PresbyFriend — reading aid for presbyopia
The two platforms work differently, so the answer depends on your device.
iPhone / iPad Four ways:
Android Four ways, none of them the camera:
On Android the camera only magnifies: there is no shutter and it does not recognise text. On iPhone and iPad there is no equivalent screen-reading feature.
Check the recognition language in Settings first. It follows your system language by default, but it should match the language of the text you are reading, not the language of the app. When the two disagree, recognition fails quietly rather than showing an error. If you read a lot of English text on a German phone, set the recognition language to English explicitly.
Android Recognition only happens through the floating button. If the floating button is off, or the accessibility permission was revoked (Android sometimes switches it off after an app update), text can never reach the app. Check Settings → Floating Magnifier Button first.
iPhone / iPad Hold the phone parallel to the page rather than at an angle, fill the frame with the text, and avoid shadows falling across it. Glossy paper and low light are the two most common causes. If the magnifier is on, tapping the shutter captures the current view at the zoom level you have set — so zoom in first, then tap.
Android The floating button recognises whatever is on your screen at that moment, so make the text as large as you can before you tap it — pinch to zoom in a browser, or turn up the text size in the app you are reading. The screenshot is taken at screen size, so text that is small on screen stays small.
PresbyFriend extracts the main article text from a shared web address. Pages that load their content with JavaScript, or that sit behind a paywall or a login, often yield nothing to extract. You can also open the link in your browser, copy the text, and paste it into the app instead.
The free version allows 10 readings per day. Pro removes that limit. There is one subscription with two billing periods — monthly and yearly — and both unlock the same thing.
Subscriptions are handled by the store you bought from, not by us. iPhone / iPad Open Settings → your name → Subscriptions and select PresbyFriend. Android Open the Google Play Store → Menu → Subscriptions. Cancelling stops the next renewal; it does not refund the current period.
Open the Pro screen in the app and tap Restore Purchases. Make sure you are signed in with the same Apple Account or Google account you bought with.
Tap Restore Purchases on the Pro screen. If that doesn't help, email us with the date of purchase and we'll sort it out. Refunds are handled by the store, not by us — iPhone / iPad use reportaproblem.apple.com; Android use the Google Play refund form.
PresbyFriend collects no data. Text recognition runs entirely on your device — using Apple's Vision framework on iOS and Google ML Kit on Android — and nothing you photograph, screenshot, paste, or open is ever uploaded. The full policy is here: Privacy Policy.
PresbyFriend is built for readers with presbyopia: large default type, high contrast, and a reading view with adjustable font size, line height, letter spacing, reading ruler, and four page themes (white, sepia, dark, yellow). If a setting doesn't do what you expect, that's worth an email — it's the part of the app we most want to get right.