Revolutionizing the Blinkist learning experience

The Blinkist team is excited to announce that, this September, we’re bringing two of the most significant updates to the Blinkist app since we introduced audio. 

Here’s what you can look forward to:

Your Library will be supercharged 🚀 The Library is being combined with Spaces to create an all-new Library experience.

Your Reading and Listening Experience is getting a glow up ✨ Retain more knowledge from the titles you love with this revamp to your reading and listening experience. 

The Library Experience

Just like Spotify allows you to use private and shared Playlists to curate your music, we’ve upgraded our members’ Library by integrating Spaces into the Library. 

Anatomy of the New Library:

• Continue where you left off: All your in-progress and finished titles, whether saved or not.
• Saved: All bookmarked titles, regardless of their status (not started, in progress, finished).
• Downloads: Access to content downloaded for offline enjoyment.
• Spaces: Former user collections and favorites, alongside all your created Spaces

Adding Spaces to the Library will make saving, organizing, and sharing your favorite titles easier than ever before. You can still access your saved, started, downloaded, and finished content from your Library, but now, you can also create your own curated Spaces along a certain theme. You can share those Spaces with your favorite people, or keep it private, that’s up to you. The integration of Spaces into the Library allows you to truly make your Library your own.

Don’t know what Spaces are? Think of Spaces like a playlist. You can save your favorite Blinkist titles to come back to later, and also organize them however you want—by topic, season, or learning goal. What’s more, you can even share your Spaces with your friends and family, giving them easy access to the titles you loved!

What will happen to my existing Library?

As this update is introduced, all previously created Spaces will be migrated into the Library. Your ‘Favorites’ and ‘Collections’ sections of your Library will be upgraded into Spaces, where you can keep them exclusively for your use or invite others to contribute and share their recommendations. The rest of your library will remain the same. 

How will this change Spaces?

How Spaces works hasn’t changed: You can still seamlessly share your Spaces, invite someone to a Space, and give other people access to the titles within it for free—even if they don’t have a Blinkist Premium account! Nor will your existing spaces change—the Spaces’ members will remain the same and your history won’t be deleted. What has changed, is that creating a Space is easier than ever: You can create a Space and add content while browsing on your For You screen, exploring titles on Explore, or even when you’re engaged with a title’s cover. That makes sorting your library and optimizing your learning bigger and better than ever before!

How can you get the most out of the new Library? 

To make the most of these new features, check out the updated video explainer and this FAQ.

The Reading and Listening Experience

We’re committed to delivering an enhanced reading and listening experience, and fueled by feedback from the Blinkist community, we’re thrilled to introduce a transformative update to our reading and listening experience. 

Better retain information with the unified reading and listening experience 

The first part of this is a unified reading and listening experience. Our community shared their challenges in maintaining focus while consuming audio and visual content, and we heard them loud and clear. Now, you can track your progress throughout the title as audio and reading position are aligned. When you listen a title in the app, the same section of text will be highlighted. This dynamic synchronization improves information retention, supports comprehension for non-native language speakers, and elevates the overall reading and listening experience.

New and improved reading experience

But that’s not all: We’ve also improved our reading experience. With this update, you’ll be able to read along with more titles than ever before! Guides are no longer only available on audio, but also have text that you can read along with and even highlight sections to save your favorite parts. 

We’ve also modernized the structure of our Blinks to give you a better reading experience. Say goodbye to traditional chapter divisions as with this update,  we transform the titles into a longer article-like format. This upgrade will keep you engaged as you read, allowing for a seamless reading experience. 

Nighttime reading and distraction-free experiences were high on our users’ wishlist. That’s why we’ve introduced an edge-to-edge full-screen reading mode. Plus, we’re providing more choices for background and font combinations, featuring a new dark night mode and an easy-on-the-eyes off-white option. Tailor the text to your preference with a granular range of font size adjustments, making accessibility a top priority.

Listen at Your Preferred Pace: You now have the power to adjust your listening speed with a simple slider, offering incremental between 0.5x and 2x speeds. 

Enhanced Accessibility and Usability: Your most-used controls are now at your fingertips, ensuring a seamless and intuitive experience. 

Coming soon: Effortless Progress Tracking

Effortless Progress Tracking: Keeping track of your progress is now even simpler. Our enhanced Outline view provides a clear overview of completed and in-progress chapters, ensuring you always know where you left off. Returning to content is a breeze, as you’ll resume from the beginning of your last chapter or the precise timestamp for episodes.