News: Android

Today we’re updating both the stable and beta tracks for Android, releasing versions 3.8.30 and 4.0 beta 122.

The main improvement is better ZIP archive support, making ePub and fb2.zip books more reliable to open. This fixes a number of issues, including missing covers in some books and missing sections of text in others.

Other changes include fixes for PDF and comics rendering, support for opening password-protected PDF documents in the beta version, improved handling of text-to-speech substitution patterns containing spaces in the stable release, and updated Ukrainian translations in both versions.

This update improves FBReader behaviour on InkBook devices. The app now correctly detects InkBook devices as e-ink readers. Additionally, we've updated the licence check flow. On InkBook devices, FBReader Premium can now be installed and used free of charge.

We've also fixed a few stability issues in cloud synchronisation.

A year after the previous beta release, the beta branch is back. Experimental features are available again, and we hope beta updates will become regular once more.

This release includes all changes from the latest stable version, 3.8.28. Additionally, PDF rendering now uses PDFium, and TTS replacement patterns can now contain spaces.

This update fixes a few annoying UI issues. The reading screen now properly respects Android system gestures, and book covers load more smoothly in the library view.

The LitRes catalogue has been removed, as it no longer makes much sense to keep it. Instead, we’ve added links to Readino in selected countries.

The main improvement in this version is significantly faster loading of ePub files with complex embedded styles. For some books, opening time has been reduced from several minutes to just 1–2 seconds.

Additional improvements include enhanced hyphenation logic (especially for English) and a fix for the Menu Settings page — all items are now moveable.