Sell me on KOReader

[radius]

I'm looking for an epub reading app for my (LCD-display) Android tablet. Once upon a time I used to use Aldiko but I was never in love with it.

I've seen the hoops people jump through to install KOReader on their Kindles and Kobos so I thought there must be something great about it to inspire such loyalty and motivate people to replace perfectly serviceable, built-in software.

But after installing it, I feel like I am using Athena-widget, GNU software from the 1990s. I guess maybe the UI is optimized for eink displays. But in any case, I don't understand the appeal yet.

What am I missing?

[pazos]

Originally Posted by radius

What am I missing?

Purpose

Give readest a try, read as much as you want. If you somehow feel like you want to read on a platform readest doesn't support install KOReader in there and sync everything.

Most of us who use KOReader on lcd devices is because we're also using it on eink and we are so within the ecosystem we would miss a lot by not using it

But that's probably NOT your case, spetially if you consider stock options "perfectly serviceable"

[xor_]

Because it's free software, and I think it's important to have an eco-system of open source software. Also, the developers are pretty cool.

One initial appeal was that it had PDF reflow and better font support.

Back when I started using it, the project was Kindle-only software. And part of the appeal was to join the effort to get it running on Kobos in the first place. Today there are no hoops to jump through.

I also don't mind the somewhat arcane interface. And I actually had to check whether my Emacs was still using Athena widgets. I guess it doesn't.

[Ebookus]

Originally Posted by radius

perfectly serviceable, built-in software.

stick with stock then. nothing wrong with that.

[Jellby]

* You can use the same software on different readers.

* There's a good chance you can configure it to your liking: If it's not there, you may raise a feature request or implement it yourself.

[neil_swann80]

Koreader seemed incredibly convoluted to me at first, but it's my daily driver for reading on my Pocketbook and Android devices now. There is a steep-ish learning curve to get everything setup to your liking, but worthwhile IMHO.

The Kosync feature to sync book progress between devices and cloud integration (I use Dropbox) to effortlessly sync ebooks across devices make it essential for me. I can obtain ebooks directly on any of my Koreader devices and sync them to my other devices without using a PC as an intermediary.

Being able to set default font and formatting to my preference within Koreader so every book looks consistent without need for Calibre tweaking is a godsend for my use case.

I like to have my reading interface as minimalist as possible, just the text on screen; no progress bars, page numbers, status bars, clock or battery meters etc. I can tap on the bottom of the screen to un-hide a status bar (also customizable) should I wish to.

I can set gestures to various screen taps (or long presses, multi-finger swipes) to quickly toggle or activate certain features; e.g. dark mode, backlight, touch screen, reading stats, bookmarks, highlights, manual progress push/pull... just the few I use, many more beyond that.

There is also a wealth of optional plugins you can add. There's a particularly good NY Times Crossword plugin available as well as a Text-to-Speech plugin in development.

Koreader supports the StarDict dictionary format, so you have plenty of free and excellent dictionaries to choose from. I really like the dictionaries HERE.

Some people do report faster battery depletion running Koreader on their devices so keep an eye on that, I have not experienced this myself.

[Gormagon]

I tried different ereader apps on Android over the years and stuck with 2 of them: Librera and KOReader. Both have advantages and disadvantages.
Librera is faster than KOReader loading the oberview of all books if you have >2000 ebook files in one folder. The navigation between all books, recent and folders is also better on Librera.

The main advantage of KOReader for me is that the dictionary function using dz and idx files is already included. On Librera I have to use another app (usually GoldenDict) for this. Plus on KOReader I can add a word in the dictionary popup to the vocabulary builder with a click.

The UI of KOReader is not very intuitive for me. After some years, sometimes I still search quite long for certain settings. On the one hand you can set almost everything to your liking, on the other hand there are much to much options to remember exactly where they are. Since I just like to read text justified with font size, line height and other things adjusted to the size of the screen that's something I can also easily do in Libera much faster than in KOReader. Librera also has PDF reflow.

There are plugins and patches to improve KOReader. I use Project Title for an improved cover display plus the patch 2-reader-header.lua for a better status bar in the header.

What I don't like about KOReader is that for every book a sdr folder is created where a metadata.lua is stored. I know it's the file that stores your adjustments, bookmarks and so on for the book. Nevertheless it sucks to have so many folders with just one or two files (.lua + lua.old).

[radius]

Thanks for all the (in-depth!) replies. This was super valuable for me. Much appreciated.