Free · Works offline · No account
The books already on your disk, finally readable in your browser
Point Paperly at one folder. It reads what is in there — EPUB, PDF, MOBI, AZW3, DOCX, Markdown — keeps your folders as shelves, and remembers every highlight, note and page you left off on.
Chrome and Edge, plus an Android app · nothing is uploaded anywhere
What it does
Ten things, done properly.
Your folder is the library
Choose a folder once. Its subfolders become your shelves, exactly as you arranged them. Nothing is copied, converted or moved — your files stay where you put them.
Six formats, one reader
EPUB, PDF, MOBI, AZW3, DOCX and Markdown all open in the same place, so a library does not have to be split across three apps.
Highlight and take notes
Five highlight colours, notes attached to the passage that prompted them, and every note from every book in one panel.
Export notes as Markdown
Your highlights come out as quoted Markdown with the book and location — the shape that pastes straight into Obsidian, Notion or a plain file.
Opens where you stopped
Progress is kept per book, so reopening a 600-page PDF puts you back on the page you were on, not on page one.
Five reading colours
Light, sepia, green, dim and dark — the Kindle set plus one for a room where the lamp is low. Every one clears WCAG AAA contrast for body text.
Rearrange without losing anything
Create folders, rename and move books from inside Paperly. A book is recognised by its contents, so your highlights and progress follow it wherever it goes.
Diagrams in your Markdown
Mermaid blocks are drawn as real diagrams instead of shown as code — and the drawing engine is only downloaded if a document actually contains one.
Translate a passage
Select a sentence you did not follow and get it back in your language, without leaving the page you are reading.
Offline, and yours
No account, no sign-in, no server. Your library, notes and progress live on your own device and the reader works with the network switched off.
How it works
Three steps, and only the first one needs you.
- Pick your folderYour browser asks which folder Paperly may read. That grant covers that folder and nothing else on your disk.
- Paperly reads what is thereTitles, authors and covers are pulled out of the files themselves. Subfolders stay as shelves.
- Read, mark up, come backHighlights, notes and your place are saved locally as you go, and are there next time you open the tab.
Also on Android
The same reader, the same library. On Android you pick your books folder through the system file picker, and Paperly can open anything shared to it from another app. The app asks for no storage permission of its own — only the folder you hand it — and its only declared permission is internet access, used for translation.
Get started
Install it, choose a folder, read. That is the whole setup.