cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43549159
A feature-complete and elegant app
Until now, every reading app I've found has been a compromise. There are closed source apps like Moon+ Reader with plenty of features and beautiful design. Some people don't mind the one-time purchase. There are beautiful apps like Book's Story with a clean, modern design and simple library management, but with little beyond the core features. There are apps like KOReader designed for e-readers with little design consideration for tablets or phones, and a somewhat cluttered design. Each of these apps are beloved by their users for different reasons.
Then there's Anx Reader. It's FOSS. It's beautiful on a phone or ereader. It's chock full of thoughtful features and customizations.
Design
It opens to a perfectly pleasing and intuitive library screen. You can import books easily, supporting most common formats including PDF. The library features smart categories of finished, reading, and not started. You can sort titles by recently read, progress, alphebetical, and more. You can also add personalized tags to keep your library organized. Group titles together by pressing and dragging into a collection.
Each book has a detail screen that shows a basic overview including tags and statistics. You can also view your overall reading statistics in a nice layout that shows things like your reading time, daily streak, etc. These are shown on cards that can be rearranged or removed as you wish.
Reading
The full screen reader can be customized in all sorts of ways according to your preference. I like to read books in a continuous scroll. That's an option in addition to a couple page turning modes. It comes with fairly limited fonts, but they are easy to download and add if you have a preference.
Adjust the line spacing, letter spacing, paragraph spacing. Adjust the Intents and all margins. Of course you can adjust the font size, but also the weight. Choose the color scheme and image background (with a couple sensible options built in). Even use custom CSS if you have particular preferences.
You can read in uninterrupted full screen, or add tasteful headers and footers with your progress or chapter title, etc. Choose exactly how you want page turning to work, with screen areas.
Reading is seamlessly smooth as expected. Oh, and the whole app has an e-reader mode.
Library management
Anx uses a syncronizing method I haven't seen before. No OPDS, KOReader, or the like, but you can sync over WebDAV between devices. Has anyone else ever come across this? Is it a feature shared by other apps or devices? I don't know. Maybe more options will be developed in the future.
It works perfectly between devices running Anx in any case.
You can save, search, and share notes and highlights (in colors or underline).
Other things
Anx Reader has a number of helpful intelligent features. It is very AI forward, which is not a selling point for me at all. Shortcuts to AI options can be switched off in some places, but not everywhere. In any case, if you want you can connect it to an LLM of your choice to summarize previous passages or chat interactively about the book. If you choose not to connect one, it doesn't do anything without your permission.
Some of the features that come built in are useful and may interest users who want a smarter reader. It can read aloud (using your on-device reader), or automatically translate. I haven't tested these features as I don't have any interest, but I can appreciate their usefulness to others.
I've noticed that while menus and reading are incredibly snappy, opening a book sometimes takes a few seconds, especially if you haven't opened it in a while. It's enough to be noticed but not quite enough to bother, especially since everything else works so seamlessly.
Conclusions
Anx Reader has a fantastic design that is a joy to use. It has piles of features, no matter what kind of reader you are. The interface gets out of your way and lets you just read and enjoy. Everything is intuitive and designed with care and intention. For me, it's the one.
Anx Reader is available on Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, and Harmony OS.
