An ebook reader that opens the books you already have.

Leaflet reads the books on your own device: EPUB, Kindle files (MOBI and AZW3), PDF and plain text. You get real pages, the book's own formatting and your place kept. There's no account with us and no store inside it, so nobody can reach in and take a book back.

It's in public beta on Android and going officially live soon. We read with it every day. It still has rough edges, and they're listed further down.

See what it opens Android · free during the beta · no sign-up link here yet

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening.

At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, was the marshes.

What it does

The page shows a thin progress bar and the chapter name. Everything else stays out of the way until you tap.

Keeps the book's formatting

Leaflet keeps each chapter as the publisher laid it out, so italics, bold, headings and images come through as intended. A lot of readers flatten a book to plain text. Leaflet doesn't.

Pages or scroll, your call

Turn real pages, or scroll a chapter like a web page. Your place is saved per book and carries across both modes. Light, sepia, dark and black themes, and a text size that suits your eyes.

Marks you can keep

Bookmarks, highlights, a table of contents and search inside the book. Read-aloud runs on your device's own voice, so the text never leaves it.

A shelf, not a storefront

Search, sort, tags, favourites and series. One book in three formats shows up as one book. Leaflet can also follow news sites and blogs through their feeds (RSS and Atom), and move your subscriptions in or out as an OPML file, the format other feed readers use.

Offline, and yours

Books stay on your device, and there's no Letworks server to send them to. Leaflet works in airplane mode, which is where most reading happens anyway. The only trips online are ones you start: a cover search, an author's page, a feed.

Sync only if you want it

Keep bookmarks, highlights and your place in step through your own Google Drive, where Leaflet only sees the files you pick, or through your own Hamlet server. Or export everything to a single backup file (JSON). No account with us, either way.

Formats

Format	Status	Notes
.epub	Works	The main format. Chapters, styling, images and structure all come through.
.mobi	Works	Older Kindle books. Leaflet opens them itself, so you don't have to convert them with a tool like Calibre first.
.azw3	Works	Modern Kindle books. The common cases open cleanly. It hasn't met every odd file yet, so tell us when one misbehaves.
.txt	Works	Plain text gets the same treatment as everything else: your theme, your text size, your place kept.
.pdf	Partial	PDFs are fixed-layout, so they show page for page rather than reflowing. There are no highlights or read-aloud yet, because Leaflet can't pick out the text inside a PDF yet.
DRM files	Not supported	Some stores lock their books with copy protection (DRM), so only their own app can open them. Leaflet reads books you actually own, and tells you plainly when a file is locked.

Roadmap

Listed in order, with no dates. Each step starts once the one before it is solid.

Open a milestone for the details.

The public beta becomes a proper release on Android, in the Play Store, with the pricing we've already described: pay a little once, or watch one untargeted ad once.

What "done" looks like Install from the store, add a book, and have nothing on the known-limitations list stop you from finishing it.

Leaflet is built with Flutter, and it already builds for iOS. What's left is making it feel right there.

What "done" looks like A test version first, through Apple's TestFlight. The reader carries over as it is. The real work is iOS file handling, meaning how books get into the app, which works differently than on Android.

Your library readable on whichever screen is nearest. The code builds for all of them already. Same app, bigger pages.

What "done" looks like Less porting than designing for the space: wider margins, maybe two-page spreads. Linux still has gaps, read-aloud among them, and they get closed before it ships. Leaflet stays offline-first on every one of them.

What's new

1.5 current beta

RSS and Atom feeds, read in the same reader, with OPML import and export and optional alerts for new articles.
A short first-launch walkthrough, so the first thing you see isn't an empty shelf with no explanation.
Library views that adapt to the width of the screen, and a "read only" filter in place of a separate tab.

Before that

Read-aloud, on-device only. PDF reading. Search inside a book. Reading stats. Cover and metadata lookup. A true-black theme.
Sync with your own Hamlet server, alongside Google Drive.
MOBI and AZW3 support, with a parser written from scratch.

Known limitations Bookmarks, highlights, search and read-aloud are paged-mode only for now. PDFs have no highlights or read-aloud. Sync only runs while the app is open. Calibre, Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud and Proton Drive appear in settings as "coming soon" and don't do anything yet.

Questions

Where do my books go when I add them?: Into Leaflet's own storage on your device, and nowhere else. There's no Letworks server to send them to. If you turn on sync, what travels is your bookmarks, highlights and place, and it goes to your own Drive or your own Hamlet server.
Can it read my Kindle books?: If they aren't copy-protected (DRM-free), yes. MOBI and AZW3 open directly. Books still locked by DRM won't open, and Leaflet won't pretend otherwise.
Is there an iOS version?: Not yet. It's on the roadmap, and the code already builds for it. Android comes first, until the reader is finished there.
What will it cost?: Nothing during the beta. After launch: pay a little, once, or watch one untargeted ad, once, to unlock everything. Never a subscription. Here's why.
Why "Leaflet"?: Small leaves, small pages. Also, the icon was already drawn.