Frequently Asked Questions

No. Highlights, notes, drawings and destinations are kept separately from the file, and Tomebound never writes to a PDF.

When you add a PDF, Tomebound keeps its own copy, so the PDF still opens if the original is moved, renamed or deleted. Your original stays where it was.

Yes. Tomebound stores the file once, however many projects use it. Each project keeps its own place in it, along with its own highlights and destinations.

No. It stays in your Library, ready to add to another project. Tomebound deletes its copy only when you delete the PDF from the Library, and it asks first.

No. Open the PDF’s settings and choose Replace with a Revised File…. Highlights find their words in the new edition, and a saved part of a page follows its words too. Drawings move with their page. Anything Tomebound can’t place with confidence is kept rather than guessed.

Any PDF your device can open. A password-protected PDF opens once you enter its password. A scanned PDF with no text behind its pages can be read but not searched.

A saved place in one of the project’s PDFs: a page, or part of a page, such as one table. It sits in the hotbar, and one tap takes you there from any PDF in the project.

A hotbar button that holds up to twelve destinations, for things that come in sets: random tables, conditions, a chapter’s sources. Groups don’t go inside other groups.

No. A destination stays exactly where you saved it. Where you are now is remembered separately, so reading on never moves a destination.

Yes, to the top or the bottom of the reader, or collapse it to a small handle when you want the whole page.

Some books, such as solo adventures and gamebooks, are made of numbered entries rather than chapters. Tomebound recognizes these books and lets you go to an entry by its number, tap “go to 212” in the text, and keep a trail of the entries you’ve visited. You can turn entry mode on or off for each PDF.

iPad, iPhone and Mac. It’s designed for iPad first. On a Mac you can read your drawings but not draw.

Yes, through your own iCloud account. Your projects, hotbar, notes, highlights, drawings, pin and reading positions reach every iPad, iPhone and Mac signed in to it, and deleting something deletes it on all of them. Turning Tomebound off in a device’s iCloud settings removes your projects from that device, along with anything it hadn’t sent yet. Its PDFs stay, and turning it back on downloads your projects again.

If you turn on Sync PDFs, in a project’s settings. It’s off until you do, and it’s set on each device: a device with it on puts its PDFs in your iCloud and downloads the ones your other devices put there, every PDF in Tomebound, not just one project’s. The PDFs count against your iCloud storage. Turning it off stops that device and leaves the PDFs in iCloud for the others, and deleting a PDF from Tomebound deletes it from iCloud too. With it off, a PDF added on another device says it’s not on this device until you import the same file here, and then everything you made in it works.

No. Everything works offline, and what you change reaches your other devices through iCloud once you’re back online. Apart from iCloud sync, the app makes no network connections.

An exported project is a single file that anyone with Tomebound can import, PDFs included. Only share PDFs you have the right to share. You can also export a project without its PDFs.

The beta is free. Pricing for the App Store release hasn’t been set yet.