Help, without the runaround

Poetic is an iOS app that puts great writing where you already look. Poems, quotes, and passages from Shakespeare, Keats, Dickinson, Whitman, Rumi, Marcus Aurelius, and hundreds more, surfacing through home screen and lock screen widgets, through notifications you schedule yourself, and through a reel you can scroll when you want to.

It is also a proper reader. The library holds full books, with a real page turn, a saved collection, a journal, and your reading stats.

Poetic is here to motivate, inspire, and move you, and to help you live a little more poetically. Check out our About Us page.

No. There is no sign-up, no email, and no password, because there is nothing to log in to. You open Poetic and start reading. Your saves, journal, and settings sync through your own secure private iCloud instead.

Yes. New writing, new authors, and new books arrive with app updates. New Scenes are the exception and can appear on their own, without waiting for an update.

The writing does, completely. Every piece and every book is installed with the app and read from the device, so nothing spins and nothing waits, on a plane or with no signal at all.

Scenes are the exception: a new one needs a connection. Once you have applied it, it is kept on your device and works offline.

Notifications arrive offline too. Poetic schedules them on your device in advance, so losing your connection does not stop them. Opening the app now and then keeps that schedule topped up for offline notifications.

They do, because they live in your own secure private iCloud rather than on the phone. Sign in to the same Apple ID on the new device and your saved pieces, journal entries, and settings restore on their own. There is nothing to export and nothing to transfer.

Premium comes with you the same way, tied to the same Apple ID. It reconnects by itself on the first launch after an install. If it has not, in the Poetic app open Settings, then Manage Subscription, and use Restore past purchases there.

Every line is a real passage from a real work, word for word as its author set it down. Nothing is paraphrased, rewritten, or AI generated. We read the originals and choose each passage by hand, so what reaches you is the true, pure art itself, rather than an imitation of it.

Tell us which one at [email protected]. The library grows steadily, and requests are the main thing that decides what gets added next.

On the home screen you build your own widget designs in the app, each with its own Themes, Scene, font, and refresh frequency. Then, from the iOS Edit Widget screen, you choose which design a placed widget shows, by name.

On the lock screen the widgets sit around your clock in the monochrome style iOS uses there, so you pick the Themes and how often they change and a line waits for you there too.

Make each widget entirely your own by choosing what Themes it draws from, how it looks, and how often it changes.

Check the Refresh setting first. Open that widget design in Poetic and look at Refresh: if it is on Once a day or Occasionally, the widget is doing exactly what you asked it to. Move it to Frequently or Hourly if you want it to change more often.

If Refresh is already high, open Poetic for a moment. The app is what prepares what the widgets show, so opening it refills every widget and reschedules your notifications at the same time.

If it still has not moved, it is worth knowing that iOS decides when a widget is allowed to redraw, and spaces those refreshes out to protect battery. A widget that has not changed for a while is usually waiting on the system rather than broken. Removing it and adding it again forces a fresh one.

It is a window that lets the light of the greatest words humanity has ever written weave itself into your day. You set the hours, how many pieces arrive in them, which days it repeats, and which Themes they come from.

It is how the writing gets woven into your day, so a line can reach you at the moment it matters and change the rest of it.

Open the window and lower how many pieces it is allowed to send, or shorten the hours it covers. If you have several windows you can switch individual ones off, or turn notifications off altogether without losing anything else in the app. It all lives in Settings.

Two things to check, and it is almost always one of them. First, open Poetic and make sure you have a Window of Light switched on, since a window is what sends anything at all. Second, check that notifications are allowed for Poetic in the iOS Settings app. With a window on and permission granted, pieces start arriving on schedule.

Poetic is free to use, and the free tier is a real app rather than a demo: the reel is uncapped, and you get a starter set of two books, four Scenes, one Window of Light, and one widget design.

Premium lifts every one of those limits. The whole book library, every Scene, as many windows as you want, all the Themes, and as many widget designs as you care to build.

It is an auto-renewing subscription, and the annual plan comes with a free trial. What is free today stays free and does not shrink when Premium arrives.

In the Poetic app, open Settings, then Manage Subscription, and tap Restore past purchases. There is also a Restore link at the bottom of the paywall, and the two do the same thing.

Make sure you are signed in with the Apple ID you bought with, since that is where the receipt lives.

Refunds for App Store purchases are handled by Apple rather than by us, because Apple is the seller of record. In the Poetic app, open Settings, then Manage Subscription, and use Request a refund. That hands you straight to Apple's own refund screen.

In the Poetic app, open Settings, then Manage Subscription, where you can view your plan and cancel. You can also do it from the iOS Settings app, under your name, then Subscriptions. You keep Premium until the end of the period you paid for.

We do collect anonymous analytics so that we can improve your experience, learn which parts of Poetic users are enjoying, and keep making the app better with every update. There is no advertising identifier and no location. Your saves and journal never reach us at all, they stay in your own secure private iCloud. For more information, see our Privacy Policy or the privacy label on our App Store listing.

In the Poetic app, open Settings, then Your Data, and tap Delete all my Poetic data.

Make sure you have an internet connection, then stay in the app and let it close itself when it is done. It only takes a few seconds. Do not force quit it while it is running.

It erases all of your Poetic data: on your phone, in your iCloud, and everything held by us and our providers. This cannot be undone.

Deleting your data does not cancel your subscription. Apple handles billing, so cancel that separately under Manage Subscription.

If you would like us to confirm it afterwards, copy your support details from the bottom of Settings first, then email them to [email protected]. Poetic has no accounts, so that is the only reference we can match your request to.

Yes, for the most part. Everything on your phone was erased straight away, but you still need to open Poetic once with an internet connection so it can finish the rest.

It completes on its own in the background from there. There is nothing to repeat and nothing to switch on. The same is true if you closed the app midway, or if it stayed offline for days.

If you have already removed Poetic, reinstall it and open it once while connected. The note it left behind survives the app being deleted, so it finishes the job with what it recorded at the time. You can delete the app again straight away.