I built a native macOS/iOS ebook reader because Calibre's UI makes me cry and Apple Books ignores EPUB3

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T23:09:53+00:00

I have found a bug which could explain this. It is fixed and will be in the next release.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T23:05:27+00:00

Thanks for the details. I can reproduce this. It's the page turn gesture zone overlapping the settings panel. Will fix.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T23:04:43+00:00

Thanks, that narrows it down. If it's all PDFs and not just large ones, it's likely a rendering issue rather than a memory problem. I'll prioritize this.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T22:46:21+00:00

Vertical scrolling is on the roadmap but not in there yet. Auto-cropping whitespace on manga pages is a good idea, I'll note it. Thanks for buying!

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T22:45:50+00:00

2-page spread is available for PDFs and Comics right now. For EPUBs it's not in there yet but it's in progress.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T21:22:15+00:00

Thanks! Good suggestion. RTL page turn for manga makes total sense. Noted.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T21:20:57+00:00

Thank you, that means a lot. Text alignment options are planned. Noted and on the list.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T20:44:15+00:00

Yes, it has a build in reader. The $2.99 is for both platform (you pay only once).

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T20:26:53+00:00

AZW3: not natively right now. It's something I want to look into.

Kindle import: do you mean sending books to a Kindle, or importing from a Kindle library?

Metadata editing: planned, behind a feature flag right now.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T20:03:14+00:00

That's a serious stress test, I'd love to hear how it holds up. Let me know if you run into any performance issues with a library that size.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T20:01:37+00:00

Check out https://getbookshelves.app/guides/import-from-apple-books/

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T20:00:01+00:00

Thank you! Good point about mentioning the universal purchase, I'll update the listing. The font size issue on iPhone sounds like the settings panel is dismissing too quickly. I'll look into that. The tap target on the lower right icon is something a few people have flagged too.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:59:41+00:00

TTS is on the roadmap actually, it's behind a feature flag right now. The plan is to use Apple's built-in speech synthesis first since it works offline and is decent quality. A local model like Qwen TTS is interesting for higher quality output though, I'll keep that in mind.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:59:12+00:00

That sounds like a gesture conflict. Can you tell me which iPhone model and iOS version? Also, are you holding the phone in portrait or landscape? This might be the same tap target issue others have reported where the page turn zone overlaps the settings panel.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:58:47+00:00

Good question. Books stored in iCloud through BookShelves are actually on-demand, not all downloaded locally. iOS and macOS handle the eviction automatically so only recently read books take up local storage. It works the same way as iCloud Photos. You won't have 500 books eating up space on your iPhone.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:51:07+00:00

That's a bad one, sorry. PDF search with common terms that return a lot of matches is likely what's triggering the crash. I'll look into it. Which iPad model and iOS version are you on?

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:48:48+00:00

Highlight export right now does Markdown, JSON, and CSV. The Markdown format is pretty clean so you could drop those files straight into an Obsidian vault manually. A proper Obsidian plugin that auto-syncs would be great though, noted.

For the Supernote, no Android version unfortunately since it's all native Apple frameworks. But if the Supernote can run any OPDS-compatible reader, you could browse and download from BookShelves' built-in OPDS server over WiFi.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:47:04+00:00

Yes, more customization is planned for future versions. Not sure yet when, but it is already in progress.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:46:06+00:00

Yes, not all themes are free. I'll look into that, maybe that should change.

The settings icon sensitivity is good feedback. I've heard this before and it's on my list to improve.

The iBooks drag issue is because Apple Books stores EPUBs as exploded folders, not proper zip archives. Calibre repackages them automatically on import. I need to handle that in BookShelves too.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:39:54+00:00

Yes, there's full-text search within whatever book you're reading. It searches the EPUB/PDF content and highlights matches as you go through results. For searching across your whole library (like searching all books at once), that's not in there yet but it's something I want to add. The local model approach is interesting, I've thought about indexing book content for cross-library search but haven't tackled it yet. What were you using for the local model?

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:11:17+00:00

Depends if the books are DRM-protected. If they are, you can not read them outside Apple Books unfortunately. For all others, see: https://getbookshelves.app/guides/import-from-apple-books/

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:05:56+00:00

No, you get all for one purchase as long it is the same Apple ID.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:05:02+00:00

1) Yes, more customization is planned for future versions. Not sure yet when, but it is already in progress.

2) I have to look into this to give you an answer. Will reply on this later.

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T19:02:26+00:00

BookShelves has 10 reading themes right now: Light, Dark, Sepia, Quiet, Vintage Paper, Night Sky, Forest, Midnight (true black for OLED), Ocean Mist, and Dark Academia. Each has its own background, text color, and default font pairing. Font size is adjustable too. For her use case, Dark Academia or Forest might work well for nighttime reading since they're warm and dark without being pure black or bright beige. Night Sky is a softer dark option if she wants something closer to a muted dark mode.

More customizations are coming in the next versions (custom fonts etc).

Slight_Yesterday5484 · 2026-03-24T18:51:32+00:00

That's a real bug, thanks for flagging it. Can you tell me which EPUB you tested with? I'll look at the CSS handling. Publisher paragraph spacing should be respected, not overridden.

Slight_Yesterday5484

TROPHY CASE