Easy Read

A lightweight portable desktop e-reader built with Rust, Tauri v2, and Svelte. Carry it on a USB drive alongside your book collection and read anywhere, no installation required. This is a single-book reader, not a library manager. Open a book, read it, close the app.

Your progress, bookmarks, highlights, quotes, history, and preferences are saved in a single readable state.json file.

---

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+O / Cmd+O	Open file picker
F11	Toggle fullscreen
Ctrl+F / Cmd+F	Toggle search panel
Ctrl+B / Cmd+B	Toggle bookmarks panel
Ctrl+Q / Cmd+Shift+Q	Toggle quotes panel
Ctrl+H / Cmd+Y	Toggle history panel
Ctrl++ / Ctrl+= / Cmd++ / Cmd+=	Increase font size
Ctrl+- / Cmd+-	Decrease font size
b	Place or remove bookmark
q	Save selected text as a quote
j / Right / Down	Next page
k / Left / Up	Previous page
Shift+Tab	Cycle search modes while search is open
; / ?	Toggle keyboard shortcut reference
Escape	Close the active overlay or popup

On macOS, Easy Read uses Cmd for standard shortcuts. Quotes and history use Cmd+Shift+Q and Cmd+Y because Cmd+Q and Cmd+H are reserved by the system.

In scroll mode, Up and Down scroll the chapter, while Left and Right move between chapters.

---

Features

Reading

• Open books via drag-and-drop or the Ctrl+O / Cmd+O file picker
• Automatically resumes the last book at the last saved position on launch
• CSS column-based pagination with a scroll mode option
• Page navigation with arrow keys, j/k, mouse wheel, or left/right click zones
• Table of contents overlay for chapter jumping
• Auto-advance between chapters at chapter boundaries
• Launching Easy Read while it is already running focuses the existing window instead of opening a second instance

Current Supported Formats

Format	Status	Notes
.epub	Supported	Reflowable text with embedded images; DRM-protected or oversized EPUBs are rejected with clear errors
.txt	Supported	Plain text, split into chapters on blank-section separators; UTF-8, UTF-16, detected legacy encodings, BOMs, and CRLF files are handled
.md	Supported	Rendered to formatted HTML via pulldown-cmark; UTF-8, UTF-16, detected legacy encodings, BOMs, and CRLF files are handled
.pdf	Not supported	Opening a PDF returns a clear unsupported-format error

Annotations & Notes

• Bookmarks: place and remove bookmarks on any page; toggle the panel with Ctrl+B / Cmd+B or toggle the current bookmark with b
• Highlights: select text to highlight in color; add optional notes
• Quotes: save selected text as a quote with q; view saved quotes with Ctrl+Q / Cmd+Shift+Q
• All annotations persist across sessions in state.json

Search

• Ctrl+F / Cmd+F opens the search panel with three modes:
  • Book: full-text search across all chapters
  • Bookmarks: live-filter your bookmarks by label
  • Quotes: live-filter your saved quotes by content
• Shift+Tab cycles search modes while the search panel is open
• Search results show chapter context; clicking navigates directly there

History

• Ctrl+H / Cmd+Y opens the History panel
• Lists every book with saved reading state
• Alphabetically sorted with icons indicating bookmark/quote status

Theming & Typography

• Light, dark, and sepia themes
• Font size slider with live repagination; adjust with Ctrl++, Ctrl+=, Ctrl+-, or the matching Cmd shortcuts on macOS
• Font family selector (serif, sans-serif, monospace)
• Line height and text alignment controls
• Bundled reading, UI, and monospace fonts keep pagination consistent across platforms
• All preferences persist in state.json

---

Persistence

Everything is stored in a single easy-to-read state.json file. Easy Read first tries to use an app-adjacent data folder so portable builds can keep the app and state together. If that folder is not writable, it falls back to the operating system's app data directory and logs the chosen location at startup.

Portable and production builds store it here when the folder is writable:

<folder containing the app executable>/data/state.json

Linux AppImage builds use the folder containing the .AppImage file:

<folder containing Easy Read.AppImage>/data/state.json

Development builds use the folder containing the dev executable, usually:

src-tauri/target/debug/data/state.json

Fallback storage uses the platform app data directory for Easy Read:

<OS app data directory>/state.json

If state.json is malformed on launch, Easy Read starts with a fresh state file, keeps the bad file beside it as state.json.corrupt-<timestamp>, and shows a recovery warning.

Example state shape:

{
  "last_opened": "/books/dune.epub",
  "books": {
    "/books/dune.epub": {
      "title": "Dune",
      "author": "Frank Herbert",
      "last_chapter": 3,
      "last_page": 12,
      "last_scroll_top": 0.0,
      "bookmarks": [
        { "chapter_index": 1, "page_index": 5, "label": "Litany against fear" }
      ],
      "highlights": [],
      "quotes": []
    }
  },
  "preferences": {
    "font_size": 18.0,
    "theme": "dark",
    "font_family": "serif",
    "line_height": 1.6,
    "text_align": "left",
    "reader_mode": "paginated"
  }
}

No database. No cloud sync. No telemetry. Just a file you can read in a text editor and copy to any device.

---

Downloads

Prebuilt installers and portable executables are published on the GitHub Releases page.

Building from Source

Prerequisites: Rust, Node.js v20+, and npm. On Windows, install the Rust MSVC toolchain and Visual Studio Build Tools with the C++ desktop workload. The Tauri CLI is installed as a project dev dependency and is run through npm/npx.

npm install

# Development
npm run tauri dev

# Production build - outputs to releases/<platform>/
npm run release

npm run release wipes any prior Tauri bundle, sets NO_STRIP=1, runs npx tauri build, and stages installers plus portable executables into a top-level releases/<platform>/ folder:

releases/
|-- windows/
|   |-- installers/
|   `-- portable/
|-- linux/
|   |-- installers/
|   `-- portable/
`-- macos/
    `-- installers/

On Windows, the raw built executable is created at:

src-tauri/target/release/easy-read.exe

The staged portable copy is named with the app name and package version:

releases/windows/portable/easy-read_<version>_x64.exe