Throughout the ages, readers have had numerous options. Depending on your personal preferences, you have been able to pick up mainstream fiction, geeky non-fiction, graphic novels, and magazines, amongst other things.
Chat stories are the latest offerings. Presented as short stories delivered in the form of text messages, these apps are wildly popular with younger readers. All you need to do is tap the bottom of the screen to reveal the next message, making it easy to lose yourself in a narrative.
If you’re interested in reading chat stories, here are the best chat stories apps available…
1. ReadIt
Expect the stories on ReadIt to capture your interest right away. However, keep in mind that you need to get a subscription to read the full stories and to view the images. Many users start out not expecting that and end up disappointed as a result, despite their enjoyment of the material.
The available genres include horror, romance, and thrillers. The app selects fictional chats for you to read automatically. But you can choose your own stories as well by scrolling to the top and tapping the X button.
ReadIt is one of the highest-rated chat stories apps on iTunes, and it’s worth downloading to find out for yourself why that’s the case.
2. Cliffhanger
You read most chat stories as if viewing someone’s messaging history. However, with Cliffhanger, you become part of the story. In each chat, there are moments where Cliffhanger lets you choose a response to determine what happens next.
As you may have expected from the name, most of Cliffhanger’s stories are thriller, mystery, or horror. You can enjoy stories for free, or sign up for a weekly subscription for more even stories along with access to images and videos.
Fans of Cliffhanger say the text stories in this app are easy to understand and totally addictive. They confess to spending hours getting lost in the stories, which are updated every week. So if you’re preparing for a long plane or train ride, this app could make the journey more bearable.
3. Tap by Wattpad
Instead of offering text-only chat stories, Tap by Wattpad presents stories with images, colorful backgrounds, sounds, and videos. This makes every story even more engaging and takes full advantage of the technology available on your smartphone.
Tap by Wattpad offers an enormous library of stories covering every genre imaginable, including an LGBTQ+ section. Most of these stories offer alternate endings, giving you more reason to revisit your favorites time and time again.
Enjoy the Tap Original stories that come out every week and are exclusive to this app. They offer something new to read even if you use the other story apps on this list. You can also read or create original stories written by other Tap by Wattpad users.
And don’t forget to recommend Tap by Wattpad to non-English-speaking friends. The app offers content in more than 10 different languages, making this one of the best social reading apps.
4. Yarn
Yarn makes it feel as though you’re peeking through other people’s text messages and learning stories about their life. With a premium subscription, you can enjoy pictures, videos, and audio clips as well. The Yarn app even lets you choose your own responses to change the direction of chat stories.
Analysts say these kinds of chat stories may change the publishing industry with new popular content. And Yarn is further pushing the boundaries with short video episodes to watch as well.
Yarn releases new episodes and conversations daily, keeping everything short to make it easy to binge through lots at once. Just remember, you need to pay for a subscription to unlock unlimited and exclusive content.
5. LEAK
With LEAK you can read short chat stories for free since the app is ad-supported, rather than subscription-based. That said, you can get a cheap subscription to remove those ads and unlock even more content. Unfortunately, LEAK is only available on your iPhone.
Enjoy stories from every genre: love, paranormal, thriller, drama, and more. LEAK keeps all of them short and easy to digest, spicing up conversations with the occasional image or status update as well.
It isn’t the best-looking app on this list, but LEAK is quick and easy to use with fewer restrictions than you’ll find elsewhere. That is, if you don’t mind putting up with the occasional ad.