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Papyrus

Overview

Papyrus is an open-source application for reading and managing both physical and digital books. It provides a versatile, user-friendly system that makes reading comfortable and fun across Android, iOS, Web, Desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux), and e-ink devices. Papyrus features an intuitive, familiar, modern UI with extensive customization options, unifying book organization, reading, note-taking, progress tracking, and personalized settings in a single application.

Project goals

  1. Cross-platform - manage books seamlessly across all devices without relearning the UI.
  2. Integrated reader - read uploaded books with extensive customization options.
  3. Flexible management - organize books into shelves, categories, add tags, edit metadata and track physical books.
  4. Progress tracking - track reading time, books read, and manage and complete goals.
  5. Storage flexibility - choose between local (i.e., on device), self-hosted, or cloud storage provider for storing book files.
  6. Data ownership - ability to export everything in open formats (e.g., JSON, CSV, ZIP).
  7. Extensible - plugin system for metadata sources, storage, and reader features.
  8. Developer friendly - public and documented API and SDKs, server self-hosting.

Target audience

  • Regular readers who read digital and/or physical books and want a centralized library management solution.
  • Habit builders who want to track reading statistics and build reading habits through goals and gamification.
  • Multi-device users who want to read and access the same data on phones, tablets, e-readers, and PCs interchangeably.

Supported platforms

  • Android (8.0+).
  • iOS (12.0+).
  • Web (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge).
  • Windows (10+).
  • macOS (10.15+).
  • Linux.

Supported file formats

  1. EPUB.
  2. PDF.
  3. AZW3.
  4. MOBI.
  5. TXT.
  6. FB2.
  7. CBR/CBZ.
  8. CBT/CB7.
  9. ODT
  10. DJVU.

Features overview

Core features

1. Book management

  • Import books from the file system or cloud services (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox)
  • Organize with shelves, user-defined collections (e.g., "Currently Reading", "Sci-Fi")
  • Tag books with color-coded labels (0-10 tags per book)
  • Edit metadata manually or fetch from online sources (Open Library, Google Books)
  • Search and filter by title, author, tags, shelves, reading progress, text contents
  • Physical book tracking, manually scanning and tracking physical books

2. Integrated book reader

Typography controls:

  • Font family selection (built-in and custom fonts)
  • Font size, weight, line, character and paragraph spacing
  • Text alignment (left, right, center, justified)

Appearance:

  • Background color themes (light, dark, sepia, custom)
  • Text and link color customization
  • Adjustable margins and padding
  • Brightness controls
  • Zoom with lock and auto-fit to screen

Navigation:

  • Single-page and two-page layouts
  • Paginated and continuous scroll modes
  • Table of contents navigation
  • Go-to-page/percentage jump with ability to get back to the previous location
  • Progress bar with position (e.g., page, percentage toggle) indicator
  • Touch zones, swipe gestures, volume key navigation

Reading profiles:

  • Save named customized presets of all reader settings
  • Switch between profiles in the reader
  • Default profile per device
  • Profile import/export to a file

3. Annotations and notes

  • Annotate text with multiple colors (built-in and freely selectable from a color wheel)
  • Add notes to annotations or create standalone book notes
  • Create bookmarks for quick navigation
  • Export annotations to a file (text, JSON, CSV, PDF, or Markdown)
  • Search across all annotations and notes

4. Reading progress and goals

Automatic tracking:

  • Reading time per book and total
  • Pages/percentage read
  • Books started, in progress, completed
  • Reading velocity statistics

Goals:

  • Time-based goals (e.g., "Read 30 minutes daily")
  • Book count goals (e.g., "Read 12 books this year")
  • Custom goals with manual progress updates
  • Visual progress indicators and charts

Synchronization:

  • Reading position synced across devices
  • Progress and statistics synchronized

5. Storage and sync

Storage options:

  • On-device (default, no account required)
  • Self-hosted server
  • Cloud storage (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox)

Offline support:

  • Full offline functionality without account on all platforms
  • Automatic sync when online (with an account)

Advanced features

These features are planned for future releases, and may not be seriously considered for implementation:

  • Format conversion between formats (create a book copy or replace existing)
  • OPDS catalog browsing to download from online catalogs
  • OCR processing to extract text from scanned document or book files
  • Audiobook support to manage and play audiobooks with synchronized progress
  • Text-to-speech to read books aloud
  • Social features to share progress, reviews, and recommendations (Goodreads style)
  • AI-powered features, such as summaries, recommendations, smart categorization, text-to-speech
  • ISBN barcode scanning for adding physical books by scanning with a phone or laptop camera
  • Plugin system which extend functionality with community plugins

Related documents

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1
   :caption: Requirements

   requirements/index
   requirements/functional
   requirements/non-functional


.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1
   :caption: System design

   design/actors
   design/use-cases
   design/entities
   design/database-model
   design/server-architecture


.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1
   :caption: Implementation

   implementation/technologies


.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1
   :caption: Server

   api/index


.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1
   :caption: Reference

   external/index