What are your go-to ebook readers?
What are your go-to ebook readers?
Calibre is great for managing an ebook library, and okay for reading ebooks but the reader is clearly not its primary focus, so I'm wondering what readers folks here use across platforms.
I know of a few, but I'm always on the lookout for different options that may have features I didn't realize I'd love to use.
Depends on device for me. For android I use Librera for books, Tachiyomi/Kotatsu for manga/comics, on the old Kindle I was gifted (Kindle Touch 2) I use KOReader so I can read epubs. For desktop I do use Calibre for reading, though I'm not a big fan of their reader. I mainly read textbooks on desktop and find the search features useful, which is the main reason for using it, it all works well enough. I had issues getting Okular to work well on my computer, but I've heard it's good? Here's hoping I can unify things a bit in the future.
Eta: I forgot I actually started using Seeneva for comics, since I like the speech-bubble zoom feature
16I had issues getting Okular to work well on my computer, but I’ve heard it’s good?
Which OS were you trying it with? I was pleasantly surprised when I found it was available on Windows, and a simple install had it working for me. Another option to consider if it still gives issues (and you're on Windows) may be SumatraPDF, which despite the name supports a wide range of formats.
4I'm running Debian. Okular worked for smaller epubs just fine iirc, but was struggling with large textbooks which is what I was using it for (Deitel Java specifically). Took forever to load, and was sluggish to search.
Unfortunately it looks like sumatra is windows only, but I'll keep searching!
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I use Koreader. It's a bit heavy because it has basically any option you can think of, it works on a wide multitude of platforms, and can have weird bugs sometimes but hardly ever. But the way I read, I need some settings that aren't in very many readers and it has them. Try it out.
13I've also had good luck using syncthing to sync my library (and progress) across devices with koreader.
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ReadEra on android and Calibre's reader on Xubuntu desktop.
Might look into some of the stuff suggested here.
11Foliate on PC, Librera FD on Android.
8Librera is the one I'd recommend if you care about customisation, and it also has TTS (Text To Speech), which is why I use it almost exclusively.
Myne is a beautiful and minimalistic app that lets you read books from the Gutenberg project. I have asked the developer, and they have no intention to add TTS functionality to the app.
Shosetsu is the best app for fanfiction (AO3 extension) and lightnovels. It recently got a TTS feature as well, but that feature is not very usable in its current implementation.
8koreader is good if your platform supports it.
I use a second-hand kindle on airplane mode and just transfer books to it from calibre. E-ink is better for my eyes.
7Permanently Deleted
5Speaking personally, it's just that non-eInk displays are simply what I have to work with and they don't bother me to read on.
I'm kind of confused, given that most displays don't use e-Ink...Do you minimize your web browsing as a result, or is it different compared to reading ebooks for you?Disregard the question, rereading your post you address it, it just hadn't fully clicked as I've not talked to many people with your experience.
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Believe it or not, DeGoogled-Chromium with Dark Reader. It makes for perfect dark mode
4I really like Alexandria on desktop and there's android support on the roadmap on GitHub.
4I also use Calibre as a library manager, but I haven't found another way to read that is not my kobo. The not e-ink screens just tire my eyes too much.
3Am I just a tech-peasant by using Book Reader? It's not the flashiest but I dig it.
3I like book reader. It's simple and does the job.
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I use Lithium on android. The dark mode is great for night reading.
3Not open source but the app is ad free and has zero trackers.
4I also use Lithium.
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If I only read on my phone, I'd use Librera. But for syncing between my Onyx Boox device and my phone, KOReader is hard to beat.
3Switched from the proprietary moon+ reader to Librera because of this comment and I've been happy with it. Presentation's quite different but all the functionality I like is there, including custom fonts. Thanks for posting about this software!
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I am surprised I haven't seen Kavita show up here yet! It's a very nice self hosted ebook/manga/comic reading server that you can access from a web browser on any device. It's really matured over the years.
I have a few thousand novels in there and really like being able to hop between devices while keeping my spot in a book.
3Okular it can read pretty much any format. MoonReader+ on my android devices.
3I run Calibre-web tied into my Calibre server so I can read on every device I own.
3Book reader on android.
3Foliatehas been absolutely amazing. I love the simple interface that doesn't look as dated ascalibre.2I have a cheap Kobo and put KOReader and Syncthing on it.
2Try foliate or koodo reader, they got a clean UI
2Permanently Deleted
2Only thing I miss from Apple was their mobile eReader. Anyone know of a decent copy of that one?
1Remarkable 2, but the PineNote might be usable now.
1Always wondered how good the Remarkable series is. Have been tempted but the hardware isn't that cheap really. Since discovering the PDF reader of Zotero and running it with a night mode plugin, I've found myself mainly just wanting to use that. The annotations are stored separately as well, so you don't get massively inflated PDF filesizes (though if you want the option to export with embedded annotations, you can do that; you can also import embedded annotations to Zotero and then clear the file of them). Very cool.
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I use my hacked kindle 4 and Bookreader on android tablet.
1I'm holding out for the PineNote from Pine64.
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