.. _viewer: The E-book viewer ============================= calibre includes a built-in E-book viewer that can view all the major e-book formats. The E-book viewer is highly customizable and has many advanced features. .. contents:: :depth: 1 :local: Starting the E-book viewer ----------------------------- You can view any of the books in your calibre library by selecting the book and pressing the :guilabel:`View` button. This will open up the book in the E-book viewer. You can also launch the E-book viewer by itself from the Start menu in Windows. On macOS, you can pin it to the dock and launch it from there. On Linux you can use its launcher in the desktop menus or run the command :command:`ebook-viewer`. Navigating around an e-book ----------------------------- You can "turn pages" in a book by either: - Clicking in the left or right margin or the page with the mouse - Pressing the :kbd:`spacebar`, :kbd:`page up`, :kbd:`page down` or arrow keys - On a touchscreen tapping on the text or swiping left and right You can access the viewer controls by either: - Right clicking on the text - Pressing the :kbd:`Esc` or :kbd:`Menu` keys - On a touchscreen by tapping the top 1/3rd or the screen The viewer has two modes, "paged" and "flow". In paged mode the book content is presented as pages, similar to a paper book. In flow mode the text is presented continuously, like in a web browser. You can switch between them using the viewer Preferences under :guilabel:`Page layout` or by pressing the :kbd:`ctrl+m` key. Bookmarks ^^^^^^^^^^^^ When you are in the middle of a book and close the viewer, it will remember where you stopped reading and return there the next time you open the book. You can also set bookmarks in the book by using the :guilabel:`Bookmarks` button in the viewer controls or pressing :kbd:`ctrl+b`. When viewing EPUB format books, these bookmarks are actually saved in the EPUB file itself. You can add bookmarks, then send the file to a friend. When they open the file, they will be able to see your bookmarks. You can turn off this behavior in the :guilabel:`Miscellaneous` section of the viewer preferences. Table of Contents ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ If the book you are reading defines a Table of Contents, you can access it by pressing the :guilabel:`Table of Contents` button. This will bring up a list of sections in the book. You can click on any of them to jump to that portion of the book. Navigating by location ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ E-books, unlike paper books, have no concept of pages. You can refer to precise locations in e-books using the :guilabel:`Go to->Location` functionality in the viewer controls. You can use this location information to unambiguously refer to parts of the books when discussing it with friends or referring to it in other works. You can enter these locations under :guilabel:`Go to->Location` in the viewer controls. If you click on links inside the e-book to take you to different parts of the book, such as an endnote, you can use the :guilabel:`Back` and :guilabel:`Forward` buttons in the top left corner of the viewer controls. These buttons behave just like those in a web browser. Reference mode ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ calibre also has a very handy :guilabel:`Reference mode`. You can turn it on by clicking the :guilabel:`Reference mode` button in the viewer controls. Once you do this, every mouse over a paragraph, calibre will display a unique number made up of the section and paragraph numbers. You can use this number to unambiguously refer to parts of the books when discussing it with friends or referring to it in other works. You can enter these numbers in the :guilabel:`Go to function` to navigate to a particular reference location. Customizing the look and feel of your reading experience ------------------------------------------------------------ You can change font sizes on the fly by using :guilabel:`Font size` in the viewer controls or :kbd:`Ctrl++` or :kbd:`Ctrl+-` or holding the :kbd:`Ctrl` key and using the mouse wheel. Colors can be changed in the :guilabel:`Colors` section of the viewer preferences. You can change the number of pages displayed on the screen as well as page margins in :guilabel:`Page layout` in the viewer preferences. You can display custom headers and footers such as time left to read, current chapter title, book position, etc. via the :guilabel:`Headers and footers` section of the viewer preferences. More advanced customization can be achieved by the :guilabel:`Styles` settings. Here you can specify a background image to display under the text and also a stylesheet you can set that will be applied to every book. Using it you can do things like change paragraph styles, text justification, etc. For examples of custom stylesheets used by calibre's users, see `the forums `_. Dictionary lookup ------------------- You can look up the meaning of words in the current book by opening the :guilabel:`Lookup/search word panel` via the viewer controls. Then simply double click on any word and its definition will be displayed in the Lookup panel. Copying text and images ------------------------- You can select text and images by dragging the content with your mouse and then right clicking and selecting :guilabel:`Copy` to copy to the clipboard. The copied material can be pasted into another application as plain text and images. Zooming in on images ---------------------------- You can zoom in to show an image at full size in a separate window by either double clicking or long tapping on it. You can also right click on it and choose :guilabel:`View image`. Non re-flowable content -------------------------- Some books have very wide content that content be broken up at page boundaries. For example tables or :code:`
` tags. In such cases, you should switch the
viewer to *flow mode* by pressing :kbd:`Ctrl+m` to read this content.
Alternately, you can also add the following CSS to the :guilabel:`Styles` section of the
viewer preferences to force the viewer to break up lines of text in
:code:`
` tags::

    code, pre { white-space: pre-wrap }