newsletter inbox works well, YouTube and podcast transcription is a nice touch, and the social following features let you see what people you respect are reading.
If your main goal is saving web articles and listening to them on a commute, Matter handles that well.
Where it gets tricky is when you want to do something with what you've read. Matter captures highlights from articles, but it doesn't connect to your books. There's no Kindle import, no Kobo import, no Apple Books sync. Your book highlights and your article highlights live in separate worlds.
An honest look at Matter
What it does well
- Beautiful, fast reading experience on iOS
- Text-to-speech with natural-sounding voices
- Newsletter inbox with a dedicated email address
- YouTube and podcast transcription built in
- Social features let you follow other readers
- Three-time Apple "App of the Day" winner
Where it falls short
- No book highlight imports (Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books)
- No spaced repetition or review system
- No AI semantic search across highlights
- No daily review emails or digest
- No highlights feed for rediscovering past reading
- No AI topic discovery across your library
- No physical book scanner
- No public API for custom integrations
- No tags with colors for organization
- No iOS home screen widget
The gap between reading and remembering
Most people forget 70% of what they read within a week. Matter helps you read more, but reading more doesn't help if you can't recall any of it three months later.
Screvi is built around the other half of the problem. After you highlight a passage in a book or article, what happens next? In most apps, nothing. The highlight sits in a database you never open again.
Screvi uses spaced repetition (the SM-2 algorithm, the same system behind language learning apps) to resurface your highlights at the right intervals. You get a daily email digest with highlights to review. You get a scrollable feed of your own best ideas. And when you need to find something specific, AI semantic search lets you ask questions like "what did I highlight about decision fatigue?", even if those exact words don't appear in any highlight.
The difference isn't about which app is better. It's about what problem you're solving. Matter is a reading app. Screvi is a remembering app.
Matter vs Screvi
A feature-by-feature comparison of both apps.
Screvi: 22/25 features · Matter: 8/25 features
| Feature | Screvi | Matter |
|---|---|---|
| Save articles from the web | ||
| Distraction-free article reader | ||
| Highlight text in articles | ||
| Browser extension | ||
| Newsletter inbox | ||
| YouTube/podcast transcripts | ||
| Text-to-speech | ||
| Social following/listening | ||
| Import Kindle highlights | ||
| Import Kobo highlights | ||
| Import Apple Books highlights | ||
| Import PDF annotations | ||
| Physical book scanner (OCR) | ||
| AI semantic search | ||
| Spaced repetition review | ||
| Daily email digest | ||
| Highlights feed | ||
| AI topic discovery | ||
| AI highlight cleanup | ||
| Tags with colors | ||
| iOS home screen widget | ||
| Public API | ||
| Share highlights as images | ||
| Export to Markdown & HTML | ||
| Lifetime plan available | $199 one-time |
Where Screvi goes further
All your books, not just articles
Import highlights from Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, PDFs, and physical books with the AI-powered camera scanner. Matter only handles web content. Screvi brings every source into one place.
AI search that understands meaning
Ask "what did I read about building better habits?" and Screvi finds relevant highlights even if those words never appear. Matter has no search across highlights at all.
Spaced repetition built in
The SM-2 algorithm resurfaces your highlights at scientifically-backed intervals. You get a daily email digest and an in-app review queue. No plugins, no setup. It just works.
Your highlights feed
A scrollable feed of your own highlights, filtered by source, tags, date, or favorites. Replace social media scrolling with your own collected knowledge.
Connections you didn't see
AI topic discovery clusters your highlights into themes across all sources. A passage from a novel, a podcast quote, and a Kindle highlight might all connect, and Screvi shows you how.
Open and extensible
A public API, Markdown/HTML export, and integrations with other tools. Your data is yours. Matter doesn't offer an API or structured export.
You can use Matter and Screvi together
If you love Matter's reading experience and text-to-speech, keep using it for that. Use Screvi as your highlights hub: import book highlights from Kindle and Kobo, review everything with spaced repetition, and search across all your reading with AI. The two apps solve different problems and work well side by side.
Frequently Asked Questions
Try it with your highlights
Create your account, add your highlights and see how Screvi can change the way you read.