Koreader can also be installed on Kobo out of the box with no jailbreaking. Just in case anybody was thinking of getting a Kindle for this.

It's worth doing so on older kobo readers in my experience because it turns pages faster, and it also correctly displays embedded ePub fonts that the native software doesn't. I don't know how many of you will ever read books that feature APL glyphs so I don't know how relevant that last bit is, and I can't speak for more recent models.

stock kobo has two epub readers. trash one from adobe used for drmed files and stock epubs, and an actually good one for use with KEPUB files. There's a calibre plugin to make the conversion upon push to the device.

Yes, KOReader is the reason to jailbreak a Kindle.

It's way better than the built-in Amazon reader app.

I was actually trying out KOReader (on Android via F-droid) last night and it... looks promising... but better than the Kindle app, really? It doesn't have a dark mode which is basically baseline for me reading at night. Or am I missing something?

E-ink screens usually don't want dark mode, because of the weird way they have to refresh[0]. The effect of that is much more visible with white text on black background compared to the opposite.

There's however a dark mode still if you need it; go to the gear icon, screen, auto warmth and night mode. Tap the mode line to switch it from automatic settings (either on time schedule or coordinates) to manual.

[0]: Basically, E-ink displays have to fully "reset" their screen by repeatedly toggling the pixels on and off, since they can't fully toggle themselves off normally; doing so will leave them with a bit of grey. Because this isn't very friendly on the eyes, most displays usually do this every couple "page changes" (actual pages when reading or moving in a menu.)

I've been reading at night for years on my Kindle, and dark mode works very well. During daytime you don't want to use it.

When you're using a device actually for reading, you don't care about minor defects on the page, just like you wouldn't care about some stain on the page of a paper book when reading it.

Thanks, I must have missed it, so that's the task when I go to bed tonight.

I hate the idea of my book collection being chained to Amazon by DRM, absolutely hate it. This whole DRM mess is one reason I haven't bought a dedicated e-reader.

Though, to be frank, it's not the only one, I spent a jaw dropping amount of money on a really good hardcover copy of The Lord of the Rings recently, and I feel like no ebook will ever come close to the reading experience of that thing. There is something about this immense, weighty, hardcover tome that just commands your attention and I still find that print on good paper causes less eye strain than even the e-ink screens I've used (though they are pretty good).

Is Night Mode what you are looking for?

https://koreader.rocks/user_guide/#autowarmth

I... think... it is. Thank you!

Yes, I also tried it on Android to see if it's worth jailbreaking my kindle and honestly the UI is a bit of a mess. It takes a lot of tweaks to get a nice looking layout to start with, out of the box it's just tiny text filling the screen with no margin.

Does it have machine translation? That would be a killer feature for me.

Edit: it has AskGPT!

For translation of more than a couple sentences on demand, you'd more likely translate the epub before you put it on the device, like with the Calibre plugin https://github.com/bookfere/Ebook-Translator-Calibre-Plugin . There are better solutions that have a dictionary for consistent name translations, too.

Thank you for this! My Victorian novel reading experience is about to level up.

which engine has the highest accuracy? how reliable is it?

According to WMT 2014 benchmarks, GPT 4o and Gemini Flash 1.5 are acceptable. I think Gemini Flash 1.5 8B is the most used right now due to price. In my experience, it is pretty good except in name translation and consistency across text which is why pros use translation dictionaries. It will mostly translate idioms which is nice.

Worth it just for this app.