Home > Lifestyle

Why Readest Is the Only Ebook Reader You’ll Ever Need

By Crystal Crowder
Readest homepage

There’s no shortage of ebook reader apps, but finding one that does everything you want is the hard part. What if there was a free, open-source, cross-platform option? That’s why Readest has become my go-to ebook reader app, easily replacing everything else.

Cross-Platform and Syncs Between Devices

Many ebook reader apps only work on a few platforms. But, Readest works on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, and the web. While that makes it attractive enough, the sync feature makes it perfect if you tend to read on multiple devices.

I personally love the Kindle app and how it syncs my library and progress between devices. But, I only use it for Kindle books. It’s a disaster at managing any other ebooks.

Readest gives me a similar cross-platform and syncing experience to Kindle, but for the numerous other ebooks I buy and download from other sources, including free ebook sites.

It’s free to sync up to 500MB of data in the cloud. I suggest only uploading a handful of books at a time to ensures you don’t need a premium plan.

Open the Readest app on whatever device you’re using, click the hamburger menu at the top, and uncheck Auto Upload Books to Cloud. Then, go back to the menu and select Sign in. Create a free account.

Uploading books and creating an account with Readest

Click the little cloud icon below any book to upload it to the cloud. It’ll then show in your library on other devices. I prefer to store everything on my desktop PC, then upload several books at a time from there.

Be patient. It sometimes takes a few minutes for everything to sync.

The only downside is there isn’t an easy way to just remove a book from the cloud. Instead, you must delete the book from the library on the device you uploaded it from. This removes it everywhere it’s synced. Then, re-upload it to your library. It won’t sync automatically unless you have syncing turned on.

Customize the Reading Environment

Any ebook reader app must have customization options for a better reading experience. Readest offers a variety of settings, including adding your own custom content CSS and custom reader UI CSS. Yes, it’s for more advanced users, but it’s nice to have the option.

If you ever used the Linux ebook reader app Foliate, everything might feel familiar. This is because Readest is modern rewrite of the popular Foliate app.

If you don’t want to create custom CSS, Readest provides five other sets of options, including:

  • Font – size, type, weight, font family, etc.
  • Book layout – spacing, margins, writing mode, etc.
  • Theme – mode, colors, highlighting
  • Behavior – scrolling, clicking, animation, etc.
  • Language – default language and translation
Why Readest Is The Only Ebook Reader Youll Ever Need Customization

Wide Variety of Built-In Reading Tools

Many apps I’ve tried drastically limit the reading tools for the free version. Readest doesn’t do that. Open any book to take notes, add bookmarks, highlight text, and even perform searches. If you’re a student, you’ll appreciate the highlight and notes features.

One thing you might not expect is built-in AI reading. For now, it doesn’t support PDF files, but that may be added in the future. Otherwise, when your ebook is open in the app, click the headphone icon at the bottom, to the right of the progress bar. If you don’t see this bar, hover your mouse near the bottom of the screen or tap once at the bottom of the screen.

Click the AI button (a green/blue button just above the progress bar) to adjust the AI settings. From here, speed up or slow down the voice, change the voice, pause it, or even set a timer. I highly suggest changing the voice. Having a childlike voice reading urban fantasy as a bit weird.

Using AI reading in Readest.

Click the headphones again to turn off the AI reader. Free users only get a limited number of hours, but the amount’s not stated in the app.

But, this still isn’t all that’s included. Select a word or phrase to look up definitions, highlight text, check Wikipedia, have AI help you pronounce it, translate it, or add the excerpt to your notebook.

Accessing reading tools in the app.

If you’re translating text, free users get up to 10,000 characters per day. You’ll have to upgrade to get more.

Compare Two Books at Once

Readest offers parallel reading, or reading two books side by side. This might sound like an odd feature, but I’ve found it to be perfect for learning a new language. It’s also ideal for research or studying.

Open your first book and click the book icon at the top left to open the table of contents. Open the hamburger menu and select Parallel Read. Choose a book from the list. This opens a second pane.

For language learning, you’ll need the book in both languages. Or, you can always just use the translate feature to view passages without using the Parallel Read feature.

Turning on Parallel Read

Compatible Formats and Premium Options

Readest currently supports EPUB, MOBI, KF8 (AZW3), FB2, CBZ, TXT, and PDF. Some features aren’t available for PDF as that part is still in active development.

So far, I haven’t had any reason to upgrade. But, if you want to sync larger libraries, get more AI reading and translations, or even early access features, you’ll want to upgrade. Plans start at $5/month, making it affordable if you’re an active reader that wants their whole ebook library available in the cloud.

Yes, Readest does have some issues, such as occasional slow loading. However, it offers an incredible amount of features for free and the developer is constantly working on the project to make it even better.

If you’re looking for more ebook reader apps, try these options.

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Crystal Crowder Avatar
Crystal Crowder
Crystal Crowder has spent over 15 years working in the tech industry, first as an IT technician and then as a writer. She works to help teach others how to get the most from their devices, systems, and apps. She stays on top of the latest trends and is always finding solutions to common tech problems.

Read next

Mycorrhizal fungi colonised plant roots roughly 450 million years ago and biologists now suspect plants could never have moved out of the oceans onto bare rock without them, meaning every forest on Earth — including the redwoods, the Amazon, and the boreal belt — is still running on a partnership older than trees themselves
Intricate network of tree roots and moss on a forest hillside, showcasing nature's resilience.
Suzanne Simard sealed paper birch and Douglas fir seedlings inside plastic bags, fed them carbon-14 and carbon-13 dioxide, and nine days later found carbon had crossed between species through fungal threads in the British Columbia soil beneath her boots
Close-up of glowing jellyfish swimming gracefully in deep green ocean waters.
A species of jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii can revert its adult cells back to a juvenile polyp stage when injured or starving, effectively restarting its life cycle, and biologists have so far failed to identify any natural limit to how many times it can do this.
French scientist Michel Siffre spent two months alone in a cave with no clock, no calendar, and no sunlight — and when his team finally told him the experiment was over, he thought he still had nearly a month left underground
When Cingular chief Stan Sigman backed the original iPhone before its 2007 unveiling, he accepted terms American carriers usually refused: no logo on the device, no control over its software, no preloaded apps, and a share of monthly subscriber revenue flowing back to Apple, after signing on without seeing a prototype
In 2016, archaeologists dated two rings of snapped stalagmites in France’s Bruniquel Cave to 176,500 years ago, evidence that Neanderthals had walked 336 metres into darkness with fire and built architecture deep underground long before modern humans reached Europe
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use
When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov stepped out of his Soyuz capsule in March 1995 after 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, doctors recorded him at several centimetres above his pre-flight height, and his spine had become so unaccustomed to gravity that the recovery team carried him to a chair rather than risk the compression of letting him walk.