Open Reader

Read EPUB books and CBZ comics inside VS Code — in the sidebar while you work, or full-width in the editor area. No browser, no external service, no data leaving your machine.

The web version reads more: EPUB · CBZ · Markdown · HTML · plain text.

Also available on the web: open-reader-web.vercel.app

Reading where you work

Books live in the sidebar next to your code. Open a chapter in the editor area for a full-width read, or keep it in the Reader panel below the library — both are styled prose, never your editor's code font.

The sidebar keeps your place

The Reader panel sits under the library, so a book stays open next to a terminal, a diff, or the Source Control view. Switch away and back — your scroll position is exactly where you left it, per chapter.

Tune it once, applied live

Typeface, size, rhythm, margins, and reading theme — every change lands in the reader as you make it, with a live preview on the settings page itself.

Features

• Library view — every .epub and .cbz in your library folders, expandable to chapters (or comic pages), with per-book reading progress.
• File browsing — the eye button in the view title swaps the book list for the library folder as it sits on disk; books open in the reader, everything else opens as a normal editor tab.
• Two reading surfaces — the Reader panel in the sidebar, or a full-width editor tab. Both honour the same typography settings, picked per chapter from the hover icons.
• Resume where you left off — reading progress per book, and scroll position per chapter, both remembered across restarts.
• Reader Settings — font family/size/weight, line height, letter spacing, alignment, margins, paragraph indent, two-page columns, and reading themes (Warm Ivory, Classic Sepia, Dark Parchment, OLED Midnight, or your own colours).
• Local and private — books are parsed on demand and cached in memory; embedded images are extracted to extension storage rather than inlined. Nothing is uploaded.

Install

Install from the VS Code Marketplace, or grab the VSIX from Releases:

code --install-extension open-reader-0.0.10.vsix

Then open the Open Reader view in the activity bar. By default it scans your workspace folder for books — use Add Folder in the view's ··· menu to point it somewhere else.

Settings

All under openReader.*, editable from the Reader Settings page or settings.json:

Formats

EPUB and CBZ today. The format layer (src/epub/formats.ts) is a small registry, so new formats plug in without touching the rest of the extension.

Known limitation: tables and complex EPUB layouts are flattened to plain HTML.

Links

• Developer — github.com/x7dl8p
• Web reader — open-reader-web.vercel.app

Release Notes

0.0.10

First Marketplace release. Web links now point at open-reader-web.vercel.app.

0.0.9

Library follows the open workspace; the eye button browses library files. About page with web and source links. New icon.

0.0.5

New icon, and a rewritten README with screenshots.

0.0.4

About page in the view's ··· menu.

0.0.3

Scroll position remembered per chapter; the eye button browses library files, with non-book files opening as normal editor tabs; shorter menu names; the Now Reading panel is now Reader.

0.0.2

The editor-area reader became a styled surface that follows the reader settings, instead of a plain text document. Chapter hover icons now name their destination.

0.0.1

Initial release.