Overview
MapleRead is dedicated to enable unique audio-visual reading experience for everyone.
Our MapleRead app family has 3 members, namely SE, CE and CX.
- SE is our flagship product with all features.
- CE is SE minus PDF reader and our unique zero-configuration Library Server.
- CX is CE with some limitation.
- No recurring subscription fees. No ads. Just buy it once. Gratuity optional.
- Moreover, SE and CE can be run side-by-side via split-view multitasking.
- Recommend the SE-CE bundle for the best value.
Feature Highlights:
- MapleRead includes a superb audio-visual EPUB e-book reader.
- It lets you easily modify publisher's original book style to better suit your aesthetic taste.
- It lets you instantly generate pseudo audiobooks with a choice of narrator voices over 40 languages.
- It enables immersion reading so that you may read and listen to the same book in sync.
- Background listening works well too. Compatible with Lock Screen Music Player and CarPlay.
- MapleRead UI is friendly to users of all ages.
- Books can be read in regular and large print.
- A choice of UI text sizes makes reading in non-book views much more comfortable.
- MapleRead is a great learning tool.
- It lets you look up words, translate sentences, search text, highlight text and write notes.
- It helps you collect vocabulary and organize notes with various priorities.
- It provides hooks to user-defined dictionaries, translators, and other tools.
- Immersion reading improves your comprehension, especially of foreign-language books.
- MapleRead is an effective and fast library management tool.
- It is designed for you, a book lover, who may own a huge and/or growing book collection.
- It lets you keep all your books in one place and well-organized automatically.
- It lets you display your books elegantly in style.
- It lets you easily repair individual book metadata.
- If supports multiple book sets and multiple tags.
- It offers multiple ways to import and export books, and works well with Calibre.
- MapleRead supports secure sync across devices via cloud.
- It syncs reading positions, notes, vocab and bookmarks (but not the books).
- It enables web access to synced data via web browsers from desktop and mobile devices.
- MapleRead offers unprecedented user-defined customization options.
- They include unlimited user-defined fonts, book themes, cover images and library scenes.
- Each book theme includes various types of user-defined highlight colors.
- MapleRead SE includes also a great PDF e-book reader.
- The PDF reader looks very similar to the EPUB reader for a sense of unified UI.
- MapleRead SE has a zero-configuration Library Server for easy book sharing.
- All books in Library can be shared.
- Smart batch download makes transferring of multiple books very convenient.
Technical Details
Caveat: Most screenshots below were taken with an app version older than 5.0, and thus may be somewhat different in details from how they would look in the latest version.
- Features unique to MapleRead SE (but not CE, CX)
Read Books in Eye-pleasing Styles
More comfortable reading conditions can better sustain your attention span.
EPUB Viewers
- Read DRM-free and password-free EPUB books in 3 book styles of your choice:
- Classic Book: a leather-bound book with customizable leather patterns
- Modern Book: an unbound book with finger-following slide, curl, or instant page-turning effect
- Modern Scroll: a scroll with rollers at both ends
- Classic Book: a leather-bound book with customizable leather patterns
- Enable book listening in foreground and background
- Instantly generate pseudo audiobooks with a choice of narrator voices over 40 languages
- Speed control and timer control
- Experience immersion reading to read and listen to the same book in sync
- Compatible with Lock Screen Music Player and CarPlay
- Choose or create your favorite themes with
- Over 30 beautiful built-in day and night themes with optional sepia effect to suit your aesthetics
- Theme Editor for creating your own themes customizing background image and colors of background, text, heading, hyperlink, search highlight, note highlight, vocab highlight
- Over 30 beautiful built-in day and night themes with optional sepia effect to suit your aesthetics
- Enhance book page layout the way you prefer with
- High fidelity rendering of publisher's style including embedded fonts
- Item-by-item application of user's override of text font, heading font, and text layout and page layout
- Text layout control of hyphenation, line spacing, paragraph spacing/indentation/alignment
- Page layout control of independent portrait and landscape column counts with adjustable column gap and column rule, independently adjustable left/right and top/bottom page margins
- Paragraph Numbering showing a layout-independent position for each paragraph
- Over 20 beautiful built-in fonts, including selected Serif fonts, San Serif fonts, and other style fonts
- Unlimited number of user fonts, installable via PC Upload
- A wide range of font sizes covering the range from fine print to large print and beyond
- Look up words, remember words, translate sentences, mark pages, speak text or mark text with
- Built-in multi-language and user-defined dictionaries
- Vocabulary list built automatically and optionally with Vocab Builder as you look up
- Multi-language text translation with a choice of translators
- Bookmarking with a choice of bookmarkers
- Built-in text-to-speech synthesis via Speak
- Note-taking including marking (highlighting) and commenting with 5 priority levels
- Navigate across the pages conveniently in multiple ways with
- Anchor button for immediate jumping to the user-defined anchored page
- Jump-back-and-forth button for going back and forth between two pages
- Page slider for quick page navigation
- Easy access to Table of Contents, Bookmark List, Note List, Vocab list
- Fast full text search
- Gesture control some common things with
- Tap or swipe to turn/scroll pages
- Pinch-and-spread to change font size over its entire range from fine print to large print and beyond
- Vertical swipe to control reading screen brightness
- Customizable control of page-turning tap, vertical swipe, and long press gestures
- Redefine some common things with
- Reading Dimmer as a convenient way to choose between system-wide and app-specific screen brightness control, optionally dependent on night mode, good for battery-saving and extra dimming for comfortable night-time reading
- Also Read EPUB 3.0 books designed for other writing modes, including vertical right-to-left writing mode (as in Chinese and Japanese) and horizontal right-to-left writing modes (as in Hebrew and Arabic) with corresponding right-to-left (RTL) page progression and user interface
PDF Viewer
- Read DRM-free and password-free PDF books with slide or instant page-turning effect in portrait orientation
- Choose or create your favorite themes with
- Over 20 beautiful built-in day themes with sepia effect to suit your aesthetics
- Theme Editor for creating your own themes customizing background image and colors of background, note highlight
- One unique built-in night theme turning black-on-white pages into white-on-black pages
- Over 20 beautiful built-in day themes with sepia effect to suit your aesthetics
- Look up words, remember words, translate sentences, mark pages, speak text or mark text with
- Built-in multi-language and user-defined dictionaries
- Vocabulary list built automatically and optionally with Vocab Builder as you look up
- Multi-language text translation with a choice of translators
- Bookmarking with a choice of bookmarkers
- Built-in text-to-speech synthesis via Speak
- Note-taking including marking (highlighting) and commenting with 5 priority levels
- Highlighting of any rectangular selection of any PDF page
- Navigate across the pages conveniently in multiple ways with
- Anchor button for immediate jumping to the user-defined anchored page
- Jump-back-and-forth button for going back and forth between two pages
- Page-thumbnail slider for full-book page navigation
- Easy access to Table of Contents, Bookmark List, Note List
- Multi-page-icon view showing all pages or just bookmarked pages
- Anchor button for immediate jumping to the user-defined anchored page
- Start reading a new page optionally with our unique Prefer-Zoom feature that can
- Automatically zoom and pan to where you prefer when you go to a new page, saving you the hassle of repeatedly setting the same preferred zoom factor and initial reading position per book for more comfortable reading experience in portrait and landscape orientation respectively
- Gesture control some common things with
- Tap or swipe to turn pages
- Pinch or spread to zoom out or zoom in
- Drag to pan
- Two-finger tap to apply prefer-zoom
- Redefine some common things with
- Reading Dimmer as a convenient way to choose between system-wide and app-specific screen brightness control, optionally dependent on night mode, good for battery-saving and extra dimming for comfortable night-time reading
and landscape orientation with optional double page landscape option 
Organize & Search Books
Organizing and searching books in multiple ways help you discover what you want quickly.
- Present the subset of browsable (visible) books the way you prefer using the bottom toolbar with
- 4 presentation styles: Flat Bookshelf , Hierarchical Bookshelf , Flat Booklist , Hierarchical Booklist
- 3 display styles: Modern , Classic , Dark
- 13 sorting orders: Title, Author, Author+Series, Series, Tag, Date Added, Date Marked, Date Meta Altered, Date Read, Reading Progress, File Size, Format , in addition to Custom Order for user-defined book sets
- 4 presentation styles: Flat Bookshelf
- Choose the subset of browsable books the way you prefer using the top toolbar with
- Tags: a book is browsable only if it has a tag that matches one of the selected tags
- Sets: a book is browsable only if it has a membership in the current book set
- Search: a book is browsable only if it matches the current type and value as specified in the search bar
- Tags: a book is browsable only if it has a tag that matches one of the selected tags
- Manage book sets with tools that let you
- Create, rename and delete user-defined book sets to group books arbitrarily, where any two sets may overlap or not (overlap allowance is quite useful but rarely found in ebook apps)
- Move or copy (duplicate) a book or multiple books at a time from one set to another set
- Update automatically the membership of Ungrouped, the subset of books not grouped in any user-defined book set, for your convenience in case further processing is needed
- Make every book always browsable if the current book set is All Books.
- Manage tags with tools that let you
- See the full list of tags applicable to the current book set under the current search criteria
- Manage the tag pool which automatically collects every tag associated with every book in All Books
- Add to the tag pool by typing or picking from a list of over 180 tags for common subjects and categories
- Modify individual book attributes (metadata or book info) by
- Editing its title, series, volume, author(s), description and tags
- Replacing its original cover image with another one from online sources
- Assigning tags of multiple selected books at the same time
- Enjoy beautiful bookshelf in portrait or landscape orientation with
- Beautiful built-in bookshelf background scenes
- Scene Editor for creating user-defined scenes from any image
- Option to change scene for one book set or the whole library
- Option to open (close) the bookshelf back board to show (hide) the background scene
- Option to make the shelf boards transparent
- Option to apply parallax effect
- Scene brightness control slider
- Long press on any book icon as a shortcut to display the action menu
- Beautiful built-in bookshelf background scenes
Exchange Books & Metadata
Convenient access to external book sources makes it easier to build up your library collection.
- Exchange is a multi-tabbed view where you can get your books in and out in many different ways
- Websites View is usually where you download from external book sources
- Provide convenient access to millions of public domain books and papers via built-in links† to OPDS catalogs and HTML webpages
- Allow user-defined links to OPDS catalogs (including calibre server) and HTML webpages
- Scan for OPDS/HTML sites via Bonjour on the same local area network
- Support smart batch download from any OPDS catalog with an option to skip potentially duplicated books and a book format preference
- Recognize calibre-specific OPDS catalog format of encoding tags, series and volume (series number)
- Support password-protected servers, such as Dropbox
- Allow HTTPS server with self-signed certificates at user's discretion
- iTunes View enables file transfer via USB from and to iTunes running on your PC
- Queue View keeps track of files transferred from Websites or iTunes
- Display an icon badge number showing the number of active queue entries if there is any
- Monitor concurrent background download/import of multiple files
- Stop, resume and edit queue entries
- Display import status of each queue entry including failure
- Facilitate manual re-downloading of any failed entry
- PC Upload View enables importing multiple files at a time from your personal computer (PC) via Wi-Fi by uploading the files from the web browser running over there
- Book Server View is where you make your app act as an OPDS/HTML book server instead of a client. With SE's built-in server, you can easily transfer books, themes and scenes from SE to CE or SE running on another iOS device.
- Serve OPDS-capable apps running on another iOS device or Android device
- Serve HTML clients such as web browsers running on iOS, Android, Mac or Windows
- Support client browsing by sets, tags, title, author, series, date added, date last edited, date last read, format, file size
- Transfer individual book files back to PC via Wi-Fi like a reverse PC Upload
- Serve OPDS-capable apps running on another iOS device or Android device
- Selected books from Library can be shared via Email, Send to (including AirDrop)
- Independent backup and restore operations can be performed in iTunes View
Organize & Search Notes
Effective note-taking improves your reading comprehension.
- Manage a single note with Note Editor
- Mark notes with 5 levels of priority where priority #1 implies first prioirty
- Adjust the priority of a note anytime later to reflect its relative priority (importance)
- Enjoy the benefit of our priority representation scheme independent of the note highlight color, which may vary among users and is fully customizable in Theme Editor
- Insert the quotation (marked text) with the touch of one button as part of the comment
- Allow overlapping notes (rarely found in ebook apps)
- Mark notes with 5 levels of priority where priority #1 implies first prioirty
- Manage multiple notes with Note List View and its companion, Library Notes View
- Review, edit and manage all notes of a book in one place
- Create and manage as many user-defined note lists as you wish to keep track of different kinds of notes
- Copy and move notes in bulk between any two note lists
- View notes in long or short form, within the current list or all lists
- Sort notes by Date Last Edited, Book Location or Priority
- Search notes by quotation or comment
- Export and share selected notes via AirDrop, email, iTunes
- Import a note file from your friend automatically as a new note list so as not to mingle with your existing notes
- Search notes by quotation or comment across multiple books with the library search bar set to “Notes”
Secure Sync
Syncing data across devices via Cloud facilitates convenient web access to synced data as a bonus.
- Enable web access to synced data via web browsers from desktop and mobile devices
- Sync data across your devices running SE, CE or CX editions via secure cloud connection
- Sync reading positions, notes, vocab and bookmarks of books (not the books themselves)
- Sync data for all books in the library with one tap
- Sync data for the currently opened book with one tap
- Sync data for selected books in the library with the standard edit-select method
- Guarantee deterministic sync results
- Minimize sync traffic between cloud and device
- Enable flexible resolution of potentially multiple reading positions from synced devices
Split View Multitasking
- SE and CE apps can run side-by-side in split view multitasking.
Bundled Books
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for demonstrating various layout styles especially involving images and poems, and with sample notes for playing with note list management and sync
- A lot more books can be downloaded from the built-in links in Exchange's Websites View. It's worthwhile to look under Sample Books under OPDS.
Please keep these bundled books in the app. They will also be useful for diagnostic purposes.
Perhaps you may find it interesting to compare how these EPUB books are rendered by other reader apps. Sometimes you don't know what you have missed in a book without looking at the faithful rendering of the publisher's style by high-quality apps like MapleRead.
† A unique built-in link is to an OPDS catalog created and maintained by Maplepop as a free public service for the famous academic website arXiv.org, providing open access to over one million PDF e-prints in many science subjects. The URL is http://arxiv.maplepop.com/catalog/