Features

Themes are more than color schemes. Each defines background, text color, progress bar tint, bookmark marker palette, and — for some — the reading font itself.

• PalettesFive families — Neutral, Ochre, Celestial, Lime, Rose — each with seven tonal variations: a pure-white extreme on the left, five mid tones in between, and a pure-black extreme on the right. The extremes carry the palette's signature color in saturated text on plain white or black — built for full sun on a beach or pitch-dark bedrooms.
• FeaturedTypewriter (ivory + dark brown, locked to American Typewriter) and Terminal (white monospace on deep blue, locked to Menlo / Courier New, Norton Commander homage). Both come with their own independent typography and layout settings.
• CustomThree user-defined slots with full color picker control
• Day & Night modeAssign separate themes for light and dark system appearance — automatic or manually overridden

The reader carries three independent appearance contexts — Regular, Typewriter, and Terminal. Each remembers its own font, size, line height, padding, alignment, and navigation mode, so a tweak made inside Terminal won't follow you back to Ochre.

All system fonts — no downloads, no licensing, no rendering differences between devices.

• SerifGeorgia, Palatino, Charter, Iowan Old Style
• Sans-serifHelvetica Neue, SF Pro, Avenir Next
• MonospaceMenlo on Mac, Courier New on iOS; American Typewriter everywhere

The font picker groups them with labeled sections and shows live "Aa" previews in the theme you're currently using.

• Size12 to 48 pixels
• Line heightContinuously adjustable, from tight to spacious
• Paragraph spacingContinuously adjustable from 0.3 to 2.4 em
• Text indentToggle first-line indentation
• AlignmentLeft, justified, or right
• HyphenationAutomatic when justified, with content-based language detection for Latin, Cyrillic, CJK, Arabic, and Greek scripts
• Page paddingContinuous slider from edge-to-edge to generous margins
• Image displayShow, mask (reveal on hover), or hide entirely

Every setting applies instantly — no page reload, no position lost.

The default reader renders the book as a single continuous page — no artificial breaks, just smooth vertical scrolling.

Switch to Page mode for a paginated experience with animated or instant page turns and page separators. On Mac, Two pages mode renders a classic book spread. All three modes preserve your exact position when switching.

Your reading position is tracked more precisely than most readers bother with — which means it survives:

• Font changesSize, family, line height
• Window resizesFull layout reflow
• Device switchesMac to iPad, iPad to iPhone — ContinuousReader with sync enabled
• Mode switchesScroll to page, page to spread
• Long absencesReopening the book weeks later with different settings

When you return to a book, the reader fades in at the exact paragraph you left, not the nearest chapter.

A slim progress bar along the bottom expands on hover (Mac) or tap (iOS) to reveal reading position. Click or double-tap to open the progress drawer:

• Tapered sliderA custom track that's thick for the part you've read and hair-thin for what's ahead, with a smooth S-curve at your current position
• Drag-to-seekAnd tap-to-seek with debounced scrolling
• Entry markerA filled dot with a dashed ring showing where you started this session
• Marker modesSwitch the track to show chapters, images, or nothing. Chapter markers show titles on hover. Image markers show thumbnail previews.
• Go ToJump to any page number or percentage, with a sliding pill mode switch

In ContinuousReader, an additional marker mode shows color-coded bookmarks along the track, each with its preview text and page number on hover.

All marker positions are computed live from the document — not stored estimates, always matching where things actually are.

Chapter structure is extracted on import from EPUB spine items, FB2 sections, and HTML headings, with proper heading priority and scene-break separator filtering (* * *, ---, etc.).

The Chapters tab in the side panel lets you jump to any chapter with one click. On Mac, you can switch between two display modes:

• Chapter listA static list with the current chapter highlighted and bolded
• Chapter mapProportional variable-height rows — taller rows for longer chapters — with a thin left rail track, a sliding thumb, and a viewport-proportional indicator. Page numbers are hidden in map mode for a cleaner spatial view.

If you've used the minimap in a code editor, you'll recognize the shape — the book as a page of structure, not just text.

Add a bookmark with Cmd+B or via the text selection context menu. The app captures your selected text as a preview, or — if nothing is selected — the first visible paragraph.

• Seven colorsTo categorize bookmarks (last-used color is remembered)
• NotesAttached to any bookmark
• Color filter barWhen you have two or more colors in a book
• Text highlightingPer-color tints, multi-paragraph for long selections, inline for short ones
• Live markersOn the progress bar, with tooltip previews
• Nearest bookmarkHighlighted in bold in the side panel as you read

Bookmarks belong to the library. JustReader, which reads one book at a time without storage, doesn't retain them.

Open in-book search from the Search tab in the reader's bottom toolbar, or press Cmd+F. Match counter, previous/next navigation, case-sensitive toggle, and yellow/orange highlights in the text. Position markers appear along the scrollbar so you can see matches at a glance.

Search works the same way as translation, settings, and navigation — as a tab in the reader's bottom toolbar, not a floating window that covers the text.

Each book has a personal notes field with a rich text editor. The formatting toolbar supports bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, H1–H3 headings, bullet and numbered lists, blockquotes, horizontal rules, and four highlight colors (yellow, green, blue, pink). On iPhone, the toolbar splits into two rows to fit everything without scrolling.

Notes are stored with full formatting and rendered the same way in the side panel and in exported reports.

Double-tap the reading area to hide the bottom bar and enter fullscreen. The top safe area is ignored so content extends under the Dynamic Island or camera housing. Double-tap again to exit. The mode auto-exits when you open settings, search, or the side panel.

Optional pixel-art clock shows the time as dotted numerals on the background of the page — adjustable position and contrast, visible enough to check at a glance, unobtrusive enough to ignore while reading. For anyone who's ever lost track of time in a book and missed their stop.

Highlight any word or phrase. The translation appears in a panel at the bottom of the screen that stays out of the way while you keep reading. No popup, no modal, no context switch.

Three display modes in the panel:

• Translation onlyJust the translated text, maximally compact
• Side by sideSource and translation next to each other
• InterlinearThe translation directly under the original, word alignment preserved

Switch modes in the toolbar, or set your preferred default in settings.

• Many target languagesProvided by Apple's on-device Translation framework
• Nothing leaves your MacAll translation happens locally
• Selection menu reorderingTranslate and Bookmark sit at the top of the right-click / long-press menu by default. Reorder them in settings — whichever you reach for more often goes first.

Every word you look up can be remembered. ContinuousReader tracks:

• LanguagesThe languages you translate between, with frequencies
• Words seen beforeWith counts
• BooksWhere you translated the most
• Time-based activityWhen and how often you reach for translation

Tracking can be toggled any time. Turn it off and nothing is recorded. Turn it on and export the full history as an HTML report — useful for language learners, researchers, and translators.

Future: export to Anki or other flash-card formats, if there's demand.

Built-in text-to-speech that reads from your current position. Not a separate mode — an extension of the same reading session.

• Position sync on openThe voice reader matches the paragraph you were visually on
• Position sync on closeThe visual reader scrolls to the paragraph the voice finished
• Word-by-word highlightingA soft rounded indicator glides from word to word, automatically keeping the current paragraph scrolled into view
• Transport controlsPlay/pause, skip forward/back, elapsed time (monospaced digital timer), paragraph counter
• Adjustable speedContinuous slider with real-time effect — change speed mid-sentence and playback picks up from the exact word, not the nearest paragraph
• Pitch and voiceInline pitch slider, voice picker with Auto language detection or manual selection. Disabled during playback to prevent disruption — pause, adjust, resume.
• Theme integrationAll controls, progress bar, and word highlight use your current reader theme colors

• EPUBWith chapter extraction and embedded image handling
• FB2 / FB2.ZIPWith automatic genre code mapping (~170 codes)
• MOBIVia a native decompressor
• HTML / HTML.ZIPWith HTML sanitization and encoding detection
• TXT / TXT.ZIPWith encoding detection
• RTF / RTF.ZIPStreaming parser

Embedded images are extracted, compressed to JPEG under 500KB at max 1200px, and stored alongside the content. Importing images is your choice, per book — on by default, off if the author overdoes it or you want to save space (the choice is remembered). Once imported, images in the reader can be shown, masked (revealed on hover), or hidden entirely.

• BrowseNative file picker with filter for all supported extensions
• URLPaste a download link and the app fetches, validates, and imports the file
• Drag and dropDrop a file onto the library. Or drag a URL straight from your browser's address bar — the book is fetched and the import dialog opens with metadata, cover, and author already filled in. You skip the copy-paste-open-import-paste-fetch dance, but you still see the book before it joins the library.

On Mac, the import dialog has a persistent tab switcher (This Mac / URL / Drop) remembered between sessions.

In JustReader, importing replaces the current book. In ContinuousReader, books join the library.

When you import a book into ContinuousReader, you can set its metadata before it enters the library:

• Duplicate detectionAgainst existing library
• Cover previewShown from the book's own metadata — replaceable later from the Book Card
• Metadata previewDetected title, author, series, publication date, language
• Color tagAssignment
• Genre chip pickerManual genre editing
• Folder assignmentContext-aware — uses the current folder when browsing a folder, falls back to your default setting
• Origin URLStored for later "In Library" detection in OPDS
• Image inclusion toggleFor FB2/EPUB/MOBI (strip images if you prefer text-only)
• Open after importCheckbox

JustReader skips this dialog — pick a file, start reading.

• 5 MBWarning banner, import proceeds
• 50 MBHard limit, import rejected
• 100 MBHard limit on decompressed size for ZIP/EPUB archives

Browse online book catalogs with a native interface.

• Default catalogsStandard Ebooks, Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks — ready to use
• Custom catalogsAdd your own OPDS server with Basic Auth support
• Feed navigationWith breadcrumb trail and middle truncation for long paths
• Server-side searchUsing the catalog's OpenSearch template when available
• Local filterAt the bottom of every feed — instantly filters visible items by title, author, or summary as you type
• Cover thumbnailsWith native caching
• "In Library" badgeFor books already imported
• Batch import queueWith folder assignment, color tags, and format selection
• Single importWith post-import options

Two features that make OPDS browsing more than a one-time lookup.

• ShortcutsBookmark any feed for one-click navigation. Useful for favorite author pages, series, or collections.
• WatchersTrack series or author feeds for new entries. Toggle an eye icon on any acquisition feed to start watching. "Check" detects new additions manually. Color-coded status: green when all entries are in your library, orange when new ones appear. Delete a catalog, and all its shortcuts and watchers are cleaned up.