User guide

Getting started

UniReader reads your books where they already are. Show it the folder that holds them, and a minute later your whole library is on screen, with covers.

The first launch

Two short screens greet you. The first says what UniReader reads; click Next. The second asks Where are your books? Click Choose a folder… and pick the folder that holds them — on your PC, a USB drive, OneDrive or Dropbox. UniReader looks through it and its subfolders. Nothing is moved or copied. Prefer to look around first? Click Later.

Adding books

• A folder. In the empty library, click Choose a folder…. Later, use File → Add a folder…, or the Add… button at the top of the sidebar. The folder is read in place and becomes a source of your library.
• Single files. Use File → Open files… (Ctrl+O), or drag files from File Explorer onto the UniReader window. A file from outside your folders is kept under Buffer (opened files) in the sidebar.
• Files into a folder of your library. Drag them from File Explorer onto that folder in the sidebar. They are copied into it.

Finding your way around

• The tab bar starts with Library, which always brings you back to your books; each book you open gets its own tab next to it.
• The sidebar on the left lists All documents, the reading shelves (In progress, Finished, Recent), your COLLECTIONS and your FOLDERS.
• The library in the middle shows your books as covers, with a search box, a cover-size slider and format chips above them.
• The reader replaces the library when a book’s tab is active; its sidebar holds the outline, pages, bookmarks, notes and audio.

Continue reading

In the library, a Continue reading card shows the last book you were reading and how far you got. Click Continue and you are back on the page where you stopped. Books you have marked as finished never appear there.

Your library

The library is a catalog of the folders you showed UniReader. Your files stay where they are: shelves, collections and corrected titles live in UniReader, and File Explorer keeps your folders as they were.

Folders

Each folder you added is a source. Under FOLDERS in the sidebar, you find it with its subfolders, exactly as on disk; click one to see what it holds, and use Expand all or Collapse all to open or close the tree. Drag a book onto another folder to move the file there. To add a source, use File → Add a folder…. When you have added books in File Explorer, Rescan (or File → Rescan all folders) brings the library up to date.

Reading shelves

Three shelves fill themselves: In progress, Finished and Recent. Next to them, Buffer (opened files) keeps the files you opened from outside your folders.

Collections

1. Click New… next to COLLECTIONS in the sidebar, give the collection a name and click Save.
2. Right-click a book and choose Add to a collection, then the collection.
3. Right-click a collection to edit or delete it. Deleting a collection leaves its books in the library.

Smart collections

A smart collection fills itself from rules and stays up to date as your library changes. Click Rule… next to COLLECTIONS, give it a name, then fill in what matters: The title contains, The author contains, The publisher contains, The path contains, a range of years, Added within the last (days), the Formats and the Reading state. A book appears when it matches every criterion you filled in.

Search, sort and filter

• Search. Type part of a title, an author, a publisher, a year or a file name in the box above the covers. Click In the content to look inside PDFs and text documents as well.
• Order. Books are listed by title; Recent lists them by the date you last opened them.
• Filter. The chips PDF, eBooks, Comics, DjVu and CHM show one family at a time, and Subfolders shows the books of every subfolder at once.
• Size. The slider next to the search box makes the covers bigger or smaller.

Covers

UniReader makes a cover for every book from the file itself. Right-click a book and choose Set cover from a page… or Set cover from an image… to change it, and Reset the cover to go back.

Correcting the details

File names are often a poor guide. Right-click a book and choose Edit metadata… to set its title, authors, year, publisher, ISBN and summary. Swap title and author fixes a book where the two were inverted. Select several books to change their authors, year or publisher at once. About the document… shows the details of the file.

Finding a book’s details online

Right-click a book and choose Look up information online…, then click Search: UniReader looks it up in Open Library and Crossref, with no account and no key. Click the right proposal to fill in the details, and tick Update the cover to take its cover as well. Nothing is kept until you click Save.

Articles and references

A folder of scientific papers reads better as a list of references. Right-click it in the sidebar and tick Article folder: its covers give way to a table of authors, title, journal, year and a Reference column with the DOI or the arXiv number. Its subfolders follow. Identify articles… looks every paper up in Crossref and arXiv in one go, and the BibTeX button in Edit metadata… copies a reference ready to paste into a paper.

Removing or deleting

• Remove from the library (Delete key) takes the book off your shelves and leaves the file on disk.
• Move File to Recycle Bin… (Shift+Delete) sends the file itself to the Recycle Bin.
• Either way, Ctrl+Z undoes it. To take a whole folder out of the library, right-click it and choose Remove the source folder; its files stay on disk.

Opening documents

A book opens in a tab, like a page in a browser. Keep a manual next to a novel, a paper next to its references, and move from one to the other without losing your place.

From the library

Double-click a cover, or right-click it and choose Open. The book opens in a new tab, at the page where you stopped. If it is already open, UniReader simply brings its tab forward.

From outside UniReader

Drag a book from File Explorer onto the UniReader window, or use File → Open files… (Ctrl+O) to choose one or several. It opens in a tab, and if it is not in one of your folders it is kept under Buffer (opened files), so you can find it again.

Tabs

• The first tab, Library, is always there. Each book adds a tab after it, closed with its ×, or with a middle click.
• Ctrl+Tab goes to the next tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab to the previous one; Ctrl+W closes the current tab. Ctrl+1 brings you back to the library, Ctrl+2 to Ctrl+9 go straight to the first eight books.
• The arrow at the end of the row lists every open tab.
• The tabs you leave open are there again the next time you start UniReader.

Tab groups

1. Right-click a tab and choose Create a tab group…, then give the group a name.
2. To add other tabs, right-click each one and choose Move to group. Remove from the group takes a tab out.
3. Right-click the group to Rename… it or change its Colour.
4. Ungroup dissolves the group and leaves every book open.

Which formats open

• Books: EPUB, MOBI, AZW, AZW3, PRC, FB2 and LIT.
• Documents: PDF, DOC, DOCX, RTF and TXT.
• Scans and references: DjVu and CHM.
• Comics and manga: CBZ, CBR and CB7.

Reading and moving around

UniReader adapts to each kind of document while keeping the same gestures. This chapter shows how to turn pages, choose a layout, jump through a book and find a passage.

Two kinds of documents

Fixed pages: PDF, DjVu and comics (CBZ, CBR, CB7) keep the layout of the printed page. You choose how the page fits the window and zoom in or out. Reflowable text: EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, FB2, CHM, LIT, Word, RTF and TXT flow into pages built for your window. You choose the text size, the spacing and the theme.

Turning pages

Press ← and → to turn the page, or use the arrows on each side of the page number in the toolbar. In PDF, DjVu and comics, Home and End go to the first and last page. The same commands are in the View menu: Previous page, Next page, First page, Last page.

One page, two pages or scrolling

For PDF, DjVu and comics, click the display button in the reader’s toolbar, or right-click the page. Choose Single page or Two pages, and Page by page or Continuous scrolling. In two-page view, the cover stays alone and the pages pair up after it. In reflowable documents, the Page layout button offers Single page and Two pages.

Fit and zoom

For PDF, DjVu and comics, the display menu offers Fit to width, Fit to page and Fit to height. View → Zoom in (Ctrl++), Zoom out (Ctrl+−) and Zoom 100% (Ctrl+0) change the scale. Keep these settings for this document type makes your choice the default for that format.

The table of contents

When a document is open, the left panel shows its Outline: click a chapter to go there. The Pages tab shows thumbnails of PDF, DjVu and comic pages. The + button adds your own entries to the outline.

Going to a page

In PDF, DjVu and comics, type a number in the page box of the toolbar and press Enter.

Back and Forward

After a jump in a PDF, a DjVu or a comic — a chapter, a search result, a page number — View → Go back (Alt+←) returns to where you were, and Redo the jump (Alt+→) goes there again. The same arrows are in the toolbar.

Finding a word

Choose Document → Search… (Ctrl+F) and type a word in the search box. Next match (F3) and Previous match (Shift+F3) move from one match to the next. Search works in PDF and in all reflowable formats.

Full screen

View → Full screen (F11) hides the menus, tabs and panels; move the mouse to the top or left edge to bring them back. Esc leaves full screen.

Back where you stopped

UniReader remembers your position in every document as you read, and reopens your tabs when you start it again. In the library, Continue reading brings back the book you were in. Document → Progress bar shows how far you are, just below the page.

Bookmarks, highlights and notes

Mark the places you want to find again, color the passages that matter and write your own notes beside them — in Markdown, with equations if you need them.

Bookmarks

Choose Edit → Add a bookmark (Ctrl+B), or open the Bookmarks tab of the reader sidebar and click +. Double-click a bookmark to go back to its page; select it and click − to delete it.

Highlight a passage

1. Choose the color first: click the round swatch in the reader toolbar (Highlight colour) and pick yellow, green, pink, blue, orange or purple.
2. Select the text on the page.
3. Click Highlight in the toolbar, or press Ctrl+H.

Your highlights

Highlights appear in the Notes tab of the reader sidebar, together with your notes. Double-click one to go back to its page.

Write a note

1. Choose Edit → Add a note (Ctrl+Shift+N), or open the Notes tab of the sidebar and click +.
2. The editor opens beside the page. Give the note a title.
3. Leave Markdown + KaTeX ticked to format the text, and watch the Preview below as you type.
4. Click Save.

Markdown and equations

Notes accept headings, bold and italics, lists, links, quotes and tables. Equations are written in LaTeX: $…$ inside a sentence, $$…$$ for an equation on its own line. The Preview shows the result as you type; drag the divider to give the editor or the preview more room.

Your notes

The Notes tab lists your notes and your highlights. Double-click a note to open it in the editor; select it and click − to delete it.

All your annotations in one place

In the library, the Annotations shelf gathers the notes, highlights and bookmarks of the whole library.

Export

• File → Export notes (Markdown)… writes the document’s notes, highlights and bookmarks to a .md file.
• File → Export notes (PDF)… makes a PDF of them, with formatting and equations.
• Both commands are also in the ⋯ button at the right of the reader toolbar.

Listen

UniReader can read the text aloud with the voices of Windows. And when a book comes with its own recordings — a language course, an audiobook — you can play them next to the page.

Read aloud

1. Open the document at the place you want to hear.
2. Choose Document → Read aloud (Ctrl+Shift+L), or click the play button in the reader toolbar.
3. The play button then pauses and resumes; Stop reading aloud stops.

What is read

UniReader reads the page you are on. If you have selected a passage, it reads that passage instead. In a PDF or a DjVu book, it can carry on to the next page by itself.

Language, voice and speed

Click the voice button next to the play button (Reading voice and speed) to set the Language, the Voice and the Speed, and to tick Automatically continue to the next page. The same settings are under File → Settings… → Reading & library, in the Read aloud section.

Listen while you read

A document can have its own recordings: the drills of a language course, the chapters of an audiobook. You attach the folder that holds them once, and the Audio tab of the reader sidebar lists its tracks. Nothing is copied or moved — the folder stays where it is.

Attach a folder of recordings

1. Open the document and choose the Audio tab in the reader sidebar.
2. Click Choose a folder… and pick the folder. Subfolders are included.
3. Each audio file becomes a track, named after the file, with its path below it.

Play the tracks

Click a track to play it. Above the list: Previous track, Back 10 seconds, Play / Pause and Next track, with the elapsed time and a slider to move within the track. The sound keeps playing while you turn the pages or switch to another tab of the sidebar.

Formats

UniReader plays MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG, WMA and MP4 audio.

The AI Coach

Stuck on a passage? The reading coach answers questions about the page you are reading, explains, sums up or quizzes you. UniReader supplies the conversation and the page; you bring your own AI account.

Open the assistant

With a document open, click AI Coach in the reader toolbar, or choose Document → Reading coach (Ctrl+Shift+I). The Coach panel opens to the right of the page; the × button closes it.

Connect your account

1. The first time, the panel asks for a key. Choose the provider in the list: OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google (Gemini), xAI (Grok), Mistral, Groq or DeepSeek.
2. Paste the API key you created on the provider’s website, then click Save the key.
3. Forget removes the key from this computer.
4. In File → Settings… → AI Coach, Provider accounts lists your keys with their model and, for OpenRouter and DeepSeek, the credits left (Refresh credits). Enter or update a key adds or replaces one.

Choose the model

Next to the provider, a list shows the models it offers; the round-arrow button refreshes it from the provider. A key alone is not enough: the model answers, and your account with that provider pays for the replies.

Ask a question

Type your question in the box at the bottom and press Enter (Shift+Enter starts a new line). When the conversation is empty, ready-made questions are offered: Understand the page, Quiz me, Explain the hard parts and Key terms. Stop interrupts an answer that is being written.

What goes with the question

Under the question box, choose Text, Image or Both: the text of the page, a picture of it — useful for formulas, tables or a scanned page — or the two together. The line above sums up what will go: the page, an estimate of tokens, the selection and the size of the image.

Ask about a selected passage

Select a passage on the page before asking: Include the selection appears under the question box. Ticked, the question is about that passage, and the page goes along as context.

Keep an answer

Below the conversation: Copy copies the last answer, Note saves it as a Markdown note of the document, in the Notes tab, and Clear starts afresh.

Your usual chat site

The Browser mode, at the top of the panel, opens ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Copilot or OpenRouter Chat inside the panel. It is a chat on the provider’s site, without sending the UniReader document.

Privacy: what is sent, when, to whom

• Nothing from the document leaves your PC until you send a question or click a ready-made one. To fill the model list, the app asks the provider for its models, with your key and nothing from the document.
• With each question go the title, author, publisher, year and format of the document, the page number, the text of the page (up to 24,000 characters) or its image, the selected passage if you included it, and the earlier exchanges of the conversation. Clear empties it.
• With a direct key, everything goes straight to the provider you chose. Through OpenRouter, the pages you send transit through OpenRouter, which can see their content.
• Your keys are encrypted with your Windows account and stored on this PC only. UniReader never receives your key, your questions or your pages.

Using several devices

UniReader for Windows reads the books you keep on each PC, and your purchase follows your Microsoft account from one PC to the next.

Your purchase on several PCs

Premium bought in the Microsoft Store belongs to your Microsoft account. On another PC, sign in to the Microsoft Store with the same account and install UniReader: it checks your license each time it starts, and unlocks itself.

Your books on each PC

Each PC has its own UniReader library, made of the folders you add on that PC with File → Add a folder…. If your books live in OneDrive, Dropbox or another synced folder, add that folder on each PC: the service brings the same files to every PC under your own account, and UniReader reads them where they are. Reading positions and notes are kept on the PC where you made them.

An iPhone or iPad as well

UniReader for iPhone and iPad can receive books from your PC’s browser over Wi‑Fi. In its library, tap Import, then Import via Wi-Fi and Start server, and open the address it shows in a browser on your PC: drag your files onto the page and click Import. Bought in the App Store, that version is separate from the one in the Microsoft Store.

Themes and appearance

Give the page the color and the type that suit your eyes, by day and by night. Themes, text size and spacing apply to the reflowable formats; PDF, DjVu and comics keep the look of the printed page.

Reading themes

Click the Background style button of the reader’s toolbar. A row of color swatches offers light, sepia, paper and two dark pages, plus Auto — follows the application’s mode. Below them, you can lay a texture on the page: Ruled, Dotted or a paper grain.

Text size, spacing and margins

The Text size button has A− and A+, from 12 to 30 pixels. The Background style button also holds the Line spacing and Margins sliders, so that color and spacing are set in one place.

For one book or for all

Your settings are remembered for each type of document. Default in the Background style panel keeps the current style for every book of that format.

Light or dark app

Choose View → Dark mode to darken the library, tabs and toolbars, and View → Light mode to come back. The same switch is in Settings → General → Appearance (Dark theme). The Auto reading theme follows it.

Pictures on dark pages

With a dark theme, pictures in a book keep a light background, so that drawings and diagrams with transparent parts stay readable.

Printing and exporting

Put a document on paper, or your notes alongside it.

Printing a document

Open the document and choose File → Print… (Ctrl+P), or Print… in the ⋯ menu at the end of the reader’s toolbar. PDF, DjVu and comics go through the Windows print dialog, one page per sheet; EPUB and the other text formats print from the reader’s own print dialog.

Printing your annotations

When the document has notes, highlights or bookmarks, Print… first asks What would you like to print?: choose The document or Notes, highlights and bookmarks.

Exporting your notes

File → Export notes (Markdown)… and Export notes (PDF)… save your notes, highlights and bookmarks as a file. More in the chapter on notes.

Finding the file

In the library, right-click a book and choose Show in File Explorer: the folder opens with the file selected, ready to copy or attach to an email.

Free and Premium

PDF and EPUB are free to read for as long as you like. Premium opens every other format and the tools around them — and you can try all of it free for 10 days.

What is free

Without Premium, UniReader for Windows reads PDF and EPUB files, for as long as you like and without an account.

What Premium adds

• Every other format: DjVu, MOBI, CHM, comics, office documents and more.
• The AI Coach, the reading assistant that works with your own AI account.

The 10-day trial

For 10 days, every Premium feature is open. The trial costs nothing, asks for no payment details, and nothing is charged when it ends. It runs on this PC, and it starts only when you choose.

Starting the trial

You can also start it without opening a document: in File → Settings… → Subscription / Purchase, click Start the 10-day free trial.

1. Open a document in a format that is part of Premium, such as a comic or a DjVu book. A window tells you which format it is and offers the trial.
2. Click Start the free trial and open: the trial starts and the document opens straight away.
3. Unlock the full version shows the offers instead, and Later closes the window.

While it runs, and when it ends

• File → Settings… → Subscription / Purchase shows the days left.
• When the trial ends, PDF and EPUB stay free and nothing in your library is deleted. The other formats ask for Premium again.

Buying Premium

In File → Settings… → Subscription / Purchase, choose the One-time purchase with Buy, or a Monthly subscription or Annual subscription with Subscribe. Each shows the price for your country, and the Microsoft Store handles the payment.

Restoring a purchase

There is nothing to restore by hand: UniReader asks the Microsoft Store for your license each time it starts. If a purchase is not recognized, check that the Microsoft Store is signed in with the account you bought it with, then reopen UniReader.

Changing or canceling a subscription

The Microsoft Store handles renewals and cancellation, under your Microsoft account.

Help and troubleshooting

Where to find help inside UniReader, what to do when a file won’t open or goes missing, and how to reach us when something is still wrong.

The help inside the app

Choose Help → Help centre, or press F1 wherever you are. Its search field finds a word in every page.

A file that won’t open

When a document cannot be read, UniReader tells you in the reader instead of closing — for example that a PDF is damaged or isn’t a PDF at all.

• Try another file of the same format. If it opens, the first file is at fault; if it doesn’t, the reader is, and we want to know.
• UniReader reads DRM-free files. A book protected by DRM, such as one bought in the Kindle store, opens in the app of the shop that sold it.
• If the file opens in another app, send it to us: it helps us improve the reader.
• Formats that are not free ask for Premium once the trial is over: see Free and Premium.

EPUB, MOBI, CHM or LIT on Windows

These books, and text documents, are displayed with Microsoft’s WebView2, which is part of Windows 11. If one of them shows a message saying WebView2 is required, install the free WebView2 Runtime from Microsoft’s website, then reopen the book.

Files missing after you moved them

UniReader reads your files where they are, without copying them. If you moved or renamed files in File Explorer, choose File → Rescan all folders so the library lists them where they are now.

Premium not recognized

Check that the Microsoft Store is signed in with the account you bought with, then reopen UniReader: it checks your license each time it starts. See Free and Premium.

Contacting support

Write to support@pasahome.org, for a question, a bug, an idea or a purchase. A real person reads every message, usually within one or two working days. To help us fix things quickly, please include:

• the app version (File → Settings… → About) and your Windows version;
• the format of the file and, if you can, the file itself;
• what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead.