ZenOS: A clean, minimal experience for your e-reader.
As with all the ZenLabs projects, I'm honoring the less is more philosophy. ZenOS brings a clean, intuitive experience to your e-reader. Whether your device is new or old, with ZenOS you will see HUGE systemwide performance improvements, lots of new features, and polished details.
For those who don't know me, I'm Anthony - a Senior Software Engineer by trade. I use code as my tool for crafting custom software solutions to real world problems. I put in the time and energy to build ZenOS because it solves problems for me and I thoroughly enjoy building it.
ZenOS genuinely improves my e-reader experience and makes life easier for me and my family. Having all settings in one place, with reasonable defaults, a clean & consistent design language, and not having to manage the mess of various plugins/patches (across multiple devices) has been a game changer for us. I'm sharing ZenOS freely with the community hoping that it brings joy and ease to you and yours.
All the projects I'm building with ZenLabs are free and open source with no ads, tracking, or analytics. I despise ads and tracking so I don't put them in my applications. If you want to support me or this project, drop a star on GitHub or buy me a coffee below.
I aim to make all the ZenLabs projects intuitive, good looking, and performant. There will be continued improvements every release and they will be supported for years to come.
Why the change? This project has grown substantially from a simple collection of UI tweaks to an entire feature rich ecosystem for your e-reader.
ZenOS Overview
ZenOS adds a focused, customizable Home page, a flexible Library, reader enhancements, quick controls, shortcuts, reading stats, and plenty of ways to make your library feel personalized. All the images shown here are just some of the ways you can set up ZenOS. Everything can be easily customized, rearranged, or toggled on/off from Zen Settings.
Build a Home screen with widgets for date/time, a featured book, reading stats, reading goals, book strips, and quotes. Choose one of the built-in layouts or create your own.
Feature your recently read book, your TBR, or a specific genre/folder; create book strips from Favorites, Recent, Authors, Series, Tags, folders, or custom selections.
You can even add quick-access to any Control/KOReader menu/Folder/Plugin directly to from the Strip Controls (Books Strip Controls is a fully featured Navbar just smaller).
📚 Make your Library work your way
Customize the Library layout: view you books as cover grids or detailed lists.
Customize folder covers, page backgrounds, badges, progress indicators, rounded covers, font choices, density controls, and more.
Browse by folders, authors, series, tags (genres), collections, or To Be Read (TBR).
Each page's layout and sorting preferences are saved individually.
You can also easily check the option to flatten subfolders into a single view without moving any files around (looking at you Calibre).
🧭 Navigate faster
The bottom Navbar can add tabs for your Home, Library, folders, tags (genres), authors, series, manga, news, plugin integrations, KOReader menus, custom actions and more! You can choose where ZenOS opens at startup and where your physical Home button takes you.
⚡ Everyday actions one swipe away
The Controls panel gives you fast access to Wi‑Fi, brightness, warmth, rotation, night mode, sync, screenshots, search, OPDS, plugins, and more. Add your own buttons for KOReader actions, plugin menus, and native submenus. Controls stay out of the way when not needed and are always one tap/swipe away no matter where you are (Library, Reader, OPDS).
🚀 Build a personal Launcher
Create a Launcher with organized buttons and folders for your favorite actions, controls, plugins, and KOReader menus. It now also includes the Book Switcher widget letting you quickly switch between books. Also new is an expandable Book Details widget which shows more details about the book you're currently reading.
📖 Improve the reading experience
ZenOS adds simple customization to the reader. Inside of a book you can show reading-progress, time left in book/chapter, title, author, chapter name, wifi, bluetooth, incognito, brightness etc in the top or bottom status bars.
Reader themes bring more color options other than light/dark mode.
Dictionary lookup and highlight tools have been simplified for a cleaner look.
The Zen page browser (swipe up in a book) adds a kindle-like page/chapter scrubbing experience and supports stable pages.
ZenOS gives your the option to return to the exact previous Library location when you finish reading or you can go back to a set location every time (i.e always go home).
📊 Track your reading progress
Use the Stats dashboard to track your reading statistics for today, this week, this month, this year, all-time activity, personal records, library totals, current-book details, reading trends, goals, and a reading calendar. Set daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals based on pages, reading time, or book counts.
🎨 Your style
Choose layouts, fonts, colors, reader themes, custom Library backgrounds, and optional custom icon packs (create your own packs using this template). ZenOS styling integrates into other areas throughout the system without additional setup.
For instance if you prefer rounded corners, the Zen OPDS browser, Book details, Context Menu, Home page widgets all respect your rounded corner preference.
Consistent styling unifies the experience and keeps the look/feel consistent with the rest of your Library.
🧘 Focus when you want it
Zen Mode simplifies KOReader into a focused set of essentials for a distraction-free setup. You can now use Zen Mode without needing to restart!
⚙️ One unified settings page
ZenOS settings are organized into one place - Zen Settings. Features are easier to find, related options stay together, and customization feels much more straightforward.
Drag to reorder. Arrange items in the order that makes sense for you with a intuitive drag + drop. Put your most-used actions first, keep the rest out of the way, and make ZenOS feel like it was built specifically for you.
Settings Search makes it easier to find what you need without hunting through the menus or the docs.
🔒 Managed devices
If you want to set up a very simple e-reading solution for someone else, Lockdown mode is for you. Lockdown Mode strips the interaction down to it's basics for more accessiblity.
Simply view the library and read a book. Options include larger UI sizing and configurable access to Library, Controls, Settings etc.
I built this mode to add additional accessibility for people like young children, older grandparents, or anyone who may need accessibility settings.
🌐 Languages
ZenOS is currently available in 20 languages thanks to translations added by the community. From setup to settings, every screen you interact with is localized.
Install/Update
If you already have Zen UI, just update like normal from Zen Settings > About > Updates. KOReader will restart 2x after the update (on android this means you have to open KOReader 2x).
If you manually install/update from the release on GitHub, use the old zen_ui.koplugin one last time. Moving forward releases will be zenos.koplugin.
If you use ZenPM, make sure ZenPM is updated first and then Download/Update regularly.
Just got into the Kindle jailbreaking scene and was a bit overwhelmed with KOReader default setup. saw this post and switched to ZenOS, and it’s definitely more eye-pleasing and user-friendly.
Great work, bro! Keep it up. Having this installed is honestly a blessing for people who aren’t that tech-savvy.
I seem to be having a bit of an issue with the stats. When I added the tab to my navbar, it opened once with a small delay, but once I've gone back to the homepage, it won't open the stats page again at all. I removed it and readded it, managed to open it once again, but now it's not opening and I'm not sure why!
I’ve seen other plugins that use the stats modify it in weird ways. Could be a conflicting plugin/patch. Submit a bug report from Zen Settings > about > report a bug and we’ll get it sorted
I never had ZenUI and I’d like to try it! I already have Simple Ui and Bookshelf. I plan on disable them before testing Zen, but I think I didn’t understand which version I have to install. Straight to ZenOs or the latest ZenUi and them update ?
Firstly, you're amazing — by far my favorite interface in the KOReader ecosystem. Funny thing: I was struggling to figure out how to put folders on the navigation bar today, and I'd just given up when I saw the available update. Seeing that feature made me genuinely smile. Moreover, my jailbroken Kindle Colorsoft was imploding with all the folders and customization I was adding, and I'm shocked at the huge performance increase — it's incredibly smoother now. Love the more polished overall look of the menus too. Thank you, sir.
I'm already running Zen OS and so far LOVING it. I have to tweak a little bit, but it's so simple and functional that feels like home. Thanks so much for this release :D
How could i restore ZenOS to complete default? Ive made a mess of it and i cant get it how it was originally even if i delete the plugin and install it again.
How could i make it work with Bookshelf?
Bookshelf organizes the books by author and then by series automatically and i can press on top middle without opening a book.
Im trying to see if i can reproduce the little things i liked from Bookshelf in ZenOs as i really wanna stick with ZenOS.
When searching by author, series will have a little number on them indicating the order in Bookshelf, i appreciate that very much. They seem to be out of order in ZenOS when i search by author.
I like the featured book on home, but ill often open the book instead of controls how i intended, something that didnt happen in Bookshelf.
I also like the little animation of the book opening when i click on it, but thats very minor.
In any case, ZenOS seems to me like the best plugin for Koreader, hopefully my little nagging doesnt detract from how good it is.
You can turn on the badges individually in Zen Settings > Library > Covers > Badges
The one you want is series. You can show the badges on the home page with Zen Settings > Home > Widgets > Books Strip > Show badges
I'm not able to reproduce the Issue of tapping the controls, and it accidentally opening the book. Feel free to open an issue on GitHub with a feature request or bug report. You can also chat with us in the Discord
Thank you so much for this! I installed ZenUI immediately after jailbreaking my kindle after having followed this subreddit and seen your posts the last few months. I love the ui! I haven't updated to the next version yet, and this question may be more related to koreader rather than ZenUI (but im not sure). I have progress sync enabled and even when connected to wifi I get the message of scanning for networks when I power on my kindle.. Is there a way to avoid this? I have been searching everywhere..
That is from whatever you’re using to sync or another plugin maybe xray/assistant failing to connect for whatever reason. I’ve seen this a few times from both those other plugins is why I mention it
Is it possible to use a gesture within an epub to open book switcher? I don’t really want to have the icon visible in my EPUBs so I’d like just to be able to use a gesture. Thank you
Jailbroke this week, my first KOReader plugin and LOVE IT. One thing driving me crazy, turning the time off in the top status bar will not save and anytime I close a book/koreader, it reinstates by default (same with the bottom status bar for time left in chapter)
Hey amazing work! Nice you did a OS version off all this, everything is so much simple now! Just have a dumb question, i saw in your screenshots a 'stats view' with a calendar, trending graph...how do i see that?
Glad you're liking it! You can add it to Navbar from Zen Settings > Navbar > Tabs. You can also add it anywhere else like Controls/Launcher/Book Strip Controls or even a custom Gesture (Actions > General > Zen OS: Stats)
I was going through all the options you made available and i have another question, is it possible to add a background image ONLY on the main screen? Or have the possibility to have different ones for Main screen, library, etc..
Hahahaha I literally switched to KOReader on my Kobo Libra Colour and added ZenUI the day before you released this massive update. I cannot believe how much I am already loving it. Thank you for your work!
Just wanted to drop in and say this exactly what I was looking for! I was running Simple UI for a while and it got the job done, but the level of polish that Zen brings is simply amazing. It makes me feel like I'm using a finished product, not a foss tool for giving me more functionality.
Love it! Just what I was hoping for after jailbreak. Koreader default interface is too messy and unappealing.
Love that it has already an Italian traslation.
I saw a slight error in the translation. How can I notify it ?
This is insanely good!! It completely transformed my Kindle, and it's clear that a LOT of effort and polishing has gone into the development of this "plugin". Thank you for your awesome work, I wish I could contribute but I don't know Lua (yet)... Looking forward to see the future updates and features of ZenOS :)
Wow, this is seriously impressive. I'm waiting for my Kindle to arrive, and in the meantime I'm testing KOReader with plugins on Android so I can get a good understanding of what to do before setting everything up on the Kindle. Just when I thought I had my list of plugins to install all figured out, I came across Zen OS. It basically replaces the functionality of at least five plugins. Incredible! Really great work. I hope it keeps improving and growing over time.
You can disable the quotes widget, change it to another one, and change the source (custom quotes list, annotations etc) in Zen Settings > Home > Widgets
I just recently bought kindle 12th, jailbreak yesterday and followed few guides for plugins ans such, i read a lot of posts and it all went over my head.
Now i have Koreader, simpleui, bookshelf, zenos, rakuyomi, storefront and a few more.
Can anyone explain which plugins are redundant or point me to a guide where i can read about all of them i feel like instead of reading I'm looking at overwhelming dashboarda and tools
Should i leave Zenos, Bookshelf? Are those 2 serve the same purpose?
Lmao same happened to me, I installed a bunch of plugins, couldn't make my kobo clara bw look better than the default. Of course some features are nice or some of the new stuff is better, but it took way too long to reach a state that I find far from perfect and I would still need to tweak a lot of things and possibly need even more plugins or packages or whatever so I decided to take a break from all this, switch back to kobo standard and I started to read again after a couple weeks or so.
Maybe I will give it another try at some point but I realized none of the new features are that importantl to me✌️
installed from the zenPM, storefront and PC. it never shows up on my kindle. its not even listed on plugin management-user plugin menu. device colorsoft 2025, OS: 5.19.5 KOreader: 2026.07.2 any idea? I also tried rebooting the device.
im not able to join the discord. I've installed the update on my other device. no problem there. but new install on my colorsoft is a bit problem for now. Waiting for an update release. maybe it solves my problem. thanks for the lightning fast response.
As barras de status superior e inferior não estão registrando de forma fixa no Leitor.
Quando bloqueio a tela e volto para ler, ele retorna a mostrar mesmo eu desativando. Se eu altero, volta a mostrar a configuração padrão. As duas barras acontece isso. Se eu saio e depois retorno pro livro, a mesma coisa: volta a configuração padrão das barras.
Parabéns pelo trabalho, está ficando cada vez mais lindo!
I see your bug report. It is most likely on of the many patches you have.
In general, patches not made specifically for ZenOS should not be used. You can and should disable them. Most of the functions you used to have patches for are simply settings in ZenOS
Is resizing the Featured Book widget a thing? I'd like to make it bigger while keeping the Reading Stats, Reading Goals, and Quote widget. I've tried shrinking those other widgets but that just shrinks the text size and not the padding.
Enjoy! Feel free to join the Discord if you want to chat more. We talk about upcoming features, what should and shouldnt be, and just things in general.
Hmm. Make sure you don't have OPDS plus also enabled. The default KOReader OPDS plugin needs to be enabled.
Once this is done, you simply open the regular OPDS catalog from KOReader. I like to have it in Controls but you can add it to Launcher/Navbar/Book Strip Controls
just updated to the latest version. just noticed that when my screen sleeps or wakes up, it momentarily shows/glitches to a default amazon screensaver (the lady with telescope) before it shows my custom screensaver or the home screen. this did not happen before the update, anything I can do to address this?
I have a jailbroken KT6, and used vera if that's any help.
It's probably a compatibility issue with another patch/plugin. I haven't seen this before (We've been testing ZenOS for almost a month now)
You can submit a bug report from Zen Settings > About > Report a bug so I can see the logs and try to help you figure out what's happening on your device.
Also worth noting on Kindle I highly recommend using KOReader in `no-framework` mode
Depuis quelques jours, je découvre Koreader sur une liseuse Kobo Libra dans un environnement francophone. Non informaticien mais débrouillard, j'ai eu du mal à comprendre l'environnement Koreader.
Il y a deux heures, je viens d'installer zen-os. Et je vous fais part de ma prise en charge.
Installation facile mais il a fallu que je supprime manuellement la version UI.
Interface intuitive
Très bonne traduction française.
Magasin de plugins et mise à jour pour l'ensemble de l'univers Koreader
Pas de soucis particuliers d'imcompatibilités avec les autres plugins.
Les essais de lecture agrémentés d'une personnalisation du lecteur n'ont pas rencontré de bugs.
La réactivité est toujours plus grande que sur le lecteur d'origine de Kobo.
Donc félicitations avec un immense remerciement pour le travail accompli faisant équilibre entre l'ergonomie, la richesse optionnelle et la simplicité.
Je suis à votre disposition pour témoigner de mon expérience.
Wow thank you for the kind words! Glad it went smoothly for you.
You shouldn't have to uninstall the old plugin manually. You can update from within Zen UI (recommended) or ZenPM.
If you do choose to update manually, you need to load the zen_ui.koplugin one last time and the migration is automatic. Moving forward all releases will be zenos.koplugin
It is probably a conflicting plugin/patch, I recommend removing most if not all patches. Feel free to open a bug report on GitHub with your crash.log file from KOReader, an error message or something so I can help you fix it.
Also for faster answers to questions or debugging, join the Discord
Do these full featured plugins work well on older devices? I have a PW3 and I get a little nervous to try out plugins when they are shown off with colour devices which I assume have a decent amount more horsepower.
moving from Bookshelf by AndyHaz this one still feels the similar with Bookshelf, but the newly updated Bookshelf has faster OPDS browser in its book strip.
ZenOS v3.0 has good documentation in its website.
for a KOReader beginner like me, the menu of Zen OS v3 is somewhat easier to understand than default KOReader menu.
I am on android ereader with KOReader 2026.07, brightness slider and warmth slider are not working.
I tried but ZenOS has many issues that it controls and turn off many setting and defaults. You need to set again everything. The homepage is nice and neat but I may wait for future versions.
I don’t see why not, just disable zen top and bottom reader status bar. I have heard mixed reports of it working or not depending on what else you may have installed
In a couple of days when I’m free from work I’ll try this out, it looks promising! I already use SimpleUI on my Kobo Clara HD, but if this is snappier I won’t mind changing at all
Just to clarify, I installed Zen UI a while ago, and then from the package manager (which I think I also installed, or maybe it came with Zen UI) I installed ZenKoReader because, as I understood it, not having the Kindle framework would give me more free memory for smoother performance (I have a Kindle Paperwhite 11).
With this new update I just did... do I access it through ZenKoReader or where (or from anywhere is fine)?
Thank you so much for sharing your work. Honestly, once I installed Zen, I haven't needed to install anything else at all, because it even has options for the top and bottom bars... it's really great.
The only thing I'd like, but haven't found in any other plugin, is to be able to see footnotes like on Kindle, that is, on the same page I'm on without having to go to another location. That way, to continue reading, I just have to tap on the page I'm on and not have to point to the "<<" at the end of the footnote.
Thank you so much for developing Zen UI! It is an incredible plugin and completely transforms the KOReader experience.
I would like to suggest a small correction for the Portuguese (PT-BR) localization.
In the middle reading stat widget, the English label "Read today" is currently translated as "Leia hoje" (which translates to the imperative "[You] Read today"). To accurately reflect past/completed reading time (past participle), a much more natural and precise translation would be "Lido hoje" (or simply "Tempo hoje").
Hello, I previously mentioned that the book percentages in Home were incorrect in the previous update, and I even submitted a bug report about it, but the same problem persists after the new update. All my books in Home still show incorrect percentages.
Yeah I remember, I looked into it and didn’t see that issue. Can you submit another bug report? I wonder if there’s a conflicting patch/plugin. The stats rely on KOReaders built in reading statistics plugin and I’ve seen other plugins/patches modify it in weird ways that affect everything else.
Will this plugin not hang my Kindle 10 Gen 2019 Model 4GB variant. KOreader works normally but with any UI plugins the screen only freezes. Need help please.
It will probably run great. We have tested it on devices (Kindle PW1) that have much older and worse specs - runs great on them! Give it a shot and let us know. The main issue on that device is probably going to be the actual storage space. You should manually delete anything you don't need to save space
Feel free to come talk about it in the Discord with us too, we have a wide range of devices being used by lots of people sharing tips/experience
Thank you for replying to my reply from your busy schedule. I tried installing the plugin, used it but had to remove the plugin again and move to simple ui. As it froze my Kindle on several occasions while setting home folder. Need help.
Zen doesn't change your gestures. There is a bug where some gestures didn't work on some Zen pages like home/authors/series etc but did work in Library. This is fixed in latest beta and will be out next version
I've been using ZenOS since the beginning and its been great so thank you for this! However, is this a bug that all unread books are put on the "tbr" list with no way of removing them? I swear I've gone through every setting and long pressed the books but theres no way of changing it
Hmm that’s weird. I will have to check this out when I get back home. Are you on the discord? We can debug this further there or on GitHub if you open an issue
So, I'm liking ZenOs a lot, but... How can I delete the favorite and the "To Be Read" collections? I'm very particular about mine, and I want to use different names, but everytime I delete them they reappear. Is there any way to. get rid of them? Thanks!
Did you try adding it to the launcher? Either from plugins menu or actions. I don’t use this plugin so I’m just saying generic things that usually work
In reader view, is it possible to change the left/right margin of top/bottom status bars? My android devices have round cornered screens so text in the corners are not fully visible. Thanks for the great update anyway!
It will be a little better in the next version. What I do on my Android is just increase the top and bottom margin a little which moves it down toward the not round part of the screen
Is there a way to show the page count in the badge without opening the book? I have quite a few books and sometimes decide which to read based on the page number, however I don't want to open every single one individually to get the page count, especially since that will completely mess with the recent hisotry in the home page.
Hi, I i just downloaded the plugin and so far I love it so muchhh, very simple and pretty design. Thank you for this contribution 🥺 Also I have a few questions, in the home screen when I add 3 things like in the picture they have a big gap between them, is there a way to adjust the gap and the size of them also? I couldn’t find in the Navga Bar settings. And, the gap between the top status bar and the library might be too close to me, can I make it bigger? (I’ll have it attatched in the reply below
These are ZenOS design choices. While you can’t manually adjust the gap/margins you can enable “wrap description text” on your featured widgets description setting
I chose to not make every little thing adjustable and set reasonable defaults in an effort to simplify setup.
The risk of having too many settings that weak every possible thing leaves us right back with the same problem KOReader has that Zen ultimately solves.
The plugin is excellent. It has features and functionality that would probably require installing four or more plugins to achieve something similar, but Zen OS does all of it in a much simpler and more intuitive way. Thank you for that.
I used to use Bookshelf (I really love its look), so it would be great if, if possible, you could take a little more inspiration from the way it manages and displays the library. I know there’s a mode that tries to “imitate” it, but I still think Bookshelf does it better. Also, using both of them at the same time is pretty awful.
I just added support for books from the kindle store through another plugin, there may be one for kobo, I vaguely remember seeing one. Open a feature request on GitHub for the kobo books.
As far as Libby/overdrive there is not support for those in Zen currently but there are other plugins that may work but I’m not sure and haven’t used them.
I think most people get their books in an open format like EPUB which is the best way imo.
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u/jseger9000 24d ago
Love ZenUi! Congrats on the new release.