chareader

A fast, minimal reader for novels and comics on Linux. Opens .epub, .txt and .cbz files.

• Clean reading view with justified text, three themes and adjustable size, spacing and width
• Scroll or book-page view, with a chapter list and saved reading positions
• Auto-scroll (word by word, line by line or smooth) with a reading guide
• Fast reader that shows one word at a time
• Comic view with two-page spreads, right-to-left (manga) order, fit-to-width and zoom
• Library of recent books with cover thumbnails
• Rebindable keys, and custom fonts by dropping a .ttf or .otf on the window

Written in C with SDL3, OpenGL 3.3 and FreeType.

Install

Install the build tools and libraries:

Distribution	Packages
Void	base-devel pkg-config SDL3-devel freetype-devel libpng-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel libdeflate-devel
Arch	base-devel sdl3 freetype2 libpng libjpeg-turbo libdeflate
Debian / Ubuntu	build-essential pkg-config libsdl3-dev libfreetype-dev libpng-dev libturbojpeg0-dev libdeflate-dev
Fedora	gcc make pkgconf SDL3-devel freetype-devel libpng-devel turbojpeg-devel libdeflate-devel

Then build and start it:

git clone https://github.com/paddle1407/chareader.git
cd chareader
./setup.sh
./run.sh

To add chareader to your app launcher, run ./desktop.sh --link.

Usage

./run.sh                 # open the library
./run.sh book.epub       # open a book

You can also drop a book onto the window. Press s or click the cog for settings, and ? for the full list of keys.

Key	Action
Space / → / PgDn	Next page (Shift+Space goes back)
← / PgUp	Previous page
↓ ↑ / j k	Scroll
n / p	Next / previous chapter
c	Contents
a	Auto-scroll on/off
r	Fast reader
= / -	Bigger / smaller text (zoom in comics)
t	Next theme
f	Fullscreen
Esc / q	Back to the library
Ctrl+Q	Quit

Data

run.sh keeps everything chareader writes inside its own folder, in .data/: settings and reading positions (state.ini), cover thumbnails and imported fonts. To uninstall, delete the folder (and the launcher link, if you made one).

If the window looks wrong on a scaled display, run CHAREADER_DEBUG=1 ./run.sh to print the sizes it sees.

Development

make            # build ./chareader
make test       # run the tests

Bundled fonts are Noto Serif, Noto Sans (SIL Open Font License) and DejaVu Serif; their licenses are in fonts/. BMP decoding uses stb_image (public domain).