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Longboxes

Reading comics

Longboxes ships with a full-screen browser reader. No app to install, no OPDS to wire up — you click an issue cover, the page renders.

Opening the reader

Every issue page has a Read button. Clicking the cover image on the issue page does the same thing. Both lead to /read/{file_id}:

  • The header disappears (the reader owns the viewport).
  • The first page loads, or the page you were on if you’ve read this before (see Progress below).
  • Edge taps / arrow keys flip pages.

The reader works on any file with a readable archive — matched, unmatched, local, supplement. If the archive opens, the pages render.

Fit modes

The toolbar carries a fit toggle:

  • Fit width — the page scales to the viewport width; long pages scroll vertically. Best on tall portrait phones.
  • Fit height — the page scales to the viewport height; nothing scrolls. Best on desktops and tablets.

Mobile landscape covers (covers wider than they are tall) letterbox cleanly in fit-height instead of stretching. Wraparound covers (double-wide back+front spreads) crop to the front half automatically so the reader card never shows the back cover.

ActionWhat it does
Right arrow / right edge tap / right edge buttonNext page
Left arrow / left edge tap / left edge buttonPrevious page
Click center of pageToggles the toolbar
FFullscreen
EscLeave fullscreen (only) — does not close the reader
Close buttonReturns to the issue page

In manga / right-to-left mode (see below), the left/right inputs swap so the arrow keys feel correct for RTL reading.

Reading direction (manga mode)

The toolbar has an LTR / RTL toggle. It’s per volume, not per file — once you flip a Japanese series to RTL, every issue in it remembers. The label shows the action it performs: “RTL” means “flip to right-to-left.”

Direction is stored on the cv_volumes row (or local_volumes for hand-catalogued series), so it survives a ComicVine cache clear and travels with the volume across re-scans. An unmatched file (no volume to attach to) falls back to the default LTR.

Progress tracking

Progress is per user — not per file. Each user has their own reading position on every file they’ve opened.

  • The reader opens at your last-read page automatically.
  • Position is saved as you read (debounced, so flipping fast doesn’t spam the database).
  • Closing the tab or hitting close flushes the last page reliably (via sendBeacon, so the final flip is never lost).
  • Reaching the last page stamps finished_at. The mark is sticky — paging back through a finished comic doesn’t un-finish it.

Progress surfaces in four places:

  • Continue reading on the home page — files you’ve started, past the first page, not yet finished.
  • Recently read on the home page — files you’ve finished.
  • A thin progress bar along the bottom edge of issue-page hero covers.
  • The same bar on volume issue lists (table and gallery views).

Resetting and incognito

Two controls for when you want to manage what’s recorded:

Reset reading progress lives on the issue page. It clears your read_progress row for that file — both the page position and the finished_at mark. The next time you open the file, it starts from page 1 as if you’d never opened it.

Incognito reading is the eye toggle in the header. With it on, the reader still resumes from your saved position, but it stops recording new progress. Useful when:

  • You’re sharing the account with a household member who’s reading ahead.
  • You’re skimming back through a finished arc and don’t want to pollute Continue reading.
  • You just want to read without the bookkeeping for a session.

Existing progress is untouched. Incognito means “not tracked,” not “forgotten.”

What the reader doesn’t do (yet)

  • Double-page spreads. Each page is its own image; the reader doesn’t yet pair them for two-up reading.
  • A page thumbnail navigator. Today you flip linearly; jumping to page 47 of a 90-page omnibus means flipping 47 times. (Or editing the URL — /read/{file_id}?page=46 works, but it’s not exposed in the UI.)
  • OPDS or external reader app support. Longboxes’ reader is browser-only; Tachiyomi / Mihon / Panels / Chunky / KOReader can’t connect today. On the roadmap.

Archive format support

Reader plays anything Longboxes can scan: CBZ, CBR, CB7, and PDF. EPUB is not supported.

PDFs are rendered page-by-page through the archive layer; performance is reasonable for typical comic PDFs but a very large scanned PDF (50+ MB per page) can be slow on the first paint of a fresh page.