Reading & study
A private record of the days you spend with a book, for your own discipline. It is off unless you turn it on, and it never appears inside the reader. You look at it when you choose, on the Days page.
The Days link appears in the menu once you are signed in. Choose Keep a record of my reading days. Nothing is recorded before you do.
There is nothing to start or stop. Read as you normally would, and the day is counted in the background.
Your record is kept in leaves. A leaf is one sheet of a book (two pages), so half a leaf is a single page.
At least two minutes of reading in a book that day.
If you use the optional face and gaze observation and face the page for at least two minutes while reading, the day becomes a full leaf instead of half.
Up to two a day. Bookmarks copied in from published annotation sets are not counted.
Up to two a day, for notes of a sentence or so. Typed, spoken and handwritten notes all count.
Reading counts when the book is open in front of you and you have turned a page, scrolled or tapped in the last three minutes. Time with the tab in the background, or the device asleep, is not counted.
A day joins your run when it has its reading leaf. The run carries through to the end of today, so it is never shown as broken in the morning before you have had a chance to read. If you miss a day, a new run simply begins; your earlier days, longest run and total leaves are all kept. Days follow your device's own calendar.
The Days page also shows today's leaves, this week's and all told, a calendar of the last five weeks, and a line about reading from a writer of the past, different each day.
An optional add-on to Reading days, for readers who want an extra measure of self-accountability. The camera notices whether you are facing the page with your eyes open. It needs no setup and takes a few seconds to learn your usual position.
On the Days page, with your record on, find Face and gaze observation and choose Offer it in the reader. This is a one-time choice; you can withdraw it there at any time.
Tap the middle of the page to open the reader controls and switch on Face and gaze. Your browser asks for camera permission the first time. Close the controls and read as usual.
Open the reader controls again to see a short status: settling in, facing the page or looking away. Nothing else appears while you read.
It turns itself off when you switch it off, switch tabs or apps, lock your device, or close the book, and it never starts again on its own. Face and gaze are one switch here. In a teacher's assignment, the camera signal and gaze observations are separate choices, so that students consent to each; see Face observation and Gaze observation.
If the switch doesn't appear, check that you chose Offer it in the reader on the Days page, and that you aren't reading from an assignment link (those have their own camera panel).
On the Days page, Stop keeping the record stops recording and keeps your past days, so you can turn it back on later. Delete my record… removes every recorded day and cannot be undone.
Your record is private to your account and is not shared with teachers or anyone else. Only daily totals are kept: minutes of reading, minutes facing the page, and how many bookmarks and notes you made. Not what you read or what you wrote. Face and gaze observation looks at camera frames on your device only; no images, video, face measurements or eye positions are uploaded or saved, and it does not recognise or identify you. The small detection model downloads from Google the first time it starts. These are estimates for your own encouragement, not a measure of attention or understanding.