Books and highlights

The Android app reads the books in your vault. You add an EPUB, a PDF or a CBZ comic to the vault on your computer, sync carries it to the phone, and it opens from Files in a full-screen reader. Your reading position syncs back through your own vault. Passages you highlight are written into an ordinary Markdown note for that book, and the note is where the highlights live.

There is no reader on the desktop. The desktop syncs books, reading positions and highlights notes like any other file, and a highlights note opens and edits there like any note.

Formats

Format	On the phone	Highlights
EPUB	Reflowed into pages that turn	Yes
PDF	One page per screen, pinch to zoom, double tap to fit the width	Yes, on pages that have selectable text
CBZ comic	One image per page, pinch and double tap to zoom	No
CBR comic	Syncs between desktops, but the phone skips it	No

A scanned PDF has no text layer, so pressing and holding on its page shows “This PDF has no selectable text”.

Getting books onto the phone

Books sync up to 95 MB each, and every other file up to 16 MB. A larger book stays on the computer that holds it. The full size rules are under What actually syncs.

On a metered connection, books wait for Wi-Fi and notes carry on syncing. The phone’s sync status reads “3 books waiting for Wi-Fi” while any are held. To download them over mobile data, open the account sheet and turn on Download books over mobile data. It is off by default and applies to that phone only.

A desktop on Jotura 0.10.0 or older stops syncing at the first book over 17 MB that another device uploads, and stays stuck until it updates. Update every desktop before you add large books.

Reading

Tap a book in Files to open it. A book still downloading shows its progress and opens when it finishes. Once you start reading, the book’s row in Files shows a thin progress bar and a count of its highlights.

• A tap in the middle of the page shows the top bar, with back, the title, Contents and the reader settings, and the bottom bar, with a page scrubber and your position.
• A tap or a swipe on the left or right edge turns the page.
• Contents lists the chapters of an EPUB, the outline of a PDF, or a list of pages for a comic. It is hidden when a book has none.
• The screen stays awake while the reader is open.

Reader settings belong to the phone, since they describe the screen rather than the book. An EPUB has font size, font, margins, line spacing and a theme of Light, Sepia, Dark or Follow app. PDFs and comics have the theme only. A comic also has Read right to left for manga, remembered for that book.

Continue reading

The Recent tab opens with a Continue reading row of up to five books you have started and not finished, each with its cover. A book without a cover gets a generated one. The row is absent until you have a book in progress.

Your place, privately

Your position in every book is saved in Jotura/reading.json in your own vault, keyed by the book’s content, so renaming or moving a book keeps your place. Your devices merge it book by book, and the most recent position wins.

The Jotura/ folder can never be shared, so your position stays private even when the book sits in a shared folder. Other members see nothing of it, and a viewer’s position saves although a viewer cannot change the share.

Highlighting

Press and hold on a passage in an EPUB or a PDF, then adjust the selection with Android’s handles. A bar appears above the selection with four colours (yellow, green, blue and pink) and a comment button.

• A colour saves the highlight at once.
• The comment button saves it in the colour you used last and opens a sheet for your comment.
• Tapping a highlight you already made opens the same bar to change its colour, edit the comment or remove it. Highlight removed offers Undo for five seconds.
• Page turns pause while a selection is on screen.

After a save, a message reads “Saved to Pride and Prejudice - Highlights”. Tap it to open the note.

The reader’s Highlights tab, beside Contents, lists the book’s highlights in reading order with their colour, passage and the first line of the comment. Tap one to jump to it, or use Open note at the top. A highlight the reader cannot find in the book any more is marked “Couldn’t place”, and its quote stays in the note.

The highlights note

The first highlight in a book creates <Title> - Highlights.md in your highlights folder, Highlights unless you pick another under Highlights folder in the phone’s account sheet. The folder is a vault setting, so it applies on every device, and changing it moves no existing note.

Highlights from [[Pride and Prejudice.epub]] by Jane Austen.

> a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

The whole novel in one line.

Each highlight is a blockquote, and the text directly below it, up to the next quote or heading, is its comment. The body holds no ids or markers. The frontmatter links the book and keeps a short fingerprint of each passage with its colour and position, and the desktop editor hides it.

The note is the source of truth, and you can edit it on any device:

• Rewrite a comment, or add headings and your own paragraphs between highlights. Text you add is left alone.
• Tidy a quote’s wording. A lightly edited quote stays linked to its passage in the book.
• Delete a quote and the highlight disappears from the book the next time it opens.
• New highlights are added at the end of the note, above a closing ## Links section if you have one. They never overwrite what you changed.

Two devices adding highlights to the same book at the same time merge into one note. A book replaced by another edition at the same path finds its note again through the book link.

In the phone editor

A quote in a highlights note shows Open in book, which opens the reader at that passage.

Private in shared folders

A highlights note is always written into your own vault and never inside a share, including for a book in a shared folder or one you can only view. Other members never see your highlights, and you never see theirs.

Search

A highlights note is an ordinary Markdown file. Keyword search finds it by what the quotes and comments say, and on the desktop search by meaning does too. The jotura command line tool reads it like any other note, so an AI agent you use can quote from your highlights. See Search and Reading and searching.