Library

The library is your bookshelf — every book you've imported, organized however you want. It supports thousands of books without slowing down.

Bookshelf views

Toggle between two views from the top-right of the library:

Grid — covers laid out in a grid. The default; best for browsing by visual recognition.
List — one row per book with title, author, progress, and status. Dense, good for large libraries.

Search the library from the header — typing filters by title, author, tags, or series. Press Esc or clear the field to see all books.

For privacy on a shared screen, open the library's View menu and turn on Hide covers. Readest replaces real cover art with plain placeholders everywhere in the library and book-details surfaces until you turn it off.

Recently read

Turn on Show recently read in the library's View menu to pin a strip of your most recently opened books across the top of the shelf — up to a dozen covers, newest first, no matter how the rest of the library is grouped or sorted. It's the quickest way back into whatever you're part-way through.

Home-screen widgets

On iOS and Android, add a Readest widget to your home screen to jump straight back into your reading. Add it the usual way — long-press the home screen and pick Readest from the widget gallery — and it shows your most recently read books with their covers and progress. Tap one to open it right where you left off. When a book is playing through text-to-speech, the widget doubles as a mini player with play, pause, and skip controls. There's nothing to configure in the app — the widget keeps itself up to date as you read.

Organize books

Group books by:

Authors — auto-grouped by author
Books (flat view)
Groups — user-created collections (drag books into a group or create one from the selection menu)
Series — auto-grouped when books share series metadata

Sort by title, author, last-read, date added, format, series, or published date, ascending or descending. A secondary Then by key breaks ties and orders books inside a group — set one yourself, or leave it on the smart default that adapts to your grouping (group by author, for example, and each author's books sort by series).

Bulk operations. Enter selection mode (long-press on mobile, long-click on desktop) to pick multiple books. The action bar lets you change status, delete, group, or show details. With a single book selected, Send hands its file to the system share sheet (Mail, Messages, AirDrop, and so on) — available on iOS, Android, and macOS. Send to Nearby Device transfers it directly over your local network when Nearby BookDrop is enabled. These are different from Share Book, which uploads the book and creates a public link.

Book metadata

Tap Details in the action bar in selection mode (or right-click → Book info) to open the metadata panel:

Title, author, series — editable. Your edits take precedence over what's in the EPUB.
Cover — extracted automatically; you can replace it with any image. Tap or click the cover in book details (or the reader sidebar) to inspect it full-screen.
Tags — your labels for filtering.
File details — format, size, import date.

Edited metadata is stored in Readest's book config, not in the file itself — the original EPUB is never modified.

Import options

See Getting Started → Open your first book for the basics. A few extra notes for heavy importing:

Duplicate detection — Readest hashes book content and metadata, and refuses to import the same book twice.
Batch import — drop many files at once.
From Web Browser — in an installed Readest app, open + (Import Books) → From Web Browser, save a Calibre-Web, Kavita, or other HTTP(S) book-server address, and browse it inside Readest. A book downloaded in that browser is imported automatically. This is useful for servers whose normal website offers more controls than their OPDS feed.
From Web Novel — in an installed app, open + (Import Books) → From Web Novel and paste the novel's chapter-list URL. Review the detected title and chapters, select only the chapters you want, and download them as one EPUB. Readest asks you to confirm the detected list before it starts making chapter requests.
Import from a folder — open the library's + (Import Books) menu and choose From Directory. The Import Books dialog lets you pick a folder, then filter what comes in: which File Formats to include (EPUB and PDF by default), a minimum File size to skip tiny stub files (20 KB by default), and the Folder Structure — Create groups from subfolders (each top-level subfolder becomes a library group) or Import all into library (flatten everything). Available in the desktop app and on mobile builds that can read external folders.
Read books in place — in that same dialog, turn on Read books in place to register the folder as an external library and read each book from its original location instead of copying it into Readest. It saves disk space, and cloud auto-upload still works. Note that deleting an in-place book from Readest also removes the original file; on iOS, folder access is remembered across launches.
Import failures — when a batch import hits more than one failure, Readest shows a summary dialog listing each file that couldn't be added (and why) instead of a fleeting toast.
calibre series — series name and index are pulled from EPUB, PDF, and CBZ files when available, and feed the Series grouping on the bookshelf.
Download progress — cloud and catalog downloads show their progress directly over the book cover, so you can keep browsing while a large file arrives.

Send to Readest

Send to Readest captures books, documents, and web articles into your library from outside the reader — much like "Send to Kindle." Captured items land in your account and sync to every signed-in device.

From a web URL (desktop) — the + (Import Books) menu has a From Web URL entry. Paste an article link and Readest clips the page into a self-contained EPUB and saves it. Because it renders the page in a hidden browser, paywalled and login-only articles usually come through.
Share sheet (mobile) — in any iOS or Android browser, tap Share → Readest to send the article you're reading. Readest clips it and adds it to your library.
Email-in — Plus, Pro, and Lifetime accounts get a private inbound email address. Email a book or document as an attachment, or an article, to that address from an approved sender and it lands in your library. Manage it under Settings → Integrations → Send to Readest: your address, the Approved senders list (your own account email is approved automatically), and Recent activity.

Nearby BookDrop

Nearby BookDrop moves books straight between devices on the same network, with no account and no cloud round-trip. It speaks the LocalSend protocol, so the far end can be another copy of Readest, the LocalSend app itself, or KOReader running the Readest plugin. It's part of the desktop and mobile apps; the web app doesn't have it.

Turn it on at Settings → Integrations → Content Sources → Nearby BookDrop → Enable Nearby BookDrop. The device is discoverable for as long as Readest is open, under the Device Name you pick, and the panel shows the name and port it's announcing. Transfer Sounds plays a chime when a transfer starts, finishes, or fails.

To send, long-press a book and choose Send to Nearby Device, or enter select mode and tap Nearby to send several at once. Readest lists the devices it can see; pick one and the transfer starts.

To receive, leave Readest open on the receiving device. Each incoming transfer asks first, naming the sender and how many books are coming, and accepted books go into your library. Only book files are accepted — anything else is declined automatically, and the sender is told which files were skipped. On KOReader, open Tools → Readest → Receive via Nearby BookDrop instead. Your operating system may ask for local-network permission the first time.

calibre plugin

If your books live in calibre, the Readest plugin pushes the ones you pick, with their metadata, into your Readest cloud library, where they sync to every signed-in device. It is a manual push. Nothing uploads in the background.

Install it

Download Readest-<version>.calibre-plugin.zip from the latest Readest release.
In calibre, open Preferences → Plugins → Load plugin from file and choose that zip.
Restart calibre, then add the Readest button to the main toolbar if it isn't showing.

Push books

From the Readest toolbar menu, choose Log in to Readest…. Email and password work, and so do the Google, Apple, GitHub, and Discord browser sign-ins.
Select any number of books in calibre.
Click Readest, or pick Push selected books to Readest from its menu.

Each book goes up in the best format Readest supports, preferring EPUB, then PDF, AZW3, MOBI, AZW, FB2, FBZ, CBZ, TXT, and MD. Title, authors, series, tags, description, publisher, language, and identifiers travel with it, plus your calibre custom columns unless you turn those off in Readest → Customize plugin…. Metadata is embedded into a temporary copy, so the files in your calibre library are never touched.

Re-pushing updates instead of duplicating. The plugin recognizes a book by its calibre uuid and fingerprints the file, so a second push of the same book does the right thing:

Nothing changed, so the book is skipped.
Metadata edited, so the library entry is updated in place and the file is left alone.
File changed, say after a re-conversion, so the new file replaces the old entry. Reading status, grouping, progress, and the library date carry over, and notes and reading positions re-attach when the title and authors are unchanged.

Every push ends with a per-book report of what was uploaded, updated, already up to date, or failed. Readest → Check Readest status runs the same comparison without uploading anything.

OPDS catalogs

OPDS (Open Publication Distribution System) is a standard for ebook catalogs — think of it as RSS for bookstores and libraries.

To add a catalog:

Open Import Menu → Online Library in the header bar of the library page.
Add a new catalog with its root URL and optional username / password.
Browse the catalog from the library — OPDS catalogs appear as entries in the top bar.

You can also save a catalog you're already browsing: open the Options menu (or the + button) in the catalog's top bar and choose Add to My Catalogs. It bookmarks the current feed — even a deep sub-shelf — without re-entering the URL or credentials.

Many sources publish OPDS feeds:

Standard Ebooks — classics with modern typography. URL: https://standardebooks.org/opds
calibre server — if you run calibre Content Server, its OPDS endpoint works directly. If it requires a login and fails with a 400 Bad Request, set calibre's authentication mode to basic — see Troubleshooting.
Your own library server — Komga, Kavita, and other self-hosted services all expose OPDS.

Downloads from OPDS go straight into your Readest library. A title you already own shows Open & Read (with Download Again alongside) instead of a download button.

Filtering & sorting

Many catalogs expose their own filters and sort orders — by author, language, newest, popularity, and so on. On a wide screen these show up in a Filters sidebar; on a narrow screen, open the Options menu in the catalog's top bar. The available choices come from the catalog itself, so they differ from one server to the next.

Auto-download new items

Each saved catalog has an Auto-download new items toggle (cloud icon at the bottom of the catalog card, or in the add/edit dialog). When enabled, Readest checks the catalog's "new" feed in the background and pulls any new publications into your library automatically. Each card shows when it last synced and how many downloads failed, if any.

Because a feed can contain many books, Readest asks for confirmation before auto-download is enabled. Drag catalog cards by their handles to put frequently used sources first; that order follows you through catalog sync.

This is the easiest way to keep up with a Standard Ebooks or self-hosted calibre catalog without having to browse it manually.

Streaming (OPDS-PSE)

Catalogs that publish OPDS-PSE streaming links let you open a book without downloading the whole file first. Readest fetches pages from the server as you turn them, so a giant volume on a slow connection becomes readable in seconds. Streamed books live in your library as transient entries — open one again later and Readest resumes from where you left off; download it explicitly when you want a local copy.

Stored credentials

Catalog URLs save to all your signed-in devices through cloud sync. Catalog credentials (username / password) only sync if you've turned on the optional Credentials category — see Sync & Backup → What syncs for the encrypted-credentials setup.