What is papery-epub-reader?

Papery is a quiet, lightweight, local first EPUB and TXT ebook reader. It is available as a native app for Windows, Linux, and Android, and also as an installable web app that works in a browser. The project's stated goal is to give readers a simple reading experience without accounts, ads, tracking, or uploading books anywhere. The reader supports importing EPUB and TXT files from your device, automatically reading each book's cover, title, and author. TXT files can be in UTF-8, BOM, GBK, or GB18030 encoding, and the app can automatically detect common Chinese chapter markers. On desktop you can turn pages with the scroll wheel, arrow keys, or clicks, while on phones you can swipe or use the system back gesture, including an immersive reading mode that shows the current page number in the corner. Readers can customize the table of contents, font size, line spacing, margins, several Chinese fonts, and the page background color and texture, and the layout automatically switches between one and two columns based on window width. Books are organized into a shelf with currently reading and finished sections, each showing real reading progress, and books can be grouped into boxes that support drag and drop on desktop or long press on mobile. The app tracks a reading heatmap covering the last year, counting time only while a book is open and the app is in the foreground. Data can be backed up as a versioned zip file containing books, files, book boxes, progress, and reading statistics, and restoring a backup can either merge with or overwrite the local library. There is no account system or cloud sync in the current version, so backup files are the way to move your library between devices. The project explains it ships only reader code, with no bundled books or book sources, and expects users to read content they obtained through legitimate means. It is built with Tauri, epub.js, Vite, and IndexedDB, and is released under the MIT license, with a bundled Chinese font under the SIL Open Font License.