SimpleUI for KOReader

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.

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Features

Home Screen

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)
• 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

Bottom Navigation Bar

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

Top Status Bar

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

Custom Title Bar

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

Folder Covers

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

Quick Actions

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

Settings

All features are accessible via Menu → Tools → SimpleUI

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Installation

1. Download this repository as a ZIP — click Code → Download ZIP
2. Extract the folder and confirm it is named simpleui.koplugin
3. Copy the folder to the plugins/ directory on your KOReader device
4. Restart KOReader
5. 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.

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🌍 Translations

SimpleUI has full translation support. The UI language is detected automatically from your KOReader language setting — no configuration needed.

Included languages

| Language | File | Status | |---|---|---| | English | (built-in) | Complete | | Português (Portugal) | locale/pt_PT.po | Complete | | Português (Brasil) | locale/pt_BR.po | Complete | | Español | locale/es.po | Complete | | 简体中文 (Chinese Simplified) | locale/zh_CN.po | Complete | | Русский (Russian) | locale/ru.po | Complete |

Adding a new language

All 297 visible strings in the plugin are translatable. To add a new language:

1. Copy locale/simpleui.pot to locale/<lang>.po, using the standard locale code for your language (examples: de, fr, it, ja)
2. Open the file in any text editor or a dedicated PO editor such as Poedit
3. For each entry, fill in the msgstr field with your translation:

msgid "Currently Reading"
msgstr "Aktuell gelesen"

4. Save the file inside the locale/ folder — no code changes needed
5. 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.

Notes for translators

• Placeholders like %d, %s, and %% must be kept in your translation exactly as they appear in the msgid — you can reorder them if your language requires it, but not remove them
• \n is a line break — keep it in the same position
• Never modify the msgid line — only edit msgstr
• If a msgstr is left empty (""), the English original is shown as a fallback
• Submitting your translation as a Pull Request is very welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md

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🔧 Customising Quotes

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.

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Contributing

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.

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📄 License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.