I installed it on my Amazon Kindle and I couldn't be happier.
It shows once again that free software is superior to proprietary software. Free software grows slowly to make users happier and not to attract them with useless features to extract more value from them.
Congratulations for this great piece of software.
I’m a heavy KOReader user and absolutely adore it, but I think it definitely trades user-friendliness for power and flexibility. The Kindle proprietary store has a far more user friendly UI imo, though it’s getting progressively worse (and the fact that kindles now default to showing you the store pisses me off to no end). KOReader plugins really close the gap though.
> I think it definitely trades user-friendliness for power and flexibility
A tale as old as time with OSS software from what I've seen. So far the only exception that I've seen of a FOSS piece of software with great UX is Blender[1]. With UX not being a first-class citizen on Linux, exposure to a solid universal tooling to create great UX also exacerbates things.
I think the issue of bad UX and OSS are comorbid because good UX needs an extremely opinionated mind at the helm and a culture of prioritizing features and saying "No, this is not important" which OSS generally lacks.
I think the only proprietary software companies with any shot at longevity are Japanese companies. First Japan leads by far the ranking of oldest companies in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies). Then we have actual software like Zelda Breath of the Wild which is a technical marvel comparable to the original Rollercoaster Tycoon considering how well it runs on the severely limited architecture of the Switch.
I think this boils down to profit not being the only driving force for these companies, but prestige and a sense of duty and responsibility towards something larger and less immediate.
> Software was not viewed so much as a product, but more like a service, similar to integration, training, and ongoing support and maintenance. It was usually sold on a time-and-materials basis, and sometimes it was just thrown in for free to sweeten the deal. The real money was in the hardware.
> Software development was considered rather low-skill work. It didn’t pay well and was viewed as a kind of clerical work. The job was simply to write software that was close enough to whatever sales had promised the client while they were out drinking last week.
You're assuming long lasting soy sauce companies have anything to do with software development. Japan produces great video games despite how terrible otherwise the developer environment and culture is there and nearly all of the other software shows it.
Didn't say they are good quality, or the working environment is nice or anything, just that they have higher chances or living a long time. The reasons might not be any more or less commendable, but they are different than chasing the highest profit margin possible in the next quarter
Japanese software and software technology culture is amongst the worst in the world. They're famous for failing to adopt modern ways of working, tools and as an industry is seriously struggling. There's fantastic video in this from Asianometry: https://youtu.be/ky1nGQhHTso
Bro has never played the thousands of shitty visual novels. Hell even from software games, which are beautifully well designed, are technically embarrassing
Wouldn't wanna live there permanently. Wouldn't want to have been born Japanese. But my god the products and services are head and shoulders above my baseline expectations; it's simply nicer.
I have always found the adoption loophole to maintaining a family business hilariously smart.
I also understand why it’s not something common outside of Japan. Selling your family name in exchange for (maybe) keeping your business alive is a bit distasteful imo.
> Breath of the Wild which is a technical marvel comparable to the original Rollercoaster Tycoon considering how well it runs on the severely limited architecture of the Switch.
What? It can’t even maintain a stable 30fps on its own target hardware. That’s not an example is point to for something running “well.”
Yeah, it's genuinely my favorite game of all time but to compare it to Rollercoaster Tycoon as "a technical marvel" is doing a massive disservice to Chris Sawyer.
As someone who thought the same (stock was enough for me) until I had some free time and switched, here are some things I'm really enjoying, in no particular order:
- Format support: EPUB, CBR/CBZ (comics, graphic novels), PDF
- Dark mode
- Fully programmable gestures and shortcuts
- Automatically syncs with my readeck instance (think readitlater/instapaper) to dowload the articles I save for example here on HN
- Calibre integration over wifi
- RSS/Atom
If you are into manga, there is an extension for directly downloading them on the device
I'm really happy I made the switch.
- Custom dictionaries
- Better and faster UI. I always thought the Kindle was just slow, nope, it's just really bad software
- Customise any/everything. Font size, line spacing, paragraph spacing, margins, header/footer content, the list goes on
- Ability to use things like BookOrbit (or alternatives) to manage your books and sync your progress/stats.
- LLM-integration through plugins like KOAssistant, highlight a word/phrase/passage to get it explained to you. This was invaluable for me when reading through a series from the 1950's about the late 1700's, lots of phrases I'd never heard. Many I could grasp the meaning from context but it was way more fun to hear the "why" behind the phrase. Same with historical events that I am less knowledgeable about than I wish. Let's me stay "in the book" instead of picking up my phone.
- Full control, some people don't care/need this but I love being able to SSH into my Kindle and do whatever I want. I love having my entire book reading experience end-to-end be fully open source and self-hosted.
In my case from different places like itch.io , smashwords.com, gumroad.com, some fundraisings that provide epubs. You also have some nice free places like standardebooks.org. Or you can sail the digital seven seas if there's no availability.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ has more books than you will be able to read in your lifetime for no cost. Some are classics for a reason, some are garbage - same as any other publisher.
There are a number of other free ebook sites out there as well.
Never updating if you don't want an update. I see no reason for my e-reader to have updates. I have a Kobo and after I updated it once about 5 years ago I haven't since because it already does everything I need it to.
Not only is it the superior piece of software, the freedom it offers by dissociating the choice of hardware from the choice of software is another example why free software and interoperability is something we should strive for.
I like the Readwise integration via plugin and the EPUB support, but for the first few days with it, I was busy understanding the menu hierarchy and trying to figure out how to match the styling and spacing of my native Kindle books. The out-of-the-box experience is unfortunately just "tasteless," and I needed some time to warm up to it.
It's a great reader app, but as a reader of Japanese light novels it's sadly not fit for my personal purposes - last I checked vertical text is only possible in a really, _really_ hacky way (using a font that is turned sideways), and dictionary support for Japanese (or, say, Finnish with its complex lemmatization) is lacking behind browser extensions such as Yomitan, or mobile apps like Hoshi Reader that have Yomitan dictionary support.
I don't think KOReader handles fixed-size epubs terribly well too, and most of my manga (usually bought on Rakuten Kobo) comes in that format.
For reading English or native language books on non-Android e-readers it's a godsend.
You can use the regular Kindle viewer once you jailbroke your kindle, but KOReader has native epub and pdf support so you don't have to use a converter when uploading your books.
I did find it hard to get the bezels to be even and it still doesn't always format well depending on the book. I still kind of prefer the default viewer.
I use this plugin in KOReader which lets you download books from Z-Library within KOReader.
Another cool thing is you can use custom fonts and dictionaries. I use the OED short version and the Wikipedia one. There's built in ones that it can download but pirated ones like OED you have to upload yourself.
Unfortunately on MacOS it seems you have to use Amazon's app to access the filesystem.
Edit:
They changed it on the newer Kindle which I have.
There's open source alternatives to the send to kindle app.
> Unfortunately on MacOS it seems you have to use Amazon's app to access the filesystem.
Hmmm not really my experience, unless it's a new thing. I am still able to access it via finder. Although I need to exit KoReader first and go back to the stock UI.
>Unfortunately on MacOS it seems you have to use Amazon's app to access the filesystem.
I can recommend using a Filebrowser plugin for KOReader, that way you can access the file system over a web interface and upload that way. No cables needed or anything, quite convenient.
same experience here, jailbroken Kindle, installed KOReader, tried it and returned back to default viewer, don't exactly remember the reason, maybe overcomplicated? (especially since it's device for my kids, it doesnt have internet access, I just put there books offline)
If you have a newer Kindle and some hacking skills, consider looking for new Kindle jailbreak methods. The existing jailbreak methods don't work on newer firmwares. ( See https://kindlemodding.org/kindle-models.html )
KOReader is my jam! With its reflow for PDFs, I've used it on my Kindle Oasis 2 to read everything for my undergrad and graduate degree. Some years ago now, I wrote a script that converts the annotations to Obsidian [0], and then another little script to automatically keep my "Articles" folders in sync between the Kindle and my laptop.
I have this on my Amazon Kindle and I freaking LOVE it!
Paired with BookOrbit [0] and using plugins like BookShelf, BookEnds, and KOAssistant I have the best reading setup ever.
The speed of this on my Kindle is _insane_ compared to the stock software. I'm not talking about page turning, that was fine on both, but navigating menus is way faster.
It was a little finicky to configure but once I got a feel for it I didn't have a problem and 15 books read later since I installed it a few months ago and I never touch the settings.
My favorite plugins:
BookShelf: Best UI for viewing my books by author/series/etc IMHO. Much better than the Kindle default UI and much snappier
BookEnds: Configure the header and footer of each page to show what info you care about most. There are community configs you can test out easily and download right on your kindle if you like them
KOAssistant: highlight some text and throw it at an LLM with a provided prompt or your custom one. This was invaluable when reading the Hornblower series which used a lot of older english words/phrasing as well as nautical terms (which I'm completely unfamiliar with). I enjoyed the books way more since I could figure it out inside my kindle instead of constantly having to pick up my phone to look up a phrase.
BookOrbit: It provides a plugin for KOReader that syncs your progress, annotations, etc.
KOReader is table stakes for any e-reader I might consider. If my Kindle died tomorrow I'd have a Kobo or similar on it's way to me within hours. I won't use any reader that doesn't support KOReader after using it for these last few months.
I set up KOReader with a jailbroken Kindle. DammitJeff has a good video introducing the topic. UI is definitely awkward, but it is awesome and pretty "hands off" when set up. It also has built-in support for OPDS so downloads from places like "Project Gutenberg" are a breeze. Also, if you are a homelabber with stuff like Calibre & Calibre Sync, it all works as you'd expect.
If you use a Kindle, you have to jailbreak it first before installing it. There's definitely been some improvements with user experience at least with apps since I first jailbroke it. There's like an appstore with games and KOReader that I use.
So good. I've built a plugin for it to allow me download books from my Jellyfin server on my Kindle 3 Keyboard (from 2010!). Was lovely for develop for and the wide compatibility of KOReader has made it a great investment.
I am using koreader on my ereader and KOreader has a native support for https://wallabag.org/. They are both fantastic opensource projects, whenever I like to read a blog post I am sending them to my wallabag and therefore I can easily have them on my ereader too.
Also the fact that you can install different plugin on KOreader and customize it in a way you like is fantastic.
for example just check:
I finally installed this on my Kobo Libra 2. The UX is clunky but overall it works great. Very fast. Don’t need KEPUBS anymore as epubs render just as fast, where as that’s not the case on the stock software.
I finally got around to installing it as I got an xteink x3 and wanted to have cross device syncing back to my Grimmory server. Works great with OPDS and KOSync.
Although I miss using the native kobo sync where I could just add a book to my virtual shelf and have it auto sync to my device. OPDS seems very rudimentary in comparison, but it works nonetheless.
KOReader is awesome and it's my go to for most e-reader reading. I've recently been trying out Plato (https://github.com/baskerville/plato) as well and it has a really nice experience for reading PDFs. It crops the margins and pages through the PDF in chunks nicely.
It has super useful features like the semi-auto-cropping which removes margins in PDFs (like papers or books), including unnecessary things like page numbers or similar, so that you can really maximize the size of the core content. It also has a nice chapter overview and other useful things!
Truly one of the best pieces of software I have used so far.
I installed this the moment I got my Kobo Libra H2O. Mostly read fiction from the 1800s and early 1900s and I did not want to fight whatever proprietary software the reader came with (Kobo is probably better than the Kindle for this, but I never tried it!)
I have a problem with epubs though. This need to support every single thing under the sun makes the pipeline exceedingly complex. All you need for a vast majority of fiction is:
- headings
- paras
- emphasis (bold/italic)
- block quotes
Add simple "image" syntax to it to display maps etc from detective stories
Basically a ruthlessly cut down version of markdown.
The mini-readers from Xteink came in at the right time for such experimentation.
Fiction from the 1800s? Now that sounds interesting. Can you name three titles that you would recommend? And: how did you get into this? Doesn’t sound like a TikTok trend, haha.
It took me some time to know my way around it, but wow. I have it configured with some plugins, like zen ui and bookshelf. I Also use BookOrbit to sync reading progress and annotations between devices. Loving it.
If you like the statistics you might enjoy BookOrbit. I'm a sucker for stats like this and love having them centralized so that it's not just on my e-reader (in case it dies or if I read on another compatible app that syncs progress/stats).
Did anyone made a comparison across different devices for running this? I am curious on what is the best device today to run it, and also the best when accounting for cost of the device too.
I love KOReader! I use it on my Kobo Clara Colour with Calibre. Love Wikipedia lookup, customization options, and the fact that wifi is off by default.
KOReader is so much better, including in how it renders typography and does typesetting than what ships on Kobo devices by default, it's sort of wild.
I actually made a mod to try to upgrade Kobo's built-in reader so it's more correct, i.e. more faithful to how KOReader renders text. Sharing it here since it may be interesting for anyone with Kobo e-readers: https://github.com/nicoverbruggen/NickelTypeFix
My wish is to see ebooks become first class citizens on all digital devices. Apple has a native ebook reader built in to their devices. It's cumbersome and bloated, but it's there. No web browser except Yandex has built in ebook support, even though it would be the easiest thing in the world. Android, Linux and Windows have no built-in ebook reader, as far as I know.
Murasaki [1] is the most performant and sleek ebook reader you can get for MacOS currently. It's magnificent, but the creator has regionally limited who can get it, unfortunately.
I really appreciate you mentioning Murasaki - thank you. I've been looking for something like this for a long time, because every single EPUB "reader" out there does so much more than just read EPUBs. This one does just that, I love it.
The old Microsoft Edge had epub support, and even a nascent ebook shop and a nifty note-taking/annotation mechanism (there was even a restitution payment made for folks who had taken notes), but Microsoft gave up on it when they shifted to a rebadged Chrome.
It doesn’t seem like it’s a huge ask imo, and I’m also pretty surprised that they have such limited support, a mostly text format like epub really should be simple to add functionality for.
Less surprising but still annoying is how many hoops you need to jump through to get a good reading experience for manga, particularly on macOS. I had to try many options that were either too buggy, too difficult to install correctly, various aggressive paywalls, or straight up don’t function with high quality scans.
Eventually I landed on one(will edit the name in when I have access to my laptop) that functions well but has some memory issues in importing books, possibly a memory leak.
Maybe I’ve just become shit at finding apps in the modern unsearchable age, but it really feels like reading of all types has diminished enough that we are an unserviceable market.
I installed it on my Amazon Kindle and I couldn't be happier. It shows once again that free software is superior to proprietary software. Free software grows slowly to make users happier and not to attract them with useless features to extract more value from them. Congratulations for this great piece of software.
I’m a heavy KOReader user and absolutely adore it, but I think it definitely trades user-friendliness for power and flexibility. The Kindle proprietary store has a far more user friendly UI imo, though it’s getting progressively worse (and the fact that kindles now default to showing you the store pisses me off to no end). KOReader plugins really close the gap though.
> I think it definitely trades user-friendliness for power and flexibility
A tale as old as time with OSS software from what I've seen. So far the only exception that I've seen of a FOSS piece of software with great UX is Blender[1]. With UX not being a first-class citizen on Linux, exposure to a solid universal tooling to create great UX also exacerbates things.
I think the issue of bad UX and OSS are comorbid because good UX needs an extremely opinionated mind at the helm and a culture of prioritizing features and saying "No, this is not important" which OSS generally lacks.
[1]: https://www.blender.org/
I think the only proprietary software companies with any shot at longevity are Japanese companies. First Japan leads by far the ranking of oldest companies in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies). Then we have actual software like Zelda Breath of the Wild which is a technical marvel comparable to the original Rollercoaster Tycoon considering how well it runs on the severely limited architecture of the Switch.
I think this boils down to profit not being the only driving force for these companies, but prestige and a sense of duty and responsibility towards something larger and less immediate.
This podcast about the history of zaibatsu, hardware, and software comes to mind. https://www.disruptingjapan.com/the-forgotten-mistake-that-k...
> Software was not viewed so much as a product, but more like a service, similar to integration, training, and ongoing support and maintenance. It was usually sold on a time-and-materials basis, and sometimes it was just thrown in for free to sweeten the deal. The real money was in the hardware.
> Software development was considered rather low-skill work. It didn’t pay well and was viewed as a kind of clerical work. The job was simply to write software that was close enough to whatever sales had promised the client while they were out drinking last week.
I think you know nothing about Japanese software.
You're assuming long lasting soy sauce companies have anything to do with software development. Japan produces great video games despite how terrible otherwise the developer environment and culture is there and nearly all of the other software shows it.
Didn't say they are good quality, or the working environment is nice or anything, just that they have higher chances or living a long time. The reasons might not be any more or less commendable, but they are different than chasing the highest profit margin possible in the next quarter
Japanese software and software technology culture is amongst the worst in the world. They're famous for failing to adopt modern ways of working, tools and as an industry is seriously struggling. There's fantastic video in this from Asianometry: https://youtu.be/ky1nGQhHTso
Bro has never played the thousands of shitty visual novels. Hell even from software games, which are beautifully well designed, are technically embarrassing
They are, but the central theme of the convo here isn't quality but longevity
There is nothing inherently special about Japan or Japanese people. You can pull similar examples from many other countries.
I take it you've never been to Japan...
Wouldn't wanna live there permanently. Wouldn't want to have been born Japanese. But my god the products and services are head and shoulders above my baseline expectations; it's simply nicer.
I have lived in Japan.
> Wouldn't wanna live there permanently. Wouldn't want to have been born Japanese.
So I take it you understand that there is no free lunch.
The apps I need to use for Rakuten Mobile are certainly... special.
I agree. I didn't say it's special, only different. Can you say adult adoption is something common in the US?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_adult_adoption
I have always found the adoption loophole to maintaining a family business hilariously smart.
I also understand why it’s not something common outside of Japan. Selling your family name in exchange for (maybe) keeping your business alive is a bit distasteful imo.
It's weird and shows how heinous the working culture is, salarymen are almost property of the company they work for
> Breath of the Wild which is a technical marvel comparable to the original Rollercoaster Tycoon considering how well it runs on the severely limited architecture of the Switch.
What? It can’t even maintain a stable 30fps on its own target hardware. That’s not an example is point to for something running “well.”
Yeah, it's genuinely my favorite game of all time but to compare it to Rollercoaster Tycoon as "a technical marvel" is doing a massive disservice to Chris Sawyer.
Software
Software Japan
What extra features has over regular kindle software? I find kindle features enough but I want to know if I’m missing something
As someone who thought the same (stock was enough for me) until I had some free time and switched, here are some things I'm really enjoying, in no particular order:
- Format support: EPUB, CBR/CBZ (comics, graphic novels), PDF
- Dark mode
- Fully programmable gestures and shortcuts
- Automatically syncs with my readeck instance (think readitlater/instapaper) to dowload the articles I save for example here on HN
- Calibre integration over wifi
- RSS/Atom
If you are into manga, there is an extension for directly downloading them on the device
I'm really happy I made the switch. - Custom dictionaries
What's the point of Dark mode on an eink screen?
- Better and faster UI. I always thought the Kindle was just slow, nope, it's just really bad software
- Customise any/everything. Font size, line spacing, paragraph spacing, margins, header/footer content, the list goes on
- Ability to use things like BookOrbit (or alternatives) to manage your books and sync your progress/stats.
- LLM-integration through plugins like KOAssistant, highlight a word/phrase/passage to get it explained to you. This was invaluable for me when reading through a series from the 1950's about the late 1700's, lots of phrases I'd never heard. Many I could grasp the meaning from context but it was way more fun to hear the "why" behind the phrase. Same with historical events that I am less knowledgeable about than I wish. Let's me stay "in the book" instead of picking up my phone.
- Full control, some people don't care/need this but I love being able to SSH into my Kindle and do whatever I want. I love having my entire book reading experience end-to-end be fully open source and self-hosted.
Being able to put epubs bought elsewhere and reading them without needing to convert the files is a huge plus
Kindle already supports that, or at least my 5 years old vanilla Kindle can.
Where do you buy your epubs from?
In my case from different places like itch.io , smashwords.com, gumroad.com, some fundraisings that provide epubs. You also have some nice free places like standardebooks.org. Or you can sail the digital seven seas if there's no availability.
Theres a long trail of smaller stores, including Kobo store and ebooks.com
Standard Ebooks for high quality public domain books, though they also offer azw.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ has more books than you will be able to read in your lifetime for no cost. Some are classics for a reason, some are garbage - same as any other publisher.
There are a number of other free ebook sites out there as well.
I wouldn't assume that purchases are taking place.
Considering that the GP said
> Being able to put epubs bought elsewhere
I'd say it is in this case.
IMO the most important one is more options for PDF rendering, often allowing you to read PDFs without squinting.
Well tbh the reason I like it has to do more with calibre (free software)
Never updating if you don't want an update. I see no reason for my e-reader to have updates. I have a Kobo and after I updated it once about 5 years ago I haven't since because it already does everything I need it to.
Funnily koreader comes with a lot of features that are useless to me, but I love that I can just disable the respective plugins.
Not only is it the superior piece of software, the freedom it offers by dissociating the choice of hardware from the choice of software is another example why free software and interoperability is something we should strive for.
I like the Readwise integration via plugin and the EPUB support, but for the first few days with it, I was busy understanding the menu hierarchy and trying to figure out how to match the styling and spacing of my native Kindle books. The out-of-the-box experience is unfortunately just "tasteless," and I needed some time to warm up to it.
Yeah and like the majority of open source software, the UI is garbage and unintuitive.
It shows reading stats that I absolutely love!!
It's a great reader app, but as a reader of Japanese light novels it's sadly not fit for my personal purposes - last I checked vertical text is only possible in a really, _really_ hacky way (using a font that is turned sideways), and dictionary support for Japanese (or, say, Finnish with its complex lemmatization) is lacking behind browser extensions such as Yomitan, or mobile apps like Hoshi Reader that have Yomitan dictionary support.
I don't think KOReader handles fixed-size epubs terribly well too, and most of my manga (usually bought on Rakuten Kobo) comes in that format.
For reading English or native language books on non-Android e-readers it's a godsend.
You can use the regular Kindle viewer once you jailbroke your kindle, but KOReader has native epub and pdf support so you don't have to use a converter when uploading your books.
I did find it hard to get the bezels to be even and it still doesn't always format well depending on the book. I still kind of prefer the default viewer.
I use this plugin in KOReader which lets you download books from Z-Library within KOReader.
https://github.com/ZlibraryKO/zlibrary.koplugin
Another cool thing is you can use custom fonts and dictionaries. I use the OED short version and the Wikipedia one. There's built in ones that it can download but pirated ones like OED you have to upload yourself.
Unfortunately on MacOS it seems you have to use Amazon's app to access the filesystem.
Edit:
They changed it on the newer Kindle which I have.
There's open source alternatives to the send to kindle app.
> Unfortunately on MacOS it seems you have to use Amazon's app to access the filesystem.
KOReader comes with SSH, so you can just SSH into it.
> Unfortunately on MacOS it seems you have to use Amazon's app to access the filesystem.
Hmmm not really my experience, unless it's a new thing. I am still able to access it via finder. Although I need to exit KoReader first and go back to the stock UI.
>Unfortunately on MacOS it seems you have to use Amazon's app to access the filesystem.
I can recommend using a Filebrowser plugin for KOReader, that way you can access the file system over a web interface and upload that way. No cables needed or anything, quite convenient.
same experience here, jailbroken Kindle, installed KOReader, tried it and returned back to default viewer, don't exactly remember the reason, maybe overcomplicated? (especially since it's device for my kids, it doesnt have internet access, I just put there books offline)
If you have a newer Kindle and some hacking skills, consider looking for new Kindle jailbreak methods. The existing jailbreak methods don't work on newer firmwares. ( See https://kindlemodding.org/kindle-models.html )
KOReader is my jam! With its reflow for PDFs, I've used it on my Kindle Oasis 2 to read everything for my undergrad and graduate degree. Some years ago now, I wrote a script that converts the annotations to Obsidian [0], and then another little script to automatically keep my "Articles" folders in sync between the Kindle and my laptop.
Very grateful for this software!
[0]: https://github.com/simonpacis/kohico
I have this on my Amazon Kindle and I freaking LOVE it!
Paired with BookOrbit [0] and using plugins like BookShelf, BookEnds, and KOAssistant I have the best reading setup ever.
The speed of this on my Kindle is _insane_ compared to the stock software. I'm not talking about page turning, that was fine on both, but navigating menus is way faster.
It was a little finicky to configure but once I got a feel for it I didn't have a problem and 15 books read later since I installed it a few months ago and I never touch the settings.
My favorite plugins:
BookShelf: Best UI for viewing my books by author/series/etc IMHO. Much better than the Kindle default UI and much snappier
BookEnds: Configure the header and footer of each page to show what info you care about most. There are community configs you can test out easily and download right on your kindle if you like them
KOAssistant: highlight some text and throw it at an LLM with a provided prompt or your custom one. This was invaluable when reading the Hornblower series which used a lot of older english words/phrasing as well as nautical terms (which I'm completely unfamiliar with). I enjoyed the books way more since I could figure it out inside my kindle instead of constantly having to pick up my phone to look up a phrase.
BookOrbit: It provides a plugin for KOReader that syncs your progress, annotations, etc.
KOReader is table stakes for any e-reader I might consider. If my Kindle died tomorrow I'd have a Kobo or similar on it's way to me within hours. I won't use any reader that doesn't support KOReader after using it for these last few months.
[0] https://bookorbit.app/
I set up KOReader with a jailbroken Kindle. DammitJeff has a good video introducing the topic. UI is definitely awkward, but it is awesome and pretty "hands off" when set up. It also has built-in support for OPDS so downloads from places like "Project Gutenberg" are a breeze. Also, if you are a homelabber with stuff like Calibre & Calibre Sync, it all works as you'd expect.
Lots of nice features but the UX and UI are so painful that it's not worth jumping from the stock kobo reader for me.
It's nice to have another option though and if the UX improves one day maybe I'll use it as my main reader.
I got to the same conclusion. Installation was also painful; understandable, these platforms are clumsy.
The software itself is magic, kudos to all the developers and community.
If you use a Kindle, you have to jailbreak it first before installing it. There's definitely been some improvements with user experience at least with apps since I first jailbroke it. There's like an appstore with games and KOReader that I use.
This is the guide I used and it's up to date.
https://kindlemodding.org/
I installed it and I use Calibre to send books over wifi. Simple and sweet setup.
EXTREMELY confusing UI, but when you get used to it, nothing really comes close in terms of customisability and features.
Seriously, takes ages to find specific settings for the first few times.
I tried but the whole process is a miserable experience between the stale blog posts and the dead links…
And then the UX… great project but could use a systems guy used to jailbreaking installations and a UX designer
Edit: for kobo at least
you used https://kindlemodding.org/?
Worked fine for me.
No it was on Kobo
So good. I've built a plugin for it to allow me download books from my Jellyfin server on my Kindle 3 Keyboard (from 2010!). Was lovely for develop for and the wide compatibility of KOReader has made it a great investment.
I am using koreader on my ereader and KOreader has a native support for https://wallabag.org/. They are both fantastic opensource projects, whenever I like to read a blog post I am sending them to my wallabag and therefore I can easily have them on my ereader too.
Also the fact that you can install different plugin on KOreader and customize it in a way you like is fantastic. for example just check:
- https://github.com/doctorhetfield-cmd/simpleui.koplugin - https://github.com/AndyHazz/bookshelf.koplugin
Or with Lua you can develop your own plugin for that. to people who wanted to jailbreak their Kindle I can recommend these two links:
- https://kindlemodding.org/ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtk7ERwlIAk
All in all I am supper happy with KOreader and can't imagine to use anything else
I finally installed this on my Kobo Libra 2. The UX is clunky but overall it works great. Very fast. Don’t need KEPUBS anymore as epubs render just as fast, where as that’s not the case on the stock software.
I finally got around to installing it as I got an xteink x3 and wanted to have cross device syncing back to my Grimmory server. Works great with OPDS and KOSync.
Although I miss using the native kobo sync where I could just add a book to my virtual shelf and have it auto sync to my device. OPDS seems very rudimentary in comparison, but it works nonetheless.
What's the advantage of Grimmory over Booklore?
Have people moved on from Calibre?
I've been slowly spinning up self-hosted services and Calibre was on my TODO. I haven't even heard of Booklore.
KOReader is awesome and it's my go to for most e-reader reading. I've recently been trying out Plato (https://github.com/baskerville/plato) as well and it has a really nice experience for reading PDFs. It crops the margins and pages through the PDF in chunks nicely.
I have it on my Kobo, it's really good ! I use it with Wallabag, I can save articles on my desktop and sync it before leaving for work, really nice.
I absolutely love KOReader on my Boox Go 10.3!
It has super useful features like the semi-auto-cropping which removes margins in PDFs (like papers or books), including unnecessary things like page numbers or similar, so that you can really maximize the size of the core content. It also has a nice chapter overview and other useful things!
Truly one of the best pieces of software I have used so far.
I installed this the moment I got my Kobo Libra H2O. Mostly read fiction from the 1800s and early 1900s and I did not want to fight whatever proprietary software the reader came with (Kobo is probably better than the Kindle for this, but I never tried it!)
I have a problem with epubs though. This need to support every single thing under the sun makes the pipeline exceedingly complex. All you need for a vast majority of fiction is:
- headings
- paras
- emphasis (bold/italic)
- block quotes
Add simple "image" syntax to it to display maps etc from detective stories
Basically a ruthlessly cut down version of markdown.
The mini-readers from Xteink came in at the right time for such experimentation.
Fiction from the 1800s? Now that sounds interesting. Can you name three titles that you would recommend? And: how did you get into this? Doesn’t sound like a TikTok trend, haha.
Previous discussions:
31-mar-2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43539103 106 comments
10-apr-2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39996947 33 comments
It took me some time to know my way around it, but wow. I have it configured with some plugins, like zen ui and bookshelf. I Also use BookOrbit to sync reading progress and annotations between devices. Loving it.
I use it since years on my PocketBook Touch HD 3. I especially like the statistics. You might not care about them, but I find them very interesting.
If you like the statistics you might enjoy BookOrbit. I'm a sucker for stats like this and love having them centralized so that it's not just on my e-reader (in case it dies or if I read on another compatible app that syncs progress/stats).
Did anyone made a comparison across different devices for running this? I am curious on what is the best device today to run it, and also the best when accounting for cost of the device too.
I love KOReader! I use it on my Kobo Clara Colour with Calibre. Love Wikipedia lookup, customization options, and the fact that wifi is off by default.
KOReader is so much better, including in how it renders typography and does typesetting than what ships on Kobo devices by default, it's sort of wild.
I actually made a mod to try to upgrade Kobo's built-in reader so it's more correct, i.e. more faithful to how KOReader renders text. Sharing it here since it may be interesting for anyone with Kobo e-readers: https://github.com/nicoverbruggen/NickelTypeFix
Amazing software. Makes a 10 year old Kindle of the best electronics I own.
FWIW not only it is in itself nice but it evens has plugin system. Consider extending it and sharing back with the community!
My wish is to see ebooks become first class citizens on all digital devices. Apple has a native ebook reader built in to their devices. It's cumbersome and bloated, but it's there. No web browser except Yandex has built in ebook support, even though it would be the easiest thing in the world. Android, Linux and Windows have no built-in ebook reader, as far as I know.
Murasaki [1] is the most performant and sleek ebook reader you can get for MacOS currently. It's magnificent, but the creator has regionally limited who can get it, unfortunately.
[1] https://genjiapp.com/mac/murasaki/index_en.html
I really appreciate you mentioning Murasaki - thank you. I've been looking for something like this for a long time, because every single EPUB "reader" out there does so much more than just read EPUBs. This one does just that, I love it.
The old Microsoft Edge had epub support, and even a nascent ebook shop and a nifty note-taking/annotation mechanism (there was even a restitution payment made for folks who had taken notes), but Microsoft gave up on it when they shifted to a rebadged Chrome.
It doesn’t seem like it’s a huge ask imo, and I’m also pretty surprised that they have such limited support, a mostly text format like epub really should be simple to add functionality for.
Less surprising but still annoying is how many hoops you need to jump through to get a good reading experience for manga, particularly on macOS. I had to try many options that were either too buggy, too difficult to install correctly, various aggressive paywalls, or straight up don’t function with high quality scans.
Eventually I landed on one(will edit the name in when I have access to my laptop) that functions well but has some memory issues in importing books, possibly a memory leak.
Maybe I’ve just become shit at finding apps in the modern unsearchable age, but it really feels like reading of all types has diminished enough that we are an unserviceable market.
I installed it on my Kobo to have the syncing from Calibre. Works perfectly, no complaints.
Use it both on my phone and on an eink Android tablet. Love it, especially the dark mode.
I wish you could disable fullscreen (enable the navigation bar) on Android though :-(
It seems there's a native dictionary. How does it fare?
Good. You can install your own or download the free ones from settings.
It also searches Wikipedia.
The PDF support is just the right thing to have.
See also this discussion from earlier today, which might have prompted this submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49094189
Thank you for this
It really does rock.
KOREA!