[HTML] Mangareader

See Releases for the latest downloads and changelogs.

Try the demo in your browser.

Mangareader is a simple image viewer designed for reading digital comic books. It displays images in a folder or ZIP/CBZ/RAR/CBR/7Z/CB7 archive as a single, continuously scrollable page in your default browser.

This project was made out of frustration with the overall clunkiness I experienced with other comic book readers I tried on the Windows platform. If you need features like bookmarks, history, library management, cloud sync, etc. this is not the comic reader for you. This app is focused only on providing a simple and fluid viewing experience.

Features

• View your images in a continuously scrollable page.
• Various automatic resizing options.
• Horizontal view options (LTR and RTL)
• Use all the familiar navigation controls available on your browser/device setup.
• Open images directly from a folder or contained in a comic book archive file.
  • Supported archive formats: cbz, cbr, cb7, zip, rar, 7z
  • Supported image formats: bmp, png, jpg, gif, apng, svg, webp
• Light and dark themes.

Supported platforms

• Windows
• MacOS 12 (beta support)
  • Note: does not support RAR/CBR archives

Install

Application builds are located under Releases.

Download and extract your desired version, and the application is ready to use. No installation is required.

Usage

The app can be started in several different ways:

• Run mangareader.exe (Windows) or HTML Mangareader.app (MacOS) and open an image file or comic book archive.
• Right click an image file or archive, and "Open with..." the Mangareader executable.
• Drag an image file, image folder, or archive onto Mangareader executable or a shortcut.

Advanced options

In addition to the in-app options, some advanced options can be configured in the app's config.ini file (if it doesn't exist, make sure you have version >2.2.0 and run the app to generate it):

• Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\html-mangareader\config.ini
• MacOS: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/html-mangareader/config.ini

config.ini options

• browser (default: none): Windows only - specify the browser for the app to use. Leave empty to use the default browser.
  • Example (Windows): browser = C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
  • Example (Mac): browser = open -a "/Applications/Safari.app" %%s
    • For unknown reasons this works only unreliably and is therefore not officially supported; attempt at your own risk
• disableNavButtons (default: no): hide the next/previous page controls in the app.
  • Example: disableNavButtons = yes
• disableNavBar (default: no): disable the right side quick navigation control in the app. This can speed up the loading of large image sets.
  • Example: disableNavBar = yes
• dynamicImageLoading (default: no): reduce memory usage of the app by unloading images that are not currently visible. Greatly decreases memory usage for large image sets, but may impact scrolling performance and cause issues when opening multiple tabs.
  • Example: dynamicImageLoading = yes

For developers

Prerequisites

• Python 3.7+
• Node.js 16+
• PyInstaller: pip install pyinstaller (only required for building binary)

Setup

First, ensure the prerequisites above are installed on the system.

Then, from the repository root:

1. Install Python dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt
2. Install Node.js dependencies: npm install

Running without building binary (Windows/MacOS)

The application can be started without building a binary. Examples:

Start reader with open file prompt

npm run start

# or, to autoreload on source file changes:
npm run watch

Directly open an image, folder, or archive

npm run start "path/to/open"

# or, to autoreload on source file changes:
npm run watch "path/to/open"

Build distributable

Building the executable is done using PyInstaller.

Windows

Run build-win.cmd. The executable will be created in dist\mangareader.

PyInstaller options can be configured in the script. See the documentation for details.

MacOS

From the repository root, run:

npm run compile
pyinstaller --noconfirm mangareader-darwin-x86.spec

The application bundle will be created at dist/HTML Mangareader.app.