Type set like a printed book
Whole paragraphs are justified at once, words are hyphenated by real dictionaries and typesetters’ rules, punctuation hangs into the margin. The page reads as an even, quiet grey.
Coming soon to Windows and macOS
A book, not a screen.
Nightleaf Book Reader sets every page the way a good printer would — and lays it open on your desk, under a warm lamp. Made for people who read for hours and want it to feel like reading.
Made for long reading
Every reader opens EPUB. What people keep coming back for is how a book feels after the third hour. Nightleaf is built around three things:
A real book in your hands
An open hardcover on a wooden desk, a lamp above it, paper with a grain you can almost feel — and a page you can take by the corner and turn.
Kind to your eyes
Warm aged paper by default, carefully balanced night schemes, a high but never harsh contrast, and type that grows with the window like a book brought closer.
Typography
The page you never notice
Good typography does its work before you arrive. Nightleaf has its own typesetting engine — no web view, no stock text box — written for one purpose: a page that does not tire the eye.
Whole-paragraph justification
Most readers fill one line at a time and stretch whatever is left — that is where the white “rivers” come from. Nightleaf weighs every possible break in the paragraph together (the Knuth–Plass method used by TeX) and picks the most even page.
Few hyphens, and the right ones
Hyphenation by proven dictionaries for English and Russian, with typesetters’ practice on top: whole words tried first, no ladders of hyphens, no broken word at the foot of a page when it can be avoided.
Hanging punctuation
Quotes, commas, full stops and hyphens sit slightly outside the text block, as in fine printing, so the margins look truly straight.
Microtypography
Letters may widen or narrow by up to 2 % — invisible to the eye — so word spaces stay even instead of gaping.
Calm, aligned pages
No lonely line at the top or bottom of a page, no heading stranded at the foot. Lines on facing pages stand on one shared baseline grid, as in a printed spread.
Book-like structure
Chapters open lower on a fresh page, epigraphs sit to the right in italics, verse keeps its lines, the first paragraph after a heading starts flush.
Russian and English, both done properly
Language is detected for every book and every paragraph. Each brings its own rules: non-breaking spaces after short Russian prepositions and initials, numbers kept with their units, dashes and quotes in their places.
Proportions of a real book
A page holds 32 lines by default. Make the window larger and the whole book grows, as if you brought it closer — the lines and the place you read stay the same. Prefer larger type? A single slider.
Set in Literata, a typeface designed for long reading on screens, at its text optical size. More book typefaces are coming.
The book
Turn the page like paper
Nightleaf does not imitate a book with a flat picture. The open hardcover lies on a wooden desk under a warm lamp; its boards curve, its pages have edges and a soft shadow at the spine, the paper has a faint grain drawn in code.
Take it by the corner
Move the mouse to a page’s outer corner and it lifts slightly under your hand. Drag it: the sheet follows you and rolls over. Let go past the middle — or flick it — and it lays down; let go early and it falls back.
Or just read on
Arrow keys, Page Up and Down, Space, the mouse wheel, a click on either half of the spread, the side buttons of the mouse. The cursor hides itself after two seconds.
Your choice of turn
Paper turn by default; a gentle slide, a fade or an instant change if you prefer. Never a flash or a flicker.
One page or two
A wide window shows a spread; a narrow one, a single page. Full screen with F11.
Paper & ink
Colours for every hour of reading
The default is Old Paper: near-black ink on the warm, yellowed paper of an old book — far gentler than white. For the evening there are night schemes, tuned so light text on a dark page does not glare.
- Every built-in scheme has a contrast of at least 7 : 1 — the strictest level (AAA) of the web accessibility guidelines — without going harsh.
- On dark pages the letters are drawn slightly lighter in weight, so light text does not bloom or look bold. The text never reflows when you change colours.
- Paper grain, page edges and the shadow at the spine follow the colours you choose.
Your place
It never loses your page
Pages change when you resize the window or make the type larger — your place does not. Nightleaf remembers the exact phrase you were reading, not a page number.
Opens where you stopped
Start Nightleaf and it opens the last book at the line you left, in a window of the same size and place.
Progress you can see
A thin strip under the book shows how far you are, with a mark for every chapter. Hover to see a chapter’s name, click to go there.
Big books, quickly
The first time a long book opens, Nightleaf typesets it chapter by chapter and shows honest progress — what it is doing and how long it will take. After that, it opens at once.
The shelf
A bookcase, not a file list
Close a book and you are at a wooden bookcase lit by a lamp. Your books stand cover out, each with a thin line showing how much you have read.
- Move a book by dragging it — the others make room, as on a real shelf.
- Books without a cover get a cloth binding with the title typeset on it.
- Remove a book with the small × on it; it is only taken off the shelf, and you can bring it back in a click.
Books
Opens the books you already have
EPUB 2 & 3
Read by our own code. The publisher’s styles are set aside: your book gets Nightleaf’s typography.
FB2 & FB2.ZIP
Chapters, epigraphs, verse, emphasis and covers.
TXT
Plain text in almost any encoding, detected automatically.
Old files are welcome. Besides Unicode, Nightleaf reads the legacy encodings old books were saved in — Windows-1251, KOI8-R, KOI8-U, DOS 866, ISO-8859-5, Mac Cyrillic, Western and Central European code pages and more — and works out which one a file uses by itself.
Books with DRM and PDF are not supported.
Yours, and only yours
No account
Nothing to sign up for. Open a book and read.
Stays on your computer
Your books, places and settings live in plain files in your own folder. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Two languages
The interface speaks English and Russian, switchable on the fly.
Windows & macOS
Made for both, from one code base, with the same pages on each.
Why Nightleaf
What makes it different
| — | A typical reader app | Nightleaf |
|---|---|---|
| Justification | One line at a time; uneven gaps and rivers | Whole paragraph at once (Knuth–Plass) |
| Hyphenation | Often none, or many in a row | Dictionary patterns and typesetters’ rules, few hyphens |
| Margins | Punctuation sits inside the edge | Hanging punctuation, optically straight edges |
| Facing pages | Lines drift out of step | One baseline grid across the spread |
| Russian typesetting | English rules for everything | Its own rules, detected per paragraph |
| Look | A flat panel of text | An open book on a lamp-lit desk |
| Resize the window | You lose your place | The same phrase stays in front of you |
On the way
Nightleaf is being made now
Everything above works today. Here is what we are building next — listed honestly, without dates.
- Coming
Smooth auto-scroll
A continuous ribbon of text moving at your reading speed, adjustable on the fly, smooth on any monitor.
- Coming
Notes and time left
Footnotes that pop up without leaving the page; time to the end of the chapter at your own pace.
- Coming
Contents, search, bookmarks
Jump to any chapter, find a phrase, mark a page.
- Coming
Your own colours and type
Every colour adjustable with a live preview on the real spread; more typefaces, line spacing and margins; presets to save and share.
- Coming
Day and night
Schemes that change smoothly with the time of day, and a warmer tint in the evening.
- Coming
Read aloud
Using the voices built into Windows and macOS.
- Coming
A real library
A catalogue with authors and series, folder import, a dictionary on hover.
Coming soon to Windows and macOS
Nightleaf Book Reader is in active development. There is nothing to buy or download yet — and no newsletter to sign up for. When it is ready, this page is where it will be.
Windows 10 and 11 · macOS