Reading

The reader is where you spend most of your time in Readest. It's designed to stay out of the way — controls appear when you ask for them and disappear when you don't.

Reader interface

Tap or click the center of the page to toggle the toolbars.

Top toolbar — back to library, book title, TOC, bookmark toggle, settings, and actions (translate, instant annotation, etc.).
Bottom toolbar — chapter progress, page/time info, TTS toggle.
Sidebar (press S) — Table of Contents, Bookmarks, Notes, and in-book Search.
Notebook (press N) — excerpts and notes for the current book.

Progress indicators on the bottom show how far you are through the current chapter and through the book as a whole. Time-to-finish estimates update as you read.

Progress display. By default the footer shows your position as a page number. Under Settings → Layout → Header & Footer, switch Reading Progress Style to Percentage or Reference Pages — the latter shows real page numbers pulled from the book's own page list (when it has one). Turn on Show Progress Bar in the same panel for an always-visible bar with a tick mark at each chapter boundary; it draws in higher contrast on e-ink screens.

Gestures & shortcuts

Readest works with tap, click, keyboard, and volume keys. Full references: Gestures and Keyboard shortcuts.

Turn pages:

Tap the left or right edge of the page
Swipe horizontally (mobile)
Press → / ←, L / H, Space, or PgUp / PgDn
Volume keys, or a custom remote / keyboard binding — see Hardware page-turn buttons

Reading with hardware buttons? Turn off Swipe to Paginate (and tap-to-paginate, if you like) under Settings → Behavior → Pagination so a stray finger drag won't flip the page mid-highlight.

Adjust brightness (mobile): slide up or down along the left edge of the screen. Toggle the gesture with Swipe for Brightness under Settings → Behavior → Device.

Jump between chapters:

Alt+→ / Alt+← — next / previous chapter
Sidebar → TOC — tap any heading

Selection actions (select text, then use the popup toolbar or a shortcut):

Action	Shortcut	Result
Copy	`Ctrl+C` / `Cmd+C`	Copy to clipboard
Highlight	`Ctrl+H` / `Cmd+H`	Default color
Underline	`Ctrl+U` / `Cmd+U`	Underline style
Annotate	`Ctrl+N` / `Cmd+N`	Highlight + note
Translate	`Ctrl+T` / `Cmd+T`	See Translate & Lookup
Dictionary	`Ctrl+D` / `Cmd+D`	Wiktionary lookup
Wikipedia	`Ctrl+W` / `Cmd+W`	Wikipedia popup
Read aloud	`Ctrl+R` / `Cmd+R`	TTS the selection
Proofread	`Ctrl+P` / `Cmd+P`	See Proofread rules

Page layout

Readest offers two page layouts. Switch from the reader settings, or press Shift+J to toggle.

Paginated — classic page-turn model. Supports one / two or up to four columns; configurable margins and gap. Best for long prose.
Scrolled — continuous scroll. Good for mobile, web articles, or when you want a constant pace.

Layout settings are global for all books by default, but you can apply any current setting as a local settings for the current book from the settings panel's menu.

Comics, manga & PDFs

Fixed-layout books — comics and manga (CBZ), image EPUBs, and PDFs — get their own controls in the reader's View menu:

Webtoon Mode — collapses the gaps between pages into a single seamless, top-to-bottom strip, the way vertical-scroll webtoons are meant to be read. It switches the book to scrolled flow and fits each page to the screen width; leaving scrolled mode turns it back off.
Contrast — dial page contrast from 50% up to 300% (100% is normal) to darken a faded scan or lighten a heavy one — handy for old comics and low-quality PDFs.
Tap to zoom — tap any image or table to open it full-screen; pinch to zoom in and out on a touch screen.

TOC & search

Table of Contents. Open the sidebar (S) and switch to the TOC tab. The current section stays highlighted as you move through the book, and a Current position row appears beneath the active chapter showing the page you're on. Each entry lists its own page number, too.

In-book search. Press Ctrl+F / Cmd+F in the reader, then open Search Options to choose how matching works:

Contains — plain substring match (the default).
Whole Words — match complete words only.
Regular Expression — match a regex pattern.
Nearby Words — find two or more words within a set distance of each other (Within 5 / 10 / 20 / 50 words).

Match Case and Match Diacritics are independent toggles (diacritics don't apply in regex mode), and you can scope a search to the whole Book or just the current Chapter. Results group by chapter with a short excerpt around each match. Click any result to jump there.

Bookmarks

Press Ctrl+B / Cmd+B to toggle a bookmark at the current spot. A ribbon appears on the page and the bookmark is added to the sidebar's Bookmarks tab. Bookmarks can be named for quick reference later.

Bookmarks sync with your other devices if cloud sync is on — see Sync & Backup.

Highlights & notes

Select any text and the annotation toolbar appears. Three visual styles, five default colors (plus custom colors you can define yourself):

Highlight — colored background
Underline — underline only
Squiggly — wavy underline

Adjust the selection with the keyboard. With text selected, Shift+← / Shift+→ grows or shrinks it a character at a time; add Ctrl (or Opt on macOS) to move by whole words. A selection can now run past the edge of the page — in paginated mode Readest turns the page automatically as it grows.

Customize the toolbar. Under Settings → Behavior → Annotation Tools → Customize Toolbar, drag actions into or out of the selection popup and reorder them — hide the ones you never reach for, or move Translate to the front.

Add a note to any annotation by tapping Annotate or pressing Ctrl+N. Notes support plain text and markdown and show up in the Notebook panel (N).

Excerpts let you save a quoted passage without highlighting it inline — useful for collecting quotes you want to keep but don't want to mark up the page with.

Highlight every occurrence. On an existing highlight in a reflowable book, toggle Apply to every occurrence in the book (the icon in the highlight popup) to fan the same color out to every place that phrase appears. The extra marks update live and persist across reloads and sync.

Export. From the Book Menu, export all notes to Markdown or plain text. The export template includes title, author, chapter, quote, note, and a deep link back to the exact location in the book. When a book has highlights in more than one color or style, the dialog adds a Filter Annotations section so you can leave certain colors or styles out of the export. In the export dialog, Annotation Link picks the link style — App Link (a readest://… link that opens the app directly) or Web Link (a universal https://web.readest.com/… link that also works in a browser). On mobile and the web app, exports go through the system Share via… sheet, so you can send them to Notes, Mail, Slack, or anywhere else without saving a file first. For continuous syncing to a third-party service, see Readwise export.

When someone follows a deep link on a device that doesn't have the book yet, Readest opens it in preview mode — they see the surrounding paragraphs without overwriting their own reading position or progress.

Import & clear. The Book Menu also has Import Annotations — currently bringing highlights and notes in from a Moon+ Reader export (.mrexpt) — and Clear Annotations, which removes every highlight and note in the book after a confirmation (bookmarks and excerpts are left untouched).

To pass a whole book to someone else — for a book-club discussion, or so a friend can pick up where you left off — open Book Menu → Share Book (in the reader or by long-pressing a book in the library).

The dialog lets you:

Pick an expiration: 1 day, 3 days (default), or 7 days.
Toggle Share reading progress to include your current page in the link, so the recipient lands on the same spot.
Copy the generated URL, or hand it to the system Share via… sheet.

Recipients with a Readest account get a one-tap Add to my library button on the landing page. Anonymous visitors see an Open in app prompt that falls back to the web reader.

Manage or revoke active share links from Main Menu → Account → Manage Shared Links.