Superpowers
Read
Read is a reading room inside OmniGet for your ebooks, PDFs, comics and manga. It keeps the library, opens every book in its own reader, follows manga series for new chapters, and converts or sends books to your e-reader.
Where it is
Open Superpowers in the sidebar and choose the Read card. To hide it, go to Settings › Integrations › Read and turn off Show Read. Turning it off hides Read and stops its library server. Read is on by default.
The left column of Read has two parts. The top part has Home, Library, Manga & comics, Updates and Browse, followed by your Shelves once you have one. The bottom part has Notes & words, Downloads, Statistics, Convert & send and Settings.
How to use it
Add your books
- Open Read. On an empty library, choose Add a folder, or drop books, comics or folders on the window.
- OmniGet scans the folder. Books, comics and PDFs in it are added and kept up to date.
- To add more folders later, open Settings › Library inside Read and choose Add folder.
Removing a folder takes its books out of the library. The files stay on your disk.
Read a book
- Open Home and pick a book under Continue reading, or find it in Library.
- Choose Read (or Continue when you have started it).
- Use the toolbar for Contents, Search, Highlights, Bookmark, Read aloud and Reading settings.
- Select text to Highlight, Underline, add a Note, Copy, Quote, Define, Translate or Explain it.
The Reading assistant answers questions about the book using only the text up to where you are, so nothing gets spoiled. It offers Story so far, Summarize chapter, Characters, Quiz me and Ask, and needs an AI provider.
Comics and manga open in the comic reader, with the Reading mode set to Right to left, Left to right, Vertical or Webtoon, single or double Pages, and a Fit to screen, width or height.
Organize the library
- Library shows Everything, Books, Comics & manga or PDF, as a Grid or a List, sorted by title, author, series, date added, last read, progress, rating or size. Turn on Group by series to stack a series.
- A book’s page has Edit for its metadata, Find metadata to look it up online, Change cover, Status and Rating.
- Save a web page turns an article, a fanfic (FanFicFare) or a web novel (lightnovel-crawler) into a book.
- Delete files moves the files to the Read trash folder. Remove from library keeps them on disk.
Use shelves
- Select books in Library, then choose Add to shelf, or open Settings › Shelves inside Read.
- Choose New shelf for a hand-picked list, or New smart shelf for a list that fills itself.
- For a smart shelf, choose whether books must match all rules or any rule, then Add rule (for example, Author contains a name, or Days since read more than a value).
Shelves show up in the left column under Shelves.
Follow manga and comics
- Open Browse, pick a catalog and search it, or use Search all to search every source of one kind at once.
- Open a series and choose Follow.
- New chapters show up in Updates and on Home under New chapters. Use Check for new chapters to check now.
- On a series page, choose Download, Download unread or Download all, and turn on Download new chapters automatically if you want.
- With chapters downloaded, Make a volume (EPUB) joins them into one book in your library.
Move to another source moves a series to a different catalog. Read marks follow it, matched by chapter number.
Notes and words
Notes & words lists every highlight, note and bookmark from all books, with a search box. Words keeps the words you saved from the dictionary, and Export for Anki saves them for Anki.
To keep notes outside the app, open Settings › Notes inside Read and set a Live notes folder. Read writes one Markdown file per book there (an Obsidian vault works) and rewrites it each time you highlight.
Convert and send
- Open Convert & send, or right-click books in the library and choose Convert.
- On Convert, pick the target in Convert to and the Converter. Built in handles TXT, Markdown and HTML to EPUB, EPUB to Kobo kepub, and comics to CBZ or fixed-layout EPUB. Other formats use calibre, KCC or pandoc when they are installed.
- On Send to device, plug in a Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook or a device with KOReader and choose Send, or send by E-mail (Send to Kindle).
- Tools shows which converters were found on this computer and lets you point to one with Choose file.
Downloads and statistics
Downloads has three lists: Chapters, Books and Conversions, with Cancel all and Clear finished.
Statistics shows reading time, streaks, books finished, chapters read, Reading activity, When you read, your most read books and authors, and the formats you read. You can set a yearly goal for books and a goal for Minutes a day.
Options
These live under Settings inside Read, in the tabs Library, Shelves, Sources, Updates, Sync & sharing, E-mail, Notes and Backup & import.
| Option | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Library folders | Folders whose books, comics and PDFs are added and kept up to date. | |
| Where downloads go | Folder for books and chapters you download in Read. Change it with Change. | |
| Organize files | Moves books into folders named from their metadata. Use Preview first. | |
| Find duplicates | Lists books that appear more than once. | |
| Catalogs | Adds an OPDS catalog (Calibre-Web, Komga, Kavita, Stump, another OmniGet) or a Suwayomi server you run. | None |
| Source repositories | Installs sources from a repository URL. Each file is checked against its checksum. | None |
| Check followed series | How often Read looks for new chapters. | Every 12 h |
| Delete downloaded chapters after reading | Removes chapters you have read, keeping a few behind. | Never |
| Download chapters ahead while reading | Fetches the next chapters while you read. | Off |
| KOReader sync | Keeps your place in step with KOReader through a sync server. | Off |
| Trackers | Sends the chapters you read in followed series to AniList or MangaUpdates. | Off |
| Share the library on your network | Lets e-readers on the same Wi-Fi browse and download your books over OPDS. | Off, port 8580 |
| E-mail (Send to Kindle) | Your SMTP account for mailing books. The password is kept in the system keychain. | Not set |
| Live notes folder | One Markdown file per book, rewritten as you highlight. | Off |
| Backup | Export backup and Restore backup for progress, ratings, shelves, highlights, followed series and read chapters. | |
| Import from Mihon / Tachiyomi | Reads a .tachibk backup. MangaDex series come in with their read chapters. |
Built-in catalogs
Read ships with Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks and Open Library for public-domain books, and MangaDex and MANGA Plus for manga published with the rights holders. Show adult content in Browse is off unless you turn it on.
Shortcuts
| Where | Keys | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| Read | / | Focus the search box |
| Read | ⌥←Alt+← | Go back |
| Book reader | ← → | Turn pages |
| Book reader | ⌘FCtrl+F | Search this book |
| Book reader | ⌘BCtrl+B | Bookmark |
| Book reader | T N S | Contents, highlights, reading settings |
| Book reader | R | Read aloud |
| Book reader | F | Full screen |
| Book reader | escEsc | Close the open panel, then the book |
| Comic reader | ← → | Turn pages |
| Comic reader | D | Single or double pages |
| Comic reader | M | Next reading mode |
| Comic reader | [ ] | Previous or next chapter |
| Comic reader | H | Hide the bars |
Common problems
A CBR or CB7 comic does not open
The reader opens CBZ archives. Convert the file to CBZ first in Convert & send.
Converting to MOBI, AZW3, PDF or DOCX fails
Those conversions need calibre. Install it, then check Convert & send › Tools; if it shows Not found, use Choose file to point to it.
Read aloud is missing
Read aloud uses the system’s speech voices. When the system webview has none, Read shows “Read aloud isn’t available in this system’s webview.”
A series can be read but not downloaded
Some sources only allow reading in the app. The series page says “This source can be read in the app but not downloaded.”