Everything in the app
A complete tour of what PandaReader does today, grouped the way the app itself is organised. Each section links to the relevant documentation page.
Library sources
Connect as many as you need, side by side. Every source is scanned on each app launch and can be refreshed by hand.
WebDAV
Nextcloud, Synology, Apache or anything else that speaks WebDAV, over HTTP or HTTPS, with a starting folder of your choice.
FTP
Plain FTP for older NAS boxes and routers with a USB drive. Starting folder and credentials, nothing else to configure.
SFTP
Password or public-key authentication. Import an existing private key (BOM and line-ending quirks are handled) or generate an ECDSA P-256 pair on the device and copy the public half to the server. Sync uses a pool of up to eight SSH connections.
NFS (NFSv3)
A client written from scratch inside the app, because no maintained Android NFS library exists. Portmapper-discovered MOUNT and NFS ports, TCP, AUTH_SYS.
SMB / Samba
SMB 2 and 3 shares on Windows, Samba or a NAS, with share path and credentials. SMB 1 is not supported by design.
Local folders and Calibre Wi-Fi
Any folder on the phone through Android's document picker, plus Calibre's wireless "Smart Device" connection so Calibre can push books straight to the app.
Case never matters. Every path field, starting folder, export path or share path, is resolved against the server's real directory structure, so /Books/Calibre and /books/calibre both work. Server setup guide →
Calibre-aware
Reads metadata.db directly
When a source contains a Calibre library, titles, authors, series and series index, tags, publication dates and date-added all come from Calibre's own database rather than being guessed from filenames. Series folders are real database membership, not a title-pattern heuristic.
Wireless device sync
PandaReader implements Calibre's Smart Device protocol. Start the wireless device connection in Calibre, the app appears as a device on the LAN, and Calibre sends books with full metadata. No server needed at all. Calibre guide →
One bookshelf, organised your way
Cross-source grouping
The same book available from several servers and in several formats shows up once. The detail page lists every copy, and reading progress is tracked per format with its own reset.
Series and Collections tabs
A Series tab built from Calibre's series data, and a Collections tab for folders you curate yourself or that the app detects. Opening a series sorts in publication order.
Authors sheet
Tap an author on any book to see everything by them. Books with multiple authors link each one.
Search and filters
Search by title, author, format or source name. The filter dialog has its own search box, select-all, and separate Collections and Series sections.
Tags, favourites, read status
Favourite books and folders, mark read or unread, and bulk-tag with Calibre's tags. In-progress books pin to the top of the shelf in every sort mode.
Multi-select
Long-press to select books or whole folders, then mark read, add to a collection, tag, hide or delete in one go.
Hidden page
Hide books or entire series from the shelf. Swipe left from the shelf to reach the Hidden page and bring anything back.
A–Z jump index
A tap-to-jump letter rail along the right edge for large libraries, with jump-to-top and jump-to-bottom buttons.
Counters and sorting
The top bar shows visible and total book counts. Sort by title or recently added, and the shelf remembers where you were, even across rescans.
Local sync and offline mode
Mirror a server to the phone
Turn on sync for any server and pick a folder. A foreground service downloads every missing book, keeps going if the app is minimised or the phone locks, reports its phase and per-file progress, and checks all sources on every launch. Files are named after the book's real title so the folder is browsable from any file manager.
Offline, only what you can read
In airplane mode or when the network drops, the shelf can hide every book, folder, series and format that is not available locally, leaving only synced or previously opened books. The total counter stays honest and the shelf reacts live to connectivity changes. It is a single switch in App settings. Sync and offline guide →
The reader
Three engines, one set of controls. Read how each one works →
From-scratch text engine
EPUB, MOBI/AZW3, FB2 and TXT are laid out with Android's own text layout, no WebView. Books open instantly by laying out the resume chapter first, page counts are exact, and the backward-scroll jump that plagued WebView readers is gone for good.
Scroll or paged
Infinite vertical scroll or page turning, switchable per preference. A progress bar, page counter and percentage sit in the bottom status bar; tap the counter to toggle percent.
Themes and fonts
Light, dark and sepia reading themes. Built-in fonts, OpenDyslexic, or import your own. Font size as a percentage, all with a live preview in Reader settings.
Highlights and notes
Select text, highlight it, attach a note, and come back to edit or remove it from the Highlights & Notes drawer. Highlights that run across a page break are merged automatically.
Magnifier while you drag
Dragging a selection handle floats a real zoomed view of the text above your finger, down to the gap between two letters, so the finger covering the text is no longer a problem.
Chapters drawer and Back
A table-of-contents drawer built from the book's own structure, and a Back button in the status bar to return after jumping to a chapter, highlight or note.
Native PDF viewer
Built on pdfium: clickable links, real text selection with highlights and notes, a chapters drawer from the PDF's bookmarks, and optional colour inversion in dark theme.
Comics and DjVu
CBZ, CBR, CB7 and CBT archives and DjVu scans in a bitmap pager with pinch-to-zoom and free panning that never snaps back. Pages sort the way a person would, "page2" before "page10".
Exact resume
Position is stored as chapter plus character offset as well as percentage, so resuming after a font change lands on the same words. Last-opened books get a one-tap resume button on the shelf.
Covers, series and links
Fast covers
Covers are pulled by streaming just the cover entry out of an EPUB instead of downloading the whole file, which matters for multi-hundred-megabyte comics. A memory cache in front of a disk cache keeps scrolling smooth.
Series from three sources
Books without Calibre series data are looked up on Hardcover, Open Library and Google Books, in an order you set. Hardcover uses an API key from your own account; the other two need no key.
Links out
"View on Hardcover" and "View on Open Library" buttons on the book detail page when the book is found there. Series and Hardcover guide →
Settings, diagnostics and updates
App settings
System, light or dark app theme; system font or a custom one for the app's own menus; the offline "hide unavailable content" switch; the Hardcover API key with Save & test; and the series lookup order.
Reader settings
Reading theme, font and custom fonts, font size, reading mode, progress bar, page number and percentage toggles, and PDF colour inversion, every one with a live preview.
Diagnostics and What's new
An in-app log viewer for sync, scans and reader timings, written to a file you can read over adb, and a What's new screen that lists every version's changes, mirrored on this site's Changelog.
Privacy and security
- No account, no sign-in, no analytics or crash reporting services. The only network calls are to your own servers and, if you enable them, the public series-lookup APIs.
- Server passwords, SSH private keys and API keys are stored with Android's EncryptedSharedPreferences, backed by the hardware Keystore.
- Hardcover is accessed with a Personal Access Token you create on your own account with just the
read:catalogandread:me:contentscopes. The app respects Hardcover's rate limits and pauses all calls when told to. - DRM is a hard line: the app never strips protection, and DRM-only formats such as KFX are not scanned at all.