Thorium Reader

a woman sitting at a table reading at her smartphone

logo of Thorium Reader Thorium Reader is the EPUB reader of choice for Windows 10 and 11, MacOS and Linux.

This EDRLab application is in constant development and aims at becoming a reference for accessing EPUB 3 publications in reflow or fixed layout format, audiobooks and visual narratives, PDF documents and DAISY 2.02 and 3 accessible ebooks; LCP protected or not.

It is localized in a large set of languages, each version offering new locales.

Huge efforts are also made to get Thorium Reader highly accessible for visually impaired and dyslexic people.

This application is free, with no ads and no leaks of private data.

This is the perfect tools for heavy readers, library patrons and students.

You’ll find here a documentation in English and French.

Quotes

“I love Thorium and have introduced it to my students for reading any digital content. It is doubly good when something that makes reading more accessible for visually impaired people is also something that makes things more flexible for all. It makes it so much easier to get buy-in for using it.” – Suzanne Norman (Simon Frazer University, Canada)

“I am very happy to have found this app. Its simple, easy to use, and most importantly, its very friendly for people who are blind and visually impaired.” (Noberto, USA)

“I can’t get enough of this ebook reader its clean and simple makes things easier for me to read! thank you I totally recommend this!” (Gigi, USA)

Sponsor Thorium Reader

This software is free, open-source and as such, its development is only possible because it is funded by different organizations. Among these, members of EDRLab, private or public grants and small recurring donations from happy users (individuals or companies).

Make a small recurring donation via Github Sponsor
Make a one-shot 1000 € donation via Stripe

Terms of Use, Privacy Policy

Please read carefully the following terms and conditions and the documents incorporated by reference therein before you begin using the Thorium Reader application.

Download Thorium Reader

The latest version of Thorium Reader is 2.2.0, released in December 2022.

This version features:

The display of accessibility metadata in publication info dialog.
Navigation history when following hyperlinks, with back / forward buttons (+ keyboard shortcuts for accessibility).
EPUB FXL Fixed-Layout zoom now with keyboard shorcuts (increase, decrease and reset).
Single centered pages on EPUB Fixed-Layout publications when the aspect ratio of the screen is portrait instead of landscape (this overrides the authored values).
Enhancements in MathML support via MathJax, for screen reader interaction (accessibility).
Support of the Calibre content server as a source of ebooks, via is OPDS feed, with an optional authentication.
Possibility to edit the title and URL of an OPDS feed.
Updated translations: English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Spanish, Swedish.

And a large set of fixes detailed in the release page.

Here are links to:

The Windows 11 version on the Windows Store.
The Windows version on the Github platform.
The MacOS version on the Github platform.
The Linux (.AppImage) on the Github platform, compatible with multiple distributions including Ubuntu 20.04 and newer (please tell us on which it works perfectly or not).
The Linux (.deb) version on the Github platform, compatible with Debian type distributions, including Ubuntu 20.04 and newer (requires GLIBC 2.28+).

For testers willing to check our latest developments, nightly builds of the Windows 10, MacOS and Linux versions can also be downloaded from the Readium Github platform.

Learn more about Thorium Reader

Daniel Weck made a presentation of the latest features of Thorium Reader during the Digital Publishing Summit 2022: here are the slides of his presentation.

Need support?

As every open-source project, support is mainly done via Github issues.

Here is the link to the EDRLab Github Thorium Reader issues repository.

If your unable to open a Github issue for any reason, you can also send an email to thorium-support at edrlab.org (@ replaced to avoid spam), we’ll make our possible to answer.

Why developing Thorium Reader?

For a long time, there was no modern EPUB 3 compliant reading application usable on Windows, OSX and Linux, properly accessible for print disabled people, with a good support for the LCP DRM and capable of browsing OPDS catalogs.

EDRLab decided to build such an application and release it for free, in order to provide users a great way to enjoy on a large screen EPUB publications, comics / manga / bandes dessinées, audiobooks, LCP protected PDF documents.

Print disabled people now benefit from an EPUB 3 reading app which supports screen readers like Jaws and NVDA on Windows, Voice Over on Mac.

Technology

Thorium Reader is based on the set of open-source chrome-less modules, a toolkit named Readium Desktop. Thorium Reader and Readium Desktop both rely on Electron.js, node.js and typescript, which are efficient cross-platform technologies. Thorium is also using React components based on HTML 5/CSS 3.

Media coverage

Introducing Thorium, a new free desktop EPUB reader for Windows and Mac, 24th Annual Accessing Higher Ground, November 2019, speakers Richard Orme (CEO) and George Kerscher (Chief Innovations Officer), DAISY Consortium.

Thorium Reader, une application de lecture pour Windows, macOS et Linux, January 2020, Actualitté.

Le logiciel de lecture d’ePub pour Windows MacOS et Linux, Thorium Reader, est disponible, March 2020, Lettresnumerique.be.

L’application Thorium Reader peut désormais lire les livres audio., April 2020, Actualitté.

Thorium Reader is a free cross-platform eBook reading app, May 2021, GoodEReader.