2026.07.3

Reading progress moves onto the cover

In the library, a book's reading percentage now sits as a small badge in the corner of its cover,
instead of a line of text under the title. That line is freed up for readable books; only a book
that cannot be opened still uses it, to say why.

The progress bar marks where the chapter ends

The thin progress bar at the foot of a page now carries a short tick at the point the current
chapter ends, alongside the mark for how far you are through the whole book. Glance at it and you
can tell how much of the chapter is left, not just how far into the book you are.

A contents page, set like a printed one

Contents now reads like the contents page of a printed book rather than a plain list: the book's
own serif face (Literata), a letterspaced "Contents" heading over a rule, and leader dots running
from each entry across to its place in the book. The current chapter is bold; nested entries are
italic.

That place is shown as a percentage rather than a page number, on purpose — a real page number
would mean paginating the whole book every time you open Contents, which Reader avoids.

Menus repaint faster

Menus and panels — Contents, Bookmarks, Highlights, the Aa sheet — now open in a fast e-ink refresh
mode, so scrolling and tapping in them repaints quickly. The book page itself still gets the crisp,
full-quality refresh, and it is cleaned up the moment you close a panel.

A chapter scrubber

A slider now runs along the bottom of the reading chrome, raised clear of the very edge so it is
easier to catch with a thumb, with a tick for every chapter. Drag it to move through the whole
book.

• Dragging near a chapter boundary snaps to it, like a detent on the slider, so landing exactly on
  a chapter start doesn't mean hunting for the pixel. Releasing on a snapped chapter now opens that
  chapter's first page — it used to occasionally land on the tail end of the chapter before it.
• Wherever you've placed a bookmark, a small glyph marks its spot on the track.
• A floating window above your finger shows a preview of the page you'd land on. The first time you
  open a book, Reader renders a strip of sampled page thumbnails once in the background — a few
  seconds, invisible while you keep reading, a few megabytes on disk — and every drag after that
  shows the preview instantly, with no wait. The track itself is visible now, and while that strip
  is being built each chapter's stretch draws as a run of fine dots until its thumbnails are ready,
  then turns solid — open the scrubber early in a fresh book and you can watch it fill in.
• The whole timeline has been redrawn for the panel it lives on: everything is weight rather than
  color — four grays, a rounded track, chapter ticks that thin out while pending, crowded chapter
  marks merging into a single cluster mark instead of smearing together, and a thumb that grows
  under your finger and shows a firm detent line when it snaps to a chapter. The readout above it
  is set in Literata with tabular figures, so the percentage doesn't shiver as it counts.
• The page itself still never repaints while you drag — only the preview window and a readout
  update. The full page is drawn once, when you lift your finger, keeping a long scrub to a single
  clean refresh instead of a flurry of them.
• The scrubber no longer turns the page while your finger is still resting on it. The Nomad's touch
  panel sometimes reports a light, resting finger as lifted — so Reader now obeys a release only
  when the gesture made its intent plain: a crisp tap, or a drag with normal finger pressure. Any
  other release just holds: the thumb and preview stay where you left them, touching the track
  carries on scrubbing, and a tap on the preview window (or the track) turns the page. The one
  trade, stated plainly: a very light drag no longer jumps the moment you let go — the preview
  waits for that confirming tap instead.
• ↩ appears after a jump — a scrub, a Contents tap, a bookmark or highlight jump — to return to
  exactly where you were, and it's a bit bigger now, easier to catch with a thumb.
• Page previews can be turned off from the Aa sheet, for anyone who'd rather skip the background
  generation entirely — the track goes solid and the window stops appearing. A live count while a
  strip is being built shows how many chapters are done, and a book's previews can be deleted to
  reclaim the disk space without touching the toggle.