Start on iPhone, Pick Up on Mac — Syncing Yomite's Library, Bookmarks, and Pronunciation Dictionary via iCloud

You’re halfway through a novel on iPhone during your commute. By the time you’re at your desk, you want to pick up right where you left off — on Mac, on the bigger screen, through real speakers. Yomite makes that handoff possible through iCloud.

What syncs, and what doesn’t

Yomite syncs your library, bookmarks, and pronunciation dictionary across devices via iCloud Drive. Which book you’re reading, exactly where your bookmark sits in a chapter, and which custom readings you’ve registered for which proper nouns — all of that travels between iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

What doesn’t sync is the text and audio themselves — those stay local to each device. The source text that feeds the speech engine, and the audio generated from it, are never uploaded to the cloud. This is the same design that keeps all of Yomite’s speech synthesis fully on-device (see Why Yomite’s Speech Synthesis Runs Entirely On-Device for the full picture). Privacy comes first, which means only the metadata you need to resume — where you are, and how you want it read — makes the trip between devices.

Setting it up

All you need is to be signed into the same Apple ID with iCloud enabled on each device. Turn on iCloud sync in the app’s settings, and from then on, updating a bookmark on one device propagates to the others automatically — no manual export step required.

Say you register a reading for an invented fantasy name like 影廊アルス in the pronunciation dictionary while riding the train on your iPhone. Open the same book on Mac later that evening, and that registration is already in effect. The pronunciation dictionary is a per-book feature that sticks permanently once set (see How to Fix Japanese TTS Misreadings) — iCloud sync is what keeps it from being locked to a single device. The same goes for your bookmark: leave off mid-chapter on the subway, and the exact position is waiting for you when you open the book again on a different screen.

Full backup and restore with a .novelvoice file

Separately from day-to-day syncing, Yomite can bundle your entire library into a single .novelvoice file for backup and restore. This is useful before switching to a new device, before a major OS upgrade, or simply when you want a snapshot of your current state preserved. Think of iCloud sync as sharing incremental day-to-day changes, and .novelvoice as a point-in-time snapshot you can save and restore in full.

Purchases carry across devices too

Yomite’s premium unlock, purchased on iOS, iPadOS, or macOS, applies to every supported device signed into the same Apple ID. Buy it once on iPhone, and it’s already active on your iPad or Mac — no separate purchase needed on each device.

System requirements

iCloud sync, along with the rest of Yomite, requires iPhone (A12 Bionic or later), iPad (A12 or later), or Mac (M1 or later), running iOS 17, iPadOS 17, or macOS 14 respectively. These requirements exist because on-device speech synthesis needs Apple Silicon-class performance to run smoothly.

The takeaway

Yomite keeps its privacy-first design — speech synthesis stays entirely on-device — while syncing exactly the information you need to keep reading without losing your place: library, bookmarks, and pronunciation dictionary, all via iCloud. Pick up a commute read on your Mac at home, or continue a weekend chapter from your iPhone the next morning, without thinking about which device has what. When you switch devices for good, a .novelvoice backup carries everything over in one step.

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Get 読み手 Yomite on the App Store →

Related: Why Yomite’s Speech Synthesis Runs Entirely On-Device · How to Fix Japanese TTS Misreadings

Questions or feedback: [email protected]

— Yomite Team