Troubleshooting

Nothing downloads after subscribing

1. Check the download switch. Subscribing does not turn downloading on. Open the story and look at Download chapters. A card in the library saying not downloading is telling you the same thing.
2. Check whether it is a trial. A trial stops after the first few chapters by design. The story screen offers Download the whole story.
3. Check the site's account. Open Settings → Sources. A login error is shown on the site's row. Questionable Questing cannot be used at all without an account.
4. Check the queue. The Queue screen shows what is waiting and in what order. Waiting is normal.

Downloads are slow

This is intended. Fiction Reader asks each site for one page every few seconds, so a four-hundred-chapter thread takes well over half an hour. The exact pacing for each site is on its card in Settings → Sources, and the Queue screen says how many downloads run at once.

Raising the limits is possible and the app will let you. It makes your account a heavier guest on somebody else's server. See why downloads take a while.

A device says it cannot reach the server

1. Check FR_CORS_ORIGINS first. For the Android app the server must list https://localhost. This is the usual cause and it presents as an unreachable server. See Letting the Android app in.
2. Check the address, including the port. From v0.5.7 the setup screen distinguishes the two failures: nothing answered at that address means routing, anything else means the origin is not allowed.
3. Check routing. Away from home, the device needs a VPN into your network. A phone with full signal has no route to a machine on your home network.
4. Check the server is up with a browser on the same network.

Chapters mark themselves read half way through

Check Mark read at under Behaviour in the reading view's settings panel, not the app's Settings screen. Its lowest value is 50%, and a profile left there marks every chapter read at the halfway point. The default is 90%.

This setting is stored with your profile, so it applies on every device you read on, which is why it can look like a fault that follows you around.

Pictures do not appear in a chapter

• One picture failed. It offers Try again, which asks the server to fetch that image properly through the normal pacing and sign-in. That is a repair of the archive rather than a page reload.
• A picture has no address at all. Chapters archived before lazy-loaded forum images were handled kept the frame without the address. The notice offers Download this chapter again, which restores every picture in it at once, usually from copies already on disk.
• Every picture in every chapter is missing on a phone or tablet. That is an app-level problem, not a chapter problem. Update to a current version.

A chapter opens blank

• Not downloaded. Opening the chapter is the request. It should say so and start fetching.
• Past a trial's end. It explains and offers the rest of the story.
• Offline, and not saved on this device. It says so plainly. See Reading offline.
• Genuinely blank with no message. Going back to the story is always safe. If it repeats, note the story and chapter for a report.

A site will not search

• FanFiction.net has no search at all. Paste a link instead. It also needs a browser-based fetcher that is not built yet, so it refuses outright instead of failing in confusing ways.
• SpaceBattles sometimes refuses automated search requests. Browsing a forum section usually still works, and so does pasting a link.
• Questionable Questing needs an account before anything works.
• A site that used to work and now returns nothing has probably changed its markup. That needs a fix in the app rather than a setting.

Failures are reported per site instead of failing the whole search, so results from the sites that did answer are still shown.

Progress bars never move

Live progress arrives over a streaming connection. A reverse proxy that buffers responses, or that has a short read timeout, breaks it while leaving everything else working. Set proxy_buffering off; and a long proxy_read_timeout. See TLS and reverse proxies.

Sync is not arriving on the other device

• Give it minutes, not seconds. A synced folder takes time to propagate, which is why the card says last synced four minutes ago rather than in sync.
• Check both devices point at the same folder, using each machine's own path for it.
• Read the error beside the last success. The card keeps both, so it can say when it last worked.
• Downloaded chapters do not sync yet. Reading positions, notes and your own books do. See What travels.
• Held operations are normal. A position for a book that has not arrived yet is counted and explained, not dropped.

A book will not import

• DRM. Protected files are refused, and Fiction Reader does not attempt to remove protection.
• A format that needs converting. PDF, legacy DOC, RAR and CBR need Calibre's ebook-convert on the machine. Without it the file stays listed with an honest reason.
• Too large. There are size limits on upload and on parsing; a file above them is listed as unsupported, not silently dropped.
• The drive is unplugged. A book the scanner cannot see is marked temporarily unavailable. Nothing is deleted, and nothing propagates to your other devices.

Settings → My Books shows failed imports and offers Re-import failed.

Reporting a problem

Check the issue tracker and the current release notes first. A source that has stopped working is often a site changing its markup.

A useful report has the Fiction Reader version, the operating system or deployment type, what you did, and the error message with anything sensitive removed.