Support

Answers to the common questions — and a real person behind the email at the bottom.

How does Amazon sync work?

In the Library tab, choose Sync from Amazon. Refrain opens Amazon's own sign-in page inside the app; once you're signed in, it reads your highlights and notes from your Kindle notebook (read.amazon.com) right on your device. Your credentials go to Amazon and nowhere else. Re-syncing is always safe — the same highlight never imports twice.

Why would I need My Clippings.txt?

Two cases. Books you sideloaded onto the Kindle yourself — personal documents, non-Amazon books — never appear in the Amazon notebook, and neither do highlights from some older Kindle models. Both live in a file called My Clippings.txt on the Kindle itself. Copy it to your device (or straight into the Files app), then use Import clippings in the Library tab. Imports merge cleanly with Amazon sync: no duplicates, and clippings even fill in the highlight dates Amazon doesn't provide.

Why don't my Amazon-synced passages show dates?

Amazon's notebook doesn't expose per-highlight dates, so passages arrive without them. If you later import My Clippings.txt, Refrain recognizes the same passages and quietly backfills their dates.

How does sync between my devices work?

Through your own iCloud, automatically, whenever your devices are signed in to the same Apple ID. There's no Refrain account to create and nothing to configure. Without iCloud, Refrain works fine on a single device.

What's free, and what's paid?

Importing, browsing, searching, the daily return deck, and iCloud sync are free forever — the free app is complete, and it never caps or truncates your own library. The one-time $4.99 unlock buys the intelligence layer: threads across your books, rhymes on every passage, and your kept insights. Never a subscription.

I purchased the unlock but Threads is still locked.

Open the unlock sheet and tap Restore purchase. Purchases are tied to your App Store account, so the unlock follows you to every device — including a new phone.

Can I delete a passage or a book?

Refrain never deletes what you marked — you can hide instead. A hidden passage stays in your library but leaves the returns; a hidden book leaves the shelf. Both are reversible, from the book's page or from Library → Hidden.

Amazon sync stopped working.

Occasionally Amazon changes its notebook pages. Refrain updates itself for those changes automatically within a sync or two — no app update needed. If a sync fails, try again a little later; if it keeps failing for more than a day, email us and it will get fixed quickly.