(Guide/Review) YACReader is an open source, cross-platform comic book reader

[Karlston]

YACReader is an open source, cross-platform comic book reader

Do you like comic books? Want to read your favorites on your computer? Have you tried YACReader? It is an open source comic book reader for Windows, macOS and Linux.

 

The program consists of 2 components: YACReader and YACReader library.

 

 

Select the folder where your comic books are located in and YACReader Library will import your books from to its database. It is a central location from which you can manage, read your comics.

 

 

The left pane of the library displays sub-folders that contain your comics. Books that aren't placed in folders are not displayed in the Folder pane, so it is advisable to keep your comics in sub-folders, even if the directory contains just a single book. YACReader supports CBR, CBZ, CB7, PDF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP, TAR, RAR, ZIP, ARJ, CBT formats. I used it primarily with the CBR and CBZ formats.

 

 

Right-click on a folder to update a folder, or mark it as incomplete or read. Use the + and bin icons to add or remove folders from the library. To update your library, right-click on its name. You may also rename or remove a library, export/import comic info to a YDB file.

 

Click on a folder to open it. The top pane on the right-hand side displays the cover image of each comic book. The pane at the bottom lists all books in the selected directory, with the name, number of pages, disk size of each book. It also shows you whether you have read the book, the current page you're on, and the rating that you gave for each comic.

 

 

Right-click on a comic book to open it, or the folder that it's located in, reset the comic rating, download tags from Comic Vine, set the order (number) for the comics, mark a book as read/unread. You can delete comics, or add them to the favorites list from the context menu. The same options are available on the toolbar at the top of this pane.

 

Comics that have been marked as favorite, and the ones you're currently reading are listed in the pane to the bottom left corner. Double-click on a comic book in the Library and it will be opened in YACReader. Or you can open it directly from the reader's browse option.

 

 

The Toolbar has various options, and the same can be found in the right-click menu. Use it to open a new comic book, a folder, save the image from the current page, navigate to the previous/next comic.

 

The other options allow you to switch the pages, fit the window to the height/width of the page, full size, rotate the page, toggle double page mode, adjust the zoom level. The magnifying glass tool enlarges the content under the mouse cursor, and is handy when the text is too small or illegible. Don't have time to finish a comic? Set a bookmark and comeback to it later. The program has a built-in dictionary that can be used to translate words.

 

 

YACReader supports various keyboard shortcuts for opening, reading the comics. The hotkeys are customizable. The program can also be used with the mouse, the wheel scrolls the page, while double-clicking on the screen switches to full-screen mode

 

The application comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, but these aren't portable. YACReader is also available for iOS and syncs with the desktop program.

 

YACReader is an impressive application and I had a perfectly enjoyable time using it to read comics, aside from when it failed to work in a couple of instances with an "Error opening comic - Unknown error opening the file". The same files worked perfectly in other comic book readers such as CDisplayEX and SumatraPDF.

 

Landing Page: https://www.yacreader.com/

 

 

YACReader is an open source, cross-platform comic book reader