Minimal eReader

A lightweight, blazing fast, portable, and open-source document viewer and annotator for Windows, built for performance and simplicity.

💾 Download the latest version here.

You can download the installer .exe or the portable .zip

About The Project

Minimal eReader is built on the principle that a document viewer should be fast, efficient, and resource-friendly.

Minimal eReader confronts annotation through a minimalist mindset. Rather than altering the documents itself, it creates a note system that works like a layer. Think of it as akin to a Kindle reader, where you can save text to a file, or save notes attached to that text, or notes by themselves. Everything is saved to a .txt file for each document, and automatically opened when you open the document.

Built with native C++ using the powerful Qt framework and the highly optimized MuPDF rendering engine (the same backend used by SumatraPDF), this application starts instantly and handles large documents with ease. It features a clean, modern, dark-themed interface that gets out of your way, allowing you to focus on what matters: the content.

Features

• 📁 Broad Format Support: Natively opens PDF, EPUB, XPS, CBZ, FB2, SVG, and many other document and image formats thanks to the underlying MuPDF engine.
• ⚡ Lightweight & Fast: Starts extremly quickly and uses minimal system resources, even with large files open.
• 🗂️ Tabbed Interface: Open and switch between multiple documents within in a single window.
• 🌙 Modern UI: A custom-drawn, frameless dark theme built on QT that's easy on the eyes.
• ⭐ Favorites System: Bookmark your frequently used books and access them quickly via a dynamic submenu or standalone dialog.
• 🧭 Table of Contents Navigation: Dockable ToC panel built from the embedded document outline. Navigate chapters with one click.
• 📝 Annotation/Notes management:
  • Save passages, comments, and page notes (like on Kindle).
  • Store notes centrally or next to the book for portability.
  • Interactive panel to view, edit, and delete notes.
  • Automatically highlights saved passages on selection.
• 🔍 Powerful Search: Full-document search with all results shown in a floating panel, complete with context snippets.
• 🎯 Precise Highlighting: All matches highlighted on the page, with special styling for the selected result.
• 🧰 Essential Viewing Tools: Smooth zoom, fit-to-window, “Go to Page,” and fast navigation controls.
• 🔧 Status Bar Interactivity: Clickable zoom label, quick nav arrows, and cleaner layout.
• ⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts: Efficient controls (Ctrl+F for search, F11 for fullscreen, Ctrl+Shift+T for ToC, etc.).
• 🔐 Secure & Private: No telemetry, minimal dependencies, fully open-source.

Screenshots

What's Next?

• Bookmarks
• Page manipulation. For compression and basic manipulation, see MinimalPDF Compress
• Multilingual (Easy, but embedding the fonts would make the program much larger).
• Custom colors for background/text
• Export as
• (You suggest)

Building From Source (For Developers)

This section details the prerequisites and steps required to compile the project yourself.

Prerequisites

• C++ Compiler: Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) Build Tools are required. The project is configured for the v143 toolset (Visual Studio 2022).
• Qt Framework: Qt 6 (version 6.2 or newer) for Desktop MSVC. You can install it using the Qt Online Installer.
• MuPDF Source Code: You must download the source code for the MuPDF library, as this project links against a custom-built version of it.

Build Steps

1. Download and compile the source file of MuPDF.

2. Open the ereader.pro file in Qt Creator.

3. Ensure the .pro file's INCLUDEPATH and LIBS variables correctly point to your compiled MuPDF include and lib directories.

4. Configure the project to use your MSVC 64-bit Qt Kit and set the build mode to Release.

5. Build

Deploy the Application

The compiled executable requires Qt's runtime DLLs to be present.

1. Locate your compiled .exe in the build output directory.

2. Use the windeployqt.exe tool (found in your Qt installation's bin directory) to gather all necessary Qt dependencies:DOS

   "C:\path\to\Qt\bin\windeployqt.exe" "C:\path\to\your\release\ereader.exe"
   

License

This project is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0).

Acknowledgments

• Qt Framework
• MuPDF Library by Artifex Software, Inc.