#1 Headway

I downloaded Headway on a day when I convinced myself that reading a few book summaries might cancel out the two hours I spent watching strangers argue in YouTube comments. Sadly, it didn’t. But the app stuck around anyway.

Headway takes nonfiction books, the ones that usually require a commitment, a highlighter, and a tolerance for long-winded analogies, and then trims them down to just the key ideas. It’s not trying to make you a scholar. It’s just trying to make sure you walk away with something slightly more useful than a random reel on Instagram.

You set any goal you have, like being less of a mess, making more money, and understanding people without decoding trauma textbooks, and it curates summaries that lean into that. I usually use Headway when I’m chilling at the house and don’t have the mood to do anything. It’s kind of like a passive learning approach, but at least it doesn’t involve endless scrolling or articles that end with ‘what happens next will shock you.’

The app also has a clean interface, and it tracks your progress in a way that makes it feel like the app is proud of you. And if you’re like me and enjoy fake virtual trophies, there are little achievement badges too.

Headway is definitely not a replacement for actual books, but if your bookshelf is more decoration than habit at this point, this is a pretty decent way to pretend otherwise. So, the next time you’ve unlocked your phone for no reason and need to redirect that energy somewhere that doesn’t make you feel worse afterward, open Headway.

#2 Deepstash

Deepstash is an app that takes all the things you meant to read, like books, podcasts, or articles, and…