litreader

A terminal-based ebook reader and library manager for your text story collection.

Features

Organize Your Library

• Track reading progress across all your stories
• See library-wide statistics
• Save favorite stories and authors for quick access

Comfortable Reading

• Clean, distraction-free terminal reader
• Bookmark passages to return to later
• Jump to any point in a story by percentage
• Track where you left off automatically

Discover and Explore

• Fast full-text search across your entire library (powered by ripgrep)
• Browse authors and see stats about their works
• Filter and sort by rating, size, or name

Customizable

• Configurable color schemes
• Keyboard-driven interface with vim-style navigation
• Built-in configuration editor

Multiple Collections

• Copy and rename the executable — ficreader, logreader, workdocs — and each binary automatically gets its own config, cache, and library
• Tweak colors and directories per instance; they are fully independent

Screenshots

Favorite Stories	Favorite Authors	Bookmarks

Installation

Requirements

• Go 1.24+ - Download Go
• A collection of .txt files organized in author folders

Optional:

• pandoc - For markdown rendering (falls back to plain text)
• ripgrep - For fast search (search disabled without it)

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/subbass/litreader.git
cd litreader
go build -o litreader ./cmd/litreader

# Optional: install system-wide
sudo mv litreader /usr/local/bin/

Multiple Collections

Copy and rename the executable to run fully independent instances, each with its own library, config, cache, and color scheme:

cp litreader ficreader    # fiction library
cp litreader logreader    # log files
cp litreader workdocs     # work documents

Each binary stores its files under ~/.config/<name>/ and ~/.cache/<name>/ automatically — no extra setup needed. Just run it once and configure the directory.

Quick Start

1. Run litreader — config files are created automatically
2. Press c to open the configuration editor
3. Set your Search Directory to your story library folder
4. Press q to save and restart litreader
5. Run litreader -u to scan your library

Keyboard Shortcuts

Dashboard

Key	Action
s	Search library
f	View favorites
b	View bookmarks
a	View favorite authors
e	Explore all authors
c	Configuration
l	Open last read story
q	Quit

Reader

Key	Action
↑/↓ or j/k	Scroll
Space/@	Page down/up
0-9	Jump to percentage
w	Toggle word wrap
f	Add to favorites
a	Add author to favorites
b	Add bookmark
v	View bookmarks
e	Edit in built-in editor
o	Browse author's files
q or ←	Back

Editor

Key	Action
Ctrl+W	Toggle word wrap
Ctrl+S	Save
Arrows	Move cursor (by visual row when wrapped)
PgUp/PgDn	Scroll
Home/End	Start/end of line
Esc	Exit

Version

Current: v2.7.3

See DEVELOPMENT.md for technical documentation and changelog.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.