What software can I use to view epub documents?

Question

What software can I use to view .epub documents?

score 268 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 08 '23 at 19:12

calibre

You can use calibre software for viewing .epub documents.

To install calibre from Flathub, or (deb package) on terminal:

sudo apt install calibre

If you don't want to launch the full calibre client just to view your e-book files, you can add a .desktop launcher to calibre's inbuilt ebook viewer:

Create a new .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications:

 gedit ~/.local/share/applications/calibre-ebook-viewer.desktop

Copy and paste the following passage into the file:

 #!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
 Version=1.0
 Type=Application
 Terminal=false
 Icon=calibre
 Exec=ebook-viewer
 Name=Calibre Ebook Viewer
 Comment=Display .epub files and other ebook formats
 MimeType=application/x-mobipocket-ebook;application/epub+zip;
 StartupWMClass=calibre-ebook-viewer

Save the file. You should now be able to launch Calibre's inbuilt ebook viewer both from the dash and through the right click "Open with" menu.

score 103 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 21 '22 at 07:46

103

I recommend fbreader. Small, fast, single key page turning. Quite pleasant.

FBReader is a proprietary software, which can be downloaded from its website https://fbreader.org/ and in the Snap Store.

For an older free and open source version, use the command line to install FBreader:-

sudo apt-get install fbreader

edited Jan 21 '22 at 07:46

Error404

8,278
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answered Nov 22 '10 at 13:56

Samizdata

1,217

score 40 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 21 '22 at 07:48

40

I prefer Okular, a document viewer made for KDE. It has features including bookmarks and highlighting.

It's available in the main Ubuntu repository and can be installed on a plain vanilla Ubuntu installation; Kubuntu is not required.

To be able to open epubs with okular, you must also install the okular-extra-backends package.

sudo apt-get install okular okular-extra-backends

edited Jan 21 '22 at 07:48

Error404

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answered Jun 28 '13 at 15:05

Will

705

score 29 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 22 '10 at 16:50

Another useful option, try this in Firefox; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/45281/, a fairly good extension for the Firefox web browser that lets you read .epubs from the browser, especially good since on Ubuntu you are likely to be using Firefox and it is usually kept open when you are using your computer.

score 22 · Answer 5 · edited May 10 '24 at 22:30

22

Use Foliate, an epic epub reader. It support text to speech, on the fly translator, word meaning and Wikipedia search.

You can download deb file. Or install ppa on ubuntu 18.04+ via

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apandada1/foliate
sudo apt update
sudo apt install foliate

Foliate can also be installed with snap by:

snap install foliate

edited May 10 '24 at 22:30

zx485

2,865

answered Mar 15 '21 at 10:40

Bapi

449

score 16 · Answer 6 · edited Jan 08 '19 at 23:15

16

MuPDF can read epub files, and is only 3 MB.

It may be too minimalistic for some, but I loved it! Way faster than xpdf!

sudo apt-get install mupdf

edited Jan 08 '19 at 23:15

sunyata

275

answered Apr 26 '17 at 13:57

Atle

161

Сергей Казнадей · Answer 7 · 2014-08-20T17:15:02.860

3

Coolreader 3 http://sourceforge.net/projects/crengine/ one or two pages, bookmarks, memory last reading pages, settings background, fonts, fonts color. Settings avilable only for root, but save for user. PPA https://launchpad.net/~vovansrnd/+archive/ubuntu/coolreader

Editor fb2 http://fb2edit.lintest.ru

edited Aug 20 '14 at 17:15

answered Aug 20 '14 at 16:06

Сергей Казнадей

31

score 2 · Answer 8 · edited Apr 03 '25 at 21:59

2

To view an epub ducument from terminal:

pandoc yourfile.epub | lynx --stdin

You should install lynx and pandoc using:

sudo apt install lynx pandoc

edited Apr 03 '25 at 21:59

BeastOfCaerbannog

16,703

answered Jul 27 '22 at 19:28

Name

191

score 2 · Answer 9 · edited Mar 28 '17 at 10:30

2

Compared to Calibre and FBreader, I find Readium Chrome extension offers a much better user experience:

Readium is written in javascript and looks much more modern. Hope it will help other Linux users.

edited Mar 28 '17 at 10:30

Zanna

72,312

answered Mar 28 '17 at 09:46

user93581

127

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 01 '18 at 12:16

1

nov.el is an excellent Emacs package that allows you to read EPUB files in Emacs.

There is also a corresponding Spacemacs layer which allows you use all the Evil (Vim) key bindings when reading.

answered Aug 01 '18 at 12:16

xji

642

score 1 · Answer 11 · edited Mar 18 '21 at 01:57

1

If you care about UI/UX kind of thing, I recommend Foliate. It's neat and crisp.

edited Mar 18 '21 at 01:57

zx485

2,865

answered Mar 15 '21 at 11:50

moonshadowolf13

391
3
7

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Sep 13 '15 at 21:18

lucidor at http://lucidor.org/lucidor/download.php does a decent job. I completely removed calibre from my system because it doesn't let me leave the books in my own directory structure. (Then spent hours moving the thousands of books into a directory structure I like by hand.) I couldn't find coolreader to try. Okular I like but the extensions did not work on epub for me. fbreader works but you have to open it up first and then the book whereas lucidor you can right click from the file manager to associate epubs to lucidor.

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Oct 07 '17 at 23:33

1

Another option may be Ebook-Viewer, a GTK ePub reader. But it seems to lack DRM support.

answered Oct 07 '17 at 23:33

Hibou57

1,205

What software can I use to view epub documents?

13 Answers13

calibre

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