EPUB Reader · Herenfor

A lightweight EPUB reader. It hands typographic decisions back to the book itself: the page width, margins, floats, illustrations and footnotes a book declares are rendered as they are, and the reader only supplies defaults where the book declares nothing. It supports EPUB 2.0.1 and EPUB 3.x; since v0.4.0 it also opens TXT books and ZIP/CBZ comics.

Highlights

Read the way you want: turn one page or a two-page spread, or scroll continuously from one chapter straight into the next, and switch at any time without losing your place
A quiet reading interface: contents, bookmarks and notes share one drawer, and the rest of the interface stays out of the way
Adjust the layout as you read: page colour, font, size, line height, spacing, margins and columns, all from a small panel above the page, with sliders that update the page live as you drag; line height, weight, letter spacing and word spacing rest at the book’s own values until changed, and a changed value can be restored to follow the book again (margins and the spread gap can return to automatic)
Kind to every pair of eyes: Traditional/Simplified Chinese conversion and custom character replacement, grayscale, invert and dim filters, and assistance for red, green and blue colour weakness; all of them change only how the page is shown, never the book
Made for touch: swipe to turn pages on phones and tablets, with a page-turn animation that follows your finger and a library and menus rearranged for small screens
Illustrations at original size: open an image in the text in an overlay, then zoom, pan, fit it to the window or view it at its original size; closing returns you to where you were
Faithful to the book: percentage widths, asymmetric margins, floats, full-page illustrations and inline footnote markers keep their intended proportions
Bring in a whole folder at once: pick the folder where you keep your books, and they are sorted into shelf folders that follow your own directories, with duplicates recognised
Hand over to another device on your Wi‑Fi: show a QR code on one device and scan it with the other to send books, progress, bookmarks and notes directly, without any cloud
Chinese and English interface: choose Simplified Chinese, English or follow the system, and the switch takes effect at once; it changes only the app interface, never the book’s content or your notes
Optional cloud sync: through Jianguoyun (Nutstore) or a compatible WebDAV service, sync reading progress, bookmarks, notes, favourites and folder membership between devices; only reading data is synced, and EPUB files are never uploaded
Private shelf: tap the shelf title to switch between the library and the private shelf, and set a password the first time. Its books, progress, bookmarks, notes and favourites are stored separately and do not appear in the library, global search, archives, device transfer or cloud sync; the password stays on this device, and original files are not encrypted
TXT and comics: open TXT books and ZIP/CBZ comics. TXT chapter starts and indentable paragraphs are detected, and the Aa panel has a paragraph-indent switch; comics in single and double page modes zoom up to 4x with a pinch and pan by dragging, scroll mode zooms the whole strip, and desktop uses Ctrl+wheel and mouse drag
Local first: no account, and your books and reading data stay on your own devices by default
Most important of all is staying lightweight with performance first; I aim for as good a reading experience as I can

Library

Automatic import folder: in Settings > Storage, pick or change the folder, scan now or turn it off, and see the last scan’s new and failed counts; scans run only while the app is in the foreground and the shelf is idle
Import through a file dialog, in batches; on desktop, drag and drop works too; the same book is never added twice
Open EPUB files from the system: choose EPUB Reader in your file manager’s Open with menu to import and open a book
Import a whole folder: its sub-folders become shelf folders; preview the grouping first, stop at any time, and keep whatever was already imported
Folders and favourites organise the shelf; grouping only records where a book belongs and never moves or copies the file
A cover grid that generates a placeholder cover when a book has none, with a “new” badge on freshly imported books
Reading progress and recently-read tracking, so opening a book returns you to where you left off
Reading archives that can be exported and imported to carry progress, bookmarks and settings between devices
Device transfer: on the same Wi‑Fi, pair two devices with a QR code and send reading progress, bookmarks and notes; include-books is a checkbox on the send form; one pairing covers several batches, and the sending direction can be switched
Each folder can have its own sort order; inside a folder you can import directly or add books from other folders, and folders can be dragged to rearrange them
Everyday tools — search, filters, sorting, view and density — stay on the shelf; the rest lives on a separate settings page, grouped into appearance, reading, data and backup, storage, and about; appearance includes a “Reduce motion” switch, and text choice groups such as library filters, search scope and font source share one segmented control style
Export the original book files: choose Export books from a book’s or a folder’s menu; a single book exports as EPUB, several are packed into a ZIP
Batch selection can take a whole folder at once; in list view, folders show the cover, author and progress of their first book and sort together with books

Reading

Book tabs: open books in new tabs and switch between them, keeping up to 5 tabs
Custom reading themes: choose your own paper, text and accent colours, and save up to 6 themes
Audio and video embedded in a book play right on the reading page
Contents, bookmarks and notes share one drawer; very long tables of contents still open smoothly, and nested branches can be collapsed
After jumping from the contents, a link, a search result, a note or a bookmark, you can go back to where you were, and forward again
Tap-to-turn regions are customisable: keep only the tap zones you want on the left and right, and on touch devices a tap on the left can also go to the next page; with “left side turns forward” enabled, the left preview arrow flips to point forward so it matches the actual turning direction
Page-turn animation: slide, fade or none; touch page turns can be interrupted and dragged back and forth
A progress bar for the whole book, with chapter marks you can drag
Long chapters are prepared in the background, so opening a book or reaching a heavy chapter does not hold up what you are reading
Reading position is remembered by content anchor, so font, window and layout changes return you to the same passage
Bookmark ribbons: a page with a bookmark carries a red ribbon, adding and removing bookmarks is animated, and a removed bookmark can be undone; on phones and tablets a tap in the top-right corner adds or removes a bookmark
Chapters slide into one another like an ordinary page turn, and you can slide back midway; in two-page reading, the empty half page at the end of a chapter can be filled with the first page of the next chapter (turned on in settings)
Changing the theme fades the whole screen to the new colours and recolours the current chapter in place, keeping your position and selection
Optionally override the book’s fonts with your own; off by default
Footnotes in an overlay: hover to preview on desktop, click to pin and scroll
Search within the current book in the reader; on desktop the search docks on the right without squeezing the text; the shelf has its own search for books
Select text to copy it or attach a note; notes can be edited, deleted and jumped back from
In two-page reading, consecutive one-page chapters such as illustration, title and copyright pages are shown side by side; two chapters in a row that are each a large image are joined into one spread
Fixed-layout (pre-paginated) books render as full pages, and DRM-protected books get a clear notice

Per platform

Windows: a self-drawn title bar that follows the app theme replaces the system one, keeping the book title and the window controls in the same bar that also drags the window; when importing, books can be copied into the app’s library or keep linking to the original files; the library location can be changed, and a book’s menu can show its EPUB file in File Explorer; the Aa theme row can be browsed with the mouse wheel or by dragging
Android: turn off “copy into library on import” and files picked with “Import book” are read where they are, without a second copy; if a file moves or access is lost, reconnect the same file (only identical content rebinds), and deleting such a book says the original file stays where it is; edge-to-edge immersive reading, swipe page turns, a battery indicator while reading, a built-in QR scanner for device transfer, and the system back gesture steps back one layer at a time; the screen can stay on while reading, and the system status bar can be hidden in the reader; on phones, the folder expand/collapse control now sits in the filter row; reading settings can turn on volume-key paging (with an optional reverse switch), which only applies while reading the book text

Compatibility

EPUB files vary widely in how they are implemented, and the reader is built to tolerate that:

Percentage widths, asymmetric margins and floats are rendered in their intended proportions
Fonts a book declares take effect by default, and the reader’s default font does not override them
Images and wide tables stay within the page: wide tables narrow and wrap long lines, while tables the book itself fixes in place keep their layout
Books that ask for right-to-left page turns are turned that way; vertical books are shown in vertical layout (experimental; it can be forced to horizontal when the result is not good enough)
Full-page illustrations, divider images and inline footnote markers render correctly
Books that do not follow the specification closely still open and read as well as possible

Testing uses a variety of beautifully made editions from individual authors, which gives the reader very good compatibility.

Privacy

No account and no usage data collected. Books, notes and reading progress stay on your devices by default; only when you turn on cloud sync is reading data synced to the WebDAV service you choose, and EPUB files are never uploaded. Device transfer connects two devices directly through an encrypted one-time pairing, without passing through a server; on Android the camera is used only while scanning a pairing QR code.

Architecture

Tauri 2 provides the app shell and native capabilities, the interface is React with TypeScript, and the core parts such as parsing and layout are written in Rust. Book metadata and reading progress live in a local SQLite database.

Platform status

Windows: released, for Windows 10 / 11 (x64)
Android: released, for Android 7.0 or later (arm64)
macOS, Linux and iOS: planned

Local AI and retrieval

Semantic search, AI questions and answers grounded in the book with citations back to the original text, and chapter and book summaries are all planned. The aim is for retrieval and question answering to happen inside the reader itself rather than in a standalone application. This exploration is documented on its own at the local RAG / retrieval branch.

Download

Every build is published on Releases. Since v0.4.0 the app is named SeLis; install identity, signing, data directories and update URLs are unchanged, so existing users can upgrade in place and keep their shelf and progress. The release page also provides corresponding source and license notice ZIPs.

Windows: an installer and a portable build. Windows 10 and 11 usually ship with the required WebView2; older or trimmed-down systems need to install the evergreen runtime themselves
Android: an .apk package, not distributed through Google Play, so the first install needs permission to install unknown apps; to update, install a newer .apk over the existing app, and your library and reading progress are kept

In the app, Settings → About checks for updates: it describes the new version, the Windows installer and Android builds can download and install it directly, and the portable build links to the download; checking automatically at startup is optional.

License

Original code is released under GPL-3.0-only; the release page also provides corresponding source and license notice ZIPs.

Third-party components keep their own licences (MIT, Apache-2.0, MPL-2.0, BSD, ISC, Zlib, Unicode-3.0 and others); the full list is in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md in the repository, and licensing notes are in LICENSING.md.