Support

Any of these:

• Double-click an EPUB in Finder (once Plainread is your default app for it, see below).
• Drag the book onto Plainread's window or its Dock icon.
• File › Open… (⌘O).
• File › Recently Read for the last 10 books.

Each book opens in its own window. Plainread reads the book where it is: nothing is copied, imported or moved.

Out of the box, Apple Books is the Mac's default app for EPUB books. The quickest way to change that: choose File › Make Plainread the Default for EPUB Books (or click the same button in Plainread › Settings…) and confirm if macOS asks. The menu item disappears once Plainread is the default. Plainread also offers this, at most twice, in a bar above the page.

Or in Finder:

1. Select any .epub book and choose File › Get Info (⌘I).
2. Under Open with, choose Plainread.
3. Click Change All…, then Continue.

Until then, double-clicking a book opens it in Apple Books, which adds it to its library. Use File › Open… in Plainread, or drag the book onto Plainread, instead.

EPUB 2 and EPUB 3 books: ordinary .epub files, and the unzipped EPUB folders that Apple Books keeps in iCloud and in its backups. Books whose fonts are scrambled to protect them (a common publisher practice) open normally.

Some EPUBs are "fixed layout": each page is designed as a picture, with text and images placed at exact positions, the way picture books, comics and some cookbooks and textbooks are made. Plainread reflows text to fit your window and your typeface, so those books won't look as designed. Open them in Apple Books instead. Ordinary books, where the text flows from page to page, are what Plainread is made for.

The file was cut short or is corrupted. This often happens to a book in iCloud Drive, Google Drive or Dropbox that hasn't finished downloading: wait until it has, then open it again. Otherwise, download the book again from where you got it.

Some stores encrypt their books so they can only be read in the store's own app: books bought in Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books and others. Plainread can't open those, and won't try to remove the protection. Books from publishers that sell without DRM, from libraries of public-domain books, and EPUBs you made yourself all work.

Not yet. Plainread is a reader and never changes your books. To keep a passage, use Copy with Citation (⇧⌘C) and paste it into your notes.

Everything is in the View menu, and in Plainread › Settings… (⌘,):

• Font: System Serif, System Sans, Georgia, Palatino or Charter.
• Appearance: follow your Mac, or always light, sepia or dark.
• Zoom In, Zoom Out and Actual Size (⌘+, ⌘−, ⌘0).
• Wider and Narrower (⌥⌘], ⌥⌘[) set the line width.
• Justify Text (⌘J), with words hyphenated at the ends of lines so the spacing stays even.

Your choices apply to every book and are remembered next time. Plainread keeps your place in the book when you change them.

Yes. View › Pages (⌘2) shows the book in pages, two side by side like an open book when the window is wide enough, one otherwise. View › Scroll (⌘1) goes back to one long scroll. You stay on the same sentence when you switch.

To turn a page, press →, ↓ or Space (and ←, ↑ or ⇧Space to go back), swipe sideways on the trackpad, or click in the margin beside the pages. The last page of a chapter turns to the next chapter. The line at the foot shows the printed page, when the book records it, or else the page within the current chapter, and how far through the book you are.

Turn off View › Two Pages Side by Side to always see one page.

By default Plainread sets the book in your chosen typeface and line spacing, while keeping the book's own italics, small capitals, centred lines and indents. View › Publisher Styles (⇧⌘Y) shows the book in the publisher's own fonts and spacing instead. The colours always follow your theme, so a book stays readable in dark mode.

The table of contents sits beside the book. Click a chapter to go there; the chapter you're reading is marked as you scroll. Show or hide it with View › Show Table of Contents (⌘T) or the button beside the window's close, minimise and zoom buttons. At its foot you'll see the printed page (when the book records one) and how far through the book you are.

Go › Next Chapter and Previous Chapter (⌥⌘→, ⌥⌘←) move a chapter at a time.

Yes. Each book opens where you left it, even after you move or rename the file, as long as it's the same book.

Edit › Find… (⌘F) searches the whole book, not just the chapter on screen. ⌘G and ⇧⌘G move between matches, and Esc closes the find bar.

Links within the book, such as notes, cross-references and the book's own contents page, jump to the right place. To return to where you were reading, choose Go › Back (⌘[); Go › Forward (⌘]) goes to the note again. Jumps from the table of contents can be undone the same way.

Web and email links open in your browser or mail app. A book can never load anything from the internet by itself.

Select a passage and choose Edit › Copy with Citation (⇧⌘C), or right-click the selection and choose Copy with Citation. Plainread shows "Copied with citation" and copies the passage in quotation marks, followed by the author, the title of the book and the printed page:

“I lived there two years and two months.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden, p. 1)

Where you paste formatted text, as in Notes, Pages, Mail or Word, the title is in italics. A passage that runs across a page break gets a page range. Quotation marks inside the passage become single ones.

An EPUB has no fixed pages: the text reflows to fit the window. Many publishers record where each printed page begins, and Plainread uses those markers. When a book doesn't include them, the citation leaves the page out.

The Chicago and APA styles include a year. Plainread uses the date in the book's own information, which is sometimes the date of the e-book edition rather than of the original publication. Check it against the book's copyright page before you cite.

Plainread › Settings… offers Chicago author-date (Scott 1998, 42), APA (Scott, 1998, p. 42) and MLA (Scott 42).

To copy a passage without a citation, choose Quotation marks only. The command is then called Copy as Quotation, with the same shortcut, and copies just the passage in quotation marks.

Select a book in Finder and press Space. Plainread's Quick Look extension shows the cover, title, author and contents, followed by the book's text in Plainread's style. Very long books show their first part; open them in Plainread to read the rest.

1. Make sure Plainread is in your Applications folder, and open it once. macOS only finds its extensions after the app has been opened.
2. Check the extensions are turned on. On macOS 15 or later: System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions, then click the info button next to Quick Look and turn on Plainread. On macOS 14: System Settings › Privacy & Security › Extensions › Quick Look.
3. If another app also previews EPUB books, macOS uses only one of them. Turn the other one off in the same place.

Spotlight already keeps track of every file on your Mac, but on its own it can't read inside an EPUB. Plainread includes a small Spotlight importer that reads each book's title, author, publisher and text for Spotlight. Then a search in Spotlight (⌘Space) or in a Finder window finds a phrase in any book, wherever you keep it.

The importer runs inside Spotlight, on your Mac. Plainread itself never looks through your folders, and nothing is sent anywhere.

1. Make sure Plainread is in your Applications folder, and open it once.
2. Log out and back in (or restart) once after installing Plainread. Spotlight looks for new importers when you log in.
3. Give Spotlight time. It reads books in the background, and a large library can take a while the first time.
4. Folders listed in System Settings › Spotlight › Search Privacy are never searched.
5. Books with DRM can be found by title and author, but their text is encrypted, so Spotlight can't search inside them.