Are you looking for a new e-book reader? Check out these four reliable open source ebook readers for Android.

Who doesn’t want to have a good reading experience? Instead of wasting time on social media or instant messaging apps, read a book, magazine or other document on your Android phone or tablet.

To do this, you need a suitable e-book reader software. Let’s take a look at four reliable, open-source Android e-readers.

Book Reader

Let’s start with one of my favorite open source Android e-readers: the Book Reader. It is based on an old open source version of the now proprietary FBReader application. Like earlier versions of FBReader, Book Reader is small and simple, but easy to use.

Advantages:

  • Easy to operate.
  • The interface follows Android’s Material Design guidelines, so it’s very clean.
  • You can bookmark e-books and share the text with other apps on your device.
  • Continuous support in languages other than English.

disadvantages

  • The Book Reader has fewer customization options.
  • There is no built-in dictionary or support for external dictionaries.

Supported ebook formats:

Book Reader supports EPUB,.mobi, PDF, DjVu, HTML, plain text, Word documents, RTF, and FictionBook.

The source code for Book Reader is licensed under GNU GPL 3.0 and can be found in GitLab.

Cool Reader

Cool Reader is a flexible and easy-to-use e-book software. While I thought the software’s ICONS reminded me of those in Windows Vista, it did have some useful features.

advantages

  • Height customization, you can change the font, line width, paragraph spacing, hyphen, font size, margin, and background color.
  • You can override style sheets in the book. I’ve found this useful for two or three books that have all text set to lowercase.
  • It automatically searches for new books in the device when it starts up. You can also check out the books in Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive.

disadvantages

  • Cool Reader’s interface isn’t minimalist or the most modern.
  • While it works out of the box, you’ll actually need to tweak some configurations to be more comfortable with Cool Reader.
  • The app’s default dictionary is proprietary, although you can replace it with an open source dictionary.

Supported ebook formats:

You can use Cool Reader to view EPUB, fiction, plain text, RTF, HTML, CHM and TCR (e-book format for Psion family of handheld computers) files.

The Cool Reader source is licensed under GNU GPL 2 and can be found at Sourceforge.

KOReader

KOReader was originally created for the E Ink ebook reader, but it was later found to work with Android. In testing it, I found KOReader to be both useful and frustrating in equal measure. It’s obviously not a bad app, but it wouldn’t be my first choice.

advantages

  • Highly customizable.
  • Support for multiple languages.
  • It allows you to look up words using a dictionary (if you have it installed) or Wikipedia (if you have an Internet connection).

disadvantages

  • You need to change Settings for each book. KOReader doesn’t remember the Settings when you open a new book
  • The interface feels like a dedicated e-book reader. The app doesn’t have the look and feel of Android.

Supported ebook formats:

You can check PDF, DjVu, CBT, and CBZ ebooks. It also supports EPUB, novels,.mobi, Word documents, text files, and CHM files.

The Cool Reader source is licensed under GNU Affero GPL 3.0 and can be found on GitHub.

Booky McBookface

Yes, that is indeed the name of the e-book reader. It’s the most basic e-book reader in this article, but don’t let that (or the silly name) disappoint you. Booky McBookface is easy to use, and it does one thing well.

advantages

  • No frills. It’s just you and your ebook.
  • The interface is simple.
  • Holding down the app icon in the Android launch bar brings up a menu that lets you open the last book you’re reading, get a list of unread books, or find and open a book on your device.

disadvantages

  • There are few configuration options — you can change the font size and brightness, and that’s it.
  • You need to use the buttons at the bottom of the screen to browse the ebook. Clicking on the edge of the screen doesn’t work.
  • Unable to bookmark ebooks.

Supported ebook formats

You can use the software to read EPUB, HTML documents, or plain text ebooks.

The Booky McBookface source is licensed under GNU GPL 3.0 and can be found on GitHub.

Do you have a favorite Android open source ebook reader? Leave a comment and share in the community.

Via: opensource.com/article/19/…

By Scott Nesbitt (lujun9972

This article is originally compiled by LCTT and released in Linux China