Wallflower — a quiet social reader

Wallflower

4 min read Original article ↗

About Wallflower

A social reader with somewhere to put things.

Wallflower reads Mastodon and Bluesky together as one calm, chronological broadsheet — then gives articles, feeds, posts, passages, and even RSS links a quieter second life in your Commonplace Book. From there, each item can move into your Reader and become a private podcast episode.

The reading flow

The stream moves. Your reading can stay.

Social timelines are good at bringing things to you and bad at helping you return to them. Wallflower treats discovery and reading as connected but different activities: notice something, decide whether it deserves your time, then open it in the Reader and file it into your workflow without the stream tugging at your sleeve.

Morning edition In time order

Mastodon · 18 minutes ago

The library kept its windows open through the rain. Everyone read a little more slowly.

Bluesky · 26 minutes ago

A field note on attention, public spaces, and the things a city teaches quietly.

keep what matters

Commonplace Book Inbox · To Read · Archive

To Read · 8 minutes

The patient work of paying attention

An article kept away from the rush of the timeline.

“Keep the sentences that change the way you look.”

Read · Narrate · Export episode

What is inside

Built around a reader, not a metric.

01

Mastodon and Bluesky

Connect multiple accounts from either network or both. Posts arrive in one edition, while full handles and origins stay visible. Matching cross-posts appear once, with their connection intact.

02

Confluence

A deliberately balanced view of both networks, made for the days when one busy source would otherwise crowd out the other.

03

Compose and respond

Write, reply, quote, and cross-post. Quick replies open where you are; images and GIFs carry alt text; drafts wait when you need to leave a thought unfinished.

04

Threads, profiles, and search

Follow conversations through a nested thread or read a self-reply chain as one essay. Search people, posts, and tags, and keep private notes beside the profiles you return to.

05

Inbox, To Read, and Archive

Inbox holds things you have not decided about. To Read is the queue you chose deliberately. Archive keeps what is finished or worth retaining without pretending it is still waiting.

06

A first-class feed reader

Subscribe to RSS and Atom, arrange sources in folders, import or export OPML, sync seen stories, and move an article straight to Inbox or To Read. Cached editions open without a fresh round trip.

07

A focused article reader

Open the full post or feed article in a quiet reading view, search its text, file it into your private workflow, and post a story without leaving the reader. PDFs join the same queue with their own annotation view.

08

Highlights that travel

Keep passages with notes, revisit them in context, or turn one into a post or warm-paper quote card. Export reading as EPUB, Markdown, BibTeX, RIS, or Obsidian-ready notes.

09

Listening and read aloud

Have an Apple device read an article aloud on-device. With Patron, turn any kept post, link, or article into a private Wallflower episode and private podcast feed. Save it in Reader first, then listen through AirPods, the Lock Screen, or Dynamic Island without changing your workflow.

10

A library you can shape

Notebooks, full-book search, reading-time filters, batch filing, recoverable trash, and a Reading Year keep a useful library from becoming another undifferentiated pile.

11

Quiet media and safety

Images, video, and podcast audio play inline. Alt text remains available, while content warnings, sensitive-media gates, filters, mutes, blocks, and reporting keep control with the reader.

12

Accessible by design

VoiceOver and screen-reader descriptions, Dynamic Type, keyboard navigation, generous targets, and reduced-motion and transparency support are part of the interface rather than an afterthought.

Web · iPhone · iPad · Mac

One reading life, across devices

Wallflower adapts from a single comfortable column on your phone to a broad, adjustable multi-column edition on larger screens. Commonplace material, feed subscriptions and folders, seen stories, column choices, and reading preferences stay connected wherever you read. Apple devices can also carry signed-in accounts through iCloud.

Public beta

Take Wallflower with you.

The native iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps are available through TestFlight while we finish the details. The same invitation works for both Apple betas.

A note from the maker

Wallflower is made by Andrew Leahey for people who still like reading the whole thing. It is a sibling to PIVOT, a daily word puzzle with the same quiet temperament.