SimpleUI for KOReader

A clean, distraction-free UI plugin for KOReader that transforms your reading experience. SimpleUI adds a dedicated Home Screen, a customisable bottom navigation bar, a top status bar, and a reworked library title bar, giving you instant access to your library, history, collections, and reading stats without navigating through nested menus.

<div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; flex-wrap: wrap; gap: 10px; max-width: 1000px; justify-content: center;"> <img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4ea92760-c2bf-488b-9f5a-1f663157c97f" width="240" height="324" alt="simpleUI1" style="object-fit: contain;" /> <img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a1a7a2c7-6c0f-484e-b6fa-c78474661480" width="240" height="324" alt="simpleUI2" style="object-fit: contain;" /> <img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1707f5c2-e367-47b8-90a9-9a9549bd9e67" width="240" height="324" alt="simpleUI3" style="object-fit: contain;" /> <img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fd443a96-e12c-4dc7-9e69-103c444458af" width="240" height="324" alt="simpleUI4" style="object-fit: contain;" /> </div> ---

Features

Home Screen

The centrepiece of SimpleUI. A home screen that gives you everything at a glance:

Clock & Date — a large, readable clock with full date display
Currently Reading — your active book with cover art, title, author, progress bar, percentage read, and estimated time left
Recent Books — a row of up to 5 recent books with cover thumbnails and progress indicators; tap any to resume reading
Collections — your KOReader collections displayed as tappable cover cards, right on the home screen
Reading Goals — visual progress tracker for your annual and daily reading goals, including physical books read
Reading Stats — compact stat cards showing today's reading time, pages, streaks, and all-time totals
Quick Actions — up to 3 customisable rows of shortcut buttons (Library, History, Wi-Fi toggle, Brightness, Stats, and more)
New Books — a row of up to 5 recently added books sorted by file date; unread books are labelled "New" and started books show their read percentage; opt-in via Arrange Modules
Quote of the Day — optional literary header, randomly picked from a curated list of 100+ quotes; can also show your own highlights
Module ordering — rearrange Home Screen modules in any order to match your workflow
Per-module scaling — resize each module independently, or lock all scales together for uniform adjustments
Start with Home Screen — set the Home Screen as the first screen KOReader opens every time you pick up your device

A persistent tab bar at the bottom of the screen for one-tap navigation:

Up to 5 fully customisable tabs: Library, History, Collections, Favourites, Continue Reading, Home Screen, Wi-Fi Toggle, Brightness, Stats, Bookmark Browser, and custom folder or collection shortcuts
3 display modes: icons only, text only, or icons + text
Navpager mode — replaces the pagination bar with Prev/Next arrows at the edges of the bottom bar; arrows dim when there is no previous or next page
Hold anywhere on the bar to instantly open navigation settings

Top Status Bar

A slim status bar always visible at the top of the screen:

Displays clock, battery level, Wi-Fi status, frontlight brightness, disk usage, and RAM all configurable
Each item can be placed on the left or right side independently

Custom Title Bar

A reworked title bar for the Library, History, Collections, and other full-screen views:

Back button — replaces KOReader's default navigation with a cleaner chevron; hides automatically at the root folder, and also hides when the Library's Lock Home Folder setting is active and you are already at the home folder
Search button — quick access to file search, compacts into the freed slot when the back button is hidden
Menu button — opens the KOReader main menu
Page number in title — shows "Page X of Y" in the subtitle when browsing multi-page views (enabled automatically by Navpager)
Button size — three sizes (Compact, Default, Large) for the title bar buttons
Separate layouts — Library buttons and sub-page buttons (History, Collections, etc.) can be configured independently

Folder Covers

Custom cover art for folders in the Library mosaic view:

Automatically uses the first book cover found inside a folder
Supports a .cover.* image file placed manually in the folder for full control
Long-press any folder and tap Set folder cover… to pick a specific book's cover as the folder's cover, only visible when Folder Covers is enabled
Optional folder name label with configurable position (top, centre, bottom) and style (solid or transparent background)
Optional item count badge with configurable position
Hide selection underline for a cleaner look

Quick Actions

Shortcut buttons configurable both on the Home Screen and in the bottom bar:

Assign any action to a custom folder, collection, or KOReader plugin
Quick Wi-Fi toggle and frontlight control
Power menu (Restart, Quit) accessible as a tab
Bookmark Browser — browse your highlights and bookmarks across all books

Settings

All features are accessible via Menu → Tools → SimpleUI

Installation

Download this repository as a ZIP — click Code → Download ZIP
Extract the folder and confirm it is named simpleui.koplugin
Copy the folder to the plugins/ directory on your KOReader device:
- Kobo: /.adds/koreader/plugins
- Kindle: /koreader/plugins
- Android: koreader/plugins at the root of onboard storage.
Restart KOReader
Go to Menu → Tools → SimpleUI to enable and configure the plugin

Tip: After enabling the plugin, tap the Home Screen tab in the bottom bar to open your new home screen.

Tip: To make the Home Screen your default start screen, go to Menu → Tools → SimpleUI → Home Screen → Start with Home Screen. From then on, KOReader opens directly to your home screen every time you turn on your device.

🌍 Translations

SimpleUI has full translation support. The UI language is detected automatically from your KOReader language setting — no configuration needed.

Included languages

Language	File	Status
English	(built-in)	Complete
Português (Brasil)	`locale/pt_BR.po`	Complete
Português (Portugal)	`locale/pt_PT.po`	Complete
Polski (Polish)	`locale/pl.po`	Partial (67.7% — 248 missing)
Magyar (Hungarian)	`locale/hu.po`	Partial (64.7% — 271 missing)
Български (Bulgarian)	`locale/bg.po`	Partial (64.6% — 272 missing)
简体中文 (Chinese Simplified)	`locale/zh_CN.po`	Partial (64.6% — 272 missing)
Русский (Russian)	`locale/ru.po`	Partial (62.6% — 287 missing)
Deutsch (German)	`locale/de.po`	Partial (52.0% — 369 missing)
Čeština (Czech)	`locale/cs.po`	Partial (47.5% — 403 missing)
Türkçe (Turkish)	`locale/tr.po`	Partial (47.4% — 404 missing)
Українська (Ukrainian)	`locale/uk.po`	Partial (41.9% — 446 missing)
Svenska (Swedish)	`locale/sv.po`	Partial (41.4% — 450 missing)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)	`locale/vi.po`	Partial (40.8% — 455 missing) ⚠️
Français (French)	`locale/fr.po`	Partial (40.1% — 460 missing) ⚠️
Română (Romanian)	`locale/ro.po`	Partial (43.0% — 438 missing)
Română (Moldova)	`locale/ro_MD.po`	Partial (43.0% — 438 missing)
Español	`locale/es.po`	Partial (33.6% — 510 missing)
Italiano (Italian)	`locale/it_IT.po`	Partial (38.9% — 469 missing) ⚠️
繁體中文 (Chinese Traditional)	`locale/zh_TW.po`	Partial (38.4% — 473 missing)

⚠️ These files contain syntax errors and may not load correctly. Contributions to fix them are welcome.

Adding a new language

All 768 strings in the plugin are translatable. To add a new language:

Copy locale/simpleui.pot to locale/<lang>.po, using the standard locale code for your language (examples: de, fr, it, ja)
Open the file in any text editor or a dedicated PO editor such as Poedit
For each entry, fill in the msgstr field with your translation:

po
msgid "Currently Reading"
msgstr "Aktuell gelesen"

Save the file inside the locale/ folder — no code changes needed
Restart KOReader; the plugin picks up the new language automatically

The plugin first tries an exact match for the locale code (e.g. pt_PT.po), then falls back to the language prefix (e.g. pt.po), then falls back to English.

Notes for translators

Placeholders like %d, %s, and %% must be kept in your translation exactly as they appear in the msgid — you can reorder them if your language requires it, but not remove them
\n is a line break — keep it in the same position
Never modify the msgid line — only edit msgstr
If a msgstr is left empty (""), the English original is shown as a fallback
Submitting your translation as a Pull Request is very welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md

🔧 Customisation

Custom Quote of the Day

You can supply your own quotes by placing a .lua file in the custom quotes folder on your device:

<KOReader settings dir>/simpleui/custom_quotes/

(<KOReader settings dir> is typically /mnt/onboard/.adds/koreader/settings on Kobo or /mnt/us/koreader/settings on Kindle.)

The file must return a table of entries in this format:

lua
return {
    { q = "Quote text.", a = "Author Name", b = "Book Title (optional)" },
    { q = "Another quote.", a = "Another Author" },
}

Once the file is in place, go to Menu → Tools → SimpleUI → Home Screen → Quote of the Day → Source → Custom and select your file. Changes take effect the next time the Home Screen is opened.

The custom_quotes/ folder is created automatically on first run and is never touched by plugin updates.

To add, remove or edit the built-in quote pool instead, open desktop_modules/quotes.lua inside the plugin folder and follow the same format.

Custom Quick-Action Icons

You can use your own SVG icons for custom quick-action buttons. Place .svg files in the custom icons folder:

<KOReader settings dir>/simpleui/custom_icons/

They will appear in the icon picker when creating or editing a custom quick action (Menu → Tools → SimpleUI → Quick Actions → Edit → Icon).

The custom_icons/ folder is created automatically on first run and is never touched by plugin updates.

Icon Packs

An icon pack lets you replace multiple SimpleUI icons at once — titlebar buttons, pagination chevrons, navigation tab icons, and quick-action icons — with a single tap.

Where to place packs

<KOReader settings dir>/simpleui/sui_icons/packs/

A pack can be either:

A subfolder containing icon files with the correct names (see below).
A .zip file containing those same files, either flat or inside a single root folder.

You can place packs there manually, or use Style → Icons → Icon Packs → Install pack from ZIP… to browse to a .zip directly on your device.

The packs/ folder is created automatically on first run and is never touched by plugin updates.

Applying a pack

Go to Menu → Tools → SimpleUI → Style → Icons → Icon Packs and tap the pack you want. Icons are applied immediately to the live UI — no restart needed.

Packs are additive and partial: only the slots covered by the pack are changed. Slots not included in a pack keep their current value (custom or default). To revert everything afterwards, use Style → Icons → System Icons → Reset All System Icons.

File-name conventions

Every file in the pack root must be an .svg or .png. The filename (without extension) determines which icon slot it fills:

SimpleUI titlebar buttons

Filename	Description
`sui_menu.svg`	Menu button (right side of titlebar)
`sui_search.svg`	Search button
`sui_back.svg`	Back / return button

Browse-by buttons (Library titlebar)

Filename	Description
`sui_browse_normal.svg`	Browse button — default / all books view
`sui_browse_author.svg`	Browse button — by author
`sui_browse_series.svg`	Browse button — by series
`sui_browse_tags.svg`	Browse button — by tags

Native pagination chevrons

Filename	Description
`sui_pager_prev.svg`	Previous page
`sui_pager_next.svg`	Next page
`sui_pager_first.svg`	First page
`sui_pager_last.svg`	Last page

Navpager arrows (Bottom Bar)

Filename	Description
`sui_navpager_prev.svg`	Navpager previous arrow
`sui_navpager_next.svg`	Navpager next arrow

Quick-action icons (prefix sui_action_)

Filename	Description
`sui_action_library.svg`	Library
`sui_action_homescreen.svg`	Home Screen
`sui_action_collections.svg`	Collections
`sui_action_history.svg`	History
`sui_action_continue.svg`	Continue Reading
`sui_action_favorites.svg`	Favourites
`sui_action_bookmark_browser.svg`	Bookmark Browser
`sui_action_wifi_toggle.svg`	Wi-Fi toggle (On)
`sui_action_wifi_toggle_off.svg`	Wi-Fi toggle (Off)
`sui_action_frontlight.svg`	Brightness
`sui_action_night_mode.svg`	Night Mode
`sui_action_stats_calendar.svg`	Reading Stats
`sui_action_power.svg`	Power menu
`sui_action_settings.svg`	SimpleUI Settings
`sui_action_browse_authors.svg`	Browse by Author
`sui_action_browse_series.svg`	Browse by Series
`sui_action_browse_tags.svg`	Browse by Tags

Quick Actions Defaults

Filename	Description
`sui_qa_folder.svg`	Default Quick Action icon (Folder)
`sui_qa_plugin.svg`	Default Quick Action icon (Plugin)
`sui_qa_system.svg`	Default Quick Action icon (System)

Folder Covers

Filename	Description
`sui_fc_empty.svg`	Placeholder cover for empty folders

Files with names that do not match any of the above are silently ignored.

Optional manifest (`pack.lua`)

A pack can include a pack.lua file in its root to provide metadata and override the default filename conventions:

lua
return {
    name        = "Night Owl",          -- display name in the menu (default: folder name)
    author      = "your-name",
    version     = "1.0",
    description = "Dark, rounded icons",

    -- Optional: map a slot ID to an alternative filename inside the pack.
    -- Useful if you want filenames that differ from the convention above.
    map = {
        sui_menu    = "hamburger.svg",
        sui_pager_prev = "arrow-left.svg",
    },
}

If pack.lua is absent, the pack name shown in the menu is the folder name (or the zip stem).

Typical pack structure

NightOwl/                       ← pack name (or NightOwl.zip)
  pack.lua                      ← optional manifest
  sui_menu.svg
  sui_search.svg
  sui_back.svg
  sui_browse_normal.svg
  sui_browse_author.svg
  sui_browse_series.svg
  sui_browse_tags.svg
  sui_pager_prev.svg
  sui_pager_next.svg
  sui_pager_first.svg
  sui_pager_last.svg
  sui_navpager_prev.svg
  sui_navpager_next.svg
  sui_action_library.svg
  sui_action_collections.svg
  sui_action_history.svg
  sui_action_continue.svg
  sui_action_frontlight.svg
  sui_action_night_mode.svg
  sui_action_power.svg
  sui_action_settings.svg

All files are optional — a valid pack can contain as few as one icon.

Notes for pack authors

Use .svg for best results; KOReader renders SVGs at any resolution. .png files work but may look blurry on high-DPI screens.
Icon paths are stored as absolute paths in settings. If you move or rename the pack folder after applying it, the icons will break until you re-apply the pack. Zip-installed packs are extracted to packs/ and are therefore stable.
To share a pack, zip the folder (NightOwl/) and distribute the .zip.