A clean, distraction-free UI plugin for KOReader that transforms your reading experience. SimpleUI adds a dedicated Home Screen, a customisable bottom navigation bar, a top status bar, and a reworked library title bar, giving you instant access to your library, history, collections, and reading stats without navigating through nested menus.
The centrepiece of SimpleUI. A home screen that gives you everything at a glance:
- Clock & Date — a large, readable clock with full date display
- Currently Reading — your active book with cover art, title, author, progress bar, percentage read, and estimated time left
- Recent Books — a row of up to 5 recent books with cover thumbnails and progress indicators; tap any to resume reading
- Collections — your KOReader collections displayed as tappable cover cards, right on the home screen
- Reading Goals — visual progress tracker for your annual and daily reading goals, including physical books read
- Reading Stats — compact stat cards showing today's reading time, pages, streaks, and all-time totals
- Quick Actions — up to 3 customisable rows of shortcut buttons (Library, History, Wi-Fi toggle, Brightness, Stats, and more)
- New Books — a row of up to 5 recently added books sorted by file date; unread books are labelled "New" and started books show their read percentage; opt-in via Arrange Modules
- Quote of the Day — optional literary header, randomly picked from a curated list of 100+ quotes; can also show your own highlights
- Module ordering — rearrange Home Screen modules in any order to match your workflow
- Per-module scaling — resize each module independently, or lock all scales together for uniform adjustments
- Start with Home Screen — set the Home Screen as the first screen KOReader opens every time you pick up your device
A persistent tab bar at the bottom of the screen for one-tap navigation:
- Up to 5 fully customisable tabs: Library, History, Collections, Favourites, Continue Reading, Home Screen, Wi-Fi Toggle, Brightness, Stats, Bookmark Browser, and custom folder or collection shortcuts
- 3 display modes: icons only, text only, or icons + text
- Navpager mode — replaces the pagination bar with Prev/Next arrows at the edges of the bottom bar; arrows dim when there is no previous or next page
- Hold anywhere on the bar to instantly open navigation settings
A slim status bar always visible at the top of the screen:
- Displays clock, battery level, Wi-Fi status, frontlight brightness, disk usage, and RAM all configurable
- Each item can be placed on the left or right side independently
A reworked title bar for the Library, History, Collections, and other full-screen views:
- Back button — replaces KOReader's default navigation with a cleaner chevron; hides automatically at the root folder, and also hides when the Library's Lock Home Folder setting is active and you are already at the home folder
- Search button — quick access to file search, compacts into the freed slot when the back button is hidden
- Menu button — opens the KOReader main menu
- Page number in title — shows "Page X of Y" in the subtitle when browsing multi-page views (enabled automatically by Navpager)
- Button size — three sizes (Compact, Default, Large) for the title bar buttons
- Separate layouts — Library buttons and sub-page buttons (History, Collections, etc.) can be configured independently
Custom cover art for folders in the Library mosaic view:
- Automatically uses the first book cover found inside a folder
- Supports a
.cover.*image file placed manually in the folder for full control - Long-press any folder and tap Set folder cover… to pick a specific book's cover as the folder's cover, only visible when Folder Covers is enabled
- Optional folder name label with configurable position (top, centre, bottom) and style (solid or transparent background)
- Optional item count badge with configurable position
- Hide selection underline for a cleaner look
Shortcut buttons configurable both on the Home Screen and in the bottom bar:
- Assign any action to a custom folder, collection, or KOReader plugin
- Quick Wi-Fi toggle and frontlight control
- Power menu (Restart, Quit) accessible as a tab
- Bookmark Browser — browse your highlights and bookmarks across all books
All features are accessible via Menu → Tools → SimpleUI
- Download this repository as a ZIP — click Code → Download ZIP
- Extract the folder and confirm it is named
simpleui.koplugin - Copy the folder to the
plugins/directory on your KOReader device - Restart KOReader
- Go to Menu → Tools → SimpleUI to enable and configure the plugin
Tip: After enabling the plugin, tap the Home Screen tab in the bottom bar to open your new home screen.
Tip: To make the Home Screen your default start screen, go to Menu → Tools → SimpleUI → Home Screen → Start with Home Screen. From then on, KOReader opens directly to your home screen every time you turn on your device.
SimpleUI has full translation support. The UI language is detected automatically from your KOReader language setting — no configuration needed.
| Language | File | Status |
|---|---|---|
| English | (built-in) | Complete |
| Português (Brasil) | locale/pt_BR.po |
Complete |
| Português (Portugal) | locale/pt_PT.po |
Complete |
| Italiano (Italian) | locale/it_IT.po |
Partial (92.8% — 31 missing) |
| Polski (Polish) | locale/pl.po |
Partial (92.8% — 31 missing) |
| 简体中文 (Chinese Simplified) | locale/zh_CN.po |
Partial (92.3% — 33 missing) |
| Français (French) | locale/fr.po |
Partial (91.6% — 36 missing) |
| Svenska (Swedish) | locale/sv.po |
Partial (91.2% — 38 missing) |
| 繁體中文 (Chinese Traditional) | locale/zh_TW.po |
Partial (87.7% — 53 missing) |
| Deutsch (German) | locale/de.po |
Partial (79.8% — 87 missing) |
| Türkçe (Turkish) | locale/tr.po |
Partial (79.8% — 87 missing) |
| Română (Romanian) | locale/ro.po |
Partial (79.3% — 89 missing) |
| Español | locale/es.po |
Partial (68.6% — 135 missing) |
| Русский (Russian) | locale/ru.po |
Partial (83.0% — 73 missing) |
| Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) | locale/vi.po |
Partial (14.0% — 370 missing) |
All 430 strings in the plugin are translatable. To add a new language:
- Copy
locale/simpleui.pottolocale/<lang>.po, using the standard locale code for your language (examples:de,fr,it,ja) - Open the file in any text editor or a dedicated PO editor such as Poedit
- For each entry, fill in the
msgstrfield with your translation:
msgid "Currently Reading"
msgstr "Aktuell gelesen"- Save the file inside the
locale/folder — no code changes needed - Restart KOReader; the plugin picks up the new language automatically
The plugin first tries an exact match for the locale code (e.g. pt_PT.po), then falls back to the language prefix (e.g. pt.po), then falls back to English.
- Placeholders like
%d,%s, and%%must be kept in your translation exactly as they appear in themsgid— you can reorder them if your language requires it, but not remove them \nis a line break — keep it in the same position- Never modify the
msgidline — only editmsgstr - If a
msgstris left empty (""), the English original is shown as a fallback - Submitting your translation as a Pull Request is very welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md
To add, remove or edit the Quote of the Day pool, open desktop_modules/quotes.lua inside the plugin folder. Each entry follows this format:
{ q = "Quote text.", a = "Author Name", b = "Book Title (optional)" }Changes take effect the next time the Home Screen is opened.
Contributions are welcome — bug fixes, new features, translations, and documentation improvements. See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to get started.
To report a bug, open an Issue and include your KOReader version and device model.
MIT — see LICENSE for details.