8 ms·

Foliate: Read e-books in style, navigate with ease

639 points by ingve 2y ago

Buttons840 2y ago
Does it manage my "library" for me? I can open PDFs on every OS I've ever used. Like, just open the file, find a PDF file in some directory and open that PDF file and see a render of the PDF. I've never found anything that can do the same for ebooks without also trying to manage my "library". Like, if I just want to peek at a random epub file it will add it to my "bookshelf" automatically and makes that a very prominent part of the program. Can I use this to just open an epub file?
- exe34 2y ago
  koreader is very polite about this, unlike calibre.
- Bayes7 2y ago
  Check out sioyek, it’s great and can open epubs like normal pdfs: https://sioyek.info/ https://sioyek.info/ https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek
  - flobosg 2y ago
    Sioyek uses the MuPDF engine, which supports EPUB: https://mupdf.com/ https://mupdf.com/
  - Ringz 2y ago
    I stumbled over it but didn’t installed it because the website doesn’t mention the ebook functionality. “Sioyek is a PDF viewer with a focus on technical books and research papers”
  - zeke_the_cat 2y ago
    Nightmarish with a tablet.
- specproc 2y ago
  I like foliate, certainly one of the slicker options out there, but yes it does have the behaviour you describe. I do have need of a library, but there's not much point for me if it's just one or two types of document. I've just moved to the new Zotero 7 beta, which has epub support, has always managed PDFs and web snapshots, and since Zotero 6 has supported rich annotation. Perfect setup for me. One library containing all my notes, citations and reading.
- skydhash 2y ago
  Zathura and okular can do it, as well as Sumatra on windows, but they suffer from ugly defaults. The best reader is koreader (kobo device in my case) as it let you customize the reading experience. I tried creating a reader (macos) based on mupdf (koreader also used it) and it’s definitely possible to have an epub viewer. I also dislike bookshelf type software if they try to manage the files as well (a simple database can be fine). So far. I just use these to check the epub file and do the reading on the kobo instead (or convert to pdf if I want annotations (ipad)).
  - II2II 2y ago
    It's worth noting that KOReader is available for desktop Linux users, both as a Debian package and AppImage. The interface is better suited to touch screens though. I suspect that is why noone has bothered to port/build it for other desktop operating systems.
    - graemep 2y ago
      Its what I use on a Linux tablet because of the better touchscreen UI. Foliate did not work as well.
  - joveian 2y ago
    Zathura will by default keep a history and your position in each document, which I personally don't like (I want it to start from the beginning each time) but you can change this with 'set database "null"' in the config file. I tried zathura for pdfs a while ago but went back to evince due to the nice feature of showing all search results in a sidebar when you search. Unfortunately evince doesn't support epub. My zathurarc so far is: set database "null" set adjust-open "width" set scroll-wrap false set font "monospace light 24" set statusbar-home-tilde true set window-title-home-tilde true set window-title-page true set guioptions "v" map [fullscreen] <PageDown> scroll full-down map [fullscreen] <PageUp> scroll full-up map [normal] <PageDown> scroll full-down map [normal] <PageUp> scroll full-up The font option just seems to cover the interface font (which is tiny if you don't set it) and guioptions "v" means no default status bar but always a vertical scroll bar. Page up and down use viewable pages instead of the default document page. I was also just looking for an epub reader due to this Humble book bundle on game design that mostly only has epub: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/all-about-gaming-mit-press-books https://www.humblebundle.com/books/all-about-gaming-mit-pres...
- lf-non 2y ago
  Foliate's core function is an ebook reader and not library management. Once installed you can double click your epubs to open them on foliate - it will not move around your stuff. There is a library view in the app but it is mostly a history of recently accessed files.
- pjerem 2y ago
  Ironically, the best ebook reader that just worked like you said was Microsoft Edge when it had its own engine, before it became "Chrome but even worse".
- freddie_mercury 2y ago
  Calibre works exactly the way you suggest, so I'm not sure why you haven't found it. It comes with an app called ebook-viewer that doesn't do anything except view ebooks. It doesn't automatically add it to the calibre library management.
  - Scaevolus 2y ago
    Calibre's built in ebook viewer is very ugly.
    - xangel 2y ago
      I use it for everything but actual reading.
  - johnchristopher 2y ago
    > Calibre works exactly the way you suggest, so I'm not sure why you haven't found it. JFC, that's not how the installation and the first run of Calibre works at all. I'd write "I'am not sure why you think people would think calibre is first a manager library and not a book reader after installing it" but I'd be lying.
    - karolist 2y ago
      I think Calibre advocates forgot what it's like to setup it for the first time and what a messy ugly process it is for new timers. A containerized version needs VNC access to set it up and perform some un-intuitive UI actions https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-calibre/#application-setup https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-calibre/#applicati... I've used https://www.kavitareader.com/ https://www.kavitareader.com/ but it's not perfect either, this space could be "disrupted" by a Plex like product with opensource + licensed offerings but the target market is pretty small I think.
      - exe34 2y ago
        nix-shell -p calibre I'm not sure what the container is for...
- 9dev 2y ago
  I'm actually working on something like this: https://github.com/project-kiosk/kiosk/tree/v3 https://github.com/project-kiosk/kiosk/tree/v3 I'm still deep in the trenches, though. That project is like my personal zen garden of deadline-free software development, so don't expect a release soon. Happy if someone would be interested in contributing, though :)
- adrian_b 2y ago
  On Linux, I prefer to use MuPDF for just opening any epub file. That was originally a PDF reader, but it has been working for some time also with epub files. It renders the pages not only very fast, but also better than any other epub reader that I have tried (all the others seem to make worse choices about the relative sizes of various page elements).
  - Gormo 2y ago
    Atril works the same way as well.
- bmacho 2y ago
  > I can open PDFs on every OS I've ever used. I can't do that, on windows, or linux. I loved the experience that evince on ubuntu gave me for comics/manga some years ago (what I want: continuous pages, no menu or scrollbar visible, centered, fixed width, variable width, scrollbar on edge hover to show progress), and nothing that I've tried comes remotely close. I was able to come close with HTML + CSS so I am partially content. - - - A recent big failure of mine is to find a music player on F-Droid, to listen to albums, that - is capable to play a song, - is capable to seek in the song - doesn't need access to every media file ever on my phone, only the actual file (either by popping up the file chooser, or the file is opened from an another program) I've checked at least 15 of them, and I think it is possible. I've found multiple examples that can do two (video players that don't need access to every file, can go forward/backward but refuse to play songs, also music players that don't need access to every media file, but can't jump to a position). I eventually had to give up on this one.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure VLC (from f-droid) does what you want. It might prefer to have full file access, but you can just deny that and just open files from a file browser or whatever.
    - bmacho 2y ago
      Is it working for you? It is not working for me, it keeps demanding permissions. It might be something specific to my phone, but also unlikely, since there are video and audio players that can play videos and audio without any permission at all.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        Just tested, TLDR yes it works. Steps: 0. Uninstall VLC (I just did this to reset its permissions+config) 1. Install VLC (3.5.4 from fdroid) 2. Open VLC 3. It'll start with a splash screen, click next. 4. Next screen is VLC asking what permissions you want to give it. Pick the leftmost of the 3 5. Finish the setup wizard 6. It prompts for notification permission, which I allowed 7. You should be at a screen titled "Permission not granted", with 2 buttons. Click the right button to pick a file 8. Use the system file dialog to pick a file 9. It plays
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  FBReader does this on MacOS
- Matl 2y ago
  Calibre has a 'standalone' ebook viewer component.
- weaksauce 2y ago
  maybe there’s a firefox extension you could use that when you set the default file opener it works like that? or drag and drop it on firefox with an extension.
reify 2y ago
I used to always install Foliate when I installed a new linux distro though it only opens epub and not pdf's. The default on linux is Evince for Pdf. Koodo is the way to go However, more recently I have been using "Koodo" reader and library for both epub and pdf It has a great visual library too. I only use Koodo now. https://github.com/troyeguo/koodo-reader https://github.com/troyeguo/koodo-reader http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/koodo-reader-bin http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/koodo-reader-bin
- dsr_ 2y ago
  It might be the most awesome software in the world, but if I can't read the majority of bug reports, it's not something I can feel comfortable using. (This is not a flaw in the software, this is a flaw in me: I don't know how to read -- I'm assuming it's Mandarin Chinese, but I can't even reliably tell that.)
  - Milner08 2y ago
    If thats really such an issue, you can just get the browser to translate them for you?
  - TechDebtDevin 2y ago
    You have dozens and dozens of translation tools at your disposal that take <10 seconds to solve that problem.
    - dsr_ 2y ago
      You want me to trust random translation tools on the internet for technical issues? No.
      - TechDebtDevin 2y ago
        For an E reader? Sure it's not some production tool.
  - squigz 2y ago
relyks 2y ago
This is my favorite e-book reader to use on my desktop :) (it's great for epubs)
deleted 2y ago
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rkwasny 2y ago
I’d love to have a beautifully designed version of Calibre for macOS. I’d even pay for it! It would be fantastic to have a sleek way to organize my ebook collection, especially if it could also store papers from Arxiv etc.
- mattkevan 2y ago
  I would love this too. Calibre is amazingly useful and powerful, there’s nothing else like it, but my goodness the UI is ugly. I’ve come to appreciate it as some sort of outsider art anti-design, defiantly refusing to follow any notion of design consistency and aesthetics. But still, a nicely designed version would be amazing.
- karolist 2y ago
  Would you mind listing some of the killer Calibre features you'd expect to see in an MVP?
  - skydhash 2y ago
    Cover grid, virtual libraries, customizable details pane (select the fields to show), filtering (both tree and search), virtual libraries (collection), export template, metadata editing and embedding (write to file). Thats the few stuff I used regularly.
  - jkingsman 2y ago
    Not the OP, but my library management is 90% tagging, format conversion, metadata fetch and editing, and format tune-up (font subsetting or stripping fonts, fixing covers, etc.). Virtual libraries keep me organized based on tags.
    - karolist 2y ago
      Hey, which program do you do that now with, Calibre or a set of separate tools?
      - 2y ago
__rito__ 2y ago
I used to read all ebooks on desktop when smartphones didn’t enter the market. Now I read on Kindle and a dedicated tab. There’s only one kind of book I read on my laptop now- programming books PDFs. To code side by side. That's all. And PDF is better for rendering equations, graphs, code with syntax highlighting, and figures. I use EPUB for "flat" essays, novels, storybooks, poems, etc. i.e. non-text/non-technical stuff. And I use my Kindle or my tab always for that. For the once or twice need of opening EPUBs on my laptop, I just use Okular. Won't install something via Snap/Flat or compile it for that one-off kinds of use.
- nyanpasu64 2y ago
  A Kindle is a physical device and a tab is a tablet (I initially thought it was browser tab)? My family sat/stepped on two Kindles (crushing the screens to oblivion) growing up and nobody has dared buy another one since; I don't know if it's time to reconsider.
- consf 2y ago
  [dead]
- anentropic 2y ago
  I bought a Kindle for this (programming books and PDFs) but was quickly disappointed The device itself is pleasant enough But I should have guessed, the experience for managing any content bought/downloaded from outside Amazon is almost unusable
  - __rito__ 2y ago
    > the experience for managing any content bought/downloaded from outside Amazon is almost unusable Not at all. I buy EPUBs from all kinds of vendors, across multiple languages. I also have many downloaded from Standard Ebooks [0]. All EPUB works fine, and provides great experience- as long as a file does not contain one of the following- custom page illustrations, syntax highlighted code, graphs, charts, maps, math equations, color comicstrip etc. Just use PDF in tablet or laptop for arxiv papers, math/programming books, etc. Use Kindle for recreational reading- like novels, poetry, essays, etc. I am a huge fan of reading since basically learning to read. And I love Kindle! Am a user for last ~10 years. [0]: https://standardebooks.org https://standardebooks.org
dantondwa 2y ago
I wish this worked on Windows too. In general, I'd love to see all those lovely GTK4 apps on Windows, they look so nice.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- boredhedgehog 2y ago
  There's Alexandria(https://github.com/btpf/Alexandria https://github.com/btpf/Alexandria), which was inspired by Foliate and supports Windows and MacOS.
  - rrishi 2y ago
    oh this is great. there's still room for improvement but it satisfies my basic requirements very well. thanks, this is quite useful for my macos.
- shortrounddev2 2y ago
  Did you try wsl?
- lazyeye 2y ago
  Sumatra PDF reader is a lightweight, superfast app that will load epub files.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> Enjoy features such as auto-hyphenation Is this a feature of the app? Can I bundle an ebook with my own hyphenations and ensure that only those hyphenations will appear when Foliate displays the ebook? Kindles have incredibly awful hyphenation. It seems to originate from somebody confusing the algorithm for hyphenation -- which is "there's a big list of hyphenation points for every word in existence, and when you want to hyphenate a word, you look it up in the list and choose the best available hyphenation point" -- with the algorithm for compressing the master hyphenation list, which involves representing the list as a priority-ordered set of rules for where a hyphen should appear based on a few surrounding letters. But the result is that Kindles are constantly trying to hyphenate words based on a compressed list of words that doesn't include the word that needs to be hyphenated, with results like "Q-ingjiao". This could be easily solved by checking every ebook for words that don't appear in the master list, and bundling a custom list of just those words with every book, falling back to the master list in the common case where a word that needs to be hyphenated isn't present in the custom list. But I guess nobody cares.
newzisforsukas 2y ago
foliate is pretty good for epub. I have been using it for several months, and definitely prefer it to fbreader, calibre, etc. It is much faster than those. It has a good TTS interface as well.
__gotcha___ 2y ago
been trying to use it on windows. Its a great app on linux.
__gotcha___ 2y ago
Been trying to use it on windows. Best app for linux.
asimovfan 2y ago
i need something like this for the chromebook / android.. the only app that works fine with chromebook is its own gallery viewer, but has no bookmarks no annotations in android theres only xodo which is paid and proprietary
nabla9 2y ago
I have been testing this for 15 minutes. - enforces two page layout. I don't see how to fix it. advice does not fix it: https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/discussions/1166 https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/discussions/1166 - can't open all pdf that other viewers can. - zoom does not work, settings do nothing. Result of the 'style' is smudge view you can't fix.
wahnfrieden 2y ago
I’m using this app’s EPUB engine for my iOS/macOS app, Manabi Reader, which is for learning Japanese through reading (but I want to expand to more languages and general purpose use soon) https://reader.manabi.io https://reader.manabi.io
adonese 2y ago
Is there a nice ebooks reader on android. The options I keep running to are rather very disappointing
- alexejb 2y ago
  KOreader is quite nice after some setup.
- gabelschlager 2y ago
  I quite liked ReadEra. Scans your phone for all epubs, allows grouping and organizing them, but most importantly, has a good looking, customizable reading interface.
- DaSHacka 2y ago
  I use Librera FD from f-droid[0], I think it works great though I don't typically read books on my phone (instead opting to use an e-ink kindle). [0] https://f-droid.org/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/ https://f-droid.org/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/
- TiredOfLife 2y ago
  Moon+ reader for non technical books
- hgyjnbdet 2y ago
  Mupdf.
- Sunspark 2y ago
  "Cool Reader GL" is good. Has a lovely page curl animation, etc. It's old though, and hasn't been updated in many years now but it still works fine. I like it because it's very customizable and has fine control of font rendering such as being able to turn off anti-aliasing. It takes time to set-up the way you like, but once you do, it's great and just works.
rubymamis 2y ago
Linux needs more beautiful apps with attention to UX - the same kind of care that developers of macOS apps put into their apps. That's why even when I'm building an app for Linux[1] I start by trying to make the best macOS app first. [1] https://www.get-plume.com https://www.get-plume.com EDIT: Spelling errors.
- karolist 2y ago
  Beautiful app, how did you deal with Qt licensing if I may ask? One nit regarding website, toggling dark mode causes a video change that has some ugly flashing, I think you could improve this by recording the video without dropshadow and adding the shadow with CSS.
  - rubymamis 2y ago
    Thanks! I'm using the LGPL version of Qt, since I'm not changing Qt's own source code I can release my app has closed-source easily with dynamic linking. I could also release it with static linking with no problem (in my understanding), if I allow people to download the object files as well so they can link them to any version of Qt they want (but that's a bit too much for now). Thanks for your suggestion, I'll consider it. But what do you mean by ugly flashing? Is it the instant background change that turn you off?
    - karolist 2y ago
      Yes, the background changes instantly, but video replacement is slower, therefore for an moment the old video shadow background appears distinctly from the site's background color. This is on M1 Max 64 with latest Chrome. Also, there's a problem with responsive text reflow on your personal site, I've only noticed because I'm using a tiling wm. I've made videos to showcase https://gofile.me/7cmOh/e1dTClPiT https://gofile.me/7cmOh/e1dTClPiT https://gofile.me/7cmOh/VyHzagGGa https://gofile.me/7cmOh/VyHzagGGa
      - rubymamis 2y ago
        Thanks for taking the time to make the videos! I think for the first issue, with the flashing, it seems to flash to you, but it's just the theme being changed to light, isn't it? Or you are specifically only talking about the way the video container doesn't fit the rest of the page while it's loading? Regarding the second issue, good catch! I'll fix that. Thanks!
mattkevan 2y ago
I’ve not been happy with the state of desktop ebook readers for a while, so I recently built a simple web-based ebook reader. It’s designed to be a quick and easy way to read books while also providing decent layout and typography. Although it’s a website, books and reading histories are saved in the browser’s local storage and it doesn’t track anything. Here’s the link: https://www.minimalreader.xyz https://www.minimalreader.xyz
- rrishi 2y ago
  any plans to add pdf support?
- azdle 2y ago
  Hey, might I suggest adding a public domain example book? I tried adding a couple of different epubs that I happen to have on my phone, but it just says "Please select an EPUB file." when I do. (Using mobile Firefox.)
  - mattkevan 2y ago
    That's a good idea, thanks for the suggestion. It seems to be quite picky about which books it accepts sometimes, will have to look into that :)
- just_testing 2y ago
  I am going to start using this. Thank you!
GEBIRGE 2y ago
Foliate is really good with the security aspects of rendering ebooks. See the author's foliate-js library project (https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate-js?tab=readme-ov-file#security https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate-js?tab=readme-ov-fil...). I've recently written an article about the dangers of ebooks. Maybe it's of interest to some: https://gebir.ge/blog/every-trick-in-the-book/ https://gebir.ge/blog/every-trick-in-the-book/
- nathansherburn 2y ago
  Thanks for the write up! I just wanted to chime in to say the Foliate code is really beautifully written too. I was able to hack together an epub audiobook reader by running a custom version of foliatejs in Microsoft Edge (which has an amazing and free text to speech engine called "read aloud"). It's VERT hacky but you can try it here: https://nathansherburn.github.io/foliate-js/ https://nathansherburn.github.io/foliate-js/ Works on mobile and desktop Edge.
deleted 2y ago
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joshstrange 2y ago
The app looks beautiful, but I can’t unsee the clipped buttons at the top and bottom on the left. Why wouldn’t you use the same border radius as the window? Or have the window not be rounded?
mikae1 2y ago
For KDE Plasma users that dislike non-native looking GTK apps I can recommend https://apps.kde.org/en/arianna/ https://apps.kde.org/en/arianna/
throwoutway 2y ago
Looks beautiful! While I mostly read on kindle, this makes me want to setup a new Ubuntu install. Haven't had that feeling in a while
codethief 2y ago
My favorite thing about Foliate: > Add bookmarks and annotations. Reading progress, bookmarks, and annotations are stored in plain JSON files, so you can export or sync them easily with any tool or storage service. > The data for each book is stored in a JSON file named after the book's identifier. > How are identifiers generated? For formats or books without unique identifiers, Foliate will generate one with the prefix foliate:, plus the MD5 hash of the file. Finally, someone recognized the benefit of using file hashes for ID purposes and my PDFs no longer get modified when I annotate them! Now I just wish music playlists used hashes, too…
- explosion-s 2y ago
  Maybe I'm not understanding, but wouldn't using the file hash to keep track of things make it really tricky if the file is modified in any way? E.g. when annotating a PDF it would lose all previous data associated because the hash would change
  - TuringTest 2y ago
    I guess they'd use a hash of the book contents, not the whole file?
    - ericjmorey 2y ago
      You end up with the ebook file and an annotations and bookmarks file. I'm assuming that the program would just look in the same directory as the ebook file or some configurable location.
  - braiamp 2y ago
    > Reading progress, bookmarks, and annotations are stored in plain JSON files The file is not modified.
    - cl3misch 2y ago
      I think they mean that the hash in the JSON record does not match the PDF file anymore, after the PDF has been changed by some other program.
p0w3n3d 2y ago
This looks like a decent PDF reader too, especially with Adobe's decision to cease shipping the Acrobat Reader to Linux
inSenCite 2y ago
This look pretty neat, wish there were some decent ebook readers for Android that can handle both pdf and ebpub....I was looking into moon reader but it requires an obnoxious breadth of permissions that seems very odd. Calibre is still my go-to on windows
- dsr_ 2y ago
  Have you tried KOreader? https://koreader.rocks https://koreader.rocks
  - nvllsvm 2y ago
    I use KOReader to read epubs on Android, but not PDFs. Being geared towards eink devices, KOReader lacks the smooth panning+zooming one would typically expect in an Android PDF reader. I've settled on using Bubble2 when I need to read a PDF, though I'd prefer to use my laptop when possible.
casenmgreen 2y ago
Can't view images. This is because they are in webp format. I have support for this format disabled in browser, because I know of no simple native viewer on Linux, so I in effect cannot save such images, because I cannot view them.
- Lex-2008 2y ago
  ffplay?
- adrian_b 2y ago
  Firefox works fine as a native viewer of the saved webp images on Linux, if you associate the file extension/file type with it. Also Chromium/Chrome can be used for the same purpose. The only disadvantage is that the browsers are slower and they have much more inconvenient user interfaces than the dedicated image viewers, for functions like zoom and pan or passing to the next or previous image in a directory. An alternative is to use the movie player "mpv" as the native webp viewer. This is much faster and it has the advantage of easy navigation in a directory with webp images and of easy zoom and pan (you may need to edit the mpv configuration and bind the ZOOMIN and ZOOMOUT commands to whatever keys you prefer).
- kaanyalova 2y ago
  Every image viewer i know of on Linux supports webm, do you have libwebp installed?
rabbitofdeath 2y ago
I love this on my laptop - but struggling for iOS - particularly iPad - any good suggestions? I just want to read books, keep my place and not have any ads -is this that hard?
- dmd 2y ago
  The built in Books meets all those criteria.
- leobg 2y ago
  Voice Dream Reader. Using it for 10+ years. Haven’t found anything that comes close.
- skydhash 2y ago
  MapleRead, but it’s a paid app. Apple Books is ok for reading, bad at everything else.
sqeaky 2y ago
Does it have a dark mode?
- sqeaky 2y ago
  It was in Fedora's repo, so I tried on a Fedora machine I have. It installed and worked. And does have a dark mode, it respected system preferences which was set to dark mode in KDE settings! But it no option menu and no obvious way to turn pages without using the table of contents tool. It didn't respond intuitively to mouse clicks or touch gestures attempts to turn the pages. I will try it some more later, but it doesn't follow hardware ereader (tap to turn page) or normal desktop (no visible buttons or click/drag) UI conventions.
giraffes 2y ago
Is there something like this for Windows?
garyfirestorm 2y ago
I installed snap version of Foliate on Ubuntu20.04. And it failed to work for me (when I open a valid epub, it is just blank). I’m so disappointed when I see something that I badly want and it doesn’t work.
- Sunspark 2y ago
  Try the flatpak.
- WuxiFingerHold 2y ago
  I've solved this for me with this alias: alias foliate='WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 foliate'
ntnsndr 2y ago
I love this app! I recently went shopping for Linux readers and came right back to Foliate for its common sense and feature-richness beneath a clean UX.
beginnings 2y ago
its written in javascript, I dont want javascript apps on my system
oslis 2y ago
[flagged]

639 points by ingve 2y ago

Does it manage my "library" for me? I can open PDFs on every OS I've ever used. Like, just open the file, find a PDF file in some directory and open that PDF file and see a render of the PDF. I've never found anything that can do the same for ebooks without also trying to manage my "library". Like, if I just want to peek at a random epub file it will add it to my "bookshelf" automatically and makes that a very prominent part of the program. Can I use this to just open an epub file?

exe34 2y ago
koreader is very polite about this, unlike calibre.
Bayes7 2y ago
Check out sioyek, it’s great and can open epubs like normal pdfs: https://sioyek.info/ https://sioyek.info/ https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek
- flobosg 2y ago
  Sioyek uses the MuPDF engine, which supports EPUB: https://mupdf.com/ https://mupdf.com/
- Ringz 2y ago
  I stumbled over it but didn’t installed it because the website doesn’t mention the ebook functionality. “Sioyek is a PDF viewer with a focus on technical books and research papers”
- zeke_the_cat 2y ago
  Nightmarish with a tablet.
specproc 2y ago
I like foliate, certainly one of the slicker options out there, but yes it does have the behaviour you describe. I do have need of a library, but there's not much point for me if it's just one or two types of document. I've just moved to the new Zotero 7 beta, which has epub support, has always managed PDFs and web snapshots, and since Zotero 6 has supported rich annotation. Perfect setup for me. One library containing all my notes, citations and reading.
skydhash 2y ago
Zathura and okular can do it, as well as Sumatra on windows, but they suffer from ugly defaults. The best reader is koreader (kobo device in my case) as it let you customize the reading experience. I tried creating a reader (macos) based on mupdf (koreader also used it) and it’s definitely possible to have an epub viewer. I also dislike bookshelf type software if they try to manage the files as well (a simple database can be fine). So far. I just use these to check the epub file and do the reading on the kobo instead (or convert to pdf if I want annotations (ipad)).
- II2II 2y ago
  It's worth noting that KOReader is available for desktop Linux users, both as a Debian package and AppImage. The interface is better suited to touch screens though. I suspect that is why noone has bothered to port/build it for other desktop operating systems.
  - graemep 2y ago
    Its what I use on a Linux tablet because of the better touchscreen UI. Foliate did not work as well.
- joveian 2y ago
  Zathura will by default keep a history and your position in each document, which I personally don't like (I want it to start from the beginning each time) but you can change this with 'set database "null"' in the config file. I tried zathura for pdfs a while ago but went back to evince due to the nice feature of showing all search results in a sidebar when you search. Unfortunately evince doesn't support epub. My zathurarc so far is: set database "null" set adjust-open "width" set scroll-wrap false set font "monospace light 24" set statusbar-home-tilde true set window-title-home-tilde true set window-title-page true set guioptions "v" map [fullscreen] <PageDown> scroll full-down map [fullscreen] <PageUp> scroll full-up map [normal] <PageDown> scroll full-down map [normal] <PageUp> scroll full-up The font option just seems to cover the interface font (which is tiny if you don't set it) and guioptions "v" means no default status bar but always a vertical scroll bar. Page up and down use viewable pages instead of the default document page. I was also just looking for an epub reader due to this Humble book bundle on game design that mostly only has epub: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/all-about-gaming-mit-press-books https://www.humblebundle.com/books/all-about-gaming-mit-pres...
lf-non 2y ago
Foliate's core function is an ebook reader and not library management. Once installed you can double click your epubs to open them on foliate - it will not move around your stuff. There is a library view in the app but it is mostly a history of recently accessed files.
pjerem 2y ago
Ironically, the best ebook reader that just worked like you said was Microsoft Edge when it had its own engine, before it became "Chrome but even worse".
freddie_mercury 2y ago
Calibre works exactly the way you suggest, so I'm not sure why you haven't found it. It comes with an app called ebook-viewer that doesn't do anything except view ebooks. It doesn't automatically add it to the calibre library management.
- Scaevolus 2y ago
  Calibre's built in ebook viewer is very ugly.
  - xangel 2y ago
    I use it for everything but actual reading.
- johnchristopher 2y ago
  > Calibre works exactly the way you suggest, so I'm not sure why you haven't found it. JFC, that's not how the installation and the first run of Calibre works at all. I'd write "I'am not sure why you think people would think calibre is first a manager library and not a book reader after installing it" but I'd be lying.
  - karolist 2y ago
    I think Calibre advocates forgot what it's like to setup it for the first time and what a messy ugly process it is for new timers. A containerized version needs VNC access to set it up and perform some un-intuitive UI actions https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-calibre/#application-setup https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-calibre/#applicati... I've used https://www.kavitareader.com/ https://www.kavitareader.com/ but it's not perfect either, this space could be "disrupted" by a Plex like product with opensource + licensed offerings but the target market is pretty small I think.
    - exe34 2y ago
      nix-shell -p calibre I'm not sure what the container is for...
9dev 2y ago
I'm actually working on something like this: https://github.com/project-kiosk/kiosk/tree/v3 https://github.com/project-kiosk/kiosk/tree/v3 I'm still deep in the trenches, though. That project is like my personal zen garden of deadline-free software development, so don't expect a release soon. Happy if someone would be interested in contributing, though :)
adrian_b 2y ago
On Linux, I prefer to use MuPDF for just opening any epub file. That was originally a PDF reader, but it has been working for some time also with epub files. It renders the pages not only very fast, but also better than any other epub reader that I have tried (all the others seem to make worse choices about the relative sizes of various page elements).
- Gormo 2y ago
  Atril works the same way as well.
bmacho 2y ago
> I can open PDFs on every OS I've ever used. I can't do that, on windows, or linux. I loved the experience that evince on ubuntu gave me for comics/manga some years ago (what I want: continuous pages, no menu or scrollbar visible, centered, fixed width, variable width, scrollbar on edge hover to show progress), and nothing that I've tried comes remotely close. I was able to come close with HTML + CSS so I am partially content. - - - A recent big failure of mine is to find a music player on F-Droid, to listen to albums, that - is capable to play a song, - is capable to seek in the song - doesn't need access to every media file ever on my phone, only the actual file (either by popping up the file chooser, or the file is opened from an another program) I've checked at least 15 of them, and I think it is possible. I've found multiple examples that can do two (video players that don't need access to every file, can go forward/backward but refuse to play songs, also music players that don't need access to every media file, but can't jump to a position). I eventually had to give up on this one.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure VLC (from f-droid) does what you want. It might prefer to have full file access, but you can just deny that and just open files from a file browser or whatever.
  - bmacho 2y ago
    Is it working for you? It is not working for me, it keeps demanding permissions. It might be something specific to my phone, but also unlikely, since there are video and audio players that can play videos and audio without any permission at all.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      Just tested, TLDR yes it works. Steps: 0. Uninstall VLC (I just did this to reset its permissions+config) 1. Install VLC (3.5.4 from fdroid) 2. Open VLC 3. It'll start with a splash screen, click next. 4. Next screen is VLC asking what permissions you want to give it. Pick the leftmost of the 3 5. Finish the setup wizard 6. It prompts for notification permission, which I allowed 7. You should be at a screen titled "Permission not granted", with 2 buttons. Click the right button to pick a file 8. Use the system file dialog to pick a file 9. It plays
carlosjobim 2y ago
FBReader does this on MacOS
Matl 2y ago
Calibre has a 'standalone' ebook viewer component.
weaksauce 2y ago
maybe there’s a firefox extension you could use that when you set the default file opener it works like that? or drag and drop it on firefox with an extension.

reify 2y ago

I used to always install Foliate when I installed a new linux distro though it only opens epub and not pdf's. The default on linux is Evince for Pdf. Koodo is the way to go However, more recently I have been using "Koodo" reader and library for both epub and pdf It has a great visual library too. I only use Koodo now. https://github.com/troyeguo/koodo-reader https://github.com/troyeguo/koodo-reader http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/koodo-reader-bin http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/koodo-reader-bin

dsr_ 2y ago
It might be the most awesome software in the world, but if I can't read the majority of bug reports, it's not something I can feel comfortable using. (This is not a flaw in the software, this is a flaw in me: I don't know how to read -- I'm assuming it's Mandarin Chinese, but I can't even reliably tell that.)
- Milner08 2y ago
  If thats really such an issue, you can just get the browser to translate them for you?
- TechDebtDevin 2y ago
  You have dozens and dozens of translation tools at your disposal that take <10 seconds to solve that problem.
  - dsr_ 2y ago
    You want me to trust random translation tools on the internet for technical issues? No.
    - TechDebtDevin 2y ago
      For an E reader? Sure it's not some production tool.
- squigz 2y ago

relyks 2y ago

This is my favorite e-book reader to use on my desktop :) (it's great for epubs)

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rkwasny 2y ago

I’d love to have a beautifully designed version of Calibre for macOS. I’d even pay for it! It would be fantastic to have a sleek way to organize my ebook collection, especially if it could also store papers from Arxiv etc.

mattkevan 2y ago
I would love this too. Calibre is amazingly useful and powerful, there’s nothing else like it, but my goodness the UI is ugly. I’ve come to appreciate it as some sort of outsider art anti-design, defiantly refusing to follow any notion of design consistency and aesthetics. But still, a nicely designed version would be amazing.
karolist 2y ago
Would you mind listing some of the killer Calibre features you'd expect to see in an MVP?
- skydhash 2y ago
  Cover grid, virtual libraries, customizable details pane (select the fields to show), filtering (both tree and search), virtual libraries (collection), export template, metadata editing and embedding (write to file). Thats the few stuff I used regularly.
- jkingsman 2y ago
  Not the OP, but my library management is 90% tagging, format conversion, metadata fetch and editing, and format tune-up (font subsetting or stripping fonts, fixing covers, etc.). Virtual libraries keep me organized based on tags.
  - karolist 2y ago
    Hey, which program do you do that now with, Calibre or a set of separate tools?
    - 2y ago

__rito__ 2y ago

I used to read all ebooks on desktop when smartphones didn’t enter the market. Now I read on Kindle and a dedicated tab. There’s only one kind of book I read on my laptop now- programming books PDFs. To code side by side. That's all. And PDF is better for rendering equations, graphs, code with syntax highlighting, and figures. I use EPUB for "flat" essays, novels, storybooks, poems, etc. i.e. non-text/non-technical stuff. And I use my Kindle or my tab always for that. For the once or twice need of opening EPUBs on my laptop, I just use Okular. Won't install something via Snap/Flat or compile it for that one-off kinds of use.

nyanpasu64 2y ago
A Kindle is a physical device and a tab is a tablet (I initially thought it was browser tab)? My family sat/stepped on two Kindles (crushing the screens to oblivion) growing up and nobody has dared buy another one since; I don't know if it's time to reconsider.
consf 2y ago
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anentropic 2y ago
I bought a Kindle for this (programming books and PDFs) but was quickly disappointed The device itself is pleasant enough But I should have guessed, the experience for managing any content bought/downloaded from outside Amazon is almost unusable
- __rito__ 2y ago
  > the experience for managing any content bought/downloaded from outside Amazon is almost unusable Not at all. I buy EPUBs from all kinds of vendors, across multiple languages. I also have many downloaded from Standard Ebooks [0]. All EPUB works fine, and provides great experience- as long as a file does not contain one of the following- custom page illustrations, syntax highlighted code, graphs, charts, maps, math equations, color comicstrip etc. Just use PDF in tablet or laptop for arxiv papers, math/programming books, etc. Use Kindle for recreational reading- like novels, poetry, essays, etc. I am a huge fan of reading since basically learning to read. And I love Kindle! Am a user for last ~10 years. [0]: https://standardebooks.org https://standardebooks.org

dantondwa 2y ago

I wish this worked on Windows too. In general, I'd love to see all those lovely GTK4 apps on Windows, they look so nice.

deleted 2y ago
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boredhedgehog 2y ago
There's Alexandria(https://github.com/btpf/Alexandria https://github.com/btpf/Alexandria), which was inspired by Foliate and supports Windows and MacOS.
- rrishi 2y ago
  oh this is great. there's still room for improvement but it satisfies my basic requirements very well. thanks, this is quite useful for my macos.
shortrounddev2 2y ago
Did you try wsl?
lazyeye 2y ago
Sumatra PDF reader is a lightweight, superfast app that will load epub files.

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> Enjoy features such as auto-hyphenation Is this a feature of the app? Can I bundle an ebook with my own hyphenations and ensure that only those hyphenations will appear when Foliate displays the ebook? Kindles have incredibly awful hyphenation. It seems to originate from somebody confusing the algorithm for hyphenation -- which is "there's a big list of hyphenation points for every word in existence, and when you want to hyphenate a word, you look it up in the list and choose the best available hyphenation point" -- with the algorithm for compressing the master hyphenation list, which involves representing the list as a priority-ordered set of rules for where a hyphen should appear based on a few surrounding letters. But the result is that Kindles are constantly trying to hyphenate words based on a compressed list of words that doesn't include the word that needs to be hyphenated, with results like "Q-ingjiao". This could be easily solved by checking every ebook for words that don't appear in the master list, and bundling a custom list of just those words with every book, falling back to the master list in the common case where a word that needs to be hyphenated isn't present in the custom list. But I guess nobody cares.

newzisforsukas 2y ago

foliate is pretty good for epub. I have been using it for several months, and definitely prefer it to fbreader, calibre, etc. It is much faster than those. It has a good TTS interface as well.

__gotcha___ 2y ago

been trying to use it on windows. Its a great app on linux.

__gotcha___ 2y ago

Been trying to use it on windows. Best app for linux.

asimovfan 2y ago

i need something like this for the chromebook / android.. the only app that works fine with chromebook is its own gallery viewer, but has no bookmarks no annotations in android theres only xodo which is paid and proprietary

nabla9 2y ago

I have been testing this for 15 minutes. - enforces two page layout. I don't see how to fix it. advice does not fix it: https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/discussions/1166 https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/discussions/1166 - can't open all pdf that other viewers can. - zoom does not work, settings do nothing. Result of the 'style' is smudge view you can't fix.

wahnfrieden 2y ago

I’m using this app’s EPUB engine for my iOS/macOS app, Manabi Reader, which is for learning Japanese through reading (but I want to expand to more languages and general purpose use soon) https://reader.manabi.io https://reader.manabi.io

adonese 2y ago

Is there a nice ebooks reader on android. The options I keep running to are rather very disappointing

alexejb 2y ago
KOreader is quite nice after some setup.
gabelschlager 2y ago
I quite liked ReadEra. Scans your phone for all epubs, allows grouping and organizing them, but most importantly, has a good looking, customizable reading interface.
DaSHacka 2y ago
I use Librera FD from f-droid[0], I think it works great though I don't typically read books on my phone (instead opting to use an e-ink kindle). [0] https://f-droid.org/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/ https://f-droid.org/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/
TiredOfLife 2y ago
Moon+ reader for non technical books
hgyjnbdet 2y ago
Mupdf.
Sunspark 2y ago
"Cool Reader GL" is good. Has a lovely page curl animation, etc. It's old though, and hasn't been updated in many years now but it still works fine. I like it because it's very customizable and has fine control of font rendering such as being able to turn off anti-aliasing. It takes time to set-up the way you like, but once you do, it's great and just works.

rubymamis 2y ago

Linux needs more beautiful apps with attention to UX - the same kind of care that developers of macOS apps put into their apps. That's why even when I'm building an app for Linux[1] I start by trying to make the best macOS app first. [1] https://www.get-plume.com https://www.get-plume.com EDIT: Spelling errors.

karolist 2y ago
Beautiful app, how did you deal with Qt licensing if I may ask? One nit regarding website, toggling dark mode causes a video change that has some ugly flashing, I think you could improve this by recording the video without dropshadow and adding the shadow with CSS.
- rubymamis 2y ago
  Thanks! I'm using the LGPL version of Qt, since I'm not changing Qt's own source code I can release my app has closed-source easily with dynamic linking. I could also release it with static linking with no problem (in my understanding), if I allow people to download the object files as well so they can link them to any version of Qt they want (but that's a bit too much for now). Thanks for your suggestion, I'll consider it. But what do you mean by ugly flashing? Is it the instant background change that turn you off?
  - karolist 2y ago
    Yes, the background changes instantly, but video replacement is slower, therefore for an moment the old video shadow background appears distinctly from the site's background color. This is on M1 Max 64 with latest Chrome. Also, there's a problem with responsive text reflow on your personal site, I've only noticed because I'm using a tiling wm. I've made videos to showcase https://gofile.me/7cmOh/e1dTClPiT https://gofile.me/7cmOh/e1dTClPiT https://gofile.me/7cmOh/VyHzagGGa https://gofile.me/7cmOh/VyHzagGGa
    - rubymamis 2y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to make the videos! I think for the first issue, with the flashing, it seems to flash to you, but it's just the theme being changed to light, isn't it? Or you are specifically only talking about the way the video container doesn't fit the rest of the page while it's loading? Regarding the second issue, good catch! I'll fix that. Thanks!

mattkevan 2y ago

I’ve not been happy with the state of desktop ebook readers for a while, so I recently built a simple web-based ebook reader. It’s designed to be a quick and easy way to read books while also providing decent layout and typography. Although it’s a website, books and reading histories are saved in the browser’s local storage and it doesn’t track anything. Here’s the link: https://www.minimalreader.xyz https://www.minimalreader.xyz

rrishi 2y ago
any plans to add pdf support?
azdle 2y ago
Hey, might I suggest adding a public domain example book? I tried adding a couple of different epubs that I happen to have on my phone, but it just says "Please select an EPUB file." when I do. (Using mobile Firefox.)
- mattkevan 2y ago
  That's a good idea, thanks for the suggestion. It seems to be quite picky about which books it accepts sometimes, will have to look into that :)
just_testing 2y ago
I am going to start using this. Thank you!

GEBIRGE 2y ago

Foliate is really good with the security aspects of rendering ebooks. See the author's foliate-js library project (https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate-js?tab=readme-ov-file#security https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate-js?tab=readme-ov-fil...). I've recently written an article about the dangers of ebooks. Maybe it's of interest to some: https://gebir.ge/blog/every-trick-in-the-book/ https://gebir.ge/blog/every-trick-in-the-book/

nathansherburn 2y ago
Thanks for the write up! I just wanted to chime in to say the Foliate code is really beautifully written too. I was able to hack together an epub audiobook reader by running a custom version of foliatejs in Microsoft Edge (which has an amazing and free text to speech engine called "read aloud"). It's VERT hacky but you can try it here: https://nathansherburn.github.io/foliate-js/ https://nathansherburn.github.io/foliate-js/ Works on mobile and desktop Edge.

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joshstrange 2y ago

The app looks beautiful, but I can’t unsee the clipped buttons at the top and bottom on the left. Why wouldn’t you use the same border radius as the window? Or have the window not be rounded?

mikae1 2y ago

For KDE Plasma users that dislike non-native looking GTK apps I can recommend https://apps.kde.org/en/arianna/ https://apps.kde.org/en/arianna/

throwoutway 2y ago

Looks beautiful! While I mostly read on kindle, this makes me want to setup a new Ubuntu install. Haven't had that feeling in a while

codethief 2y ago

My favorite thing about Foliate: > Add bookmarks and annotations. Reading progress, bookmarks, and annotations are stored in plain JSON files, so you can export or sync them easily with any tool or storage service. > The data for each book is stored in a JSON file named after the book's identifier. > How are identifiers generated? For formats or books without unique identifiers, Foliate will generate one with the prefix foliate:, plus the MD5 hash of the file. Finally, someone recognized the benefit of using file hashes for ID purposes and my PDFs no longer get modified when I annotate them! Now I just wish music playlists used hashes, too…

explosion-s 2y ago
Maybe I'm not understanding, but wouldn't using the file hash to keep track of things make it really tricky if the file is modified in any way? E.g. when annotating a PDF it would lose all previous data associated because the hash would change
- TuringTest 2y ago
  I guess they'd use a hash of the book contents, not the whole file?
  - ericjmorey 2y ago
    You end up with the ebook file and an annotations and bookmarks file. I'm assuming that the program would just look in the same directory as the ebook file or some configurable location.
- braiamp 2y ago
  > Reading progress, bookmarks, and annotations are stored in plain JSON files The file is not modified.
  - cl3misch 2y ago
    I think they mean that the hash in the JSON record does not match the PDF file anymore, after the PDF has been changed by some other program.

p0w3n3d 2y ago

This looks like a decent PDF reader too, especially with Adobe's decision to cease shipping the Acrobat Reader to Linux

inSenCite 2y ago

This look pretty neat, wish there were some decent ebook readers for Android that can handle both pdf and ebpub....I was looking into moon reader but it requires an obnoxious breadth of permissions that seems very odd. Calibre is still my go-to on windows

dsr_ 2y ago
Have you tried KOreader? https://koreader.rocks https://koreader.rocks
- nvllsvm 2y ago
  I use KOReader to read epubs on Android, but not PDFs. Being geared towards eink devices, KOReader lacks the smooth panning+zooming one would typically expect in an Android PDF reader. I've settled on using Bubble2 when I need to read a PDF, though I'd prefer to use my laptop when possible.

casenmgreen 2y ago

Can't view images. This is because they are in webp format. I have support for this format disabled in browser, because I know of no simple native viewer on Linux, so I in effect cannot save such images, because I cannot view them.

Lex-2008 2y ago
ffplay?
adrian_b 2y ago
Firefox works fine as a native viewer of the saved webp images on Linux, if you associate the file extension/file type with it. Also Chromium/Chrome can be used for the same purpose. The only disadvantage is that the browsers are slower and they have much more inconvenient user interfaces than the dedicated image viewers, for functions like zoom and pan or passing to the next or previous image in a directory. An alternative is to use the movie player "mpv" as the native webp viewer. This is much faster and it has the advantage of easy navigation in a directory with webp images and of easy zoom and pan (you may need to edit the mpv configuration and bind the ZOOMIN and ZOOMOUT commands to whatever keys you prefer).
kaanyalova 2y ago
Every image viewer i know of on Linux supports webm, do you have libwebp installed?

rabbitofdeath 2y ago

I love this on my laptop - but struggling for iOS - particularly iPad - any good suggestions? I just want to read books, keep my place and not have any ads -is this that hard?

dmd 2y ago
The built in Books meets all those criteria.
leobg 2y ago
Voice Dream Reader. Using it for 10+ years. Haven’t found anything that comes close.
skydhash 2y ago
MapleRead, but it’s a paid app. Apple Books is ok for reading, bad at everything else.

sqeaky 2y ago

Does it have a dark mode?

sqeaky 2y ago
It was in Fedora's repo, so I tried on a Fedora machine I have. It installed and worked. And does have a dark mode, it respected system preferences which was set to dark mode in KDE settings! But it no option menu and no obvious way to turn pages without using the table of contents tool. It didn't respond intuitively to mouse clicks or touch gestures attempts to turn the pages. I will try it some more later, but it doesn't follow hardware ereader (tap to turn page) or normal desktop (no visible buttons or click/drag) UI conventions.

giraffes 2y ago

Is there something like this for Windows?

garyfirestorm 2y ago

I installed snap version of Foliate on Ubuntu20.04. And it failed to work for me (when I open a valid epub, it is just blank). I’m so disappointed when I see something that I badly want and it doesn’t work.

Sunspark 2y ago
Try the flatpak.
WuxiFingerHold 2y ago
I've solved this for me with this alias: alias foliate='WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 foliate'

ntnsndr 2y ago

I love this app! I recently went shopping for Linux readers and came right back to Foliate for its common sense and feature-richness beneath a clean UX.

beginnings 2y ago

its written in javascript, I dont want javascript apps on my system

oslis 2y ago

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