Reading

The reader is where you spend most of your time in Readest. It's designed to stay out of the way — controls appear when you ask for them and disappear when you don't.

Reader interface

Tap or click the center of the page to toggle the toolbars.

Top toolbar — back to library, book title, TOC, bookmark toggle, settings, and actions (translate, instant annotation, etc.).
Bottom toolbar — chapter progress, page/time info, TTS toggle.
Sidebar (press S) — Table of Contents, Bookmarks, Notes, and in-book Search.
Notebook (press N) — excerpts and notes for the current book.

Progress indicators on the bottom show how far you are through the current chapter and through the book as a whole. Time-to-finish estimates update as you read.

Tap the book cover in the sidebar to open the full-resolution image in a zoomable, full-screen viewer.

Copy or save a book image. Right-click any image in a book, whether it's an EPUB illustration, a comic page, or an image inside a PDF, and choose Copy Image or Save Image. On iOS and Android, long-press the image to open the same menu. Android offers Save Image (to the photo gallery) and Share Image instead of copying. The full-screen image viewer has the same menu. A long press on text still selects it.

Progress display. By default the footer shows your position as a page number. Under Settings → Layout → Header & Footer, switch Reading Progress Style to Percentage or Reference Pages — the latter shows real page numbers pulled from the book's own page list (when it has one). Turn on Show Progress Bar in the same panel for an always-visible bar with a tick mark at each chapter boundary; it draws in higher contrast on e-ink screens.

Gestures & shortcuts

Readest works with tap, click, keyboard, and volume keys. Full references: Gestures and Keyboard shortcuts.

Turn pages:

Tap the left or right edge of the page
Swipe horizontally (mobile)
Press → / ←, L / H, Space, or PgUp / PgDn
Volume keys, or a custom remote / keyboard binding — see Hardware page-turn buttons

Reading with hardware buttons? Turn off Swipe to Paginate (and tap-to-paginate, if you like) under Settings → Behavior → Pagination so a stray finger drag won't flip the page mid-highlight.

Adjust brightness (mobile): slide up or down along the left edge of the screen. Toggle the gesture with Swipe for Brightness under Settings → Behavior → Device.

Jump between chapters:

Alt+→ / Alt+← — next / previous chapter
Home / End — start / end of the book
Sidebar → TOC — tap any heading

Selection actions (select text, then use the popup toolbar or a shortcut):

Action	Shortcut	Result
Copy	`Ctrl+C` / `Cmd+C`	Copy to clipboard
Highlight	`Ctrl+H` / `Cmd+H`	Default color
Underline	`Ctrl+U` / `Cmd+U`	Underline style
Annotate	`Ctrl+N` / `Cmd+N`	Highlight + note
Translate	`Ctrl+T` / `Cmd+T`	See Translate & Lookup
Dictionary	`Ctrl+D` / `Cmd+D`	Wiktionary lookup
Wikipedia	`Ctrl+W` / `Cmd+W`	Wikipedia popup
Read aloud	`Ctrl+R` / `Cmd+R`	TTS the selection
Proofread	`Ctrl+P` / `Cmd+P`	See Proofread rules

Page layout

Readest offers two page layouts. Switch from the reader settings, or press Shift+J to toggle.

Paginated — classic page-turn model. Supports one / two or up to four columns; configurable margins and gap. Best for long prose.
Scrolled — continuous scroll. Good for mobile, web articles, or when you want a constant pace.

In scrolled mode, View menu → Auto Scroll (Shift+A) turns the page into a hands-free teleprompter. Adjust the speed from the floating controls or, on touch screens, slide along the right edge. Low speeds move smoothly, and an active Auto Scroll session resumes when you reopen the book.

Layout settings are global for all books by default, but you can apply any current setting as a local settings for the current book from the settings panel's menu.

Comics, manga & PDFs

Fixed-layout books — comics and manga (CBZ), image EPUBs, and PDFs — get their own controls in the reader's View menu:

Webtoon Mode — collapses the gaps between pages into a single seamless, top-to-bottom strip, the way vertical-scroll webtoons are meant to be read. It switches the book to scrolled flow and fits each page to the screen width; leaving scrolled mode turns it back off.
Contrast — dial page contrast from 50% up to 300% (100% is normal) to darken a faded scan or lighten a heavy one — handy for old comics and low-quality PDFs.
Tap to zoom — tap any image or table to open it full-screen; pinch to zoom in and out on a touch screen.

When a PDF page is zoomed in or shown with Fit Width, the mouse wheel scrolls within the page first. Once the page is at its bottom or top edge, a fresh scroll turns to the next or previous page. The header and footer only appear while the page's own top or bottom edge is on screen, so on a zoomed page or in scrolled mode they don't cover the content.

For text-based PDFs, a selection can span page boundaries just like it can in an EPUB. Copied text joins visual line wraps back into paragraphs instead of preserving every PDF line break. When a PDF defines printed page labels (for example, roman-numeral front matter), Reference Pages uses those labels. Fixed-layout books that declare right-to-left progression also turn pages in the correct RTL order.

TOC & search

Table of Contents. Open the sidebar (S) and switch to the TOC tab. The current section stays highlighted as you move through the book, and a Current position row appears beneath the active chapter showing the page you're on. Each entry lists its own page number, too, and long headings wrap instead of being cut off.

In a PDF, each TOC entry unfolds into thumbnails of the pages it covers, and clicking a thumbnail jumps to that page. The current section opens with your page highlighted, and a PDF that has no outline lists all of its pages. For text-heavy PDFs where thumbnails just bury the outline, turn off Book Menu → Show Page Thumbnails for that book.

In-book search. Press Ctrl+F / Cmd+F in the reader, then open Search Options to choose how matching works:

Contains — plain substring match (the default).
Whole Words — match complete words only.
Regular Expression — match a regex pattern.
Nearby Words — find two or more words within a set distance of each other (Within 5 / 10 / 20 / 50 words).

Match Case and Match Diacritics are independent toggles (diacritics don't apply in regex mode), and you can scope a search to the whole Book or just the current Chapter. Results group by chapter with a short excerpt around each match. Click any result to jump there.

Footnotes

Tap a footnote link to read the note in a popup without losing your place. You can select text inside that popup and use the normal Copy, Highlight, Annotate, Translate, Dictionary, Wikipedia, Read Aloud, and Proofread tools. Follow a link inside the note to jump to its location in the book; Readest briefly flashes the destination so it is easy to find.

Bookmarks

Press Ctrl+B / Cmd+B to toggle a bookmark at the current spot. A ribbon appears on the page and the bookmark is added to the sidebar's Bookmarks tab. Bookmarks can be named for quick reference later.

On a touch screen you can also pull the page down to add a bookmark, and pull again on a bookmarked page to remove it. A hint tells you when releasing will add or remove the bookmark. The gesture works in paginated, horizontal books, including PDFs and comics as long as the page isn't zoomed or in Fit Width. A swipe that starts right at the top edge of the screen is left alone, so it still opens Android's notification shade. On e-ink screens the page doesn't slide; the bookmark just toggles when you release. Turn the gesture off with Pull-Down to Bookmark under Settings → Behavior → Annotation Tools.

Bookmarks sync with your other devices if cloud sync is on — see Sync & Backup.

Highlights & notes

Select any text and the annotation toolbar appears. Three visual styles, five default colors (plus custom colors you can define yourself):

Highlight — colored background
Underline — underline only
Squiggly — wavy underline

Adjust the selection with the keyboard. With text selected, Shift+← / Shift+→ grows or shrinks it a character at a time; add Ctrl (or Opt on macOS) to move by whole words. A selection can now run past the edge of the page — in paginated mode Readest turns the page automatically as it grows.

Customize the toolbar. Under Settings → Behavior → Annotation Tools → Customize Toolbar, drag actions into or out of the selection popup and reorder them — hide the ones you never reach for, or move Translate to the front.

Add a note to any annotation by tapping Annotate or pressing Ctrl+N. Notes support plain text and markdown and show up in the Notebook panel (N). Tap an existing note in either the annotation popup or Notebook to edit it in place, then press Save.

Excerpts let you save a quoted passage without highlighting it inline — useful for collecting quotes you want to keep but don't want to mark up the page with.

Highlight every occurrence. On an existing highlight in a reflowable book, toggle Apply to every occurrence in the book (the icon in the highlight popup) to fan the same color out to every place that phrase appears. The extra marks update live and persist across reloads and sync.

Import & clear. The Book Menu also has Import Annotations, which brings a book's highlights and notes in from a Moon+ Reader export (.mrexpt), or its highlights, notes, bookmarks, and reading position from a ReadEra backup (.bak). It also has Clear Annotations, which removes every highlight and note in the book after a confirmation (bookmarks and excerpts are left untouched).

Draw on the page

You can write and draw on the page itself with a finger, a stylus, or an Apple Pencil: circle a word, underline a line, bracket a paragraph, or scribble a note in the margin. Open the quick action menu from the highlighter button in the reader's top toolbar and choose Instant Draw. The button shows while Enable Quick Actions is on under Settings → Behavior → Annotation Tools, which is the default.

While you draw, a dock replaces the reader's toolbars:

Pen and Marker — the marker lays down a broad, translucent band for highlighting. Tap the active tool again to pick its color and size.
Eraser, Undo, and Redo.
Previous Page / Next Page — keep drawing across pages without leaving the mode.
Save — finishes the current drawing as one annotation and keeps you in drawing mode, so your next strokes start a new one.
Close — leaves drawing mode.

Strokes are saved as you draw, so neither Save nor Close throws anything away. Each drawing appears in the sidebar's annotation list next to your highlights and notes, labeled with the text it marks (or just Drawing), so you can jump to it or delete it there. Tap existing ink on the page to edit it again.

In reflowable books, ink is pinned to the text it marks, so it follows its words when you change the font, size, spacing, or margins. In PDFs and comics, ink stays on its page and follows zoom and pan. Drawing works in scrolled mode too. Drawings sync to your other devices through Readest Cloud, like your other annotations.

Export notes

From the Book Menu, export a book's annotations as Markdown, Plain Text, or JSON (Readest) — the JSON file is machine-readable and imports back into any book.

Format Options decides what goes in: title, author, export date, cover image, chapter titles, a chapter separator, the highlights themselves, your notes, page numbers, and note dates. Annotation Link picks the link style — App Link (a readest://… link that opens the app directly) or Web Link (a universal https://web.readest.com/… link that also works in a browser). When a book has highlights in more than one color or style, the dialog adds a Filter Annotations section so you can leave certain colors or styles out.

On mobile and the web app, exports go through the system Share via… sheet, so you can send them to Notes, Mail, Slack, or anywhere else without saving a file first.

When someone follows a deep link on a device that doesn't have the book yet, Readest opens it in preview mode — they see the surrounding paragraphs without overwriting their own reading position or progress.

Obsidian & other Markdown apps

A Markdown export drops straight into an Obsidian vault, or any other app that reads Markdown files. The layout is built to be read as a note rather than a dump: # for the book title, ## for the highlights section, ### for each chapter, a block quote per highlight, your note in bold beneath it, and an italic line carrying the page link and timestamp. Turn Cover Image on and the cover arrives as ![cover|300](…) — Obsidian's width syntax, which other renderers quietly ignore.

For a single passage rather than a whole book, hover a highlight in the Notebook panel and tap Copy. You get the same Markdown shape, block-quoted text with a bold note and an italic deep link, ready to paste wherever you're writing.

For continuous syncing to a service instead of a one-off file, see Readwise export and Notion export.

Quote cards

A quote card turns a selected passage into an image you can post or send. The Quote Card tool is off the selection toolbar by default; add it under Settings → Behavior → Annotation Tools → Customize Toolbar. Then select a passage and tap Quote Card.

The dialog previews the card as you change it:

Layout — Classic, Centered, Cover, or Page.
Colors — Paper, Night, Sepia, or Reader Theme.
Font — Serif or Sans, taken from your reader font settings.
Shape — Fit (the card grows with the quote), 4:5, 1:1, or 16:9.
Book Info and QR Code — both on by default. Book info adds the cover, title, author, chapter, and date; the QR code links back to the passage in Readest.

The card keeps the passage's bold, italics, and paragraph breaks, and shortens a quote that is too long to fit, with a note telling you so. Finish with Share (on mobile, macOS, and browsers with a share sheet), Save Image (to the photo gallery on Android), or Copy Image (not available on Android).

To pass a whole book to someone else — for a book-club discussion, or so a friend can pick up where you left off — open Book Menu → Share Book (in the reader or by long-pressing a book in the library).

The dialog lets you:

Pick an expiration: 1 day, 3 days (default), or 7 days.
Toggle Share reading progress to include your current page in the link, so the recipient lands on the same spot.
Copy the generated URL, or hand it to the system Share via… sheet.

Recipients with a Readest account get a one-tap Add to my library button on the landing page. Anonymous visitors see an Open in app prompt that falls back to the web reader.

Manage or revoke active share links from Main Menu → Account → Manage Shared Links.