this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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I'm using Thorium at present. Not thrilled with it.

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[–] tankplanker@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Recently upgraded from an ancient paperwhite with a near 600 week streak to a Pocketbook Inkpad Colour 3. I would consider myself to be a heavy user of ebooks, its the only way I read and I read at least an hour a day every day.

Decided to upgrade as it was time to replace the battery in the paperwhite, I wanted something with a faster page refresh, a larger screen, and I wanted a colour screen for comic books.

As I have gotten older the text size I read with has increased, so a larger screen is better as I have to turn the page less often, and a faster refresh rate I am waiting less when I do as I am turning the pages more often.

I am very pleased with it so far, its much nicer to use than my paperwhite and it feels good to be away from amazon. Obviously it is not going to compare to a decent tablet for colour depth or refresh rate, but I wanted eink for the battery and day light performance.

[–] kusttra@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Nook Glowlight 3, which I've had since release in 2017

I had such high hopes for Barnes and Noble's e-readers - they were super well positioned to dominate the market, but instead decided to make half-assed tablets. It was soul crushing

[–] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My 10+ year old Kindle Paperwhite 2 keeps living on, and I will use it until the day it dies for real.

[–] CatDogL0ver@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Me too. Kindle is so cheap and easy to use. I know everyone hates Amazon but Kindle is a very solid product.

[–] statler_waldorf@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago

Kobo Libre 2. I replaced an ancient backlit Kindle when it died and wouldn't give Jeff Bezos any more money. The only gripe I have is that the dark mode toggle is one level deep in the menus and not on the main screen.

[–] Teknikal@eviltoast.org 3 points 1 day ago

My kobos acting up registering false touches so I've been using my phone and moon+ which I bought years ago now.

Kinda miss e-ink so it's a stopgap.

[–] fungalfelidae5@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

i also use koreader on my phone

[–] dresden@discuss.online 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Sony PRS-350 😀

It's old, but I am not a big e-book reader. Will probably get a Kobo one once this dies.

Edit: Just read other comments and noticed that you are talking about software, not hardware. Sorry, don't read e-books on computer or mobile, unless it's a webnovel, in that case, simple browser or official app of the site.

[–] Jack_Burton@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sony club! I use whichever was the second to last release (TP2 or something). Over a decade old, battery still lasts a few weeks, and it just works.

[–] dresden@discuss.online 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah, it's a pretty neat device. Don't have any issue with it.

I don't read on desktop, but I use Pocketbook Reader on my tablet. Free with no ads, and lets me use any colors I want, override terrible embedded fonts and cramped line height, change margins, etc. It does have a couple of quirks that annoy me from time to time, but I haven't found a replacement I like better.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 2 points 1 day ago

I use Librera on my phone and Calibre on my desktop, with FBReader for those pesky lcpl files from NetGalley.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I like Koreader. It's a pain for the first hour of setup, but it runs so much faster than the other ones I've tried: Moon+, Aldiko, and a couple of open source ones that bugged out too often.

[–] tal 8 points 2 days ago

https://koreader.rocks/

I've used it on Android.

I've used Foliate on Linux.

[–] velxundussa@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago

Phone or Kobo, depending on source.

I love the openness of the kobo - if you're a technical user it's way easier to get it to do cool stuff.

The feature I like most comes from this project: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

It's a selfhosted webapp where you can upload your epubs, the killer feature is that it can be a proxy that sits between your Kobo and the official store, so just hitting sync on the device itself will also sync all your 3rd party books.

Not fiddling with cables to transfer the books is awesome.

[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago
[–] PDFuego@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

ReadEra on my tablet, and I think just a FireFox extension on the PC. I don't remember exactly what made me move from Aldiko to ReadEra, but I liked it enough to grab the paid version. Sources are all from MAM, so I'm not sure about options that let you buy & download in-app.

[–] stevedice@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago

This. Even the free version is great.

[–] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago

Kobo is best ko

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

A Boox Nova 2 and a jailbroken Kindle Paperwhite Signature with KOReader.

[–] CrayonDevourer@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Kindle Oasis - bought it years and years ago, still has free internet connectivity; just use Z-Library to email books to it, and tell wife that she has more stuff to read. I've still got all the epubs on the PC so no worries if I gotta swap to something else later.

[–] CatDogL0ver@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Z library still works? I can't find their URL anymore.

[–] CrayonDevourer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

They have a tor application for the desktop.

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Tolino (Kobo but branded for German market). Love it and haven't had any other complaints except that the initial page is fixed and can't be changed.

[–] JaymesRS@literature.cafe 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's a couple years old but this may help with the splash screen. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=345280

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ah sorry I meant the initial page that loads after the splash screen - I'd like to switch from the "Start page" to "my library" when I wake the device.

Nevertheless, cool tip on the linked page, thanks for sharing! Might play around with that aswell ;)

[–] JaymesRS@literature.cafe 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If there's anyone who knows how to modify that it would be on that forum. They are crazy smart and the kobo section has a bunch of people there.

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago

You are right, this resource is gold! Thank you so much!

Might have found a solution from that site.. Got to try hacking a bit tomorrow. Didn't know I can access the settings to easily when connecting to it via PC.

[–] TheFANUM@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Google books/moon reader

[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I use Foliate on desktop, generally pretty good.

But I do most of my reading with Librera on Android, though it has an annoying bug where switching to it with the app switchers glitches out.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I use Foliate on desktop, generally pretty good.

Unfortunately, I'm a Windows user.

[–] tal 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/issues/115

Windows build #115

One comment on that issue:

If you're looking for similar functionality and the style of reading on macOS or Windows, I'm excited to introduce Readest—a modern rewrite of Foliate UI built with Next.js on Tauri v2.0. Readest is inspired by Foliate’s simplicity and rich feature set, but with added cross-platform support. It’s designed to run seamlessly on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

https://github.com/readest/readest

https://readest.com/

I've never used it myself, but maybe it'd be of interest to you.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago
[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 4 points 2 days ago

Shame, I can't help then as I haven't daily drove Windows since 2018, so, *checks date*, seven years ago, fuck.

Though apparently, you can install Linux GUI apps via WSL.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Sure, so I'm currently evaluating FOUR of them trying to determine which one I like best:

eBoox, ReadEra, Moon+ Reader, and Librera.

eBoox lets you change the page color, but the controls are a little buried and there are only 4 colors to pick from, white, beige, gray and black.

Readera has more sensible controls and more page color options. Night and Sepia both have high contrast options where the text seems bolded.

Libreara has even more page color controls than that, about 8 of them.

Moon+ appears to have the greatest control allowing you to define colors through hex codes and apply your own background image. Pretty good font controls too.

I haven't really decided yet which one I like best, right now I have a book open in Moon+ and Libreara and both function fine, I'd have a hard time picking one over the other.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 3 points 1 day ago

I used Moon Reader for a long time and enjoyed it, but switched to Librera because there's an F-droid version. It's not quite as slick, but just as good in terms of functionality imo.

[–] d00ery@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

+1 for Moon reader, loads of customisation.

[–] b34n5@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I have a Kindle ebook reader, though I don’t use it much. I prefer reading on my computer, where I use the PDF reader Zathura and Thorium Reader for EPUBs.

[–] philpo@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago

Pocketbook Era Color and sometimes a Verse colour. Phenomenal little thingy. I love them both.

[–] higgsboson@dubvee.org 4 points 2 days ago

My Kobo Aura recently died, it was my 5th ebook reader. At some point I will replace it, but for now I read on my phone.

[–] poppichew@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago

Believe it or not, I use one of those Nook Simple Touches from nineteen dickety two. Cause you can change the battery easily, I got it for super freakin' cheap and with a light source it's perfectly fine. I just realized though, you're asking for programs. That I cannot tell you. I just use whatever is simplest on my lappy. I don't read on it often, and when I do it's typically for PDFS, which open in the browser. Eh!

[–] fujiwood@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I use Google Play Books on my phone because that's what I started with years ago. I don't really need anything fancy for just reading so it works fine.

There are times when I think about buying a dedicated reader but I don't want to go through the hassle of migrating everything. If that's even possible.