Version v0.9.2

Wikipedia-powered search & a calmer home

With v0.9.2, Simpleread gets a brain boost. You can now choose a Wikipedia search engine option, letting you pull context and quick facts directly alongside your reading, without needing to leave the app and break your focus.

The main page has been cleaned up as well. The old “Extra” section in Settings has been renamed into a more intuitive toggles / miscellaneous area, and the drop-book interface behaves like a normal, polite UI: press Esc to close it instantly, see clear instructions on how to use it, and it no longer appears just because you dragged some text around.

On top of that, category hover states no longer show random text, which makes the whole home view feel more intentional and less “dev build”.

Notes & highlights now live where they belong

Notes and highlights are finally behaving like a single feature instead of three competing ones. In v0.9.2, tapping or clicking on a highlight opens the corresponding note directly in the right-hand sidebar. No more separate “Edit note” popup, no more extra save modals – everything happens in one place.

The note resize bar now appears faster and feels snappier, so resizing your note area doesn’t feel like waiting on the UI. Saving notes has been simplified to the point where you shouldn’t have to think about it – it just works, both on desktop and on your phone.

The highlight engine itself got a serious cleanup. A bug where a bunch of highlights appeared at first and then fixed themselves later has been resolved, and the underlying event listeners were fully reworked. The result: you can scroll normally on mobile, select text reliably, and still enjoy stable behavior on desktop.

A small but important UX touch: when you decide to delete a highlight, the menu simply closes. It no longer sends you back to an extra note menu step. One action, done, and you’re back to reading.

Text-to-Speech that behaves, and toolbars you control

Text-to-Speech got some overdue care in this release. The voice selection is working properly again, so you can pick the voice you actually want instead of being stuck with whatever the engine feels like using today.

For readers who like a clean top bar, there’s now a setting that allows you to hide the Text-to-Speech and Auto-scroll buttons from the navbar completely. This works across devices – desktop, tablet, and phone – and lets you decide how minimal you want the interface to be.

Smarter search & navigation on small screens

Reading on a tablet or phone should feel light, not fragile. In v0.9.2, the search experience inside the reader has been tuned carefully: pressing Enter triggers search immediately, a subtle timer prevents searches from firing while you’re still typing, and a small loading indicator shows you when Simpleread is working behind the scenes.

If there’s only a single result, Simpleread just takes you there. Navigation between results avoids weird focus jumps, and on phones the reader now scrolls slightly lower so the hit actually lands in a comfortable spot. Pressing Enter with an empty query simply blurs the input instead of doing something surprising, and search no longer fires on blur in either Read or Notes.

The navigation bar on mobile now reacts better to real-world use: it stays visible when your document isn’t very tall, hides and appears more naturally while you scroll, and its behavior can be controlled via a dedicated setting – handy even for laptop users who rely on touchpads.

Device-aware layouts & under-the-hood fixes

v0.9.2 also brings a bunch of “invisible but important” improvements. The page width in Reading and Settings now adapts based on how you actually use Simpleread on desktop, instead of forcing a fixed 900px width. The global windowWidth logic has been refactored across Read, Notes, and Main so layout changes feel more predictable.

On tablets and smaller devices, the reader now starts with the sidebar closed, giving you more room for the page itself. Book covers that are still loading no longer show that temporary placeholder text – they simply behave and look better while you wait.

A more technical fix: a sandboxed frame that previously blocked script execution due to missing permissions has been corrected, so you should no longer see the “Blocked script execution in about:srcdoc” errors. It’s the kind of bug you ideally never notice again.

“No AI” mode & clearer finished books

Some days you want AI help. Other days you just want to read quietly. That’s why v0.9.2 adds a “No AI” toggle on the main page. When it’s off, the UI makes it obvious that AI features are disabled, so you always understand what’s available and what isn’t.

Your library also does a better job of reflecting your progress. Books you’ve finished now come with a more pronounced “Finished” look, making it easier to scan your library and see what’s complete versus what still needs your attention.

TabBook that your thumbs will actually like

TabBook received a focused round of polish – especially for mobile users. The old implementation depended on extra libraries that made swipe and scroll behavior unreliable on phones. In v0.9.2, that’s gone.

Scrolling inside TabBook now works properly on mobile without requiring complex interaction layers, the title display bugs have been cleaned up, and the buttons are bigger and easier to press. Desktop users keep the familiar behavior, while phone users finally get something designed for thumbs instead of mouse pointers.

Simpleread v0.9.2 is not a flashy “headline feature” release – it’s the one that makes the app feel more natural, especially on phones and tablets. Cleaner notes, smarter search, calmer navigation, and fewer surprises between desktop and mobile. As always, more is coming, but this version should already make your daily reading a lot smoother.