Getting the controls back
Tap or click anywhere on the page to bring the controls back. Tap again to dismiss them; they also hide themselves after about three seconds.
The bottom bar names your position in the words the site itself uses, and how long is left in this chapter. Royal Road says “Chapter 1 of 109”, a forum says “Threadmark 12 of 123”. The estimate counts the words you have left, not the chapter's total length.
One thing never hides: a hairline bar along the very bottom edge showing how far through the chapter you are.
Moving around a story
Previous and next stay inside the sequence you are reading. Reading a chapter, next is the next chapter; reading a side story, it is the next side story, which is also the sensible way out of one.
The chapter list button opens everything in the story without losing your place.
- What is next sits above the scrolling area, because a detour should be brief.
- Every category is reachable from a rail down the left when a story has more than one, each labelled with the author's own name for it.
- A search box appears past a dozen entries. Typing a number matches the number on the row.
- Rows say “not downloaded” where that is true. Opening one still works, and downloads it on the spot.
At the end of a story the reader says You're up to date and offers the two ways out: back to the story, or back to your library. A trial that has run out says End of the trial instead, and offers to fetch the rest.
Type, size and spacing
Press s, or the T button in the top bar. The panel never covers the text it is restyling, and every change applies immediately. There is no apply button.
Four controls sit at the top because they are what you opened this for: reading surface, font, size and line height. Below them, collapsed:
| Section | Holds |
|---|---|
| Night reading | Warmth and dimming. |
| Letterforms | Weight, letter spacing, word spacing. Slight positive letter spacing helps some dyslexic readers. |
| Paragraphs | Space between paragraphs, first-line indent, left or justified, hyphenation. |
| Page layout | Content width in characters, side margins, top and bottom padding. |
| Behaviour | Keep the screen awake, and how far through a chapter counts as read. |
| Recap | The Previously strip. |
| Reading progress | A fixed reading speed, or one learned from how you actually read. |
The fonts
Seven choices, all either bundled with the app or guaranteed by your device. Nothing is fetched from a font service, so the reader works with no internet and what you read stays private.
- Literata. The default, a serif designed for screen reading.
- Georgia. A serif that ships with every system this runs on.
- Inter. A clean sans-serif.
- Atkinson Hyperlegible. Designed for low vision, with highly distinguishable letterforms.
- OpenDyslexic. Weighted letter bottoms, which helps some dyslexic readers.
- Monospace and System.
You can add your own in Settings → Your fonts, in TTF, OTF, WOFF or WOFF2. Installed fonts are stored with your profile and follow it to your other devices.
Content width is measured in characters rather than pixels, so a comfortable line length stays comfortable when you change the size or move to another device.
Reset to defaults at the bottom asks first. It discards twenty settings, some of which took months to get right.
Colour and night reading
Reading surface chooses how warm or how dark the page behind the words is: match the app, Paper, Cream, Soft grey, Cool, Dim, or True black. It is a separate choice from the app's theme, which lives in Settings → Appearance and applies to every screen. The reading panel links to it, so there is only one place each is set.
Two more controls sit under Night reading:
- Warmth lays an amber wash over the page, reducing blue light.
- Dimming goes darker than the device's own minimum brightness, for screens that do not go dark enough.
They are limited against each other. Two settings that each look reasonable alone can multiply into a page that genuinely cannot be read, so the darker the warmth, the less dimming is allowed on top. Neither dims the controls. Dimming the buttons you need to stop dimming would be a trap.
Your place
Your position is saved as you scroll and written immediately whenever you leave a chapter, whether that is moving to another chapter, going back to the story, closing the window, or the phone going to your home screen. Continue reading in the sidebar, on the shelf and on the story screen reopens the chapter you were in, at the point you stopped.
If you were reading with no connection, that position is queued on the device and delivered when the library is reachable again. See Reading offline.
When a chapter counts as read
A chapter is marked read when you reach a set fraction of it, 90% by default. That avoids marking something read because you scrolled past it looking for a name.
A chapter short enough to fit on one screen has nothing to scroll, so it counts as read after about a second of being on screen instead, but only once the app is sure the page has finished laying out, so an illustrated chapter is not counted before its pictures arrive.
Settings → After reading can also delete a chapter's downloaded text once you finish it, either silently or after asking. Only the text goes: the chapter stays in the list, stays marked read, keeps its place in the sequence, and can be downloaded again whenever you want. This never applies to your own imported books.
Highlights and notes
Select any text in the current chapter and a small toolbar appears at the selection.
- Four colours create a highlight.
- Note attaches something you wrote to the passage.
- Bookmark marks a passage with no colour.
- Copy leaves your archive unchanged.
Marked passages are painted into the text. A note carries a dashed underline whatever colour it has, and a bookmark a dotted one, so you can tell at a glance that something was written about a passage and not merely marked. Clicking a mark opens a card at it with the quote, the note, the colour row, copy and delete.
Because chapters can be edited at the source, marks can move. Fiction Reader re-anchors them by matching the text at both ends of the quote when a chapter opens. A mark whose surroundings changed is shown as shifted or partial, and one whose text is gone entirely stays in the list, honestly labelled, instead of being silently deleted or attached to the wrong paragraph.
On a phone, use the long-press selection your keyboard already gives you; the toolbar appears once the selection is made.
Chapters that were edited
Chapters are stored as versions. When an author edits one, the new text is downloaded and the old text is kept.
A chapter that has more than one version grows an extra button in the top bar, with a small dot on it. Press it, or v, to see the versions and compare any two of them. The comparison is drawn in the reading column, in your own typeface and page colour. Additions are underlined and removals struck through, not merely tinted, so it reads on any surface and to anyone. Long unchanged stretches are folded, keeping one paragraph either side of every change.
Two layouts: inline answers “what did the author change”, and side by side answers “what did this paragraph used to say”.
The Previously strip
When you come back to a story after a while, a Previously strip above the chapter title shows the end of the previous chapter, enough to remember where you were. It opens itself when the previous chapter was read at least a week ago, and the Previously button in the top bar shows or hides it whenever you want.
Under Recap in the reading settings you can turn it off, change how long a gap triggers it, from a day through a month or always, and set how many words it shows, between 50 and 600.
Chapters that are not simply text
A chapter that cannot simply be read explains why.
| State | What you see |
|---|---|
| Not downloaded yet | Opening the chapter is the request. The app fetches it and says where it is in the queue. |
| Removed from the site | A banner naming the date it was removed, and the text, which reads normally. |
| Past a trial's end | An explanation and an offer to download the rest of the story. |
| The site refused it | The reason, such as an early-access chapter or a moderated post. The page is never simply blank. |
| A picture would not load | Try again, which asks the server to fetch that image properly. It repairs the archive; it does not reload the page. |
| Not saved on this device | When you are offline and this chapter was not saved, the reader says so plainly. Nothing went wrong. |
Keyboard and gestures
| ← → | Previous and next chapter |
| s | Type, size and spacing |
| c | Chapter list |
| h | Highlights and notes |
| v | Versions, on a chapter that has more than one |
| + − | Text size |
| Esc | Close whatever is open; from the bare page, back to the story |
| Tab | The first stop is a Show reading controls button, so the controls are reachable without a pointer |
These are single keys. Holding Ctrl, Shift or Alt passes the key through, so Ctrl+C copies and Shift+→ extends a selection.
Right-clicking the page offers what is under the pointer: a marked passage's note and colour, a selection's highlight options, and always the chapter list, annotations, versions, typography, chapter navigation and a link to the chapter. Each item shows its single-key shortcut, so the menu teaches them.
