EPUB Viewer, EPUB Reader & Ebook Reader

Read EPUB books in a VS Code tab, with pages or scrolling, a table of contents, search, footnote popups and a sepia or dark theme.

EPUB Reader showing a sample book in the sepia theme, with the table of contents open and a chart inside the chapter

Screenshot of VS Code 1.142 with a sample book made by scripts/make-samples.js.

Read the way you like. Turn pages like a book (two columns in a wide editor) or scroll each chapter, in your VS Code colors, light, sepia or dark.
Find things fast. Search the whole book, click a note number to read the footnote in a popup, and jump anywhere from the contents.
Pick up where you stopped. Each book opens at your last page, and book scripts never run.

Quick start

Install the extension.
Click any .epub file in the Explorer.

What you can do

Action	How
Turn pages	Right and Left arrows, Page Down and Page Up, Space, the mouse wheel, or a click on the right or left edge of the page.
Jump to a chapter	The Contents button at the left end of the toolbar opens the list. EPUB 3 nav and EPUB 2 NCX lists are both read, with nested parts and sections.
Search the book	Type in "Search in book" and press Enter. Every match is listed with its chapter and highlighted in the text. Enter goes to the next match and Shift+Enter to the one before.
Read a footnote	Click the note number. The note opens in a popup, even when it lives in a separate notes file. Escape closes it.
Change the look	Theme (VS Code, Light, Sepia, Dark), A− and A+ for the text size, and Paged or Scrolled. Your choice is kept for every book.
See book details	Info shows the cover, title, author, language, ISBN, publisher, dates and EPUB version.
Save a chapter as Markdown	Markdown in the toolbar asks where to save the `.md` file and writes the chapter's images into a folder next to it.

A footnote opened in a popup next to its note number

Book details with the cover, author, language and ISBN

Scrolled reading in the dark theme, with a search match still highlighted

Safe to open any book

The book's HTML goes through an allow-list before it is shown. Scripts, event handlers, forms, frames, inline styles and remote images or style sheets are removed.
The viewer page has a strict Content Security Policy as a second wall. Only its own script runs, and nothing can load from the internet.
Links to websites open in your browser only when you click them.
Books protected with DRM can't be read, and they get a clear message instead of garbled text.

Big books

Only the parts of the book you open are read from disk. A 400-chapter test book opened in about a second, and a search of the whole book took under half a second. Books over 200 MB show a message and are not read (setting epubReader.maxFileMB).

Settings

Setting	Default	What it does
`epubReader.flow`	`paged`	`paged` or `scrolled` reading.
`epubReader.theme`	`auto`	`auto` uses your VS Code colors. Also `light`, `sepia` and `dark`.
`epubReader.fontSize`	`18`	Text size in pixels, 10 to 40.
`epubReader.fontFamily`	`serif`	`serif` or `sans`.
`epubReader.footnotePopups`	`true`	Footnotes open in a popup and EPUB 3 footnote boxes are hidden from the page.
`epubReader.rememberPosition`	`true`	Each book opens where you stopped. Positions stay on this computer.
`epubReader.maxFileMB`	`200`	Largest book to open.
`epubReader.askForRating`	`true`	Ask one time for a Marketplace rating after a few days of use.
`epubReader.showSupportLinks`	`true`	Show the small Sponsor and More free viewers links in the status line.

Privacy

No telemetry and no network calls. Books are read on your computer, reading positions are kept in VS Code's local storage, and the only file the extension writes is a Markdown export you asked for.

Limits

The book's own style sheet is not applied, so the reading themes and text size work in every book. Fonts embedded in the book are not used.
Fixed-layout books (comics, picture books) are shown as flowing pages, so their page design is lost.
Audio, video and inline SVG drawings are not shown. An SVG cover or picture shown as an image works.
Search finds text inside one chapter at a time, so a phrase split across two chapters is not found.
DRM-protected books can't be opened.

Support Zovo

Zovo extensions are free, with no ads and no tracking. They are made by theluckystrike on GitHub. If this one saves you time, you can support the work:

More tools by Zovo

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Graphviz Viewer & DOT Viewer (Live Preview) shows a live preview of DOT files and exports SVG or PNG.
EML Viewer, Email Headers & MBOX Viewer reads EML, EMLX and MBOX email files with remote images blocked.

See all Zovo extensions on the Marketplace.

License

MIT. fflate (MIT) is bundled, see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.