What's new in Must Read 3.5.6

Siri understands the book you mean

Say a title with a typo in it, just the author, or one word of the title. Must Read now finds the book you meant instead of asking you to say it again. Books are named loosely out loud, and the app should keep up with that.

Siri also answers with a card now: the cover, the title, the author and your rating, so you can see that it worked rather than take Siri's word for it. Ask “What am I reading in Must Read?” and you get your shelf, covers and all.

Two more things to say. Ask how many days in a row you have read, and Siri shows your streak. And Siri & Shortcuts in Settings now lists every command in the exact words Siri listens for, so you never have to guess at the phrasing. A book's own page shows what you can say about that book, and each tip can be dismissed on its own.

Search that waits for the answer

A slow moment on the network used to look like an empty result. Search would give up early, show nothing, and leave you wondering whether the book existed. It now waits for the answer, and tells the server how long it is prepared to wait, so a slow reply and no reply are finally two different things.

Results are better when the title and your keyboard use different alphabets, a Russian title typed on a Latin keyboard, say, or the other way round. And a misspelled author name now finds the author.

Explore in one request

Opening Explore used to mean around forty separate requests, one per shelf, each waiting its turn. It is now one. The first screen arrives far sooner, and the classics and country lists open faster for the same reason.

Signing in, made boring again

Three things could go wrong at the door, and all three are fixed. An expired sign-in link could sign you out of the account you were already using. If signing in failed once, later attempts said nothing at all. And the app could wait forever on a server that was never going to answer.