Panels+
Read manga and comics panel by panel, without losing the page and other panel zooming utilities with no setup required. Read them the way they were intended: Panel by Panel
showcase.mp4Core feature: Panel by panel reading. Battle-tested for performance on low-specs e-readers and old KOReader versions support. (Starting from 2025 versions). This demo includes features from the next release v1.5.0 |
comics-showcase.mp4Comics showcase: Reading comic books panel by panel with custom panel flow and navigation. |
New update v1.5.0 coming soon!, want to test it out sooner? You can install it by folowing (๐ ๏ธ Manual Installation) guide below from latest nightly release. This is a release candidate, not battle-tested but stable. If you want the previous stable release you can download it here.
Panels+ is a KOReader plugin that improves manga and comic reading by replacing the default KOReader single-panel zoom flow with a custom direction-aware panel reader with in-live panel scanning. No complex pre-mangas-scanning setup required, install Panels+ and it just works.
- Includes 3 panel transition modes:
animated-mode.mp4 |
smooth-mode.mp4 |
hard-layouts-showcase.mp4 |
| 1. Animated mode | 2. Smooth mode | 3. Classic mode |
| Swipe through your manga with fade-in/fade-out transitions. (Only available in e-ink devices). You can swipe or tap on edges, configurable in "More Config" button, and rotate only the panel view or whole device from the same place. So you can read your panels even in landscape mode. | Make the current zoom view to move smoothly between panels (Duration and FPS between panels customizable). (Works better in non-eink devices, like Android and Desktop) | Move between panels with no transitions at all, simple...classic. |
- Zoom-friendly screenshot support while reading panels.
- Open panels with a long press or, if you prefer, a two-finger tap.
- Panels finding on dark-background pages.
- Safe panel detection (default) preserves conservative v1.4.0 grouping; Smart separates more complex layouts.
- Configurable reading order, progress, OCR language, navigation, and crop, transitions๎& more.
- Comics & Mangas support
- Customizable and performant in low-end e-ink devices.
- Move between panels with swipes and/or taps on edges.
- And much more.
Currently we're looking for translators. If you'd like to help us translate this plugin to your native language, check our Translation Quick Guide.
This plugin is compatible with KOReader across the following version range:
| Environment | Supported Version |
|---|---|
| Oldest Tested Version | KOReader v2025.04 "Full Moon" |
| Newest Tested Version | KOReader v2026.03 "SnowFlake" & Newer |
This could work with even older versions, but not personally tested. If any issues with versions outside the previous range, open a github issue in this repo.
|
This plugin works well with:
Tested against 0.4.1 version thanks to users feedback.If any problems, create a github issue in this repo. |
Panels+ is structured for installation via KOReader package and plugin managers:
| Package Manager | Search / Package Name | Installation Method | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Plugin Appstore (appstore.koplugin) |
Panels+ (panelsplus.koplugin) |
Search and install directly inside the KOReader Plugin Appstore (or view on the Appstore Web Catalog) | ||
ZEN Package Manager (zen_ui.koplugin or zenos.koplugin) |
(panelsplus) |
Available directly in the ZEN package manager catalog.
|
- Download
panels_plus.koplugin.zipfrom the releases page and unzip it. - You should now have this folder:
panelsplus.koplugin
Note
GUI zip extractors note: Some desktop GUI archive managers (such as GNOME Archive Manager, Ark, or Windows Explorer "Extract All") may create an extra parent folder level matching the zip filename (e.g. panels_plus.koplugin/panelsplus.koplugin/). Take this into account when extracting: make sure you copy the actual panelsplus.koplugin folder (the one directly containing _meta.lua and main.lua) into your KOReader plugins/ directory.
- Copy the whole
panelsplus.kopluginfolder into your KOReaderpluginsdirectory. (Do not copy only the files inside it).
Common plugin paths:
| Device / OS | KOReader plugins directory |
|---|---|
| Kindle | /mnt/us/koreader/plugins/ |
| Kobo | .adds/koreader/plugins/ |
| Android | /sdcard/koreader/plugins/ |
| Linux (Native / Arch / AppImage) | ~/.config/koreader/plugins/ |
| Linux Flatpak | ~/.var/app/rocks.koreader.KOReader/config/koreader/plugins/ |
The final path should look like this:
<koreader plugins directory>/panelsplus.koplugin
- Restart KOReader after copying the folder.
Configuration is as easy as just using the plugin itself!
config_overlay.mp4All your important config, straight in the zooming view!. No more looking over many hidden config screens. |
additional_config.mp4If you still need more advanced config, you can find it here |
- You can customize:
- The swipe direction
- Cropped panel? No cropped? Margin?, already got in.
- Smooth animations (Recommended in no ink-devices)
For a more fluent and immersive navigation, my personal recommendation is to set KOReader to landscape (horizontal) rotation and enable strict-crop mode in Panels+ with classic navigation for e-ink based devices and smooth navigation for android and non-e-ink devices.
While playing and testing this pluging from months of usage I found this setup the most convenient way to experience your manga (and probably the way it was intended).
recommendation_horizontal_personal.mp4
Panels+ running on a Kindle
Of course if you prefer vertical, with margin, loose cropped or even animated, then use it that way!. I've made all this config fully customizable to make this plugin `adapt to you`, not you to the plugin. Your manga, your rules.
Panels+ introduces OCR support natively, allowing you to touch & hold text inside a zoomed-in panel to look up words in the dictionaryโeven in comics/manga! Works across .CBZ, .CBR, and .PDF.
IMPORTANT: To use this feature, you'll need to set up a couple of things first:
- Install an OCR engine in KOReader by following the official KOReader guide.
- Install at least one dictionary. You can do this by following this tutorial for manual installation, or by using KOReader's built-in online dictionary installer.
(Note: Even though a lot of effort has been put into Panels+ internal OCR algorithm detection, word detection is tricky on hand-lettered or stylized comic text and might not always get it exactly right. As a workaround, I recommend binding a comfortable multi-swipe gesture to "Open dictionary lookup" as a fallback just in case.)
I'm a manga fan and I read a lot in my e-reader and found out some panels are too small to read comfortably on the full page, then I tried using ko-reader native zoom, but then I need to zoom out, change panel, zoom-in, read the panel, zoom-out, zoom-in, read, and so on... (ugh!).
KOReader can detect panels, but the native flow often means zooming into one panel, leaving zoom, moving to the next panel, and repeating that cycle.
I wanted to create Panels+ so (we manga-comic readers) could have the panel navigation we deserve with a normal reading flow!.
This supports screenshots while zoomed into panels, so you can capture the exact panel view instead of only taking full-page screenshots, and use them as screen savers, book covers, anything you want.
Starting from version v1.4.0, Panels+ includes localization support, and we'd love to translate the plugin into as many languages as possible!
Rather than relying on machine or AI translation slop, we are looking for community collaborators to help craft authentic, high-quality human translations.
If you're interested in contributing:
- Check out our Translations Quick Guide to get started.
Currently supported languages are English, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese.
You would need the following to start developing in Panels+
-
KOReader. Can be obvious, but needed. My recommendation is to set a WSL environment if windows, or directly use a linux distro.
-
LuaJIT or Lua 5.1. It's the main language of this plugin. So your PR code must run without errors in both of them (Compatibility with KOReader emmbeded lua runtime).
-
uv (not python3). Is the python manager used in this repo and used for dataset tools extraction, also needed to run the tests with
./run-tests.sh. -
Stylua (Codebase's Formatter). Used to have a consistent code style (indentation, tabs, etc...)
-
Luacheck (Codebase's Linter). Used to have consistent code patterns (Which globals are available in intelissense, function declaration styles, etc...)
From the repository root, create the development environment and install the Python dependencies using the following command:
uv syncWith Lua, LuaJIT, StyLua, and Luacheck installed, run the full test suite through uv so run-tests.sh uses the synced Python environment with the following:
# Unix environment
./run-tests.shNow you're ready, now go to CONTRIBUTING.md for the rest of the contribution guidelines, project documentation, linting, building, guides, etc...
Clone or download this repository, then run:
./build.shOn Windows PowerShell, run:
.\build.ps1The script creates dist/panels_plus.koplugin. Copy that generated folder into your KOReader plugins directory, then restart KOReader.
Project is actually stable, and personally tested in:
- Kindle 12th Gen
And thanks to users, works in:
- Kobo e-reader
Contributions are welcome for:
- Edge-cases bugs fixes
- Performance improvements
- Device-specific bugs fixes (this would help a lot)
- New features
- Datasets Mangas
Thanks for using the plugin or at least, taking a look into this repo.
Check "LICENSE" file in this repository.
