Paperback is a lightweight, fast, and accessible ebook and document
reader for everyone, from casual readers to heavy power users. It’s
designed for screen reader accessibility, fast speeds, and a bloat-free
experience.
System Requirements
Paperback currently runs on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.
Features
Completely standalone, not requiring any software to be installed on
your computer to start reading.
Incredibly fast, even on old hardware.
Simple tabbed interface, allowing you to open as many documents as
you want side-by-side.
Saves your cursor position across every document you open.
Optionally remembers what documents you had open when you closed the
program, and restores them on next launch.
Designed by a screen reader user for screen reader users.
Includes navigation functionality similar to that found in the web
browsing mode of many screen readers to quickly and easily navigate
through documents.
Includes a robust find dialog, including features such as history
and regular expression support.
Can be run entirely portably, or installed with file associations
automatically set up.
Screen Reader Compatibility
Paperback works well with all major screen readers. There is,
however, one known issue for JAWS users.
JAWS and Braille Displays
If you use JAWS with a Braille display, you may find that long
paragraphs are truncated when panning forward with your display’s
navigation keys. The read current paragraph command is also affected.
This is a bug in JAWS’s handling of the RICHEDIT50W text control, not
something in Paperback itself, and one that took quite a while to
surface a fix for given Vispero’s enthusiasm for responding to issues
with open source software.
The workaround, eventually surfaced through the JAWS discussion group
after months of waiting, is to edit paperback.jcf and set
“Braille Presentation and Panning” to “Always use DOM if available”.
You’ll also want to enable “Pan Text by Paragraph”, otherwise your
display will stay on the active paragraph rather than advancing. With
both settings in place, panning should work correctly.
Currently supported file
types
Paperback supports the following formats and extensions:
Paperback is designed for keyboard-first and screen reader-first use.
Here are the current shortcuts.
Shortcuts below are for Windows. Where macOS differs, the equivalent
is noted in parentheses — mainly because Ctrl+G, Ctrl+W, and
Alt+Left/Right are already claimed by other system or app conventions on
that platform.
File menu
Ctrl+O: Open a document.
Ctrl+F4 (macOS: Cmd+W): Close the current
document.
Ctrl+Shift+F4 (macOS: Cmd+Shift+W): Close
all open documents.
Ctrl+Shift+T: Reopen the last closed document.
Ctrl+R: Show the “All Documents” dialog (from Recent
Documents).
Ctrl+Q: Exit (Windows only; on macOS this is under the
app menu instead).
Go menu
Ctrl+F: Show the Find dialog.
F3 (macOS: Cmd+G): Find next.
Shift+F3 (macOS: Cmd+Shift+G): Find
previous.
Ctrl+G (macOS: Cmd+L): Go to line.
Ctrl+Shift+G (macOS: Cmd+Shift+L): Go to
percent.
Ctrl+P: Go to page (when supported by the current
document).
Alt+Left (macOS: Cmd+[): Go back in
navigation history.
Alt+Right (macOS: Cmd+]): Go forward in
navigation history.
[: Previous section.
]: Next section.
Shift+H: Previous heading.
H: Next heading.
Shift+1 through Shift+6: Previous heading
at level 1-6.
1 through 6: Next heading at level
1-6.
Shift+P: Previous page.
P: Next page.
Shift+B: Previous bookmark.
B: Next bookmark.
Shift+N: Previous note.
N: Next note.
Ctrl+B: Jump to all bookmarks and notes.
Ctrl+Alt+B: Jump to bookmarks only.
Ctrl+Alt+M: Jump to notes only.
Ctrl+Shift+W (macOS: RawCtrl+Shift+W,
i.e. the physical Control key rather than Cmd): View note text at the
current position.
Shift+K: Previous link.
K: Next link.
Shift+G: Previous image.
G: Next image.
Shift+F: Previous figure.
F: Next figure.
Shift+T: Previous table.
T: Next table.
Shift+S: Previous separator.
S: Next separator.
Shift+L: Previous list.
L: Next list.
Shift+I: Previous list item.
I: Next list item.
Shift+,: Go to the start of the current container (list
or table).
,: Go past the end of the current container (list or
table).
Tools menu
Ctrl+W (macOS: RawCtrl+W, i.e. the
physical Control key rather than Cmd): Show word count for the current
document.
Ctrl+I: Show document info.
Ctrl+T: Show table of contents.
F7: Show elements list.
Ctrl+Shift+C: Open containing folder.
Ctrl+Shift+V: Open current content in Web View.
Ctrl+U: View the document source in a new tab.
Ctrl+Shift+E: Export document data
(.paperback).
Ctrl+Shift+I: Import document data
(.paperback).
Ctrl+E: Export the current document to plain text.
Ctrl+Shift+B: Toggle bookmark at the current
selection/cursor.
Ctrl+Shift+N: Add or edit bookmark note at the current
selection/cursor.
Ctrl+Alt+W: Toggle word wrap.
Ctrl+,: Open options (macOS: Preferences, under the app
menu).
Ctrl+Shift+S: Toggle sleep timer.
Help menu
Ctrl+F1: Show About dialog.
F1: View help in your default browser.
Shift+F1: View help in Paperback.
Ctrl+Shift+U: Check for updates.
Ctrl+D: Open the donation page in your default
browser.
Additional document-view
keys
Delete / Numpad Delete on the tab control:
Close the selected document tab.
Enter or Space in the document text:
Activate link at cursor, or open a table view when on a table
marker.
Shift+F10 or the Menu/Application key in the document
text: Open the context menu.
Supported languages
Paperback is translated into many different languages, with more
being added all the time. A complete list follows below.
Quin Gillespie: primary developer and project founder.
Aryan Choudhary: primary contributor.
Donations
The following people have made donations of some size to Paperback
development. If you make a donation your name won’t automatically be
added here, I only add people who want their donation made public.
Note: I consider a public GitHub sponsor grounds for automatic
inclusion in this list.
Alex Hall
Brandon McGinty
Brian Hartgen
Debbie Yuille
Devin Prater
Felix Steindorff
Hamish Mackenzie
James Scholes
Jayson Smith
Jonathan Rodriguez
Jonathan Schuster
Keao Wright
Pratik Patel
Roberto Perez
Sean Randall
Timothy Wynn
Tyler Rodick
Changelog
Version 0.9.0
Added a cancel button to the update-in-progress dialog.
Added a CLI tool, called pb, to quickly convert any of Paperback’s
supported formats to HTML, Markdown, or plain text.
Added a Configurable Shortcut to Restore Paperback from the system
tray.
Added a locate button to the all documents dialog to locate missing
books that just changed their path.
Added a readability tab to the options dialog, with the following
options:
Word wrap (moved from general);
Render tables inline (new in this release, see below);
Font;
Background color;
Line spacing;
paragraph spacing;
Letter spacing;
Text alignment.
Added a toggle to determine how you want tables displayed, and
unified how tables are displayed across documents.
added a View Source option to open a document’s source in a new tab,
useful for editing Markdown for example.
Added estimated reading time to the word count dialog, as well as
the ability to set your reading speed to make this metric actually
useful.
Added Android support!
Added iOS support!
Added macOS support!
Added new languages: Dutch, Finish, and Polish.
Added support for navigating by container.
Added support for lists, list items, figures, and images in CHM
documents.
Added a word wrap menu item and subsequent hotkey.
Allow resizing the webview dialog and make it pop up at a much
easier-to-see size.
Expanded the export menu item to allow exporting to HTML and
Markdown in addition to plain text.
Fixed applying word wrap shooting you to the start of your
document.
Fix daisy books showing incorrect info in the status bar.
Fixed dl, dt, and dd elements not producing line breaks in XHTML
documents.
Fixed Escape not closing the Document Info and All Documents
dialogs.
Fixed filepos anchors in Mobi books splitting HTML tags and putting
garbage in the book text.
Fixed lag when getting near the end of the text field in large
documents.
Fixed links in legacy mobi books.
Fixed parsing RTF documents with non-Latin characters in them.
Fixed the title bar not updating after closing a document from the
all documents dialog.
Fixed word documents with locale-specific style names not rendering
their headings properly.
Fixed your selected tab not getting properly focused after
restarting Paperback.
If a selection is active when you open the word count dialog, how
many words you have selected will now be shown.
Majorly improved AZW3 parsing.
Migrated away from chmlib to our own pure-Rust CHM file reader.
On desktop, .paperback files will no longer be forcefully loaded on
document restoration. Instead, you will be asked for Confirmation when
the file is found.
Paperback now falls back to plain text extraction for falsely-tagged
PDFs.
Open containing folder now focuses the given file in explorer.
Opening the readme will now respect your selected language.
PowerPoint documents now support tables.
Properly update the menu and set focus to the text control when
opening help in paperback.
Readme.html will no longer be added to your all documents list when
opened via Shift+F1.
Removing documents from the recents dialog will now also close their
active tab.
Switched to a much more secure method of IPC on Windows.
The updater now properly shows the content of markdown code tags in
release notes.
The updater now validates the downloaded file hasn’t been tampered
with.
The webview is now opened at your current reading position.
Your search filter in the all documents dialog is now preserved
after removing a document.
Version 0.8.5
Added page support to epub books.
Added support for encrypted Microsoft Office documents. Currently
Legacy word, modern Word and modern Powerpoint are supported, with
legacy Powerpoint planned for the future.
Added support for legacy Microsoft Word documents (*.doc)!
Added support for legacy Powerpoint presentations (*.ppt)!
Added support for mobi and AZW3 books!
Added support for tagged PDF files!
Added the ctrl+q shortcut to exit the app.
Added support for zipped books from Bookshare (both DAISY and
Word)!
Alt text for embedded images should now be properly shown.
CHM documents now properly support internal link navigation.
Fixed bookmark sounds triggering at paragraph start instead of the
bookmark’s position.
Fixed go to page being off by 1.
Fixed the escape key not working to close the open as dialog.
Fixed the reader context menu not showing up on right-click or the
Applications key.
Fixed the wrong document sometimes being focused when opening
documents from the command line.
Image only PDFs are once again detected and alert you of their
existence.
It is now possible to navigate through images and figures with
g/shift+g and f/shift+f, respectively.
Paperback will now respect your application dark mode setting.
Removed DAISY XML support, as its no longer needed.
Switched back to the native Win32 first letter navigation in the
table of contents tree.
The error loading dialog now shows more detailed error
messages.
The webview will now open much faster and smoother.
Version 0.8.2
Added page support to RTF documents!
Fixed a bug where opening the webview in epubs containing external
links would automatically activate them.
Fixed a bug where the RTF parser wouldn’t put a space between words
in rare cases.
Fixed paragraphs being split into multiple short lines in some PDF
documents.
PDF documents now have basic link and heading navigation
support!
RTF tabs and line feeds are now rendered exactly as they appear in
the document.
Switched back to the tried and true pdfium library for parsing
PDF’s, making PDF rendering much more reliable once again.
Version 0.8.1
Added Ctrl+Shift+T to reopen the last closed document.
The All Documents dialog now supports selecting multiple documents
to open at once.
Fixed a few bugs with the RTF parser.
Fixed file paths containing non-ASCII characters (such as Bosnian š,
č, ć, ž) becoming corrupted when opening a file via a second Paperback
instance.
Fixed PDF text being read in the wrong order, and incorrect spacing
around capitalized words.
Fixed slow document loading when opening large files.
Fixed the localization of the Yes/No buttons in confirmation
dialogs.
Version 0.8.0
Added Japanese, simplified Chinese, and Vietnamese
translations!
Added an automatic updater that will now replace your currently
installed version of Paperback instead of just downloading the new
version!
Added optional sound feedback for reaching a bookmark or a note,
thanks Andre Louis for the sounds!
Added RTF document support!
Added support for DAISY XML documents.
Added support for Flat Open Document Text files!
Added support for Flat Open Document presentations!
Added support for separators with s and shift+s.
Any movement of greater than 300 characters will now automatically
add to your navigation history.
Fixed restoring Paperback’s window from the system tray.
Fixed Markdown documents showing raw text instead of rendered HTML
in the Web View.
Fixed tables not rendering properly in Markdown files.
Image only PDFs will now warn you of their existence when you
attempt to load one.
It is now possible to check for new dev builds instead of stable
releases when checking for updates.
Properly embed version information in the Paperback executable.
Split the options dialog into tabs for ease of use and
navigation.
Switched to Hayro for parsing PDFs, leading to more reliability,
speed, and fewer DLLs.
Rewrote the entire app in Rust. The new codebase is safer, loads
documents faster, and is easier to maintain and extend.
The text control’s context menu will now include reader-specific
actions instead of generic items such as cut and paste.
Version 0.7.0
Added table support for HTML and XHTML-based documents! Navigate
between tables using T and Shift+T, and press Enter to view one in a
webview.
Added a basic web rendering feature! Press Ctrl+Shift+V to open the
current section of your document in a web-based renderer, useful for
content like complex formatting or code samples.
Added a Russian translation, thanks Ruslan Gulmagomedov!
Added a Clear All button to the All Documents dialog.
The update checker now displays release notes when a new version is
available.
Fixed restoring the window from the system tray.
Fixed Yes/No button translations in confirmation dialogs.
Fixed loading configs when running as administrator.
Fixed comment handling in XML and HTML documents.
Fixed TOC parsing in Epub 2 books.
Fixed navigating to the next item with the same letter in the table
of contents.
Fixed the find dialog not hiding properly when using the
next/previous buttons.
Fixed epub TOCs occasionally throwing you to the wrong item.
Fixed various whitespace handling issues in XML, HTML, and pre
tags.
Fixed off-by-one error in link navigation.
Fixed some books having trailing whitespace on their lines.
Fixed various parser issues.
Bookmark-related menu items as well as the elements list are now
properly disabled when no document is open.
Improved list handling in various document formats.
Improved the translation workflow for contributors.
Many internal refactors, moving the majority of the application’s
business logic from C++ to Rust for improved performance and
maintainability.
Version 0.6.1
Added password-protected PDF support!
Added a very basic go to previous/next position feature. If you
press enter on an internal link and it moves your cursor, that position
will now be remembered, and can be navigated to with alt+left/right
arrows.
Added an elements list! Currently it only shows a tree of all the
headings in your document or a list of links, but there are plans to
expand it in the future.
Added an option to start Paperback in maximized mode by
default.
Fixed links in some Epub documents not working properly.
Fixed some epub documents not showing a title or author.
Fixed the titles of some epub chapters not showing up properly in
the TOC dialog.
Fixed you not being able to use the space bar to activate the
OK/cancel buttons in the TOC dialog.
Improved the handling of headings in Word documents.
You will now get spoken feedback if the recent documents list is
empty when you try to bring up the dialog.
Version 0.6.0
A new option to show the go menu in a far more compact form has been
added to the options dialog, checked by default.
Added an option to make navigation by structural elements wrap.
Added an option to the tools menu to open the containing folder of
the currently focused document.
Added a quite simple, but very effective, updating system.
Added a basic sleep timer feature, accessible with
Ctrl+Shift+S.
Added support for parsing FB2 ebooks!
Added support for parsing OpenDocument presentations!
Added support for parsing OpenDocument Text files!
Bookmarks can now be made to bookmark an entire line, or to mark
only some specified text. If you have no selection active when placing a
bookmark, the behavior is like pre-0.6, and it’ll mark the entire line.
However, if you select some text, only that text will be included in the
bookmark.
Bookmarks can now have optional text notes attached to them!
Navigate between bookmarks containing notes with N and Shift+N, or pop
up the bookmarks dialog with all bookmarks, only notes, or only
non-notes selected with specific hotkeys.
Bookmarks in the bookmarks dialog will no longer have an annoying
“bookmark x” prefix.
Epub books containing HTML content pretending to be XML will now be
handled properly.
Fixed loading large Markdown documents.
Fixed pressing space in the table of contents tree view activating
the OK button.
Fixed whitespace handling at the beginning of pre tags in both HTML
and XHTML documents.
Fixed the text control not regaining focus sometimes when returning
to Paperback’s window.
Fixed the text field in the go to percent dialog not updating the
slider’s value.
Fixed the rendering of custom HTML IDs in Markdown documents.
HTML inside Markdown code blocks will now be rendered properly.
If loading a book with a command line parameter while an existing
Paperback instance is running, you’ll no longer get an error if loading
your document takes more than 5 seconds.
If running Paperback as administrator, the configuration will now be
properly loaded and saved.
It is now possible to delete a bookmark directly from within the
bookmarks dialog.
It is now possible to import and export your bookmarks and reading
position for a particular document. The generated file is named after
the file with a .paperback extension. If such a file is found in the
same directory as a file while loading it, it will be automatically
loaded. Otherwise, you can manually import them using an item in the
tools menu.
Links inside documents are now fully supported! Use k and shift+k to
move forward and backward through them, and press enter to open/activate
one.
Many internal refactors, making the app faster and the binary
smaller.
Markdown content is now preprocessed in order to be CommonMark
compliant before rendering.
Navigation by lists and their items is now fully supported! Use L
and Shift+L to go by lists themselves, and I and Shift+I to go through
list items.
Numpad delete now works to remove documents from the tab bar in
addition to normal delete.
Paperback can now optionally minimize to your system tray! This
option is off by default, but turning it on will make the minimize
option in the system menu put Paperback in your tray, able to be
restored by clicking on the spawned icon.
Paperback is now fully translatable! The list of languages it
supports is currently fairly small, but it’s constantly growing!
Paperback now has an official website, at paperback.dev!
PPTX documents will now show a basic table of contents, containing
all of the slides.
The full path to the opened document will now be shown in the
document info dialog.
The installer now includes an option to view the readme in your
browser after installation.
The recent documents list has been dramatically expanded! Instead of
simply showing you the last 10 documents you opened, it’ll now show you
a customizable number, with the rest of the documents you’ve ever opened
being accessible through a small dialog.
Various small improvements to the parsers across the board,
including putting a blank line between slides in PPTX presentations,
fixing the newline handling inside of paragraphs in word documents, and
adding bullet points to list items.
Version 0.5.0
Added Microsoft Word document support!
Added support for PowerPoint presentations!
Fixed certain menu items not being disabled with no documents
open.
Fixed the orientation of the go to percent slider.
Fixed the table of contents in Epub books with URL-encoded file
paths and/or fragment IDs.
Fixed whitespace being stripped from XHTML headings in weird
ways.
Fixed whitespace handling inside of nested pre tags in HTML
documents.
HTML and Markdown documents now support the table of contents
feature! When you load an HTML/Markdown document, Paperback will build
its own table of contents out of the structure of the headings in your
document, and it will show that to you in the ctrl+t dialog.
HTML documents will now have the title as set in the title tag, if
it exists. Otherwise, they’ll continue to use the filename without the
extension.
Switched from UniversalSpeech to using a live region to report
speech. This means no screen reader DLLs are shipped alongside the
program anymore, and more screen readers will now be supported, such as
Microsoft Narrator.
Switched zip libraries to allow for opening a wider array of epub
books.
The dialog asking you if you want to open your document as plain
text has been completely redone, and it now allows you to open your
document as plain text, HTML, or Markdown.
The go to percent dialog now includes a text field allowing you to
manually input a percentage to jump to.
The HTML parser will now recognize dd, dt, and dl as list
elements.
The table of contents in Epub books will once again be preserved
exactly.
The unicode non-breaking space is now considered when stripping
blank lines.
You will no longer be asked how you want to open an unrecognized
file every single time you load it, only the first time.
Version 0.4.1
Added an optional start menu icon to the installer.
The table of contents should now be cleaner in a few cases, for
example if you have a child and parent item with the same text at the
same position you’ll now only see the parent item.
Fixed the table of contents in certain CHM documents.
Fixed the table of contents in Epub 3 books with absolute paths in
them.
CHM documents should now show their title as set in the metadata
file.
Version 0.4.0
Added CHM file support!
Added bookmark support! You can have as many bookmarks throughout as
many documents as you like. You can jump forward and backward through
them with b and shift+b, set one with control+shift+b, and bring up a
dialog to jump to a specific bookmark with control+b.
Added an installer alongside the portable zip file! The installer
will install Paperback into your Program Files directory, and
automatically set up file associations for you.
Text files with BOMs should now be decoded properly, and the BOM
will no longer be displayed at the beginning of the text either.
Added far more information to the status bar. It’ll now show you
your current line, character, and reading percentage.
HTML comments, as well as the contents of script and style tags,
will no longer be shown in text output.
If passing a relative path to Paperback on the command line, it will
now resolve it properly.
Percentage movement is now handled by its own slider-based dialog,
accessible with control+shift+g.
Documents without known titles or authors will now always have a
default.
The position saving logic is now much smarter and should only write
to the disk when absolutely necessary.
The document you had focused when you closed Paperback is now
remembered across application restarts.
Input into the go to line and go to page dialogs should now be
sanitized more strictly.
Fixed table of contents navigation in epub 3 books with relative
paths in their manifests.
Version 0.3.0
Fixed the table of contents in epub books with URL-encoded
manifests.
Fixed heading navigation in HTML documents containing multi-byte
Unicode characters.
Fixed high CPU usage in documents with long titles due to a
regression in wxWidgets.
Fixed loading UTF-8 text files.
Fixed nested TOC items in Epub books putting your cursor at the
wrong position.
Fixed a crash on application exit in certain cases.
Added a checkbox in the options dialog to enable or disable word
wrap!
It is now possible to donate to Paperback’s development, either
through the new donate item in the help menu or through the sponsor this
project link at the bottom of the GitHub repository’s main page.
Markdown documents will now always have a title, and Paperback
should now be able to load virtually any Markdown file.
PDF documents will now always have a title, even if the metadata is
missing.
Switched PDF libraries to the one used in Chromium, leading to far
more reliable PDF parsing across the board.
You can now only have one instance of Paperback running at a time.
Running paperback.exe with a filename while it’s already running will
open that document in the already running instance.
You can now press delete on a document in the tab control to close
it.
Version 0.2.1
Added the total number of pages to the page label in the go to page
dialog.
Allow tabbing from the document content to your list of opened
documents.
Fixed the heading keystrokes sometimes opening recent documents if
you had enough of them.
Paperback will now remove unnecessary soft hyphens from text
output.
Fixed heading navigation sometimes putting you on the wrong
character.
Version 0.2.0
Added markdown document support!
Added PDF document support, including the ability to navigate
between pages!
Added keystrokes for navigating by headings in HTML content,
including epub books and markdown documents. These keystrokes were
designed to work similar to a screen reader.
Fixed loading epubs with URL-encoded filenames in their
manifests.
Fixed loading epub 3 books with XHTML embedded inside of them.
A message is now spoken if the document doesn’t support a table of
contents or sections, as opposed to the menu items being disabled.
Added a recent documents menu! It currently stores your last 10
opened documents, and pressing enter on one will open it for
reading.
Completely rewrote the Find dialog, making it much simpler to use,
while also adding a history of your last 25 searches and regular
expression support!
Previously opened documents are now remembered across application
restarts. This is configurable through the new options item in the tools
menu.
Added shift+f1 to open the readme directly in Paperback itself.