Everywhere - searching several sites at once
One box, one query, sent to every site you have enabled that can be searched. Results from all of them are merged into one list.
Above the results is a line saying how each site did, either a count or the reason it could not answer. A site that needs an account, or that is refusing automated requests today, is reported, not quietly dropped. The results you did get are still shown.
There are no filters on this tab. Filters do not mean the same thing on two different sites, and merging them would produce a query none of them actually ran.
Browse a source - one site, its own filters
This is where the real searching happens. Choose a site, choose what you are doing on it, and the filter panel is built from what that site can genuinely do.
Two things on this panel are worth knowing.
Filters marked “slower”
Some sites cannot filter on something you asked for. A forum listing does not know how many words a thread contains. Fiction Reader then checks each candidate individually, which takes a real request per story. Those filters are marked, results stream in as they are checked, and a progress line says how far it has got. If it runs out of its request budget before filling the page, the list ends with Keep looking instead of pretending there is nothing more.
The panel folds away
On a forum the panel runs to two dozen controls, so once results arrive it collapses to a single Filters (2) row with Search again beside it. The number counts the filters you actually set. Coming back from a story leaves it folded.
Below the results, Remember these filters keeps the panel filled in the next time you open the app.
Add by URL - pasting a link
Paste any story or thread address and press Look up. This is the most reliable way to add a story, and the only way on a site with no usable search.
If the address is not from a supported site, the app says so and lists the sites it does support.
The subscribe form
Everything on this form can be changed later from the story's own screen, so nothing here is a decision you are stuck with.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Browse and sample | Look through the chapter list, and read a chapter or two, before committing to anything. |
| Start downloading chapters now | Off by default. Subscribing always fetches the chapter list, so you can look through a story and turn downloading on afterwards. Leaving it off means adding a story costs one request rather than several hundred. |
| Trial read | Downloads only the first few chapters and stops. See below. |
| Open the story after subscribing | Off keeps you on the results with your search intact, so you can add several in a row. |
| Start from | For a story you have already read part of elsewhere. See below. |
| Content to download | On forum threads only. Which of the author's extra threadmark lists to include, as described below. |
Trial read
A trial downloads the first five chapters and stops, and leaves the story out of scheduled update checks until you decide.
It exists because deciding whether a story is worth reading otherwise costs a full download. On a four-hundred-chapter thread that is hundreds of requests spent before you have read a word, and most of the time the answer turns out to be no.
The story appears in your library with a Trial ribbon and “5 of trial” beside its unread count. When you reach the end of the fifth chapter, the reader says End of the trial and offers to fetch the rest. The story screen has the same offer as Download the whole story.
Unread counts on a trial stop at the trial's boundary, so a five-chapter trial of a sixty-chapter thread reports five unread rather than sixty you have no way to reach.
Starting part-way through
Start from is for a story you have already been reading on the site itself. Because listing a story's chapters costs a real request, it starts as a button; pressing it fetches the list and turns into a picker.
| Choice | What happens |
|---|---|
| The beginning | Download everything. Nothing is marked read. |
| Up to date | Everything published so far is marked read. Only chapters published from now on will be unread. |
| A specific chapter | Earlier chapters are still listed and can still be downloaded one at a time; they are simply not fetched in bulk. |
Threadmark categories
On SpaceBattles, Sufficient Velocity and Questionable Questing, a story is a forum thread and its chapters are threadmarks. Authors often keep extra threadmark lists alongside the story, such as side stories, informational posts, art or an index. What those lists are called is up to the author; there is no fixed set.
The story's own threadmarks are always downloaded. Extra lists are checkboxes, and they are shown on the story's own screen too, so you can add one months later. Ticking one downloads it and records the choice, so future checks keep it.
Extra categories never count as unread. They are material to look at when you feel like it, and the reading queue is about what to read next.
Why downloads take a while
Fiction Reader asks each site for one page every few seconds. The exact rate is shown on each site's card in Settings. A four-hundred-chapter thread therefore takes well over half an hour, and that is working correctly.
These sites are run by people, most of them for free, and a reader who downloads a story ten times faster is a reader who costs them ten times as much. The Queue screen shows what is downloading and what is waiting, in the order it will actually run.
Subscribing from the site itself
The optional browser extension puts the same subscribe form in a button on the toolbar, so a story you are already looking at can be added without opening Fiction Reader. It offers the same options: categories, start point, download now, trial read.