Mini-review: LightReader UWP a lightweight ebook reader

Published by at

'ebooks' have been around for decades, of course, but the rise of the Amazon Kindle has caused something of a resurgence. EPUB is the most popular format these days and LightReader is a new UWP application for Windows 10 that handles these without frills or fuss. It's free, though you can donate to the developer if you want to say thanks, etc.

From the Store description:

This is a completely free, lightweight local EPUB format ebook reader, mainly designed for reading novels with illustrations. 

***Books are not included in the app. You have to find and download books from the Internet on your own. If you do not know what EPUB is, DO NOT download this app.

Quite a common sense caveat there, though including a mini-store of a few royalty-free ebooks in the application would have been a good idea, just to get people off to a good start?

Anyway, here's LightReader in action on my IDOL 4 Pro:

ScreenshotScreenshot

First of all, LightReader is free, but do consider supporting the dev via the in-app buttons. There are no ads or similar, it's a clean experience; (right) grabbing a test EPUB ebook, via epubbooks.co.uk in Edge...

ScreenshotScreenshot

Having downloaded the EPUB book, just pick it in LightReader and it's added to your in-app library; (right) Note the transparency effect on the hamburger menu.

ScreenshotScreenshot

Reading away, ilustrations/cover included. Note (right) the 'next' control, which appears overlaid when you're at the bottom of the current 'page'.

ScreenshotScreenshot

The tools at the bottom of the screen allow comprehensive customisation to text rendering, from font, size, spacing, and so on, while (right) the theme settings allow for an eye-friendly night mode...

ScreenshotScreenshot

The hamburger menu is where you navigate around a book, here by chapter; (right) moving 'back' takes you to your library again.

An excellent little application and well worth downloading on any Windows 10 device.

You can grab LightReader UWP here in the Store, and you can grab EPUB ebooks from many places, start at epubbooks.co.uk

Source / Credit: Store