wxReader

wxReader is a comic/manga/pdf document reader built with wxWidgets (wxPython), MuPDF (PyMuPDF), OpenGL (PyOpenGL), libvips (pyvips), and Python. Currently support Windows and Linux.

wxReaderVoiceCtrl is a hands-free external controller app for wxReader, recognizing voice command offline by vosk and pyaudio. GUI is built with wxPython.

wxReaderEyeTrackCtrl is a hands-free external controller app for wxReader, recognizing eye movement and blinking gesture offline by EyeTrax through a webcam. GUI is also built with wxPython.

-> Download link <-
wxReader for Windows10+ (>1809)
wxReader for Debian13
external controllers for Windows10+_avx2 (>1809)

Build/run from source: see below ↓

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Features

Feature	Description
File Format Support	PDF, EPUB, ePub, ZIP, CBZ (manga or comics archive files).
Paging Strategy	Single Page and Two-Page spreads (with optional blank start page). Supports Right-to-Left (RTL) reading.
Content Extraction	Extract text and images directly from specific pages to the clipboard or disk.
Image Processing	Real-time built-in filters and enhancements. Support custom OpenGL frag shaders.
Zoom and View	Fit Width, Fit Page, Manual Zoom, Fullscreen Mode, and customizable background color.
Navigation	Sidebar with Outline (TOC) and File Browser tabs. Text search dialog, and a standalone TOC dialog.
Gallery Mode	View all thumbnails or frontpages of all books inside a same folder like a gallery.
File History	Automatically saves recent files and reading progress on close.
Interaction	Drag-and-drop file loading and full keyboard operation support.
External control	(Default off.) Send command+token to a local UDP port to do page turning.

Accessibility features: The two independent external control programs, wxReaderVoiceCtrl and wxReaderEyeTrackCtrl, respectively provides offline voice-activated page turning commands and offline eye gesture based page-turning via computer camera recognition, triggered by “blinking twice while looking at a designated area of the screen.” (The are fully offline and requires a not-potato CPU.)

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Installation

Windows

1. From sauce (latest dev):

   1. Install Python 3.12 and uv, uv --project . sync.
   2. Download and put the libvips shared library *.dll files inside .\src.
   3. Sync dependencies with uv.
   4. Build with .\build.bat on Windows x64. (Run the build script inside root folder.)
   5. (Notes: upgrade pymupdf will fail the compilation.)
   6. Optional: uv --project .\extctrl\voice sync, uv --project .\extctrl\eye_track sync, then build with .\build_*.bat.

2. Pre-compiled binary (stable): portable .exe files are provided on the Releases page. Here are links to download (for win10+ x86_64):

   1. wxReader
   2. wxReaderVoiceCtrl
   3. wxReaderEyeTrackCtrl

3. Upgrade from older versions: simply copy the wxReader.cfg and pswd.txt files containing all user settings to the folder of a new version. You (probably) can also just unzip and overwrite existing files in the old folder.

Linux

Tested on platform: Linux-6.12.73+deb13-amd64-x86_64-with-glibc2.41

1. Run from sauce (clone the linux-dev branch of the repo!):

   1. Install Python 3.13 and uv, uv --project . sync.
   2. sudo apt install libvips42t64 python3-wxgtk4.0.
   3. uv venv --python /usr/bin/python3 --system-site-packages, and then activate the venv.
   4. cd src
   5. ../.venv/bin/python wxReader.py

2. Build your own binary:

uv --project . run pyinstaller \
  --name wxReader \
  --distpath build \
  --workpath build/pyi-build \
  --specpath build/pyi-spec \
  --onedir \
  --icon "$(pwd)/src/icon.png" \
  --add-data "$(pwd)/src/icon.png:icon.png" \
  --add-data "$(pwd)/src/filters:filters" \
  --add-data "$(pwd)/src/locale:locale" \
  --exclude-module tkinter \
  --exclude-module pillow \
  --collect-submodules OpenGL \
  src/wxReader.py

3. Pre-compiled binary: portable files are provided on the Releases page.

Edit translation

See /tools.txt in the repo.

Language support currently: en_US, ja_JP, zh_SG and zh_TW.

Message files are extracted with pybabel and translated with tool Virtaal.

How to ... in wxReader

Check the Menubar -> Info -> Help Topic manual of wxReader.

TODO

• keys for navigation can conflict with input fields