Book Reader for Obsidian
Read EPUB, FB2 and PDF books inside Obsidian. Highlight what matters, turn highlights into linked notes, and keep your reading progress in the same vault as everything else you know.
I built this plugin for myself — to read books and take notes in one place, without switching apps. Over time it grew into a full reader, and now it is free for everyone. Here is what it does and how to use it.
Quick start
Install the plugin
In Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Book Reader, press Install, then Enable.
Add a book
Open the library from the ribbon icon and drag an .epub, .fb2 or .pdf file into the window. The cover and page count are picked up automatically.
Read and highlight
Click a book to start reading. Select a sentence, pick a colour, press the note icon — you get a note with the quote, a link back to the book and the page number.
That is the whole setup: no account, no API key, nothing to configure.
On this page
What it is
Most people keep their notes in Obsidian and read books somewhere else — then copy quotes back by hand, usually months later, usually without the page number. Book Reader removes that gap: the book, your highlights and your notes live in one vault. Every quote becomes a real linked note, so reading feeds your knowledge base directly.
Library
Covers, reading progress and categories at a glance. Filter by Reading, Finished or Not started, search by title, resize the covers. Adding a book is a drag and a drop — EPUB, FB2 or PDF.
Reading
One or two columns like a paper book, or plain scrolling if you prefer. Your own font (Georgia, Lora, Inter), size, line height, margins and alignment. The footer shows the page and the live spread number.
The reading position is anchored by paragraph, not by pixel offset — so a phone and a desktop open the same spot even though their screens are nothing alike.
Highlights → notes
Four colours for four kinds of thought, and a comment that stays attached to the quote. One click turns a highlight into a note: the quote, a link back to the book, the page number — in your folder, from your template.
Need the whole book at once? Export highlights collects every quote into the book’s note, grouped by chapter, with page numbers and colours preserved.
Explain a passage with AI
Select a difficult paragraph and ask about it in your own words. The reader quietly passes the book’s title along as context, so the answer knows what it is talking about. You can set your own system prompt, and the answer can be saved as a note that opens in a background tab — your page stays where it was.
Optional and off by default.
💜 How to pay for AI explanations
Explanations run through any AI provider, but the easiest is the Elton AI provider: connect one key and top up the balance in the Telegram bot t.me/elton_ai_obsidian_bot. You can try it for free with the promo code “Gift”.
Search and contents
Full-text search across the whole book, with the match highlighted right on the page instead of leaving you to hunt for it. The table of contents is built from PDF bookmarks, headings, or the book’s own printed contents page — and it knows both the page and the spread number.
The book’s own note
Each book can be linked to a note of its own: reading progress and page count live in the properties, so Dataview and Bases read them like any other field. Your highlights land underneath, grouped by chapter.
Themes
Four reading themes — light, sepia, dark, and an e-ink mode with no shadows and no animation for Android readers. The automatic theme borrows the colours of your Obsidian theme and follows it when you switch. The library has its own theme setting, because a shelf and a page do not have to match.
On the phone
Full-screen reading, swipe to turn the page, big touch targets, and everything else tucked behind a single ⋯ button so it never covers the text you are selecting. Progress and highlights are ordinary files in the vault, so they travel with whatever sync you already use.
What’s new in 3.0
- In the official Obsidian catalogue. Two clicks to install — no beta installers, no manual file copying.
- Explaining a passage became a conversation. Your own question, your own system prompt, and the book's title sent as background context. The answer saves into a background tab instead of stealing your page.
- A real layout for every device. Phone, tablet and desktop each get their own arrangement; on the phone every extra control moved behind ⋯, and the keyboard no longer covers what you are typing.
- Themes switch instantly — including on desktop, where you used to have to reopen the book — plus an automatic theme that follows Obsidian and a separate theme for the library.
- The position stopped jumping. Changing columns, font or mode keeps you on the same paragraph instead of throwing you to the last page.
- Settings stopped lagging. Changing a colour no longer re-paginates the whole book — that used to take up to twenty seconds on a phone.
- PDF engine updated to pdf.js 6, with the sentence-punctuation fix carried over: some PDFs used to lose every full stop.
- Feedback moved to a Telegram bot — see below.
Privacy and network
The reader works entirely offline. Books, highlights, progress and notes are ordinary files inside your vault — nothing is uploaded, and the PDF engine ships inside the plugin instead of being fetched from a CDN.
- Translation is optional and off by default. When you switch it on, the selected fragment goes to Google Translate (
translate.googleapis.com) and nothing else. - Explain a passage is optional and off by default. When you use it, the selected fragment, your question and the book’s title go to the model provider you configured.
- Everything else — covers, progress, highlights, notes — never leaves your device.
FAQ
Which formats are supported?
EPUB, FB2 and PDF. Old FB2 files in windows-1251 are detected and decoded automatically. DjVu and MOBI are not supported.
Where do my books and highlights live?
Inside your vault, as normal files. Books go to the folder you choose in the settings; highlights and progress are stored alongside, so they move with the vault and survive any sync method.
Does it work on iOS and Android?
Yes, on both — the phone gets its own layout with gestures and full-screen reading. The e-ink mode is built for Android readers: no shadows, no animation, pure black on white.
Will it slow my vault down?
No. Books are opened on demand and nothing is indexed in the background. Reading progress is written as you read, in small updates.
Is it really free?
Yes, and open source under the MIT licence. No paid tier, no account.
Feedback
Everything goes to one Telegram bot
Found a bug, missing a feature, something awkward on the phone? Send an ordinary message to @book_in_obsidian_bot. No GitHub account, no form, no template. Every message is read — and the next versions are built from them.