Shortform: Quick Entertainment

Love the app. I use it almost everyday after using some of its competitors. Better summaries, connect ideas from the book to other books with similar ideas and good highlighting and notes system (I’m a Readwise user). The only thing is the bugs… sometimes (specially when I put comments in a highlight, the app crashes and I have to close and open it again.

I really want to like this app, but it has several issues: 1) it sometimes doesn’t save the position of where you left off 2) the text doesn’t scroll with the audio recording and the audio menu takes up a huge amount of space (I like to read and listen for maximum learning) 3) highlighting text is buggy The actual summaries are great though!

I like the amount of material offered and the more in-depth summaries. However, the UI has issues. The highlight feature isn’t always responsive, sometimes highlights more than the selected texts, or won’t highlight at all.

The books they tell you to sign up and read don’t even exist after you pay them. I was getting a summary for The Game, by Neil Strauss on Google and their website had it but it said if I need to read the full summary I must pay. I signed up and paid then return to the website for the book, clicked full summary…. Welp! The book doesn’t exist in their collection. I even searched it and nop not there.

Cannot get past the black screen

As a professor, I find this app valuable for my work, helping me identify relevant course materials. However, I’m disappointed with its limitations, such as the inability to download summaries as PDFs or copy and paste content with proper citations (as other similar services for fiction/literature allow). These restrictions make the service feel overpriced for my needs.

The support is well organized and clear about how to correct what needs to be to be corrected and a clear way to request what you want. I especially like the explanation of what had been done when my credit card failed. I still had access to the service but within certain upgrades. No anxiety about what now? Easy to work with and get back what I realize is an invaluable resource in today’s increasingly info dense internet. And real value is added by the content summaries. Thank you!!!

Was pleasantly surprised that ShortForm provides exceptional and very prompt service for inquires and requesting new titles! This platform is a keeper!

This company is pretty unethical. I tried the “free” trial but they make it very hard to stop the charge if you decide it isn’t for you at the end of the trial… which I did after emailing them… no easy button there. It wasn’t refunded. Had to deal with my credit card company. Ended up paying near 197… a fraction less, for less then a month. Will still keep fighting this with my credit card company. I am exhausted trying to deal with them - they are COUNTING on this. They are unethical and based on that alone - don’t do business with them.

As a lawyer I do a lot of analytical reading. I appreciate Shortform summaries which accurately review the authors ideas and arguments. They also present counterpoint ideas and arguments from other leading authors. These summaries are more like a mini college course on the subject. Most summaries are about 30 minutes, which gives more time for better analysis than the usual 15-minute summaries from other services. I gain a better understanding of many ideas in an entertaining capsule.