Dogear

A minimalist e-reader setup: a shared library of books, a native Android reader and a sync plugin for a Kindle that is out of support. It scratches a few itches I had, and it keeps a perfectly good device out of the bin.

The Dogear library grouped by series, with two three-book series shown in order — By series: books in series order, then everything else.

Why

The Kindle no longer gets updates and would otherwise end up as e-waste. A jailbroken Kindle running KOReader is a good reader, but it has no library of its own. Dogear adds one: books I own, kept in one place, sent to whichever device I want them on, with reading progress and bookmarks that follow me between the Kindle and the phone. No store, no account with a vendor and no extra apps.

What it does

Web library: search, filters by file type or read state, a by-series view, upload, cover changes, and a Send button per book and device.
Kindle: a KOReader plugin that downloads the books chosen for it and syncs progress and bookmarks. It never turns Wi-Fi on by itself and only checks in when the library is opened or Wi-Fi connects.
Android: a native reader for EPUB and PDF. A QR code on the web page pairs the phone, and the app keeps its books folder in step with the library.
Progress per person: each reader has their own place in a book, so a device is told who is reading.
Import: scripts bring in an existing Calibre library and add single files with the title and cover read from the file.

On the phone

The Dogear Android library as a grid of book covers with reading progress bars under each cover, and All, Reading, Unread and Finished tabs — The Android library, with reading progress on each cover.

The Dogear reader showing the first chapter of a novel in a serif typeface, with a progress line along the bottom — The reader: full-screen text, with percentage and time left.

The reader with its menu open: a bookmark star, a progress slider at 25 percent, and Contents, Bookmarks and Options buttons — Tap the middle of the page for the menu.

The library overflow menu: Sync now, add books from this phone, filter, sort and series view, Reading as, check or change library folder, and Unpair this phone — Sync, view and reader settings are in the library menu.

On the Kindle

The Dogear home screen in KOReader on a Kindle: a grid of book covers with reading progress bars, and Search, Sync, Sort and Menu along the top — The Dogear home on the Kindle: the library as a grid, with progress.

A message over the Kindle library reading Dogear sync finished, with counts for books on the device, covers fetched and books downloaded — A finished sync, with what was fetched.

The Dogear menu on the Kindle with buttons for Sync library, Reader, Status, Files, Restart KOReader and Exit to Kindle home — The menu: sync, who is reading, status and exit.

A Who is reading dialog over the Kindle library with two people to choose from — Progress is kept per person, so the Kindle asks who is reading.

A prompt over a book on the Kindle saying you were at 62 percent on the phone and are at 6 percent here, with Stay here and Go there buttons — Open a book and it offers to jump to where the phone left off.

A page of a novel on the Kindle in KOReader, with a progress bar and page count at the bottom — Then it is just KOReader, reading.

Under the hood

Two Cloudflare Workers share one codebase. One serves the web page behind a login. The other serves devices, which cannot do a browser login, using a token per device of which only a hash is stored.
Books and covers live in R2, named by a hash of their contents, with the catalogue and progress in D1.
API first: the web page and every device use the same JSON API, plus an OPDS catalogue, so a new kind of device needs no server changes.
The Android app is Kotlin and Jetpack Compose with Readium for rendering. The Kindle plugin is written in Lua.

Cloudflare Workers
D1
R2
TypeScript
Kotlin
KOReader

A private tool for my household, and the source is not public. Screenshots are the real web page, Android app and Kindle plugin (in the KOReader desktop emulator) running against a local test copy with invented books, covers and people.