How to save words while reading on iPhone: Safari, Kindle, News and PDFs

The best moment to save a word is the moment you meet it. On iPhone that can be two taps from any app, if you set it up once.

The Share sheet is the trick

Every app on iPhone that lets you select text can send that text to another app through the Share sheet. That means Safari, Apple News, Books, Kindle, Mail, Notes, and most PDF readers can all feed a vocabulary app without copying and pasting. WordVale adds itself to that sheet, so the flow is: select, Share, WordVale, done.

Step by step

Press and hold on the word until it is selected. Drag the handles if you want the whole sentence; the sentence is worth having.
Tap Share in the popup menu. In some apps it is behind the › arrow.
Scroll the row of app icons and tap WordVale.
If you shared a whole sentence, WordVale suggests the word worth learning and keeps the sentence as your example. Confirm or pick a different word.
Tap Save. The definition and pronunciation are filled in for you.

Put it at the front of the sheet

By default a new app lands at the end of the Share row. Fix that once: open the Share sheet, scroll the app icons to the end, tap More, then Edit, add WordVale to Favorites and drag it to the top. From then on it is the first icon you see.

App by app

Safari and Apple News: select text, Share. Works everywhere.
Kindle: select text, then tap Share in Kindle's own popup. Kindle limits how much you can select, but a sentence fits.
Apple Books: select, then Share from the menu.
PDFs: in Files or any reader that supports text selection, the same Share flow works. Scanned PDFs without a text layer will not let you select.
Anything else: if you can select the text, you can share it. If an app blocks selection, a screenshot and a manual entry is the fallback.

What to do with the words afterwards

Saving is the easy half. The words come back in spaced reviews, about three minutes a day, and your original sentence is on every card. If you want the full routine, it is here.

Not sure what is worth saving? Start with the collections: a hundred idioms, a hundred formal and academic words, and eighteen more.