Chrono Reader

A personal iOS reading & listening app for comics, audiobooks and EPUBs.

⚠️ This project is not 100% finished. The comic reader and audiobook player are fully functional. The EPUB reader and some secondary features are still being polished.

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Screenshots

Library & Home

Comic Reader

Audiobook Player

Collections

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Features

Feature	Status
📚 Local library (CBZ, CBR, M4B, EPUB)	✅ Done
🎨 Comic reader (LTR / RTL / Webtoon)	✅ Fully functional
🎧 Audiobook player with chapters	✅ Fully functional
🗂️ Custom collections with color tags	✅ Done
🔖 Reading progress persistence	✅ Done
🔍 Search across the library	✅ Done
📖 EPUB reader	🚧 In progress
🌙 Dark / Light / System theme	✅ Done
🎵 Background audio playback (Lock Screen controls)	✅ Done
📄 PDF reader	🔜 Planned

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Comic Reader

The comic reader (EnhancedComicViewer) is a hybrid SwiftUI + UIKit component offering:

• Three reading modes: Comic LTR, Manga RTL, Vertical Webtoon
• Double page layout support (landscape)
• Smooth page transitions with per-book settings
• Advanced zoom: double-tap to zoom on a specific point, pinch, pan
• Thumbnail scrubber for quick navigation
• Supports CBZ (ZIP) and CBR (RAR) archives

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Audiobook Player

The audiobook player (AudioPlayerView) is built on top of AVFoundation and supports:

• M4B files with embedded chapters
• Lock Screen & Control Center playback controls via MediaPlayer framework
• Background playback (requires Background Modes capability — see Docs/Audio/BackgroundPlaybackConfig.md)
• Skip forward / backward 15 seconds
• Variable playback speed
• Per-book position persistence

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Language	Swift 5.9
UI	SwiftUI (with UIKit for the comic viewer)
Concurrency	async/await + Combine
Audio	AVFoundation + MediaPlayer
EPUB rendering	WebKit (WKWebView)
ZIP archives	ZIPFoundation 0.9.19
XML parsing	XMLCoder 0.17.1
RAR archives	Unrar.swift 0.4.1

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Architecture

The app follows a feature-based layered structure:

App/                    # Entry point, AppDelegate, lifecycle
Models/                 # Domain models (Book, Collection, ProgressMarker, EPUB)
Services/               # Business logic (archive parsing, audio, EPUB, metadata)
Utils/                  # Shared utilities (ImageCache)
Views/
  AppShell/             # Tab navigation shell
  Features/
    Home/               # Library, import, search
    Comic/              # Comic viewer (CBZ/CBR)
    Audio/              # Audiobook player (M4B)
    EPUB/               # EPUB reader
    Collections/        # Custom collections
  Shared/               # Reusable UI components

Persistence: UserDefaults for books, collections, progress and settings. Files are copied to the app's Documents/ directory with a UUID prefix.

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Project Setup

1. Clone the repo and open chrono-reader.xcodeproj in Xcode 15+.
2. Select your development team in Signing & Capabilities.
3. To enable background audio, add the Background Modes capability and check Audio, AirPlay, and Picture in Picture (see Docs/Audio/BackgroundPlaybackConfig.md).
4. Build and run on a device or simulator running iOS 16+.

Note: If you move files around, make sure to re-link them in the Xcode target membership.

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Roadmap

• EPUB reader — finish pagination and TOC navigation
• PDF reader
• iCloud / Files app sync
• iPad optimized layout
• App Store release

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Made with ❤️ using SwiftUI