📖 Getting started with Aryan

In a nutshell: Aryan builds one library from the folders where your books already are, on any drive, and reads every book in its own reader. It never moves, renames or changes a book file, and it works without the internet.

1. Install Aryan

1. Download AryanEbookLibrary-Setup-<version>.exe from the latest release.
2. Run it. Aryan isn't code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen may say it doesn't recognise the app. Click More info, then Run anyway.
3. Choose how you want to use Aryan, then click Next until it's done.

Aryan runs on Windows 10 (version 1809 or later) and Windows 11, on 64-bit PCs. It carries everything it needs, so there is nothing else to install.

Updating later: download the newer Setup and run it. It goes straight to your copy, installed or portable, and updates it there. Your library is kept, and before a new version changes its database, a copy is saved in AryanLibrary-Data\Backups.

2. Bring in your books

1. Click Add a folder with books and pick the folder where your eBooks are. Its subfolders come too.
2. Aryan scans the folder. It reads each book's title, author, series and cover, and your books appear as they are found.

Aryan reads EPUB, PDF, MOBI, AZW3, KFX, CBZ and CBR. A big collection takes a few minutes the first time; after that, a scan only looks at what changed.

More folders and more drives

Open Drives & Folders at the bottom of the sidebar. Each drive that holds books is a card:

• Add folder on a card adds another folder from that drive, and Add Drive brings in a folder from a drive that isn't there yet.
• Update scans one drive again, and Refresh changes scans every connected drive.
• Remove folder takes a folder's books out of the library. The files themselves stay where they are.

Aryan knows each drive by its hardware ID, so a changed drive letter breaks nothing. When you unplug a drive, its books stay in your library with a small grey dot on the cover, and they open again as soon as the drive is back.

Aryan scans your folders each time it starts, so new, changed and missing books are found by themselves. You can turn that off in Settings > Library. Aryan never watches your folders in the background.

3. Find your way around

The sidebar

The number beside each item is how many books it holds. At the top, beside the menu button, the Now reading card takes you straight back to your book.

Finding a book

• Search with the box at the top of the window, or press Ctrl+F. It looks through titles, authors, series and tags. Esc clears it.
• Search one field: put its name in front, as in author:tolstoy, title:, series:, tag:history, list:, publisher:, format:pdf (or kindle, comics) and lang:my (or lang:hindi). Numbers take ranges: year:1990-2000, year:2000+, rating:4+, pages:<300. is: finds unread, reading, finished, favorite, rated, unrated, offline or notes. A minus leaves books out (-tag:lent), and quotes keep a value with spaces together (author:"leo tolstoy").
• Go anywhere: press Ctrl+K and type a few letters of a book, author, series, tag, list, shelf or page, then Enter. A book opens to read.
• All, EPUB, PDF, Kindle and Comics show one kind of book at a time.
• Filters narrow the page by language, year, publisher, your rating, or only the books on connected drives. Save as shelf keeps that view in the sidebar, searches with fields included, and it fills itself as books come and go.
• The buttons on the right sort the page (by title, author, series, date added, last opened, rating, progress, size, format, length or pages left), pick a book at random with Surprise me, and change the cover size or switch to a list. In the list, List columns in the same menu chooses what each row shows: rating, reading status, file size, pages, date added and last opened.
• A book's length: PDFs and comics have their own pages, and for EPUB, MOBI, AZW3 and KFX books Aryan estimates them from the text.

Make it yours

Settings > Appearance sets the App theme (light, dark, or the same as Windows) and a Colour: eight colours for buttons, switches and selections, with a tint of it across every window. Colour intensity sets how strong the tint is, and Aryan blue keeps the classic look. Your books' pages are never tinted.

4. Open a book

• Point at a cover and click Read (Continue for a book you've started), or double-click it. The book opens in its own window, at the page where you left off.
• Click once to see its details: cover, description, your rating, notes and more.
• Right-click for everything else: Open, Open with default app, View details, Show in folder, Add to list, and marking it Favorite, Reading or Finished.

With the keyboard, move to a book with Tab: Enter reads it and Alt+Enter shows its details.

Each kind of book has its own reader: PDFs are drawn sharp at any zoom, EPUB, MOBI, AZW3 and KFX books flow like a web page, and comics (CBZ, CBR, and EPUBs made only of pictures) run as one long column. If you'd rather use another app for a kind of book, turn it off in Settings > Reading > Open books in Aryan's own reader, and those books open in your default app.

KFX books, Amazon's newest Kindle format, get a readable copy the first time Aryan sees them, kept in its data folder. After that they open like any other book, and your KFX file is never changed.

Bought Kindle or Adobe books: books sold with DRM are locked to the shop's own apps. Aryan tells you when a book is locked instead of showing scrambled text. Books without DRM open normally.

5. Read comfortably

In a PDF, EPUB, MOBI, AZW3 or KFX book, the toolbar at the top has:

• Library, at the far left, closes the book and takes you back to your library.
• Contents, a side panel with tabs: the book's own Contents, Pages in a PDF (every page as a small picture, to jump to with one click) and Highlights. A PDF without a table of contents opens on its pages, and the panel opens on the tab you used last.
• Find in book (Ctrl+F), with F3 for the next match.
• The zoom button. In PDFs and comics it zooms, and Fit width is always one click away. In EPUB, MOBI, AZW3 and KFX books it sets the text size instead, with Usual size to go back.
• Text and layout (EPUB, MOBI, AZW3 and KFX): the Font, Line spacing, Text width and Justify text, and the Layout. Scroll reads the whole book as one long page, and the mouse wheel carries you from chapter to chapter. Pages turns like a book: click the left or right margin, or press the arrow keys.
• Read aloud, the speaker button (see below), and Bookmark this page, the ribbon (Ctrl+D).
• Page colour: Paper, Sepia or Night.
• Full screen (F11), and Keyboard shortcuts (F1), which lists every key for the book you have open.

Comics keep it simpler: the zoom button, a Fit button (Continuous, Fit width or Fit page), Pages and highlights (a side panel with every page as a small picture, and your clips and notes), a bookmark, full screen and F1.

Want the page all to yourself? In Settings > Reading > Reader toolbar, choose Hide while reading. The toolbar comes back when you point at the top of the page or press Alt, and Ctrl+Shift+C, P or H open the side panel on Contents, Pages or Highlights without it.

Listen to a book

Click the speaker button, or press Ctrl+Shift+U, and Aryan reads aloud from the page you're on, using the voices built into Windows. Nothing is sent online.

• In EPUB, MOBI, AZW3 and KFX books it reads a paragraph at a time: the word being spoken is marked, and the page turns as it goes. PDFs are read a page at a time.
• Ctrl+Shift+Right skips ahead and Ctrl+Shift+Left goes back. To stop, click the speaker button again or press Esc.
• Hindi is read in a Hindi voice and English in an English one. Windows has no Burmese voice yet, so for a Burmese book Aryan says so instead of reading.
• Set the speed in Settings > Reading > Read aloud speed, which also lists the languages your voices read. More voices come from Windows Settings > Time & language > Speech.

When you reach the end of a book, Aryan offers to Mark as finished. Library or Ctrl+W closes the book and takes you back to your library.

6. Look up a word

Right-click an English word while reading a PDF, EPUB, MOBI, AZW3 or KFX book and choose Define. You get its meanings from WordNet, with the Myanmar (AKK dictionary) and Hindi meanings right underneath. No internet is needed.

The same menu can Copy the word, or Find it everywhere in the book. To show only one of the two languages, or neither, use Settings > Reading > Define in other languages.

Every word you look up is kept on the Words page in the sidebar, with the sentence you met it in and the book. Search it, and Export the words as Cards for Anki or a Spreadsheet (CSV) to learn them. Your words are kept in backups too.

Burmese titles stored in old Zawgyi text, or typed in visual order, are shown as proper Unicode in your library. The files themselves are left alone.

7. Highlights, bookmarks and notes

• Highlight words: select them, and a small bar appears with five colours (Lime, Pink, Orange, Red and Green), a note, copy and delete. Ctrl+H keeps them in the colour you used last. You can also right-click a selection and choose Highlight or Highlight with a note...
• Bookmark a page: click the ribbon in the toolbar or press Ctrl+D, and again to take the bookmark off. F2 and Shift+F2 go to the next or previous bookmark.
• Note a page: right-click anywhere on a page and choose Add a note to this page...
• Clip a picture in a PDF: click Highlight an area in the toolbar and drag a box round a diagram, a photo or a scanned paragraph. In comics, drag a box round a panel, or right-click a page to highlight all of it.
• Change one later: click a highlight to change its colour, add a note, copy it or delete it.

Each book's highlights and bookmarks are listed on the Highlights tab of its side panel: click one to jump to it. In the library, the Highlights page gathers the highlights from every book you own, and My Notes gathers your notes. Both can be searched, sorted by book or by date, and exported as Markdown for a notes app or CSV for a spreadsheet.

8. Keep track of your reading

• Every book is Unread, Reading or Finished. Set it from the right-click menu or the book's details, where you can also add the date you finished it.
• Give books a favourite star and your rating, from one to five stars, in their details.
• The Reading log shows your time reading today, this week and all time, your pages this year with the longest book you finished, the Books or Pages you finished each month, and a Goal for the year if you set one. Reading now lists your current books, and Up next the next unread book in a series you're reading.
• When you finish a book in a series, the next one waits in the Continue reading row at the top of All Books.

Reading time is counted only while a book is open in Aryan's own reader.

9. Better book details

Aryan reads a book's details from the book itself, from Calibre's metadata.opf when there is one, from the copyright page, and even from the file name. When something is still wrong or missing, click the book once to open its details:

• Edit title, author and series puts your own details in. They are kept beside the book, the file is never changed, and Use the file's details goes back to what the file says.
• Find details online looks the book up on Open Library, Wikidata and Wikipedia, and shows you what it found before anything changes.
• Change cover appears when you point at the cover: choose A picture on this PC, or for a PDF or comic A page of the book. The book's own cover puts the original back.

To fill gaps for the whole library, turn on Settings > Library > Fill in missing details online. It only fills details that are empty, and sends nothing but a title, author or ISBN. It is off until you turn it on. For even more descriptions and years, you can add a free Google Books key of your own there too.

10. Lists, tags and a tidy library

Collections of your own

• My lists: click New list... under My lists, then drag books onto it or right-click a book and choose Add to list. A book can be on as many lists as you like.
• Tags: add them in a book's details. The Tags page also suggests tags Aryan worked out from your folders, languages and titles, and nothing is added until you say so.
• Shelves: set up a search or some filters, then Save as shelf.

Many books at once

• Tick books: Ctrl+click a book to tick it, and Shift+click another to tick every book in between. Or point at a cover and click the tick in its corner. Once you've started, a click anywhere on a cover ticks it. The Select books button and Select all work too.
• With the keyboard: the arrow keys move between books, Space ticks one, Shift+arrows tick the books on the way, Ctrl+A ticks every book shown, and Esc puts the ticks away.
• Then act on them: the bar above the books has Edit... for author, series and tags, Mark for Reading, Finished, Unread or Favorite, Add to list, Copy to folder... and Find online. Right-clicking a ticked book offers the same for all of them. Press Done when you've finished.
• Copy to folder puts the books' files on an e-reader, a USB stick or any folder. Your originals stay where they are, and Aryan asks before replacing a file that's already there.
• Rate and mark from the keyboard: on a book, 1 to 5 give it stars and 0 takes them away, F makes it a favorite, R marks it reading and D finished. Press it again to undo. On a ticked book, they change every ticked book.

Tidy up

• Duplicates finds books you have twice and suggests which copy to keep, by your preferred language and format. Nothing is ever deleted.
• Missing lists books whose files weren't found at the last scan. Look for moved files finds them again, and Relink keeps the book's favourite, rating, notes and tags.
• Needs Details lists books with no author, no real cover, or a title that isn't really a title.
• Authors offers to join names that are the same person, such as two spellings of one writer.

11. Your data, backups and a new PC

• Your library, covers, settings and notes live in one folder, AryanLibrary-Data, beside the app. Settings > Your data > Open data folder shows it.
• Your favourites, ratings, reading status, tags, notes, lists and highlights are also kept in two small files beside your books on each drive (.aryan-library.json and .aryan-highlights.json), so they travel with the drive. These are the only files Aryan ever writes near your books.
• Export backup... saves all of that in one file, and Restore backup... brings it back.
• Export catalogue... saves every book with its details as a CSV file for a spreadsheet.

Moving to a new PC: with a portable copy, just copy the whole Aryan folder. Otherwise, install Aryan on the new PC and add your folders: your favourites, ratings, notes, lists and highlights come back from the small files beside your books. A backup you exported can be brought in with Restore backup... as well.

12. Handy keys

F1 lists every key, in the library and in the book you have open.

In the library

While reading

13. Questions

Why is it called Aryan?

Aryan (आर्यन) is my son's name; he is one year old. In India and across South Asia it is a common given name, meaning "noble" in Sanskrit and Hindi. The app has nothing to do with the racist misuse of the word in 20th-century Europe, which I reject completely.

Does Aryan change my books?

No. It only reads them. It never moves, renames or edits a book file. Your own details, ratings and notes are kept in Aryan's data folder and in the two small files described in Your data.

Does it need the internet?

No. Reading, word meanings, highlights and everything else work offline. When it starts, Aryan asks GitHub whether a newer version is out and, if one is, offers it in a small bubble you can dismiss; it never downloads or installs anything by itself. Otherwise it goes online only if you turn on online details, or click Find details online, and then it sends only a title, author or ISBN. There is no account and no tracking.

A book has a grey dot and won't open

Its drive isn't plugged in. Plug it in and the book opens again, with nothing lost.

I moved or renamed books in File Explorer

The next scan finds them again, with their notes and highlights. If a book still shows on the Missing page, use Look for moved files or Relink.

A book's title or author is wrong

Click the book, then Edit title, author and series, or Find details online. See Better book details.

A Kindle book won't open

It is probably protected with DRM, which only Amazon's apps can open. Aryan says so when it happens. MOBI, AZW3 and KFX books without DRM open fine.

Something else went wrong

Aryan keeps a log, aryan.log, in its data folder. Please open an issue on GitHub and describe what happened; the log helps.