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
I 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.
I’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!
ReadEra on android and Calibre’s reader on Xubuntu desktop.
Might look into some of the stuff suggested here.
Librera 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.
Okular it can read pretty much any format. MoonReader+ on my android devices.
I 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.
Am I just a tech-peasant by using Book Reader? It’s not the flashiest but I dig it.
Only thing I miss from Apple was their mobile eReader. Anyone know of a decent copy of that one?
I use Lithium on android. The dark mode is great for night reading.
Not open source but the app is ad free and has zero trackers.
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.
Book reader on android.
Try foliate or koodo reader, they got a clean UI
