Reflow

PDFs are built for paper. On a phone they mean pinching, panning, and squinting at columns of six-point type. Reflow rebuilds them as EPUB files, so your reader can set the text at whatever size is comfortable. Most converters read a page straight across and interleave the columns into nonsense. Reflow works differently: it measures the typography of the document itself, works out which typeface and size the body text is set in, and uses that to tell body copy apart from headlines, captions, pull-quotes and page furniture. It then groups the page into columns, splits pages that stack two stories, and reads each column in the right order. The result is an EPUB with articles as chapters, a working table of contents, and the photographs placed alongside the text they belong to. Everything happens on your phone. Reflow does not request internet access, so your files cannot be uploaded anywhere — the app is incapable of it. WHAT IT DOES • Converts a PDF into a reflowable EPUB • Recovers reading order from multi-column layouts • Keeps photographs and captions, resized for a phone screen • Builds chapters and a navigable table of contents • Skips full-page adverts, running heads and page numbers • Saves to Downloads and offers to open it in your reader WHAT IT WORKS BEST ON Magazines, journals, newsletters, reports and papers — anything led by text in a real text layer. WHAT IT CANNOT DO • Scanned documents. If the pages are pictures of words rather than words, there is nothing to reflow. Reflow will tell you so rather than produce nonsense. • Password-protected PDFs — remove the password first. • Heavily designed pages with infographics convert, but the chapter list comes out coarser. A NOTE ON SPEED Extracting pictures is the slow part. A thick issue on an older phone can take several minutes. The app shows a running timer so you can see it is working, and you can switch pictures off for a much faster text-only conversion. No accounts, no tracking, no advertising, no network access.